Robot Town

I'm not a fan of nostalgia. I think it is one of the most debilitating of all human weaknesses, and too much of it can prevent a person from living a satisfying life. The ideal life, to me, is one lived almost exclusively in the present. However, it's hard to live by any ethical code, especially one's own, so let's call this post an appreciation of history and not a maudlin wallow in nostalgia. Besides, I'm still friends with the former citizens of Robot Town and in regular contact with them, and there's nothing nostalgic about that. In fact, one of them is married to the sister of my wife. Guess which one and win a peanut jar filled with Ernest Borgnine's urine. On to the post:

For the entirety of my junior year and portions of the first of my two senior years of college, I lived in a filthy, dilapidated house in the Russian Bottoms a few blocks away from the Midwestern university I attended. My roommates were Teenage Fashion Show, Professor Romance, and a revolving door of people who don't have blogs. (You know we are former roommates because we all use the same template.) While much of that time was spent feeling lonely, depressed, unsatisfied, angry, broke, hungry, drunk, stupid, smug, or unappreciated, living in the place was by no means routine. It was the last time in my life where I really had no idea what was going to happen on any given day. Oh, the adventures we had. Permit me to indulge in some masturbatory college memories. Please ignore the sentimentality, and if you don't like it, read something else. I suggest any volume of the "Sweet Valley High" series, or perhaps a column by George Will.
1) When we moved out of the house, I found a frog skeleton underneath my drum set.
2) I lived in the basement. It was infested with crickets. Eventually, I became adept at decapitating the insects with a pair of scissors. It was much cleaner than squashing them. A cricket would saunter by. I would grab the scissors and, with one smooth motion, lop off its head. I would grab a napkin, pick up the head and body, and drop it in the wastebasket. I got four in a row in four seconds once.
3) In the summer, a small crack in Professor Romance's window led to an infestation of snakes. One night, drunk at 3 a.m., I threw on a CD and got ready for bed. The CD stopped after one song. I got up and hit the play button several times. Nothing happened. I hit the open button. The five-disc changer popped out, and a baby snake was slithering around all over it. It slithered onto my floor. I wacked it with a drumstick for a few seconds, but this proved highly ineffective. I picked up the snake with an old t-shirt and threw it outside. (This anecdote is soon to be a Paramount motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson entitled "Snakes in a Stereo." The line, "Get these motherfucking snakes out of this motherfucking stereo" is expected to take on cult status.)
4) One Christmas, I received a pair of thick blue socks that were so ridiculous, I could only wear them at home. One of them mysteriously disappeared at the laundromat. At the time, I was on a strictly fast-food diet. One Hardee's Monsterburger too many, and I was dropping an incredibly greasy shit. I unfortunately had failed to check the toilet paper situation before sitting down on the toilet (bathroom pictured above). We were completely out. I couldn't even find any newspaper. I decided to use the blue sock. It was so thick. It took care of business. I'll leave it at that. Business completed, how to dispose of this blue sock? In my haste to find a suitable toilet paper substitute, my common sense had been momentarily displaced. For whatever reason, I did not throw the shit-smeared sock into the Dumpster. What did I do? I put it in a plastic bag and threw it in the neighbor's backyard.
5) Shane was a guy I knew from the dormitories, and he also knew each of my roommates, unbeknownst to us all. Coincidentally, he dated one of the girls who lived in the next house I moved into. Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition. Shane was a musclebound, athletic, tall, blonde guy who would have embodied Hitler's Aryan superman ideal to a T if it hadn't been for a handful of exceptions: he liked every person he met, had a bottomless appetite for drugs, had an unhealthy obsession with snakes, had a prosthetic leg (which was either due to cancer or a boating accident, he told different people different stories), and was completely, totally, and entirely one hundred percent motherfucking crazy as shit. It had been nearly a year since any of my roommates and I had seen him, but one Friday night, he showed up at our door with a Russian woman in extraordinarily tight and short shorts, a Turkish man, and an Iranian man and asked if we wanted to play some music. We went down to the basement, where all our instruments were set up, and he proceeded to play noodly, Tangerine Dream-esque New Age keyboard solos for about two hours straight. Then he pulls out a huge bag of pot and says he wants to make pot brownies. I go to the Save-Mart with him and his international entourage to buy some brownies at 2 in the morning. There is only one woman working the counter. He puts the brownie mix on the counter and yells out, "Whoo! Brownies! All right! I love them!", then proceeds to take off his prosthetic leg and pump it in the air above his head. The cashier flinches and looks like she is about to burst into tears. He hops around with his prosthetic leg hoisted in the air for about three or four minutes. We get back to the house ten minutes later, and he says, "I'm too tired to make brownies." Then he proceeds to have sex with the Russian woman on our couch, while we play some more music downstairs. Shane leaves the next morning, and I haven't seen him since. We avoid the couch for the remainder of our months at the house.

Reader participation time

Hey everybody! Remember when this blog had a Robot of the Week contest? Remember how much fun that was? Remember how I sent the Robot of the Month winner an envelope full of trash? It used to be about the community. The Internet community. Somewhere along the way, though, Dr. Mystery lost sight of the altruistic community-building the robot contest engendered. Instead, he abandoned the contest so he could spend more time working on his bizarre and selfish rants. Me, me, me. That's all this jerk cared about. Information superhighway? More like an information super-my-way. Dr. Mystery forgot his roots. He forgot the people that helped make him the failure he is today. But, c'mon gang, it's never too late to change. Or change back. So I, Dr. Mystery, am instigating a new contest. This is a caption contest. I will put a random photo up on the blog, and you, my lovely readers, if you choose to enter, will write a caption for the photo. I will keep the contest open for ten days. Unlike the last contest, this contest's winners will be decided not on merit, but by being drawn out of a hat at the end of the ten-day period. Dr. Mystery has moved beyond the concept of good and bad, better and best, pro and con. He knows that in the real world, success is achieved mostly by way of a lucky break, and the contest will reflect this reality. Also, everyone gets a chance to win this way. The random winner of each month's contest will win a homemade compilation CD created by Dr. Mystery himself. Not too shabby, am I right? I guess that depends on your taste. Contact info will be announced when the winner is revealed. Remember, you have to play to win. Without further ado, here is the first photo in our caption contest. To enter, leave your caption as a comment to this post. Whoo!

Working for a living is a stupid farce

I was sitting through a long meeting at work today in which empty jargon was bandied about and debated incessantly and people in love with the sound of their own voices made sure to say the same things repeatedly, slightly varying the sentences each time, and I had the opposite of an out-of-body experience (my mind was sucked somewhere into my lower intestine and nestled gently there for about an hour) while neon signs only I could see flashed the words: "THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE. GET OUT. GET OUT NOW." There is something I'm supposed to be doing with my life, but somehow my mind and body aren't getting the message. I need to find some work that is meaningful and enjoyable. If I don't accomplish this goal, I will never be happy. Ever. You know what was great? As stressful and financially miserable as it was, unemployment was the best thing ever. I learned how to cook. I stayed up until 4 or 5 a.m. I woke up at noon. I read a million books. I listened to tons of music. I ate when I was hungry. I cursed the heavens when I was angered. I took thirty-minute showers. Fuck this working bullshit. It brings a man down. It is undignified to work in an office. My college diploma = a two-ply square of toilet tissue. I want to be a living man! I want to bite into the earth like it was a tasty sandwich, featuring all the meats, cheeses, condiments, vegetables, and breads known to humankind! Why is, has, and ever shall be my working day so repulsively insulting to the life I live outside of work? Is it because my parents aren't rich? Is it because I don't know the right people? Is it because I find ambition unseemly and dangerous? Take all jobs and shove them!

Collage #7

Collage #7: "The Moderately Upscale Restaurant across the Street from My Cubicle Has Been Patronized by Linda Evans, Laura Bush, and Fabio"

SXSW: The music

Now that almost two weeks have passed since South by Southwest blew through town, and now that almost everyone is tired of reading about it, I present to you my SXSW report. Aside from a free Dirtbombs day show a few years ago and the Guided by Voices hoot night last year, I haven't attended the festival in all its horrible, wonderful glory since 2001 (an endurance odyssey). Much to my chagrin and/or dismay, wristbands are way more expensive now, and there sure are a lot more industry fuckos clogging the lines into the venues. Most of them have soul patches and reek of entitlement. My putdown of them is a cliche, yes, but one that is unfortunately one hundred percent accurate. Anyway, since wristbands were so expensive and, if you showed up too late, essentially worthless, I was a little conservative with my choices. Most of the bands I waited in line to see were bands I had already seen before. But I knew they could deliver the goods, baby! The rock goods!

Wednesday
Stubb's Matador showcase
What the hell is Matador up to in the '06? First on the bill was Jennifer O'Connor. I wanted to like her because she was nice and didn't look like a rock jerk, but her music was bland, singer/songwriter, coffeehouse rock. All the songs were about how her boyfriend broke up with her, or she broke up with him. She was followed by Brightblack Morning Light, a sort of ambient jam band. It was the musical equivalent of a bong cleaning. This is what the label that brought you Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, Silkworm, and The Fall's nineties albums is bringing you now. Baffling. Thankfully, The New Pornographers kicked it up eighty notches. They have it all: A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Dan Bejar (who wasn't there, unfortunately), great songs, pop hooks for days, high energy, sensible shoes, and that special Canadian je ne sais quois. They were the start of a curiously enjoyable trend for me, one that would continue with each band I was seeing for the second or third or fourth or tenth time: bettering the last performance of theirs I saw. I left the showcase after the New Pornos, because the crowd kept getting thicker, and I don't like Belle and Sebastian and Mogwai enough to suffocate in the musk of thousands of pasty white indie rockers. I had no other promising leads, so I walked down to the Exodus to try to catch The Go Team's set. I like one of their songs a lot. It's the only song of theirs I've heard. The line was ridiculous, and after waiting in it for ten minutes, I got antsy and wandered the streets for thirty minutes before going home and getting a full night's sleep. It served me well.

