Holy shit, what's my problem? Do I even have a problem? Am I great? Hunky dory, even?

I have a lot of alcoholics in the family tree, and I've been warned by doctors that it is an inherited trait. More than one doctor, in fact! But not my current doctor! He's more concerned with my hoagie intake! The problem, for me, seems to lie in the symptoms. Everyone seems to think that alcoholism is revealed when hidden drinks are discovered throughout the abode. The toilet tank, say, or behind the powertools in the garage. I have a problem with this symptom, though, because the amount a person has to hide depends on the temperament of his significant other. Say a man is forbidden to drink more than three drinks per week by his wife, gay lover, hidden extra-terrestrial, or talking basketball-playing werewolf. If he has that fourth drink, beer # 4 is probably hiding somewhere. But four drinks per week does not an alcoholic make. If the same man is drinking twelve bottles of whiskey per week, but the significant other allows it, an element of denial is strongly in place. Evidence: That werewolf was really good at slam dunking the ball, but, when he decided to simply be himself, we still won the state championship! Conclusion: Binge drinking is fully justified! USA! USA! USA! If any of you would like to talk to me, I'm passed out in my own bile! Color Me Badd 4 Life!

Potpourri of observations

Hello everyone. I like to pretend I'm a big man. I make it known around town that I have no use for the lower entertainments many of you commoners gawk at for hours upon years upon decades. I am a man of refined taste, culture, reputation and style. I'm drinking wine right now, for example. That being said, I have become addicted to the reality program, "Hell's Kitchen." It combines my newfound love of cooking with my age-old love of abusive tirades.

The mayor of Austin, Will Wynn (with a name like that, how could he lose?), has announced he is taking suggestions from anyone who wishes to e-mail him about how to celebrate Lance Armstrong's seventh Tour de France victory. I don't know Lance Armstrong, but I know this much. He would undoubtedly want me to have a high-paying, albeit surprisingly relaxing, job. This job should involve lots of screwing around, jacking around, screwing off, fucking off, pissing on it, and forgetting about it. I know this.

Take my wife, please.

But seriously, folks. My wife is great. It's these airline peanuts that burn me up. There are so few airline peanuts in a package of airline peanuts. Airline peanuts. Fuck.

This headline is a dream come true.

Please listen to lots of Silkworm, and remember how unfair this lottery of waking up every morning is. No one from the Barenaked Ladies has been killed. All the original members of Color Me Badd are still alive. Jeb Bush is still breathing in and out. Julia Roberts has been allowed to live. Thomas Kinkade talked shit about Picasso on "60 Minutes." Every host of "Entertainment Tonight," past and present, still exists. But we're still here, too. So fuck them. Do things you like with people you like as often as you can. One day, Conor Oberst will die. This gives me hope.

Damn it

A water main burst near our apartment, so the water has been shut off since three in the afternoon. It is now fourteen minutes past midnight, and the water is still off. We bought a bunch of bottled water, so we're doing alright in the hydration department, but bottled water is not going to flush my urine-filled toilet. Please, water department, let me flush my toilet filled with piss. Why won't you let me flush it?

I'm a liar

I lied about being too old to feel a personal attachment to people in rock bands that I like. I'm really bummed out about this Michael Dahlquist thing. How could this guy be dead?

