Angry, Young, and Poor: A Pseudo-Punk On A Soapbox

2004-05-10T04:01:00.000-05:00

God, I love hockey...

That's about it. I love hockey. I got home from the bars, grilled some burgers with Scott and ate the fuck out of them, then I came back up to my room and noticed a replay of the Flames-Sharks game was on. I tuned in midway through the 2nd as the Flames led 2-1. San Jose tied the fucker up with less than a minute in the 2nd period. Flames scored next in the 3rd. Then with about 4 minutes left to go, the Sharks tie it up again. The last minute of the 3rd was fucking intense, I was practically pulling my hair out, but nothing came of it. Went into OT. I sat on the edge of my chair, swearing and cursing and generally being the kind of insane human being that Canadians tend to become when their home team is involved in a tight game.

And then Calgary slapped that fucking puck into the goal almost from the blue line. I forget who scored now, because I'm out of touch with the player names these days, and besides that, I yelled at the top of my lungs when that goal was scored and did a little victory jig, so I missed the comentary when they mentioned who scored. Hell, I don't care. Calgary won, that's all I gave a shit about. Calgary hasn't made it this far in the playoffs since they won the Cup back in 1989. I still remember watching that game on TV. I was 8 years old, and Calgary beat the mighty Montreal Canadiens, who were, back then, the best damn team in NHL history. I wanna see the Flames beat the fuck out of San Jose in the Western final and then go on to whip the shit out of either the Flyers or the Lightning, whoever takes East. And I really wish that I could be sitting in a bar back in Calgary to watch it happen, cuz there's nothing like a Canadian bar during the hockey playoffs. And I've never had the chance (nor have any of my friends back there) to see Calgary in the playoffs in a bar. Damn, I should go for a quick trip up there, just for that...

Anyway. It's bedtime now. I just had to rant about how much I fucking love hockey.

2004-05-07T21:01:00.000-05:00

A word from NOFX

So I don't really have too much to say, but the good folks at NOFX do. I typed up the rant from the liner notes of their latest CD, The War on Errorism, which I sorta reviewed last week (go check it out, it's below somewhere). This rant is unedited and unabridged, all emphases theirs. Remember, these aren't my words below, so if you disagree, don't bitch at me (or do, whatever; I agree with most of what they say, so if what they say bothers you, go ahead and bitch--it is your First Amendment right to do so, of course). If you wanna watch the enhanced CD they mention, swing by my room and I'll lend you the CD so you can watch the shit on it. And maybe even listen to the songs too! Anyway, enjoy the NOFX rant. I may be back later to post something of my own.

Hello and greetings from NOFX. How are things with you? That's nice. This would be a good time to start the introduction to this CD. There's a bunch of punk songs and some other kinds of songs (I guess we still do play ska) and plenty of sophomoric lyrics, but unlike other NOFX CD's, this one has some bonus stuff. We've included an enhanced CD featuring some videos and some political commentary. Yeah, we're not really known for our politics, but maybe it's time we are. Maybe it's time for people to start sharing information and opinions instead of relying on our government or the corporate owned media to tells us what they think we should know. You don't have to be a political analyst to see that America is suffering from a general lack of knowledge. In fact, Americans seem to have a very limited knowledge of knowledge. Lots of opinions floating around, but very little actual knowledge. For being one of the wealthiest and supposedly greatest nations on the planet, one would think that the people of this great country would reflect that greatness. They don't. Compared to other Western countries, Americans rank among the lowest when it comes to education and general knowledge of world affairs.

The first question one would ask is why? Why are Americans so ignorant? Could it be that the American government wants them that way? If they didn't, they might spend more money on education. The best way to keep the status quo is to keep the majority of people happy. The best way to keep them happy is to keep them ignorant. Ignorance is bliss and the blissful don't revolt.