Thursday
Back to Stubb's to see the Fiery Furnaces. The line is horrendous. Since the headliners are Gomez and Nickel Creek, I'm baffled. It seems like a show that will accumulate a crowd slowly, not explode from the get-go. I ask the guy in line behind me who the hell got so popular on the bill. He stares at me incredulously. "You don't know?" he asks me patronizingly, like I just farted in his creme brulee. "No," I say. "You mean you really don't know?" he says. I want to strangle the fucker, grab him by the tendons in his neck, and say, "Listen, rock jerk, I worked all day. I didn't have access to the rock jerk grapevine. I asked you a simple question. Give me a simple answer or I will lay waste to you. I will eat your soul. I will put your soul in a taco and eat it. Then I will shit it out. It will pass through a system of pipes before being devoured by flies. You are a puny little man." He finally deigns to humor me with a response. Apparently, the Beastie Boys are playing a (not-so) surprise show, first on the bill. I decide to stick it out in line. I may get to see the Beastie Boys, and if not, I will still have no problem seeing Fiery Furnaces. Turns out, I hear the entirety of the Beastie Boys show, and finally get in to see their last two songs. Accidentally seeing the Beastie Boys is a nice little thing, isn't it? When they finish, Stubb's looks like the last scene in Woodstock. It is decimated. The crowd clears out, leaving much litter in its wake. Deadboy & The Elephantmen follow. They have a lot of energy, but are a little too enamored of the White Stripes band model. It's almost like they was created by an accounting firm. Noisettes follow. Again, I applaud the energy, but I can't recall even eight seconds of their set. The Fiery Furnaces follow. Nice alliteration! They are probably my favorite new band of the last couple of years. They destroy Stubb's. They raze it to the ground. Whoo! I like this band! I skip out and head to Friends, where I attempt to get into the Twilight Singers. No dice! This club is sold out! Douchebag admittance only! I walk over to Exodus to catch Eagles of Death Metal instead. I have a weird disconnected experience watching a band called The Lovemakers. I find their performance fun and their energy highly contagious, but I have a powerful hunch that their records suck some shit. Eagles of Death Metal are enjoyable, and I love the two-drummer novelty, but there is something a little too paint-by-numbers about their performance, though a couple of songs really take off. I still like the album.

Friday
Finally, I don't have to worry about getting up and going to work the next day. I do have to worry about having to piss like a madman and the clubs not being open for another thirty minutes. I start to wander around, just to keep moving and to keep my mind off my bladder. I realize after about ten minutes that I'm wandering where I probably shouldn't be wandering. This is immediately reinforced after I nearly collide with a couple shooting up between a couple of parked cars. Head down, nose to the grindstone, on the alert for more crouching junkies and hidden dragons, I trudge back downtown and find Side Bar open and not hosting live music. I take a piss, drink a pre-rock beer, and then go to Club DeVille to see Bottomless Pit, the new band from the surviving members of Silkworm. First up is The Color Scheme. What a collection of assholes. The singer is a pampered pretty boy who whines about the smallness of the crowd, and their songs are boring. What a rock jerk. Bottomless Pit, however, are fucking awesome. I'm extremely pleased. Next, I head to Antone's for Neko Case. First, I stand through Over the Rhine (I don't remember one thing about this band), Marah (total douchebags, though they do have some great riffs), and Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings (awesome, awesome, awesome). Neko Case is great, as usual, though I wish she'd shuffle some of the older songs in her set list. Also, like Meryl Streep, she's a little too professional, so reliable that at times she seems almost cold. She's a Swiss watch. This is a minor complaint, however, because I love her songs to death, and when she sings harmony with Kelly Hogan and Rachel Flotard, the hair stands up on my arms.

Saturday
I'm going to wrap this up quickly. I need to go to bed, damn it.
Irving: Don't remember them.
Silversun Pickups: Boring.
Head of Femur: I worked in a record store in college with a couple of the guys in this band. I like a lot of their songs. However, I was disappointed with their live show, which was more generically indie-rock than the albums, though this isn't really their fault. They weren't able to bring their horn and string section with them on the tour, so they didn't play any of the pretty, orchestral, harmonic stuff that I like.
Antone's Merge showcase
White Whale: Pleasant, occasionally dull, however their last song was so good that I have some hope for this band.
Annie Hayden: Snooze.
The Essex Green: Likable, catchy. I like the pop hooks. Doesn't quite do enough for me, though.
Superchunk: These cats were on fire. Great set, and totally redeeming the mediocre show they put on the last time I saw them, though the poor sound at that show had a lot to do with it. This time, great set, great sound.
Camera Obscura: Cute as hell. Americans are very receptive to Scottish accents. They just make us feel good. What can I say? I don't get the hype otherwise. Pleasant, but nothing special.
Robert Pollard: The greatest man in rock. He's not a rock jerk. He's written more classic songs today than any rock jerk ever will. Though he seemed a bit unhealthy and incoherent in between songs, while he performed he was a rock and roll dynamo. This incoherence might have had something to do with Day Four, Hour 5000 of SXSW. I felt unhealthy and incoherent myself. His new band is great. His stage banter was curiously subdued, though he did have one great line after laughing at his own dance moves: "I look like fucking Leo Sayer out here."

Activism? More like wack-tivism!

I saw an always enlightening (for those of you who can't read sarcasm, change "always" to "never") Fox 7 news segment this morning about a series of fundamentalist Christian teen rallies led by some neo-con, God-loving jerk. It was pretty typical stuff. Unfortunately, the most disgusting part was the jerk-off liberal activists protesting one of the events in San Francisco. They were holding signs and calling the Christian teens "racist, sexist, and homophobic." Say what you will about the roles of women and the treatment of homosexuals in fundamentalist Christianity, but there was something a little stupid about 40-odd adult white men yelling at 15 black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, and female teenagers who were excited about Jesus. It would be nice if the teenagers decided to experience a little bit of life firsthand before adopting an absolutist worldview, and it would also be nice if the activist jerks would take all the time, energy, and money they spent organizing their troupe, making signs, and driving to the protest and instead donated to WFMU or the American Cancer Society or took their grandmother or their best friend out to lunch or got drunk on Old Style tallboys. It would be nice if they politely talked to each other and exchanged viewpoints, and gave these opposing viewpoints some thought. I would like to live in a dreamworld where we all respected each other a little more.
On that note, I want to apologize to Pedro the Lion for saying a few months back that he/it was the worst artist in rock. I heard two or three Pedro the Lion songs recently and realized that the college-radio DJ announcing the horrible song as a Pedro the Lion song made a mistake. The songs I heard sound nothing like the purported "Pedro the Lion" song that so offended my delicate ears that cold December morn. In fact, Pedro the Lion is far from being the worst band/man in rock. I still wouldn't buy a Pedro the Lion album, but I would not smash his records over my knee if they somehow were found on my person. I'm going to assume the horrible song I heard was on the Saddle Creek label, or possibly Team Love. Something that bad has to be Conor Oberst-related.

In other hilarious protest news, a small group of people picketed a recent R. Kelly show in Austin. They came up with a great chant: "We want R&B, not child pornography!" What a courageous stand. I wish I had been there to join them. What fun we would have had. What injustice we would have exposed. What outrage we would have expressed. These are the signs I would have made:
"We want to listen to soul,
not have our teenage daughter used as a toilet bowl!"
"We want to hear R&B,
not be covered in pee!"
"Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!"
"More slow jams,
less golden showers!"
"R. Kelly likes to piss on girls. That is ridiculous!"
"I like sandwiches!"
That would have been a great protest.

I can't improve on this one

This one goes out to my brother. Here is the entirety of an IMDB news item entitled "Jackson's snake film creates huge buzz":

"Samuel L. Jackson's new mile-high thriller "Snakes on a Plane" has created such a buzz among internet film fans, movie bosses have called for re-shoots - to give the film a tougher rating. The film, which stars Jackson as an FBI agent trying to keep a federal witness alive onboard a plane full of snakes, wrapped last September - but went back before the cameras earlier this month for five days of additional shooting. Film bosses at distributor New Line Cinema opted to add new scenes to the film to take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory, according to industry magazine The Hollywood Reporter. They claim the second round of filming became necessary after intense and growing fan interest in the film, which is scheduled to be released this summer. Among the reported additions to the film is a foul-mouthed rant from Jackson in which his agent character bellows, "I want these motherf**king snakes off the motherf**king plane!" The line is expected to take on cult status. The film-makers have reportedly added more gore, more deaths, more nudity and more snakes to the finished product."