If Robert Pollard died, my wallet would be much thicker

The four days following my birthday, I received three pieces of bad news, one after the other, boom boom boom. Then I get up on the fifth day and check out a few Internet sites, only to discover that one of my favorite drummers, Michael Dahlquist, from one of my favorite bands that hardly anyone gives a shit about, Silkworm, was killed in a freakish car accident on my birthday. I'm too old to feel any personal attachment to people in rock bands I like, but I am sad that the band has decided to break up. I'm pretty obsessive about this band. They enjoyed a brief period of hipster buzz around '95, '96, but it didn't last because indie rock fans are scumbags with no loyalty. They kept putting out great albums anyway. The whole thing sucks, especially how he died. Dahlquist and two other Chicago musicians worked the same day job and were stopped at a red light on their lunchbreak. An ex-model had an argument with her mother and decided to kill herself by getting in her car, running a bunch of red lights at 70 mph, and hitting whatever got in her way. She hit them. All three of the men died. She just broke her foot. Silkworm is no more, and three people are dead because they didn't bring their lunches to work. Dahlquist's death wasn't even the top story on Pitchfork. They thought the guy from Broken Social Scene getting punched by a cop was a more important story. This jerk was buying drugs in the park, got busted, resisted arrest, and got roughed up a little bit. Now he thinks he's a big man, announcing from the stage that he's going to sue the NYPD. At least his proximity to the obituary made him look like an even bigger twat. So anyway, I'm thinking about how ridiculous and short our lives are, and how ridiculous our deaths can be, and lots of other stuff about the three pieces of bad news I mentioned earlier, and how fucking hard it is for me to find a job, and how I'm running out of money, and how directionless my life is at the moment, and about how lots of stuff I've been enthusiastic about in the past is not currently floating my boat, and I'm walking down the street, and a homeless guy asks me how I'm doing. "Alright," I say and keep walking. "Just alright?" he says. "You're great! You woke up this morning. You're doing great!" The homeless fucker's right, but he's still a jerk. I still didn't feel great. I had something else bad happen to me today, and it finally turned me around, pulled me out of the funk. I'm in the bathroom at the Arbor before the movie starts. I'm done. I'm washing my hands. I turn on the faucet. I push down on the soap dispenser. Something is fucked up with this soap dispenser. I push down harder. Soap shoots out of it in a direct arc toward my crotch. It splatters all over the groin area of my shorts, looking exactly like I pissed myself. I know a lot of people say that when they spill something on their crotch, but this time it was true. There would be no "maybe he spilled water" reaction. This could only provoke a "that guy pissed himself" reaction. This is absurd. It's kicking a man when he's down. With all my problems, I didn't deserve to have soap sprayed on my crotch in a dribbly urine pattern. I had to walk back into the theater, past the people waiting in line near the other screens. I pulled my shorts way up, pulled my shirt way down, and did the walk of shame. My shorts slowly moved down to their normal position. People looked at me funny. I walked in the theater, sat down. I looked at my crotch. My wife looked at my crotch. We both started laughing. I tried to tell her what happened. I kept laughing. I finally got the story out. Laughed some more. Now life is good again. It's been a good night. Saw a good movie. Ate a good dinner. Some productive things happened. Listened to good music. Getting ready to read a good book. Eventually, something will happen to make me angry or sad. That will last a long time. Then something good will happen again. This pattern will repeat. Then I'll die.

Alright

Chris Cunningham made another Aphex Twin video. I'm happy about that.

Mix CD report #3

Neil Young's "Cripple Creek Ferry" is possibly the finest one minute, 34 second song. I'd have to consult my Minutemen albums to see if there's any competition, but I'd have to get out of my chair to do that.

Pop that funk

"Freedom is free of the need to be free. Free your mind and your ass will follow."
----- Funkadelic

Boop blap beep bwoooooop

I enjoy Brian Eno's synth solo on Roxy Music's "Editions of You." It's a barn burner! I also enjoy Bryan Ferry's pronunciation of the phrase "Boys will be boys" ("boys will be boy-yoy-yoy-yoys"). Who else sounds like Roxy Music? No-fuckin'-body! That's who!

Collage #3

Collage #3: "Competing Histories"

Bust a birthday nut

Hello friends and enemies,
I turned 28 today. I've now lived longer than Kurt Cobain. Smells like teen longevity. Dr. Mystery 1, Kurt Cobain 0.

My job search is about as successful as the Donner Party. Speaking of eating flesh, my new goal is to forget about finding a job and find Austin's ten best sandwiches instead. The Statesman threw down the gauntlet (gantlet?) and had the hubris to proclaim the ten best sandwiches in town. I am going to eat all ten. I've already had the Italian godfather and the best egg salad in town. I will eat the remaining eight before the summer is over, cholesterol be damned. You have my word on that. Are they the ten best sandwiches in town? Who cares. Are they good sandwiches? Yes. I will eat them with pride. Civic pride.

Reading: The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction by Henry James
Listening to: A bunch of mix CDs I made last week on shuffle - #1, #2, #3, #4 (#5 is a reggae compilation I haven't posted yet)
Farting: a lot

All the best professor names have already been taken

Reinhardt, you're alright.