How do we keep 300 million people from knowing or caring what's going on in the world? Well that seems pretty easy. First, you make sure that people spend most of their time concerned with their own security. You make sure local news shows cover all the local shootings, kidnappings, and armed robberies, then throw in some sports, weather, and the ever changing price of gasoline. It seems that all major news sources provide the same one sided stories. When all you get to see is one side, it's hard to understand the complexities of an issue or have empathy for the other side. Someone such as Bill Maher from the canceled TV show Politically Incorrect was ostracized for giving an honest yet unpopular viewpoint on the subject of terrorism, and his show was subsequently canceled. Somehow one of the most inherently American pastimes of criticizing the government is now considered to be completely un-American. It's our responsibility as Americans to exercise our right to civil disobedience and dissent. These are the principles on which our country was founded.

Anyway, this is the reason we have included the enhanced CD. People need an alternative source of information. This is our way to help inform the public on how we are all getting ass fucked. The movie "Un-Precedented" clearly illustrates how the 2000 presidential election was rigged in Florida. For being the so-called leader of democracy, the United States is now the butt of a worldwide joke. The Republican party stole the election and illegally moved into the White House. It's pretty much the biggest scandal in US history and no one seems to be talking about it. All everyone keeps saying is "get over it" or "that was so two years ago." Well, we're not getting over it and neither should you. If enough people see what really happened, hopefully we can make sure that it never happens again. Hey, the truth about the Cuban missile crisis didn't come out for over 30 years, but it was just as important when it did. Please watch this trailer for this documentary and show it to as many people as you can. If you would like a full length copy, go to www.unprecedented.org to get one. Things are not going to change on their own. We need to work together to take this country back from the criminals (currently war criminals) that have stolen it from the US.

A lot of you reading this might be thinking we're assholes or American traitors. Well, we may be assholes, but we're certainly not traitors. We are actually patriots in the true sense of the word. We are the ones calling attention to the faults of our government and trying to fix them. We are the ones trying to expose mistakes and learn from them instead of covering them up. We are the ones who have concern for more than just ourselves. We are the ones trying to educate people. We are the ones who question authority instead of simply obeying it. We are the ones who are patriotic..… fuck that! Did I just say that? Let's go back. Patriotism is a little too close to nationalism. Or is it the same thing? Either way, we are fucking better than patriots. We are world patriots. Not only do we are about our own country, we care about the whole fucking planet. We are human beings with the capacity to care for more than just ourselves. So let's use that capability. It's not enough to simply think locally or nationally. We must think globally.

Americans are so concerned with their own personal safety that they've turned their backs on this country and this planet. They put an American flag on their SUV and figure they've done their part. They are more concerned with their feardoms than our freedoms (hey that's pretty good!) So let's stop with the "We Are #1!" bullshit. American is not #1. We're like #11 or #12. For the 91% of Americans who haven't traveled outside this country (such as George W. Bush before he was "elected"), there are several countries that are arguably better than this one. I would put Australia, Canada, Sweden, Holland, and Denmark on the top of the list for sure. Some of these countries have all the freedoms that the US has* plus a whole lot more of 'em (prostitution, socialized medicine, euthanasia, gay marriage, legalized recreational drugs, gay military enlistment, abolishment of death penalty, etc.) Don't get me wrong, #12 is still pretty damn good out of over 250 countries, but there's still a lot more room for improvement. That's what this is really all about: positive change. We don't want to bash American, we want to make it better. In order to make it better, you must first point out what is wrong with it. Well, we got a big pointing stick and we're aiming right for the eye. We're looking to poke that sucker right out of its socket. Thanx for reading our rant, and thanx for buying, burning, borrowing, or stealing this CD.

Sincerely,
Fat Mike, Melvin, Smelly, El Hefe

* Not sure if Australia has more freedoms but the weather and surf sure are great, and the people are really nice.

(Copyright NOFX 2003. All rights reserved. Reprinted without permission.)