Adventures in proofreading

My new job is strictly dullsville, daddy-o's, but sometimes I read funny things in the books I proofread. Today, for example, I stumbled upon a treasure chest of comical amusements, arcana, and madcap nuttery. Bust a move:
1) See if you can guess the subject of this book by a random sampling of items in the index. Win a kick in the crotch! Here are the random items:
Pacific Rim
AIDS
glam rock
gambling
funk
Battle of the Beers
Ben Affleck
air fresheners
apartheid
laundry detergent
beef
dissatisfaction
Amstel Light
2) A rare moment of poetic, concise insight from the same index (these two items actually followed each other):
2004 presidential election
Tylenol
3) In a book about a painter in Taos, New Mexico who started a society of fellow Taos artists to promote their work in the early 20th Century, these phrases come from a flyer advertising a fundraising dance for the society:
"Don't forget the evening Wednesday July 27th. Make no other engagement."
"Delicious refreshments will be served at popular prices."
4) The art book is old and is being reprinted, word for word. It's being scanned. During the scanning process, odd typos can occur. Example: A sentence that should have read, "He lived in the house," instead reads, "He lived tit the house." Doesn't that seem like a phrase that should have been used in the 1970s to describe hanging out? I wish I had access to a time machine, so I could go to a small town or suburban neighborhood ca. 1976 and become a burnout. I would listen to Little Feat and Foghat and sit on the hood of my car in the parking lot of the Conoco station. High school kids would eventually pull in, chat me up, and ask me to buy them beer. I would buy the beer, then drink it with them in an abandoned trailer in the country. When the high school kids see me on the street, they say, "Hey, man, what's happening?" I reply," Just livin' tit, my man. Just livin' tit."

Woodwind nut gas

I'm not really supposed to read the books I proofread at work for content, but sometimes I just can't help it. Today, I was proofreading a book about landmark alimony cases and one case in particular caught my eye. A woman was suing her ex-husband for massive alimony, in part to compensate for the "extreme mental cruelty" he showed her during their marriage. Examples of the cruelty were pretty basic, with the exception of this one: "incessant and inappropriate passing of gas."

Another book I worked on today was about libel, defamation, and copyright and trademark cases involving celebrities. The book briefly mentioned a lawsuit brought by Woody Allen against some kind of business that used an Allen lookalike in a print advertisement. Here's the good part. They described Allen as a "filmmaker and clarinet entertainer." Hey, everybody! Look at me! I'm a drum entertainer! Since this afternoon, I have had an image in my head of Allen alone in a room full of clarinets, telling jokes, juggling, and doing a little softshoe razzmatazz to his captive audience of woodwinds.

Last week, I proofread a self-defense manual that included pictures of a high-heeled blonde squeezing, kicking, and kneeing the testicles of a bearded assailant. Actually, that might have been from a magazine I keep under the bed. I'll get back to you on that.

Collage #6

Collage # 6
"Sex Cymbal"

Great moments in SXSW history

I've been shirking this bloggity-poo for several days because I attended the big clusterfuck of hipster douchebags, aka South by Southwest, last week. I flew solo, sparing Mrs. Mystery the pain of enduring four consecutive nights of rock fever, bobbing and weaving my way in and out of the crowds and clubs like a graceful teenage swan. Oddly enough, for a man as socially awkward and hermit-like (or hermetically sealed) as the doctor of mystery, I ran into people I know every single night. I enjoyed the randomness of the friendly encounters, and I also enjoyed spending all that time alone, watching people and coming and going as I liked. I also spent over 100 dollars on beer. It would be hilarious if I did that at a liquor store, but, alas, the tally was reached by local merchants inflating their prices to gouge tourists, not through any massive consumption on my part. I'll probably write about the music later, but let's talk about douchebags and ephemera first.

Douchebaggery:
1) The bouncers at the Exodus club are a bunch of fucking Neanderthals. I got thumped in the chest for standing on the stairs too long, people were thrown out for reasons as random as staring at the bouncers, taking pictures of the bands, or getting a little tipsy. One of these uber-douches, violently removing an intoxicated man, screamed at us to "get out of the way" though his path to the door was clear and slammed directly into us with the full force of his steroid-friendly physique. Those guys can straight up eat some dogshit. Oddly, the bartenders were excellent.
2) I had to stand in line for thirty minutes next to the two most repulsive women I've ever encountered, at least since last month. They were loudly giving a massively cliched hipster's guide to Austin to a couple of guys from out of town, probably unsolicited. They were apparently being controlled by the same puppetmaster because they were in absolute consensus on every absolutist know-it-all opinion expressed by either of their stupid faces. They even finished each other's sentences. How cute. I want to thank them for setting me straight, though. Apparently, my favorite place to see live music, Stubb's, is "the worst place to see live music in Austin." Is the sound bad, the out-of-towners reasonably asked. "No, the sound is good. Particularly if you stand by the tree. The sound is perfect next to the tree." Huh? "It's too dusty. Also, we saw LCD Soundsystem there, and it was too cold to dance." What's Austin like when SXSW is not going on? "It's a sleepy hamlet. Everyone is laid back to a fault." Where's the best Mexican food? "If you want to eat good Mexican food in Austin, the only place to get it is the east side." Is the barbecue at Stubb's good? "Stubb's is tourist barbecue. Again, the only place to get good barbecue is on the east side." Aren't these ladies precious? Eating exclusively in minority neighborhoods gives them a badge of hipster authenticity. We are so enlightened, so free. We are so down with black and Latino culture, as long as we can eat it. To be fair, the food on the east side is pretty damn good, but there's a lot of great things over there besides food, and a lot of great Mexican food and barbecue on the west, north, and south sides as well. But hipsters exist only in absolutist worlds, where the greatness of one thing negates everything else. Stubb's may be "tourist barbecue," but I think that phrase could be better used to describe the contents of the two women's brains.
3) Overheard conversation between two drunk guys, again at Exodus, while waiting at the bar for my drink.
Drunk 1: Dude, I'm trying to get some puss tonight.
Drunk 2: Drugs?
D1: No, not drugs. Puss.
D2: Ohhhh. Puss. Not drugs.
D1: No. Puss.
D2: Puss would be good. Drugs would be good, too.
D1: Yeah. Puss would be good and drugs would be good, too.

One hour later, I went back to the bar, and the conversation was still going on!

4) After Superchunk's set on Saturday night, David Cross sneaks onstage and says a few words. A completely baffled looking guy walks up to me and says: Was that David Cross?
Me: Yeah.
Baffled guy, almost angry, intently staring into my eyes like I'm some conduit between David Cross and him: What's he doing here?
Me: Probably seeing some music.
Guy, shaking his head, still perturbed, but visibly relaxing a bit: Whoaaah!

5) My favorite moment, in the bathroom at Stubbs, when a world-weary LA hipster got schooled by a drunken moron. At the paper towel dispenser:
LA Hipster (after getting a paper towel from the motion senser dispenser): Man, I'm from L.A. and I've never seen anything like this.
Drunken Moron, visibly perturbed: What? You're from L.A. and you've never seen a paper towel dispenser like this one? You've never seen one of these before? You never have?
LAH (unaware he's being fucked with): Yeah, I'm from L.A. and I thought I'd seen everything, but I've never seen these before.
DM: All you do is move your hand in front of it and the paper towel comes out!
LAH: Yeah, but I've never seen one of these in L.A.
DM: Dude, it's not that interesting.
(everybody laughs)

Ephemera:
Celebrity sightings: J Mascis, the aforementioned David Cross, Beatle Bob, David Fricke (I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel with the last two)
Personal behavior that made me laugh but also disturbed me: While on my way from one club to another, I stopped for pizza, and then I stopped for tacos.

More quality journalism

I love this headline on Yahoo News:
"Report: Stone to Bare All in 'Basic Instinct 2'"
I'll bet that's quite a report.

An innocuous little celebrity headline is given some kind of magical journalistic heft simply by the placement of the word "report." Maybe our intrepid reporter had to be blindfolded and driven to a remote shadow organization with possible terrorist ties deep in the Iraqi desert to get the goods on Sharon Stone's boobies.

Report: I ate at Jack in the Box.

Two absurdities

1. I was driving home from work last Friday with the windows rolled down because my air conditioning doesn't work. Roy Orbison was playing on a mix tape in my car. At one point in the drive, I turned a corner, passing a car occupied by two frat-looking guys stopped in the other direction at a red light. The Roy Orbison was kind of loud, so they looked over at my car. Then the driver of the car looked at me and yelled "Queer!" Roy Orbison can be a little operatic, I guess, but it's sort of like being called a "nigger" for listening to The Kinks.
2. When I was in college, I worked in a record store. A small but loyal goth contingent dropped massive amounts of money two or three times a month on a stack of terrible, terrible music. Most of them were high school kids, so they must have been indulged by lousy parents of considerable means. I jump to this conclusion with no proof besides the $3,000 a month they spent on spooky retard rock, their youthfulness, and the fact that no one would possibly hire anyone who looked like this equation: (Mick Mars c. 1985 + Count Chocula) powdered sugar = douchebag city. One Friday night, a coworker got sick and went home. The other coworker was in the back office doing some paperwork. That left me manning the store alone. A goth girl who was a regular came in with a guy I'd never seen before. This guy was the ultimate goth twat. Both eyebrows were completely shaven, and he wore heavy white pancake makeup, long black coat in the middle of summer, black eyeliner, black lipstick, black fingernails, dyed black hair, all the accoutrements, etc. He and the girl both dropped about 300 dollars on shitty CDs, and then they left. Ten minutes later, Count Twatula came back in by himself. He ordered another CD under a name that certainly wasn't his, though I wouldn't find that out until about five minutes later. He went back to the goth section and started flipping through the discs. I thought it was odd that he had come back in the store alone, but since he'd already dropped a huge wad of cash, I wasn't expecting him to steal anything. I walked out from behind the counter and flipped through a magazine in the corner. That was the chance he had been waiting for. He grabbed a stack of about ten CDs and hauled ass out the door. He was running so fast, he dropped a few of them and almost ran into the door. Someone, probably the girl, was sitting in an idling car in the parking lot next door, and the car was gone before I could regain my composure and chase after them. This anecdote doesn't really have much of a point, but have you ever seen a goth run? That shit is absurd.