Sunday morning coming down

Saturday night, I'm in my underwear, drinking PBR and watching "CSI: Las Vegas" reruns (could there be a better way to waste my life) when I hear some odd banging and kicking sounds coming from nearby that sound a whole lot weirder than the usual Saturday night drunken apartment complex living hijinks. I look out the window, and some strange person is standing motionless in front of the maintenance man's supply closet, which is right next door to our apartment. He is not one of the three maintenance men my landlords employ. He's tall, skinny, blonde, and vaguely indie-rock looking. He sees me and walks to the apartment complex across the alley, holds something above his head, stares at it for a few seconds, throws it over the fence, and takes off down the alley. I'm pissed off now because I assume he's broken in to our complex and I have to put my clothes back on and call the police. Ten minutes later, the police show up. I walk them outside and recreate the chain of events. The supply closet is still locked, and the mysterious object he stared at intensely and then threw over the fence turns out to be a fucking lightbulb. The police couldn't find him, tell me to lock my door, and leave. The next day, we're driving back from lunch and Captain Lightbulb is standing in the alley, shirtless, making weird gestures with his hands. We go inside. I contemplate calling the police again, but we end up just watching him for several minutes from our window, mesmerized. He looks directly into the sun, holds up his hand in a vaguely mystical gesture, and begins talking to himself. Then, a girlfriend/sister/roommate/friend pops out of the apartment across the alley and shoves him back inside. We discuss whether to call the cops again now that we know where he is, but we decide that he is either mentally ill, retarded, or under the influence of a particularly heavy dose of psychedelics and pass on further interactions with APD. Later, my wife sees him sitting in his pickup, talking to himself, and pressing on the horn once every ten seconds or so. Later still, he attempts to open our complex's supply closet yet again, but his girlfriend/sister/etc. grabs him and ushers him back inside. Turns out, he's just fascinated with the supply closet door, and he's really, really fucking high on psychedelics. He hasn't caused any hullaballoos since then. What's the point of this true story? I'll tell you the point, my friends. The point is that it's a dangerous, crazy world, and the children who are our future need to learn to just say no. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .to high prices! For real savings, shop at Costco. That's the Costco difference.

Get thee behind me, Satan

They've been airing the commercials for this heap of shit for the past three or four weeks. I've made a pact with myself that if I happen to watch even a minute of this show voluntarily, I will chop my dick off and eat it. Apparently, a millionaire record producer (who's recorded albums for such luminaries as Celine Dion and Kenny G.) is "tired" of his adult stepsons living off his money and is now "cutting them off." They have to find ingenious ways to raise money to survive on the mean streets of Trust Fund, USA, and we're supposed to sit on our couches and laugh heartily at this grotesque public display of obscene wealth and meaningless, pampered existence. Look at this asshole, his asshole stepsons, and the pile of hand soap, silicone, hairdye and chipmunk skulls that has somehow been fashioned into the female matriarch of this collection of fucksacks. This record producing jerk stares into the camera, fondling a handful of money, and grinning smugly, while he intones, even more smugly, "I'm cuttin' 'em off." Hee hee. He also says, false modesty gangraping arrogance while tact cries alone and ignored in the corner, "I've written and produced a few songs that did alright." (Cut to footage of him winning a Grammy for producing some horseshit.) A fucking Grammy. If I won a Grammy, I would find someone I hate and give the award to his dog. Never mind the fact that the whole pretence of this show is false. One of the stepsons has a band, produced by the stepfather, and this is their crass, vulgar, dishonest way of advertising it. Some day, I can only hope that a reality show about this family concludes with Record Producer Jerk stabbing his wife and stepsons, cutting Celine Dion open and feasting on her entrails, shoving Kenny G.'s phallic half-sax down his throat, and finally, turning the blade on himself while tears fall on the pile of worthless records he's devoted his life to recording. Fuck that guy.

Overheard at HEB on Saturday while buying beer, French bread, and chicken

Asian man in line ahead of us purchases some Celis raspberry beer.
Cashier: "Asians sure buy a lot of this beer."
D'oh!

The genius of David Lee Roth

"You mean that hot dog I just ate was Sammy Hagar?"

I regret nothing

Right now, my life is a plane and the plane is on fire. I am, apparently, unemployable, and the money is slinking away like kids from a swimming pool after little Gerald shit in it. My life savings will soon be joining Luther Vandross, and my enthusiasm for this job search is headed in the same direction. That's okay. Right now, the whiskey is joining its friends gin and vodka in my bloodstream, music that pleases me is coming out of the compute-box, and I am, for the moment, lord of all I survey. When Warren Zevon was asked, shortly before his death, for any insights he had gleaned from his terminal cancer, he replied, "Enjoy every sandwich." That's maybe the best advice anyone's ever been given.
P.S. Could it be any fucking hotter? This is the most miserable summer of my five years in Austin. It's just compounding all the other bullshit. My car is the next wood-fired oven of (name of downtown eatery with wood-fired oven here). My keys actually bake while I drive. I'm serious. I burned my hand twice today by touching my keys after I removed them from the automobile. This is not the way things should go.

Let's try this again

Two of my posts just disappeared without a trace after being up for a day, and I don't think they're coming back. Looks like I gotta recommend this Internet radio station again. It's www.erika.net/ and it's good. There are no commercials, and I've only heard two songs in three days that did not please me in some way. They just played Tobin Sprout, Bach, Hank Williams, and Sun Ra back to back. This almost makes me forget about that idiot who told J. Lo she weathered the Bennifer era with strength. Sometimes, things aren't so bad.

What?

I was flipping through the channels last night and briefly landed on "Access Hollywood." I didn't stay long, but I got to hear the interview jerk say this to Jennifer Lopez: "You weathered a whole era in pop culture called Bennifer, and you weathered it with strength."