2004-05-01T03:44:00.000-05:00

So I got all types of wasted tonight. I'll admit it; I was fucking trashed by midnight. I'm even more so right now. And all I wanted to do all night long was kick the shit out of someone. As soon as I left Thayne and Cour tney's party, the only thing I felt like doing was smashing someone's nose in. It's easy; all you do is line up a good, straight jab, but you use the heel of your palm, not your fist. The heel of your palm is far more solid than your knuckles; broken knuckles hurt, a lot. Anyway. Some beers at Miller's dulled the urge for a little while. Not long. I swear, I was looking for a fight tonight, and I hate myself for it, but I was. I walked around that bar glaring at everyone I saw, as if daring them to stare back at me. Yeah, I was definitely looking for a fight, and I still hate myself for it. I'm supposed to be some kind of pacifist, or some shit. Insanely violent Canadian masquerading as a pacifist... really, it's not easy being a pacifist when you've had the shit kicked out of you more times than you can count. But still. Nobody held my gaze. I don't know if that means anything; probably means shit-all.... when people are drunk, the tendency is to either avoid altercations entirely, or provoke them. So when I glared at people, I don't know if they were looking away from me because I cowed them (I doubt it) or because they were drunk and didn't want to deal with my moronic ass.

Yeah. I was cranky tonight. Very, very cranky. Very very very cranky. And still am. So fuck you all. Scott and Big Luke just rolled in here, time to drink more. Excellent. "You are guilty of douchebaggery so foul." Indeed.

2004-04-30T17:52:00.000-05:00

CD review and miscellany

Before I get going, I gotta say, does anyone even read this fucking thing except Zac anymore? I mean, I'm getting hits, but nobody except Zac is commenting, which leads me to believe that people never manage to get all the way through my rants, or they just don't give a fuck. If either is true, there's really no point in continuing this shit. But I'm gonna keep at it for a little while longer, just to see what we can see.

So today I did the black cherry run for work. Larry, my boss, sends someone about once a month to go buy 20 12-packs of Sweet Valley black cherry soda. It costs about 40 bucks. Larry sells the stuff for 55 cents per can, which is 136 dollars even when it's all sold. That's over a 300% profit. Brilliant businessman. Anyway, while I was in Oshkosh buying the shit, I swung by the Exclusive Company and picked up two new CDs, a Misfits collection and NOFX's latest record, The War on Errorism. For anyone out there with any interest in punk rock whatsoever, I have to highly recommend this record.

For those completely in the dark, NOFX is one of the oldest and best punk rock bands still making music, going on 20 years together, but still very talented, still making good music. This latest album of theirs is quite good, though I think 2000's Pump Up The Valuum was better, just a little. Admittedly, I've only had the chance for one complete listen of the entire record yet, since I've only had it for about two hours, but sometimes first impressions are best. The record begins with the blistering track "Separation of Church and Skate" (no, that's not a typo), kicking the CD off with a song that proves NOFX is not only just as fast as any other punk group out there, they're also more musically talented than most. I gotta say, I love these guys for saying what I've been saying for a long time now (and since they've been at it so long, they have the bragging rights to say it): "I want conflict, I want dissent, I want the scene to represent our hatred of authority, our fight against complacency. Stop singing songs about girls and love, you killed the owl, you freed the dove. Confrontation and politics replaced with harmonies and shticks. When did punk rock become so tame? These fucking bands all sound the same."

Move on to "The Irrationality of Rationality", about the bullshit justification of the military-industrial complex by the fat, dumb white men in charge of corporations. Another fast, hard-edged punker anthem. Enough said. Then "Franco Un-American", a mellower satire railing against people who just don't give a fuck, who think the horrible problems everyone on this planet faces don't really have anything to do with them. And then one of my personal favorites, which I have had an mp3 of for months now, and love, "Idiots Are Taking Over". The title says it all, but just one quick quote: "Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool." Hysterical. And if you wanna hear one hell of an amazing bass line that makes my fingers hurt just thinking about playing it, download this song from PunkVoter for gratis. Then a plain ol' ridiculous song called "She's Nubs", which as far as I could understand listening to it, is all about a girl with no bone structure. Absurdity again: live it, love it. Then a fun little ditty, fast but without much distortion, called "Mattersville," which is all about the gated community in SoCal that the NOFX guys live in with a bunch of other punkers, their own little chaotic corner of the world where aging punks can progress into middle age together. My favorite line? "We can do whatever we want, wherever we please. There's always a keg of beer and a block of cheese." God, I hope I live so good when I'm 40.