Quality journalism

"Axl Rose is making his old Guns N' Roses band mates feel unwelcome to the jungle."
-- first line of an AP article about Axl Rose's lawsuit against Slash and Duff McKagan

Tales of small town life 4

The Platte River runs below a highway bridge about a quarter of a mile northeast of my hometown. Sometimes the river gets low enough to wade in safely. When the river is low, an occasional carp gets stranded and dies. This handful of dead carp, much like the nearby prairie dog, becomes an exaggerated excuse for nihilistic carnage on the part of bored teenagers. The idea is simple, though false: some of the carp need to be killed so the rest of them can make their way down the river safely without crowding each other onto dry land. Carp aren't particularly good to eat, so trapping them or catching them with a fishing pole isn't really a whole lot of fun. They just need to be killed, and the only humane way to do it is to wade into the river with a baseball bat, wait for some to swim by, and pound the shit out of them until they are dead. This is called "carping." When I was in eighth grade, the river was very low and carping was popular among the boys in my class. My friends asked me to go carping with them almost daily, but I always turned them down. Then, as now, I liked to spend my free time listening to music and reading, and my cruelty to animals phase ended in sixth grade, when I would shoot birds in my backyard with my brother's BB gun. Clubbing fish to death seemed like a stupid thing to do (although listening to King's X seemed like a good idea to me at the time, so I wasn't exactly free of stupidity myself). One afternoon, however, after a particularly bad day at school, three of my friends again asked me to go carping. Somehow, my distaste for the activity was momentarily replaced with curiosity and desire. This would be something new. How many times did something new present itself in my tiny little hometown? I was ready to club some fucking fish. Stupid? More like gloriously stupid. As soon as school ended, we got on our bikes and rode to the most zealous carp-beater's home for supplies. He could only find two baseball bats, one of which I was lucky enough to snag, so the other two had to make do with a fence post and a golf club. We rode out to and under the bridge, laying our bikes down on a hill near the river, took off our shoes and socks, and waded into the water. I had been under the bridge a few times with friends, but had never waded in the river, so I spent about ten minutes walking around, looking at the rocks and fish in the water, watching cars drive past on the highway above my head. It was nice. Then I saw one of my friends whack the holy living fuck out of a carp. It was exciting. My other two friends joined in, killing several fish. I watched them for awhile, and then tried it myself. I've never been athletic, and fish killing is no exception. I kept missing. I finally hit one, but it kept swimming, unfazed, and the feel of the bat against the slimy back of the large fish freaked me out a little. After about thirty minutes of further carp-pummeling, I hadn't killed any, two of my friends had killed three or four, and the zealous carp-killer had a formidable mound of dead carp piled on a rock near his feet. We were about to head home when Shane rode up on his bike. Shane was three or four years older than us, and had either dropped out or been kicked out of two high schools in nearby towns before making his way to Bridgeport, where he was staying with a friend and his mother. Shane was in trouble constantly, and would later drop out of Bridgeport High School in the tenth grade, at the age of 19. He wasn't mean or intimidating, though, and we all liked him. He smoked a lot of pot, listened to heavy metal and gangsta rap, and was pretty clever. He was funny, not dumb at all, and had a burning need to fuck up. He had a great laugh, and you knew you had said something funny when you made him let it out. He once borrowed a Metallica tape from me, and though he kept it for seven months, he brought it back. I'm sure his life is probably not very good right now. Back to the carp. He looked at our pile of dead fish and laughed. He asked for one of the bats. He told my friend to throw the dead carp at him. My friend threw the dead carp. Shane hit the fish, hard, with the bat, and it split into two bloody chunks that sailed over the river bridge. We all laughed hysterically. He called out for more carp. My friend threw most of his pile of dead carp, Shane hit most of the carp thrown at him, most of the carp being hit split into bloody pieces, and most of the bloody pieces sailed over the river bridge. Unfortunately, one of the bloody pieces almost hit a state patrolman's moving vehicle. He turned around, eyeballed us from the bridge, and parked. Shane split the moment he saw the patrolman's car, so the four of us were left with bloody fish guts and the weapons in our hands. The patrolman didn't look angry or amused, just exasperated at the stupidity of the generation of American males we represented. I could very easily picture him saying "I'm too old for this shit," while a white-hot guitar lick played quietly in the background. He lectured us briefly, then let us off with a warning. I don't remember much of what he said, but I distinctly remember his closing words: "Guys, I know it's kind of sporting, but clubbing fish to death with a fence post and a golf club is just not what you're supposed to do."

The poetry of KISS

On a mountain high somewhere
Where only heroes dare
Stand the stallion and the mare
We have been and we shall be each other's destiny
One another's odyssey
(from "Odyssey")

When love rears its head, I wanna get on your case
Ooh baby, wanna put my log in your fireplace
(from "Burn Bitch Burn")

Take a look around, only one solution
Set the world on fire, fight the institution
Gonna stand our ground, feel the new sensation
Something's goin' down - rock the nation
(from "All Hell's Breakin' Loose")

So you been to the market
And the meat looks good tonight
And the ladies in waiting
Will show you what it's all about
Their selection is inviting
They sure look hot tonight
And the ladies in waiting
Will show you what it's all about
(from "Ladies in Waiting")

Man battlestations torpedo, man battlestations torpedo
I thought I'd go out and take a swim today
It was real hot and I just had to get away
They spotted an unknown sub down in the bay
But I don't care, think I'll go swimmin' anyway - yeah

Let's take a dive, torpedo girl, and feel alive, torpedo girl
Let's take a dive, torpedo girl, and feel alive

But I knew when I was in the suds and swimmin' around
But then all of a sudden I heard this rumblin' sound
I saw this thing that looked a lot like a submarine
With a pretty girl on the bridge, could this be a dream?
I don't know, could be
(from "Torpedo Girl")

Germany was really neat, Japan had much to eat
And Denmark was great, but I just can't wait, rockin' in the U.S.A.
(from "Rockin' in the U.S.A.)

I'm the kind of guy who likes feelin' high
Feelin' high and dry, and I really like to fly
I'm your kinda guy, girl I'm not too shy
And I want you to fly, so I think you oughta try
Ozone, ozone, ozone, ozone
(from "Ozone")

I got a job

Unemployment is over. The 14 1/2-month odyssey of no job has been defeated. My faith in the three-day-a-week freelance gig was shaken when they were only able to give me six hours of work in two weeks, not the 48 hours that had been promised. Though a six-hour work schedule is highly agreeable to my temperament and lifestyle, it is not very lucrative. My new job is not very lucrative either, but it is lucrative enough to live as a man again, and seems to be a welcoming environment that could lead to better things. I am no longer Mrs. Mystery's kept man. I won't talk much about my new job, just in case someone from the place finds their way here. I start Monday. Until then, I will have one last week of living the dream. I will continue to stay up until 4 a.m., sleep until noon, and do whatever the shit I want to do for six more days.

"My fellow Americans! Lady Americans! This is James Brown." -- James Brown, "King Heroin"

The decline of western sentence completion

Any time is a good time for a re-viewing of The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years, but my favorite moment this time around was the segment at the Cathouse club. The prototypical metalhead Valley Girl is interviewed, and the interview is an absolute delight. The contents of this woman's brain consist solely of band names and twelve metal-related words and/or phrases. Not once does a verb follow a noun. She's asked if she comes to the Cathouse often. She replies: "Rock and roll! Metal! Party!" She's asked what the club means to her. She replies: "Faster Pussycat! Guns N' Roses! LA!" She also does this wonderful movement with her head while she talks in which she rolls it back on her neck at the beginning of a word and juts it forward at the end, dragging out the last vowel each time. What lucky man tamed her wild heart?

TV is sometimes good

I just saw the most wonderful episode of "Cops" I've ever seen, and I am proud to report it took place outside of Austin. These two massively burned out potheads/acidheads had their home vandalized by a homeless man they'd invited to "live with them and be free." These guys were geniuses. Imagine what would happen if two Jimmy Buffett fans discovered crack. Imagine the comedy gold. The funniest guy in particular was incoherently explaining to the policeman how he found the homeless man in his bed one day, and, out of nowhere, broke into a Joe Cocker-esque original song. The policeman asked him if he wrote the song. The guy answered in the affirmative. Then the policeman asked him if he knew the homeless man's name. The guy yells out to his roommate, "Jay! What's the name of the other Jay?" The roommate walks in and answers: "Jay." "Jay what?" the cop asks. They don't know, but they do know he liked to smoke lots and lots of pot. "Why would he trash your house?" the cop asks. Roommate says, "He wanted to smoke way more drugs than us and he wanted us to give him some money." Funniest guy stares at the roommate in wonderment and says: "That is an incredible synopsis." Then the police dust the place for prints. The roommates crack open some beers and watch the police like they're watching their favorite movie, big grins on their faces. Roommate says: "That is some great police work." God bless those guys. Thank you, TV!

Amusements

This song makes me laugh. The video is slightly annoying because the dudes are trying to sell it too hard, but the song is comedy gold.

Additionally, I want to send a big heads up and gangs away to Team Wolf about a little movie called Full Moon High, directed by the mighty Larry Cohen, which is about a teenage werewolf and predates Teen Wolf by four years. Alan Arkin's son plays the teenage werewolf. Other members of the cast include Ed McMahon, as the ultra-right wing father of the werewolf, the guy who played Lamont on "Sanford & Son," the guy who played the coach on "Growing Pains" and "Just the Ten of Us," the guy who played Jeff's dad on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Jim J. Bullock, and Alan Arkin as a psychiatrist whose methods consist solely of insulting his patients. My favorite line from the elder Arkin, after a suicidal patient jumps off a building, dragging a policeman with him: "What a couple of jerks." Rent this movie.

The straight dope

Two odd things read this week:
1. Headline on a National Enquirer seen at the grocery store Tuesday, paraphrased: "O.J. Simpson spotted in hotel room with prostitutes at 1 a.m." I seem to recall the headline mentioning that these prostitutes were also she-males, but I may be misremembering it. At any rate, I find it odd that the time needs to be mentioned. It's almost like the time is the scandalous part of the scandal, not the hookers. Oh dear, what a lewd and lascivious hour to be banging a ho. If it had been 3 a.m., I would have understood, but 1:00? I'm outraged.
2. Last sentence of instructions for an iron-on patch, from the back of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios: "Do not iron while wearing the shirt."

The return of BOKARR

BOKARR has returned.

Something I found out this week

Anchee Min is a really bad writer.

The Great Indoor Flood*

We had a mini-Katrina in our apartment last night. Read about it here. What a Super Bowl Sunday. I tell you what. I experienced the gamut of human emotion. The full gamut. All twelve human feelings. I experienced them all. The day started out triumphantly. My freelance corporate hellhole gig got extended indefinitely, and though the job (with the exception of the salary) is like a casserole of everything I hate, combined, those corporate fatcats have a lot of money to throw around. I'm only going to work three days a week, and I'll be making the same money I made at my last full-time, five-days-a-week job. So my financial woes are long-term temporarily over. This job will end in about a year, though I'm actively looking for something more bearable and less far away from my apartment, and they know and I know that I could jump ship at any time. In the meantime, having Mondays and Tuesdays free is a nice consolation prize for the agony and extreme boredom of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. However, I digress. The point is, I am now a breadwinner again, so I took my wife out to eat on Sunday afternoon. The food was up to par. I did not have to send anything back, as I am wont to do, or yell at the waiter and/or waitress, as I am also wont to do. I'm a real jerk. I actually paid for a meal for the first time in months, and it felt good. Later, I attended a Super Bowl party at a friend's home. There were several attractive things about this party, the most attractive being the total of zero minutes I spent watching the game. I spent several minutes drinking beer, eating hot wings and chips and queso, devouring two slices of New Orleans King Cake, and petting a dog outside in beautiful February sunshine. Then I came home, nicely buzzed and full, read some movie reviews, listened to some music, contemplated going to bed, drank some water, and then disaster struck. Read Spacebeer to get the details. I'm not feeling so bad now. Our apartment is in a cluttered state of disarray, large portions of the carpet will have to be replaced, and I spent a lot of time last night pacing, swearing, yelling, worrying, and generally freaking out, but most of our stuff was saved. I lost one book of Diane Arbus photographs, Mrs. Mystery lost a few books, but the rest of our material possessions are fine and dandy. As a subscriber to the religion of living in the present, I laugh at my troubles. Is that the best you could do, jerks? I survived your flood. Next time, bring me a fire. I will douse it and dance a jig. It could have been a lot worse. It was basically a large inconvenience, nothing more. Seriously, though, if I had gone to bed a few hours earlier like I had planned, I would have lost all my unread books, all my records, and a good portion of my other material possessions that aren't so material, in my opinion. The stuff I need, along with food, to live happily and well. If that had gone down, I would have probably stopped crying in July of 2008. Mrs. Mystery and I toasted the random shitstorms and pratfalls of life over enchiladas, carne guisada and margaritas this afternoon. We'll see a Richard Pryor concert film at the Alamo Drafthouse tonight. Then we'll come home and sleep next to a loudly whirring industrial fan and the stench of wet carpet and towels. You win some, you lose some. Am I right? Heh? Heh? Whoo!

I was tagged by Mary P Pants several days ago. I better get on that. Here we go:
When I was little: three of my favorite songs were "I Love a Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbitt, "Cum on Feel the Noize" by Quiet Riot, and "Panama" by Van Halen. Now, I can barely tolerate the first two, but Van Halen is still on regular rotation. The mysteries of life.
I've never: been to Hartford, Connecticut.
I have seen: a crater left by a meteor in the Arizona desert.
I can: make my wife cry simply by playing Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music."
I got my first: bloody nose when my dog jumped off the couch and landed on my face.
I sometimes: don't answer my phone.
I will: change jobs often.
I have: wet carpet.
I am an expert: speller and an expert smeller.
I hate: everything but the good stuff.




*A tribute to The Great Outdoor Fight

Flyer week concludes with a rare photo of the reclusive Dr. Mystery

Political flyers

Motivational posters for the workplace and the home

Flyer week continues

Whoo!

I assume you are speaking of the hominy, Casual Ninja

More flyers

How to snag that dream job

Here is a jpeg of a flyer I am passing out to every business in Austin. This proactive move will guarantee results. And how.

My life amounts to less than eight pieces of shit

Do you ever just admit to yourself, after 14 months of unemployment, while you're driving way out in the suburbs to your two-day temporary freelance editing gig at some huge ugly hellhole of a corporation, on the same day that someone who told you they were going to hire you for a pretty decent job sheepishly and embarrassedly recanted after interviewing someone with years' more experience, after the mother of all depressive breakdowns, after saying something stupid to your wife that made everyone cry, after half-seriously contemplating some hippy shit like hopping trains or walking from Austin to Mexico barefoot with only twelve pounds of mescaline and a bologna sandwich for company, that "I really fucking wish I was Ray Davies right now."

I am not even failing stylishly. This is not the life I envisioned.

Strange items seen in public spaces in the last three weeks

1. A 28-oz. can of hominy on top of the mailboxes at my apartment complex.
2. A large Ziploc freezer bag, sealed, filled with 35-40 tampons in the parking lot of Waterloo Records.

When a shitty band beats up the singer from another shitty band, everyone wins

The water cooler talk when I was back in Lincoln, Nebraska seemed to be dominated by the recent bar brawl between the members of former local embarrassments turned on-again, off-again rock stars 311 and former Creed singer Scott Stapp. The story, as corroborated by eyewitnesses: a drunken Stapp hits on a woman in a bar, who happens to be married to one of the members of 311. 311 get pissed off, collectively, and beat the shit out of Stapp, collectively. Pretty funny story, right? It gets better. I see a little blurb about the bar brawl in the latest issue of "Teenage Panty Digest"* and 311 have come forward with their side of the story, collectively. They claim, contrary to eyewitness reports, that Mr. CreedStapp drunkenly approached them, out of the blue, and said this: "311, I am ready to fight." I fucking wish it had gone down that way. That's a beautiful sentence. Read it out loud, wherever you are: "311, I am ready to fight." That's a fucking mantra, is what that is. Scott Stapp, you are no longer the former singer for an unlistenable band with the worst album cover in the histories of music and graphic design. You are an American hero.




*Spin magazine

The worst song in rock and a couple of things that happened to me at the grocery store

For a long time, I argued that the Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" was the worst song in rock history. I argued this for several fortnights. Then, I heard a song called "My Humps" or "My Lumps" or "Lady Lumps" or some shit by Black-Eyed Peas. I briefly considered moving that song to the top of the shitheap, but, after careful consideration, I decided it was too calculatedly lazy. The Barenaked Ladies were actually trying. They were rapping, they were rocking, they were crafting pop hooks, they were attempting to be clever. Every move they made was labor-intensive, yet shitty. They remained the worst. Then, back in Lincoln around the New Year, I heard a song on college radio by Pedro the Lion. I don't know what this song is called, and I haven't heard any other Pedro the Lion songs besides this one, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that Pedro the Lion is not only responsible for the worst song in rock history, Pedro the Lion is the worst band in rock history.

In grocery store news, I was at the HEB today buying some food. They're completely rearranging the store, much to my consternation. I'm not the only one whose consternation was aroused. A mouse, whose physique I can only describe as healthy, ran out from under the shelves, freaked out for a few seconds, then ran back under the shelves. This mouse was nearly rat-sized, but clearly mouselike in appearance. He must have been eating well for some time, and is now pissed off. Also, in line to pay, an Indian youth asked me to take a picture of him next to his shopping cart. I complied with his wishes, for it would have been rude to say no, but I can only wonder why he wanted a picture of himself buying groceries at HEB. What a world, my friends. What a world.

My weekend

Guess who won the Pulitzer Prize this weekend? I did, jerk. What did you do? Watch reruns of "MASH" from your 3-legged chair? Losers.

Literary scandals and Jesus sandals

I don't know about you, but I think the JT Leroy and James Frey scandals are pretty stupid. I've never read any Frey, and I think Leroy sucks, though he was responsible for an early script of a movie I like a lot, Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" (Van Sant ended up writing the film himself), but if you like these authors' works, who cares whether Frey's memoir is either exaggerated or fabricated, and who cares whether Leroy is a 25-year-old man or a 40-year-old woman? Whether the work has any merit should be decided by the words on the page. Most artists are notorious bullshitters. Are we going to pay more attention to them or their work? I don't see any value in paying more attention to the artist than the art. If it matters to you that a writer is who he/she says he/she is, or that a memoir be 100% accurate, maybe you should quit reading books altogether. In Leroy's case, it's probably a self-generated marketing tool anyway. He's a hack. Or she's a hack. Who cares? If I found out Flannery O'Connor was actually an 80-year-old Chinese man who lived in a cave in the Ozarks, I'd still read her work with pleasure.