"Decom-poseur" is a little too fast for me to make out many lyrics, but it seems to be something about pretentious modern artists who feel underappreciated. "Medio-Core" is a track in a similar vein as "Separation of Church and Skate," though a slow, mellow number for the most part. The title is obviously a play on the words mediocre and hardcore. The guitar and drums on this track are anything but mediocore. But rather than dig at new pop-punk losers, this song rips on established punk bands who play the same fucking set list every damn show, which I've seen more times than I care to and really get annoyed by. Bad Religion is horribly guilty of this; Pennywise is edging into that territory. "Medio-core, it's not forsaken, the new stuff they're making will leave you with a feeling of indifference. How was the band? Okay. Not great, but pretty good. They played the songs I knew they would. Some old, some new, the same formula stays true. We can concur, mediocre. Sing, sing a song, make it simple so all the kids can sing along." Man, have I seen way too many shows like that, fucking teenagers singing along to the standby BR hits like "American Jesus" and "Generator" and basically not giving a fuck about anything else that's played, Greg Graffin up there like he's going through a routine he's done a thousand times before... which he has.

Anyway, the record's got six more songs, but I'm getting bored. Plus my piece of shit stereo keeps skipping the CD, which is two hours old. Fucking Dan See, selling me this piece of crap... Anyway. Check the album out, if you're of a mind. It's worth the 11 bucks I paid for it, no doubt about it. Nobody will ever match NOFX's knack for good musicianship combined with scathing social commentary and tongue-in-cheek off-color humor. They're not some shitty pop-punk group singing about how their latest girlfriend is a bitch and left the whiny songwriter heartbroken, and they don't take themselves so seriously that all they have to say is "fuck you" to the world.

I'm gonna go take a shower and get ready for a night of drunken debauchery. I have to do it tonight, since I have to fucking work tomorrow from 2 pm till probably at least 1 am. I'm fucking pissed about this, let me tell ya. My last Springfest as a student at Ripon, and I've gotta fucking work. I bet everyone's so drunk by the time I get done with work, they're all gonna be passed out. Sometimes I really hate my job.

Oh, and let me remind you: fucking leave comments, even if it's just telling me how much I suck, or I really have no reason to keep doing this. This place gets hits, I see the counter going up every night. I'm not just here to masturbate intellectually. If I wanted a private journal for me and only me to see, I'd buy a notebook and use a pen; I wouldn't be putting this up on the Net for all and sundry to see.

Anyway, shower time. Or beer time. Whichever.

2004-04-23T03:04:00.000-05:00

Absurdity

My room is a pigsty. I have way too much shit crammed into this place, because everything I own is packed in here, because I hate leaving things with my parents, because they invariably give me shit for leaving anything of mine in the house that they passive-aggressively kicked me out of two years ago. It's also a pigsty here because I'm a slob. I clean up when people are coming over, pick up the garbage on the table, throw out the empty beer cans, shove the detritus under the desk where "out of sight, out of mind," is the catchphrase. I spray Febreze over every porous surface, and I blast Air Wizard Tobacco Neutralizer into the air. It makes for a semi-hospitable environment to hang out. People tolerate it, at the very least. Hey, I like having people in my place, but I don't really give a shit if it's not up to their standards. Right now, it reeks of cigarette smoke and beer soaked into the carpet. I won't lose my room deposit; gallons of beer have been emptied onto this floor long before I got to it. I washed my sheets four days ago and they already need to be washed again, which pisses me off, because I know I sure as shit didn't spill beer and gin on them. But I've still been sleeping in them for four days, because my sense of smell is so shot that most nights it doesn't bother me very much, and I hate doing laundry.

Dumb Joke #1 -- So. There's this American on vacation with his wife in Mexico. One day, they agree to split up for the day; the man goes sightseeing while his wife goes shopping. They decide to meet at three o'clock. After a satisfying day of sightseeing, the American realizes he forgot to take his watch with him, and the afternoon is getting on. He asks several people what time it is, but they all respond "No hable ingles." Finally, he consults a guy hunkered down next to a donkey, and to his relief, the man speaks English. He asks what time it is. The hunkered-down guy regards him curiously, looks at the donkey, then reaches out to cup the donkey's balls, hefting them a few times. "Well, it's about two-thirty," he says. The American's mind is boggled, and he says incredulously, "How the hell can you tell what time it is by doing that?!" The Mexican smiles, and says, "Well, first you gotta squat down like this, next to the donkey." The American does as instructed. "And then, you gotta reach in there and lift the donkey's balls up." The American cringes, looking at the huge, hairy, sweaty, slimy, stinky donkey's balls. But curiosity prevails, and he does as told. The Mexican grins, nods, and crouches down next to the American. Then he points through the donkey's legs and says, "Now, you see that clock over there?"