This reminds me of another non-story. If I have to read in the newspaper or see on TV another news report claiming that 2005 was a slow year at the box office, I am going to crack open a beer, eat some licorice, and yell at either the newspaper, the Internet, or the TV. This piece of bullshit has been reported in nearly every major news outlet. Movie attendance in 2005 was down considerably from 2004. That part of the story is true. However, 2005's box office sales were quite high, compared to recent years. 2004 was an unusually profitable year for movie theaters because of one film: "The Passion of the Christ." Churches all over the country bought huge blocks of tickets so their parishioners could see Mel Gibson's Jesus death porn on the big screen. Thousands upon thousands of evangelical Christians, who hardly ever go to the movies, went to the movies in 2004 to see their good buddy, Jesus, get his ass crucified, yo. 2004 has distorted the statistics and created this non-story. My question to the news media is: Why? Why do you want us to believe that no one went to the movies this year? Why do the corporate overlords that own the news media want us to believe this falsity? Is it just lazy reporting? A failure to look at all the data? Figuring it was true because it had been reported a couple of times elsewhere? Or is something more sinister involved? Are the movie studios (many of which are owned by companies that also own newspapers and television stations) trying to guilt-trip us into attending more expensive shitty movies, even though we already attend plenty of expensive shitty movies, by telling us that we aren't attending enough expensive shitty movies? Seems like a lot of time and trouble to try to convince people to do something they're already doing. Anyway, stop reporting this story, idiots! It's not true!

This has been My Two Cents by the corpse of Mike Royko.

The corpse of Mike Royko is an embittered grouch who has been writing a complaint column since the death of Mike Royko.

Tales of small town life (episode three)

My maternal grandfather, named Raymond but called Joe since he was a kid, has a habit of buying things, ignoring them, and selling them in order to buy more stuff he's going to ignore. His backyard at any given moment may contain the following items, either whole or reduced to spare parts: RVs, trucks, tractors, pickups, boats, lawnmowers, a motorcycle once. He buys dogs with the same philosophy, though he waits until one dies before picking up another. I've never been too attached to my grandfather's dogs because they mostly hang out in the backyard with the revolving door of major purchases. It's easy to forget they exist. He had one dog that was unforgettable, however. This dog was named Jake, and the drawing that accompanies this post is my attempt to capture a bit of this lunatic mutt's essence. I've never seen a dog like Jake before, and I never will again. I don't remember my grandfather buying Jake, so I'm going to assume that a powerful bolt of lightning simultaneously struck a couple of dead dogs and a bunch of random shit in my grandfather's backyard, forging the tiny, ill-tempered beast we knew and loved. Jake was about the size of a three-month-old Labrador puppy, his ears stuck straight up, and he had a gummy, fangy overbite that made him look either constantly pissed off or like he had to do something vitally important in an incredibly small period of time. His eyes were wild and buggy. He was extremely fond of my sister, Katie, and my uncle Bill, and indifferent to the rest of the family and friends who were frequent visitors at my grandparents' home. Strangers, he bit. He lived a long goddamn time. One particularly harsh winter, he went missing for three below-zero days. He'd never run off before. We all assumed he'd died. My grandfather found him sleeping in a box of oily rags in the garage, simply not giving a fuck, content to be there. His most prominent attribute was his fur. Fur's not even a good word to describe it. Armor's a little more appropriate, but coat will do. It was steel wool. It was not similar to steel wool. It was steel wool. If you've ever touched steel wool, you've touched Jake. This was his fur. When I'm back home, all someone has to say is "Remember Jake?" and my brother and I will have laughing fits. He looked sort of like this photo, with more fur and determination. Jake was ugly, and proud of it. I've never admired a dog more.

Rex Reed, unintentional comedy genius

One of the joys of the new year is reading society columnist/former film critic/idiot Rex Reed's yearly tribute to those who died in his New York Observer column. The Onion doesn't even need Jackie Harvey's "Outside Scoop." They could just print Reed's column verbatim. Reed has turned hackdom into a fine art, and his tribute to the deceased is the finest example of his jackassery on record. Enjoy the strained metaphors, the celebrity asskissing, the sweeping conservative generalizations, the awkward prose, the poor taste, cranked up to eleven. A typical example of his obituary style is as follows: "This year, Elvis had to put his Hound Dog to sleep and went to that Heartbreak Hotel in the sky. We'll miss you, King of Rock and Roll." "Gandhi's next hunger strike will be in heaven. We'll miss the great pacifist activist, and the world will be a more hostile place without him. A class act all the way." I obviously made these two up, but you get the idea. This is how this man writes, and a major newspaper employs him. It's fucking astonishing. For those of you who can't make it through all five pages of Reed's obituary mambo, which will probably be most of you, here are my two favorites. I did not make these up. This man actually wrote these sentences, knowing the public would read them.

"Baby boomers who grew up glued to the boob tube watched the test pattern fade forever for Bob Denver, the goofy castaway on the brain-dead series Gilligan’s Island..."

"Simon Wiesenthal, the heroic concentration-camp survivor who dedicated his life to bringing the monsters of World War II to justice, stalked his last Nazi."

That last sentence is in such poor taste I am speechless. Rex Reed, everybody.

This is bad

If anyone reading this can help me get a job, please do. In another two months, I will have only these options remaining: (a) live off my wife like a parasite (b) become homeless (c) kill myself (d) move into my mother's attic (e) kill myself in my mother's attic (f) become a homeless parasite, killing people in attics.

How I spent my summer vacation

I have returned from the long trek north to the Middle West, from the rural panhandle and the capital city, the hometown and the alma mater, visiting the relatives gained through blood and the relatives gained through outdated civil ceremonies, the friends old and newish. I shat in many toilets, petted several dogs and cats, talked to children and the elderly, quaffed many spirits and intoxicants, ingested a delightful array of candies, cookies, meats, cheeses, et al., drove around in an oppressively beautiful fog the likes of which I have rarely seen, played the bongos to an ABBA song 'til my knuckles bruised... It was the summer of '69. No, that's not right. It was the Christmas of '05. Now, it is '06. I have resolutions four: 1) Get a fucking job. 2) Get in better physical shape. 3) Write even more. 4) Always live in the present. Destroy the past, ignore the future.

On an unrelated note, I was in a movie theater a few days ago, and I saw a movie trailer that looked fantastic. Fantastic means fucking terrible, right? Sorry, I just looked up the word "fantastic" in the dictionary. I am mistaken. What I meant to say was, I saw a movie trailer that looked fucking terrible. It seems the dream-makers in the imagination factory over in Hollywood, California have continued to blaze exciting new cinematic screensavers for our passive Coke-drinking ceremonies that take place in Masonic-esque institutions known as cineplexes. The latest shitsterpiece from Genius Land is a remake of seventies disaster turd "The Poseidon Adventure," helpfully renamed "Poseidon" so we don't have to go to the trouble of remembering more than one word when we take our retarded stepnieces to the Moronic Temple on opening night. I'm so glad those visionary empaths in Hollywoodland have the foresight to trim extraneous words from remake titles. Case in point: "The Bad News Bears." When I first heard about the remake, I was confused. I can only process three words at a time, so the information sounded like gobbledygook. Fortunately, Hollywood was listening to my confusion. The movie was renamed "Bad News Bears." Finally, I could understand the title. Thanks, rich douchebags in suits. Dropping the "The" turned the film from a will-miss to a can't-miss! In my book, they could go even further. Instead of "Poseidon," why not just "P"? The box office receipts will increase tenfold. Nevertheless, I will be first in line to see "Poseidon." I hear it's "Titanic" on a boat! Or "Die Hard" in a skyscraper on a plane in a boat! Or "The Wizard of Oz" with more tsunamis! Or "The Passion of the Christ" if Jesus was a boat! What would Jesus do ... if He were a boat? Ask a priest in a theater near you!

Enjoy this photo of my Christmas vacation. If you want to see more, look at my ladyfriend's Flickr page. There are many more where those came from, to be added at a later date. Warning: May contain trace elements of rat feces, peanuts, Dr. Mystery, Spacebeer, Plop Blop, Mary P Pants, Team Bartleby, Casual Ninja, June of 40Jake's apartment, and members of the Peabo Bryson cover band Papers.

I hate rabbits

This He-Man cartoon overdubbed with dialogue from "Gummo" is making me laugh pretty hard tonight.

Aw, raspberries!

Fuck! I just got my second jury summons in a year. This would have made me exempt, but I never had to serve last time. I ended up being an alternate who was never used. I guess if I get picked this time, it will be the first money I've earned in several fortnights. Maybe I'll just tell them I hate the Chinese* and men in gray suits and I refuse to serve unless a bowl of Cap'n Crunch is delivered to my home every Wednesday afternoon. That should work.




*It's actually the Taiwanese I hate.

Fuck (remix)

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!





Fuck it, everybody.






fuck




Merry Christmas!

Richard Pryor R.I.P.

Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks are dead. Gallagher, Carrot Top, Jim Brewer and Rob Schneider continue to walk the earth. If there is a God, his taste is in his ass.

To survive the brutal Texas winter, you need balls and clits of steel

My wife didn't have to go work today because it was on the cold side, twentyish some degrees. No ice. My dad just called me up to tell me it was 20 degrees below zero in western Nebraska. Did they call off his work? No. Did he and his fellow Nebraskans mob the grocery stores? Nay. He, like many other mighty Nebraska warriors, soldiered on. Then, he drove 40 miles to go Christmas shopping. Apparently, everything is bigger in Texas except the ability to adapt to a few days of cold. Ice, I can understand. We don't have the equipment, and most people don't have the experience, to deal with icy roads here. But all you need to do is put on a coat and take off your diaper. There is no need for the university to shut down. It's nonsense. However, if I wasn't such an unemployable failure, I would applaud this cowardice for it would mean a paid day off.

"If that's cowardice, then coward me up." --- Spoken by an alternate Dr. Mystery, one who has job security and is not hemorrhaging money by the barrelful, in a beautiful dream. Good lord, I'm fucked. The temp agency can't even find me any work. When I quit my next job, and I undoubtedly will, I will wait until I am employed elsewhere before jumping ship. Still, a year with no job is something to behold. I soared with the eagles, lived as an eagle, became an eagle. Now, eagle time is over. I must get a job in January or I will be as dry as a bone. My reserves have been siphoned. I am not an eagle. I am just a man.

Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

I'll update these "blogs" (I hate that word so much) soon. Lately, I just don't feel like it. I'm more into downloading free music these days. Advances in technology have made me a pirate. I had my leg removed and replaced with a nice beechwood stump earlier this afternoon. Speaking of this afternoon, I'm feeling nostalgic for the Middle West of this fine nation, or as Northeastern jerks call it, "flyover country." It's colder than a "witch's tit" here in Austin, Texas, USA, reminding me of the many winters spent in my homeland of Nebraska. I promised myself I would stop making fun of Texans on those rare days when the weather is wintry, but I can't help myself. My wife's workplace, and apparently many others', shut down at two this afternoon, and when I hit the grocery store on what is usually a fairly customer-empty and stress-free Wednesday afternoon lull, the place looked like the day before Thanksgiving plus explosions. I don't get it. It wasn't icy. It was just cold. It got down in the twenties, but I drove all over the city today on numerous errands and there was no ice. Apparently, it got icy later in the evening, but why did 800 million people swarm the grocery store like the great Nor'Easter was going to hit? Just because it's cold does not mean food will no longer be available. You can buy food tomorrow. You can buy food this evening. You can buy food two days from now, and every day after that. You are not going to be snowed in, iced in, or tsunamied in at any point in your residence in this region. Wednesday afternoon is my time to buy groceries. I don't have a lot going for me right now. Let me have my Wednesday afternoon. Oh god, why won't you let me have my Wednesday afternoon?

Prince can do things other people can't

It's true. Imagine if Prince never existed and some music playing friend of yours walked up to you and said, "Hey, I just wrote a new song. It's called 'When Doves Cry.' You want to listen to it?" You'd probably say, "'When Doves Cry?' 'When Doves Cry?' No thanks, jerk. What's next on your agenda, 'When Flowers Hug?' Call me when you're ready to rock." You would never realize the badass jam you had just walked away from.

Horrible injustice

Today I awoke to discover a complete lack of running water. As you can imagine, faced with an injustice of such sizable proportions, I was hopping mad and violently offended. Sure, I hear what you're saying. Lots of people had to deal with much worse recently due to hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. Look, jerk, we're talking about me right now, not them, and I wasn't able to take my daily shower until 5 p.m. That's not what I'm accustomed to, so I fired off several angry letters to Amnesty International. I hope they are able to prevent further similar injustices from happening to me. Hurricanes may be a little disruptive, but, come on, people choose to live in regions regularly affected by hurricanes. They're accustomed to it, much like I am accustomed to taking a shower shortly after being awakened by my butler every morning at noon. After my mimosa, of course. It is my right to wake at noon, have a mimosa, then enjoy a steaming hot thirty-minute shower. My ancestors died so I would have this right, but the city chose to ignore their selfless sacrifice and shut off my water supply. A pox on their houses. One should always live how one is accustomed. Always. If you have pancakes every morning, then, by God, you shall have pancakes every goddamn morning, and no one must interfere with your right to have pancakes. If they try to interfere, and offer you a tasteless frozen waffle, or worse, a rice cake, in the pancakes' stead, you have every right to drive the philistine from your quarters at swordpoint if necessary. You demand pancakes, I demand hot showers. You expect pancakes, I expect hot showers. By God, that's what we will have. Is this not America? I am disgusted and horrified. I expect you to write to your congressmen and women immediately after reading this missive. Good day.

Eleven singles I never tire of hearing, though they are (or were) ubiquitous

In no particular order:
Prince - "When Doves Cry"
Human League - "Don't You Want Me"
The Beach Boys - "God Only Knows"
Thin Lizzy - "Jailbreak"
Michael Jackson - "Rock With You"
The Rolling Stones - "Miss You"
The Clash - "Rock the Casbah"
Madonna - "Into the Groove"
Black Sabbath - "Paranoid"
Roxy Music - "Love is the Drug"
Blue Oyster Cult - "Don't Fear the Reaper"

An achronological history of growing up in a small town, or the wonder years, part one

One thing that really struck me about the recent Martin Scorsese PBS documentary on Bob Dylan was a particular Dylan comment about growing up in the small town of Hibbing, Minnesota. I'm not going to attempt a verbatim recall of the comment because my memory doesn't allow it, but I remember Dylan saying one of the myriad reasons he felt uncomfortable in Hibbing was that there was no way to rebel because the townspeople's lack of ideology meant there was nothing to rebel against. Any different viewpoint, or any viewpoint at all, just confused them. This comment was very meaningful for me, though I never had any particular inclination to be a rebel. I just felt confined and wanted to get out as soon as the opportunity arose. What was meaningful in Dylan's words was the recognition of my hometown of Bridgeport, Nebraska in his description of Hibbing. My hometown is a town without an ideology, a viewpoint, a thought about anything one way or the other. It just goes along to get along, and anything shifting that equilibrium one way or the other is met with puzzlement, ridicule, scorn, and finally hostility. Most people there are Christians, Republicans, lower to upper middle class, white, friendly, hard-working, sincere, sports fans, not particularly interested in cultural or political matters. There are a lot of positives and negatives in this highly subjective and possibly unfair checklist I've just made, but the problem is that most people there have simply adopted a set of characteristics handed down from their parents and a shared town persona without much thought about why they're Christian, Republican, etc. Things are the way they are because they've always been that way and almost everyone there is comfortable with that. That's fine, I guess, but I never felt comfortable there. I have to amend that last sentence. I felt comfortable in the town. I felt comfortable driving on its streets, walking through its parks, riding my bicycle over every square inch of it on marathon late night rides, swimming in its lake, climbing Courthouse and Jail Rock. I felt, and still feel, an affinity to the landscape, and I appreciate its beauty much more now than I ever did when I lived there. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I get off the plane in Denver or hit the Kansas state line in the car after the alien landscapes of Texas and Oklahoma fall away. But I never felt comfortable around the people, and it's only gotten worse. I don't feel any particular hostility toward them, especially since I outgrew my teen angst, but I don't feel any connection to the people who inhabit the landscape that feels like home. It's a weird, disturbing disconnect, and I have a hard time accepting it. Conversely, how connected am I to the people of Austin? Or to the people of Lincoln, where I went to college? My connections are to certain individuals, not geography. But that's a lie. Geography is important. Landscape has shaped me as much as human contact. Why did I turn out the way I did? It puzzles me.

Let's start this history off with one of my most embarrassing moments. In grade school, I became interested in true crime, serial killers and mass murderers (particularly Charles Manson), and unsolved mysteries. This interest was sparked by seeing a Geraldo Rivera special on mass murder (the one where he interviewed Manson) and the television show "Unsolved Mysteries." I was fascinated by the capability of human beings to be colossally fucked up. I was also freaked out that someone would kidnap and murder me and I wanted to understand all I could so I would be able to escape should this fear ever become an eventuality. This fear was exacerbated by a family friend's daughter being kidnapped by a sexual predator from Omaha who happened to be driving through our town, though the man ran away before doing anything to the girl after being spotted by a neighbor. He was later arrested for a previous crime in eastern Nebraska. Don't worry, this gets funnier. My interest was a little morbid, but I was still way more into comic books, rock and roll, professional wrestling, and swimming at the lake. There are no bodies hidden in my apartment. Anyway, time goes by and the fear of being kidnapped and murdered diminishes, but the interest in true crime remains. I was eleven or twelve, and I had just finished watching "Unsolved Mysteries" when one of my friends called. He said to meet him at the R&W shortly. The R&W was an ice cream parlor/hamburger joint that was a popular hangout at the time for pubescent dorks like me and my friends. It is now a Subway (the restaurant chain, not the public transportation system). I walked the six blocks to the R&W, probably ate some french fries or an ice cream cone, probably played some hair metal on the jukebox, or some Altered Beast on the arcade game. The only thing I remember clearly is seeing a lot of classmates there, and hanging out until it had become dark. I don't remember why now, but I ended up walking back home alone. About four blocks before I got to my house, I noticed a small car with out of state plates slowly turning onto the street. It slowly followed me for three more blocks. Very slowly. I'm starting to gently freak out at this point. "Unsolved Mysteries" is playing in my head. Then the car pulls right next to me and stops in the middle of the street. I can see my house from here and get ready to bust a move. A bearded man I don't recognize wearing a baseball cap leans over in the seat and says, "Hey." I lose my shit and take off running, not stopping until I'm in the living room of my house. My mother and father look at me bemusedly, and I tell them to call the cops. They ask why, and I tell them that some weird guy followed me for three blocks, then pulled alongside me in the middle of the street. I give a description of the man and the car, and my mom calls the cops. She starts going over the story with me again, gets a strange look on her face, then a flash of recognition, then embarrassment. "Oh, shit," she says. "I think you called the cops on Bill." Bill is one of my uncles. We drive over to my grandparents' house, and sure enough, Bill is on the couch and, sure enough, the sheriff talked to him. I look out the window, and see his car with its Colorado plates. I feel like the world's stupidest motherfucker, although there are some facts in my favor. My uncle had been living in San Diego, and had recently moved to Ft. Collins, Colorado. I had briefly forgotten this, and I didn't connect the Colorado license plates with him. Additionally, I had never seen his car before. Also, I hadn't seen him for a year or two, and he had a beard for the first time and was wearing a baseball cap, something I'd never seen him wear before. My mother called the sheriff and explained what had happened, though they seemed to think she had a retarded son. My uncle saw how embarrassed I was and laughed it off, though my grandfather made fun of me for about eight solid weeks. I'm not a big fan of symbolism, but I think I see some of it in this true story. I represent Bridgeport and my uncle and his car represent the outside world. Now, let's all eat a hoagie and go to bed.