I spilled gin and tonic all over the fresh pack of smokes I bought at Miller's, about half an hour ago; stupid drunken mistake, which Bade of course upbraided me about till hell and back, as I deserved. So now my smokes taste like pine needles, as I smoke one now. Not in a good way. I like gin, quite a bit. Especially when combined with tonic (which gets its flavor from quinine; did you know quinine is a cure for malaria?) and a slice of lime. But gin and tonic plus cigarettes is... well, not awful, but still not too pleasant.

Dumb Joke #2-- So there's these two bulls standing on a hill, a young bull and an old bull, looking out on a pasture of cows. A whole fuckin' pasture. And the young bull turns to the old bull and says, "Hey, I got this really good idea!" The old bull looks at him and says, "Oh, yeah? What?" The young bull says, 'Yeah, man, I got this really fuckin' good idea! Let's run down this hill and fuck one of those cows!" The old bull just looks at him, y'know, he's just lookin' at him. Then he says, "Hey, y'know what? I got a better idea." The young bull says, "Oh yeah? So what's your brilliant fuckin' idea?" The old bull grins, and says, "Let's walk down this hill, and fuck all of those cows. Dig?"

I made a mockery of my senior portfolio poster presentation assignment today. I wrote blurbs about every class I'd taken in the English department, followed by a favorite moment and a favorite quote for each. I did this drunk, and then I printed them all up, cut them out, and slapped them on a piece of black poster board. Then I printed out the title of the poster, crazily cut out each individual letter from the title, and pasted them on the top of the poster. I did all of this in the space of 20 minutes before I had to present the poster. The title? "I Am An English Major, Not An Art Major, And This Is My Poster." When I unveiled it, the entire room exploded in laughter; I think everyone there knew how much of a piece of shit, high school-style assignment it was, and appreciated my sense of irony. The faculty members there also seemed to like my favorite moments (such as when Phil got drunk on Wheeler's champagne during our last senior sem class) and my favorite quotes (such as "Huh? What's going on?" from Bade, when interrupted from his nap in Foundations, and "I'm not too worried about you failing this class, but I thought I should give you a warning shot over your bow, just in case" from David Graham). All in all, simply because I treated the assignment as the bullshit assignment it was, more people hovered by my white-on-black poster than anyone else. God, I rule.

Dumb Joke #3-- Two lunatics broke out of an insane asylum. They escaped onto the rooftop and fled toward the next building, but when they got to the edge, they realized it was much too far to jump. They despaired, until one of them remembered the flashlight he had in his pocket. "Hey!" he cried. "Okay! I'll turn on the flashlight, aim it across the gap, and you can walk across the beam of light to the next building!" The other lunatic was ecstatic. "Brilliant!" he said. So the first lunatic aimed the flashlight across the gap, and the second lunatic walked across the beam of light to the other building. "Okay, now toss the flashlight over to me and you can walk across too!" called the second lunatic. The first lunatic threw the flashlight over, and the second shined the beam across the gap. The first lunatic was about to step onto it and walk across, but suddenly, he hesitated. "What's wrong?" said his friend. "No way!" yelled the lunatic. "You'll just turn the flashlight off when I'm halfway across!"

Ahh, absurdity at its best. I stole that from a late '80s Batman limited series, The Killing Joke. The Joker tells that joke at the end, when he's cornered and knows it, and Bats "hehs" and Joker "hehs" back and soon both of them end up laughing their heads off by the final panel. Absolutely absurd. But damned funny.