My hometown, part two

Courthouse and Jail Rock, two miles west of Bridgeport, Nebraska, c. 1970s. I climbed these rocks many times growing up.

My hometown

Main Street, Bridgeport, Nebraska, c. 1970s

What important cultural touchstones have you missed out on?

I meant to write about this way back in September, after a conversation with a few friends. I'm not sure what we were talking about, but eventually the following fact came up. I have never read "The Catcher in the Rye." While in high school, I always looked forward to reading the book, but I never picked it up on my own because Mrs. Bond always taught it in eleventh or twelfth grade English. A few years go by, and I'm in Mrs. Bond's eleventh or twelfth grade English class, and she makes an announcement. For the first time in several years, she's changing the books. She's tired of teaching the same books, year after year, so she's replacing one set of classics with another. No more "Catcher in the Rye." I was disappointed, but I never got around to reading it on my own, though I did read the other Salinger books. College came and went, and I took a million literature classes, figuring "Catcher in the Rye" would pop up somewhere. I always saw an enormous stack of them in the university bookstore, but somehow, "Rye" evaded me, semester after semester, year after year. I graduate from college and suddenly I have as much time to read whatever book I want, whenever I want. However, my desire to read a novel for young adults about an alienated young adult has dissipated. The way I look at it, with so many Henry James, Stanley Elkin, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, Don DeLillo, Flannery O'Connor, and James Joyce and a few Barry Hannah books yet to read (among many others), "Rye" can sit on the shelf unread for many more years, or maybe forever. But something keeps nagging at me, repetitively, telling me to read the book. It's a cultural imperative, for chrissakes, unless you're like so many people in my hometown (especially my dad) who think books are somebody else's business, something people did until televisions were invented. So, I'm curious. What cultural ubiquities have so far passed you by? What books, movies, etc. that everyone else knows by heart have slipped under your radar? I'd like to know. Here's another one from me: I've never seen the movie "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." I've seen Tim Burton's remake, but I've never seen the Gene Wilder version. Never read that book, either. Also, I didn't have Nickolodeon growing up. I've never seen a Nickolodeon television program. What about you? Win a banana!

Coming soon

Two multi-part series starting tomorrow, to last for the indefinite future or until I lose interest, which may be sooner rather than later, inspired by recent reading material. On Can-Smashing Robot, tales of life in a small town. On Film-Watching Robot, a personal history of my interest in movies and film criticism. Self-indulgent, you say? Then don't read them, smartass.

What's the ugliest part of your body?

I hate the having and removing of unwieldy nostril hair. What kind of God could have allowed such a world in which nostril hair exists? My faith is shaken to the core. To the very core. From now on, I only believe in hoagies.

Blog is a stupid word

It's been an odd year for me, a kind of limbo or purgatory between the past and the present, this year of unemployment. The last time I didn't have some school or job where I was supposed to be, I was two years old. That was twenty-six years ago. The day before my next job starts will be a close relative of the day before I started pre-school. Right now, I'm just casting my net in a very boring ocean, hoping to pull something up big enough to eat. The results so far: nothing but carp. This year has provided me with a lot of opportunities to think and not much else. I still think it was a good idea to quit my old job. I don't regret it. I do regret liking Austin as much as I do. At this point, I can't afford to move anyway. I find the job market in this city horrifically uninspiring. I wish I wanted to live in New York City or some other monstropolis. There are a wealth of interesting jobs in those places that I could get, but I need a little space. I wish someone would just pay me to do what I do. I don't need much. Just a little more than the zero a month I'm raking in at present. If it weren''t for the handful of things in life that are so blindingly wonderful and/or horrible, there wouldn't be much point in getting out of bed. Most of it's just a lot of uh. Repetition of patterns. But the parts that are good are really good, and the parts that are bad are really awful, and those parts are worth experiencing. Presently, I'm just impatiently waiting to exchange one rut for another and living for the moments when things actually happen to me and not around me. Why the fuck won't anybody hire me? Do they know how quickly I will grow to resent the position, no matter what it is? They must know, somehow. I think I had a midlife crisis way too early. Does this mean I'm going to die young? I hope it's in a fireball of some sort.

Facts about bananas

1) In the 1980s, a home electronics store held a $299 sale on expensive stereo equipment. In the television advertisement, a wacky spokesman said the stereos were only "299 bananas." Thirty-two customers took them at their word, and entered the store with 299 bananas each in exchange for the stereos. The store owners were good sports about it, and allowed these customers to purchase the stereos with bananas. The bananas were donated to a local zoo, but the zoo would only take 1,000 of the bananas. A zoo spokesman was quoted as saying, "Most of our animals like them, but we can't just give them bananas in uncontrolled amounts."

2) I was raised Catholic. Every year in my home state of Nebraska, the Catholic Church held a statewide youth event for junior high and high school kids that featured activities, events, speeches, presentations, and a big dance. This event was called "Going Bananas for Jesus."

3) Woody Allen's movie "Bananas" is a hell of a lot funnier than Woody Allen's movie "Interiors."

4) In Lithuania, it is a symbol of patriotism and good luck to keep a banana in the right front pocket of a winter coat.

*One of these banana facts is not true. Can you guess which one? Win a banana!

Geography report (local version)

Aside from a few friends' homes and a couple of restaurants, South Austin's reputation is wildly undeserved. In fact, someone should drop a nuke on it. The economic damage to the city would be a burden, yes, but a burden worth the detonation of so many douchebag hipsters, confessional acoustic folk singer/songwriters, aging hippies, and guys who think it's a good idea to go into a place of business barefoot and with their dog.

Dr. Mystery: "May I please have a job?" Dr. The Man: "Sit on it!"

I almost got a job today, but the curse remains. I took an editing test for a temporary editing job yesterday. I was informed that the job would be from late November to mid-December for thirty to forty hours a week for $25 an hour. The work was dick-pummelingly tedious, but for 25 bucks an hour, I was prepared to pummel a little dick. They send me the test. It's just a PDF file of a document with no instructions. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? Stare at it and send it back? I email the place and ask for a little more instructional detail. They email me back and point out one of the errors on the document, but no instructions. Yes, I know I'm supposed to find and correct the errors. Thanks, jerks. What I need to know is how the fuck I'm supposed to edit a PDF file. Do they want me to print it out, correct it in pen or pencil, mail it back to them, fax it, buy some software that will allow me to correct it on the compute-machine, email it back, what? Sweet christ, what a conundrum. They email me back again to tell me that they looked at the test and realized it was confusing. They told me to edit it any way I wanted, and send it back any way I wanted. Who's running this operation? I get an email today telling me the job is mine if I want it. They will get back to me with the hours later. Alright, I think. The curse is lifted. They call me up and tell me the position is actually between six and twenty hours a week, usually six. I will be on call through the Christmas holiday. What the shit, I reply. I'm not skipping out on Christmas with my family to be on call for a six-hour a week job. Call me back when you're not tripping balls, suckers. They still might be able to throw me a little work, but until I hear something sensible, the curse is still raging. I'm fucked. I had to quit my old job because I was dying inside. Now I need to find a new job because I'm dying inside. It's almost been a year. When can I die? Please kill me soon.

Geraldo's a douche

Geraldo Rivera, from his new show "Geraldo at Large," about a man on trial for the abduction, rape, and murder of an 11-year-old girl: "Can you believe the unmitigated gall of this savage, savage monster... [five-second pause] ... if indeed, he is guilty."

Texans are jerks

Nothing much to say. I'm just tired of looking at that headless torso. Additionally, I live in a pocket of sanity in a cesspool of homophobia. Texans hate gays so much they are willing to part with their conservative values and add an amendment to the state constitution to ban something that was already illegal. Good job, you fucking morons.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day Tomorrow

Exploding head week concludes. Regular programming resumes next week.

Happy Thursday

* Exploding Head week continues.

Happy All Souls' Day

&

Happy November 1

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