Dumb Joke #4-- "A bunch of apples are roasting in an oven. One apple turns to the other and says, "Wow, it's really fucking hot in here, isn't it?" The other apple screams, "OH MY GOD! A TALKING APPLE!"

Absurdity. What else is there to explain the human condition? Tourists getting duped by natives, wizened old men smacking young pups upside the head, crazy people running across flashlight beams, apples astounded by other apples... Hey, we're all waiting for Godot, but the slippery motherfucker never, ever shows up.

2004-04-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

Fear itself?

A little over a year ago, a fairly nice winter night, I was walking with a friend of mine in the prairie. At one point, she mentioned she was glad that I would walk with her at night, because she loved going for walks at night, but she still had a slight lingering fear of the dark from her early childhood. "Oh really?" I asked, and she went on to tell me a couple of other irrational childhood fears she still held onto, at least a tiny bit, in a joking sort of way, and at the end said with slight embarrassment something like, "It's silly, isn't it?" I said that it wasn't, no, most people have at least a couple of irrational, long-held fears. Then she asked me what mine were. My immediate response was, I hadn't any. I'm sure it sounded like a load of macho bullshit, and probably still does, but at the moment I said it, I was being entirely truthful, because I hadn't thought about it in depth. I was thinking in terms of the fears she had mentioned to me--the dark, big dogs, a couple others that I can no longer remember. I was thinking about physical, tangible fears--spiders, heights, deep water, snakes, things like that. Simple, one-or two-word things that are easily explained, easily defined. Those kind of things don't scare me. I might not like certain things, but I don't hold any fear for them (or, at least, irrational fear for them; nobody in their right mind is not afraid of a charging grizzly bear or a king cobra with hood spread or a loaded gun aimed at them, but that doesn't mean one has to fear such things when they are not present).

I explained all this to my friend as we walked, and then she posed the obvious question: "So if you aren't afraid of things like that, what are you afraid of?" That was harder to answer, because it's not something men as a rule like to admit, not to each other and especially not to women. But I told her anyway. I told her how I was afraid of getting kicked out of school, which was a definite possibility at the time, and being perceived as a failure or a loser. I no longer fear getting kicked out of school, but nobody can say they're not afraid of being perceived as a failure or a loser; anyone who does is a stinking liar. I told her how I was terrified of letting my father down, and I still am, though then, as it still is now, it was an irrational fear. Most people can understand this fear, as well, though with me it is sometimes absolutely crippling, an almost panic-attack-inducing phobia that my father, somehow, someway, sometime, will end up disappointed with me and think he has failed as a father, and that I have failed him as a son. Intellectually I know this will never be the case; my dad has told me so many times. But late at night, lying sleepless in bed, I still fear it every now and then, and that fear makes me hide under my blankets like a two-year-old hiding from the monsters under his bed.

I told her how sometimes I was downright terrified of being alone for the rest of my life. At the time, I mostly meant bereft of romantic female companionship for the rest of my life, which was as understandable as it was probably ludicrous, since a few months before I'd had my heart broken by the girl I'd spent over three years with and once (stupidly) thought I was going to marry someday, and I thought I'd never find that sort of thing again. To a lesser degree, I also meant not having any real, close friendships, which I did have at the time and still do now and imagine I probably always will. This fear is both totally irrational and totally rational, as paradoxical as it may sound. The chances of a person going through life without at least one friend, close or not, are pretty damn slim. Humans are social animals by nature; we would not have evolved from the proto-simians we once were to the dominant species on the planet if this were not the case (as the simplest argument for this, do you think you'd be alive now if the social instincts to raise helpless infants to self-sufficiency were not deeply ingrained in us as a species?). It is very rare for a person to have no meaningful social contact, and those who do not, either by choice or by circumstance, tend to be miserable because of it. Even sociopaths crave human interaction, if only to inflate their own self-image. So fearing that we will always be alone is irrational because it almost never happens, but perfectly rational at the same time, since being alone is an unnatural state of being for a human that most of us would consider intolerable. Thus, I still fear being alone, irrationally and rationally, though rarely now. I'm pretty sure I'll meet "the right girl" sooner or later. I'm not so melodramatic these days as to think that if I haven't met that girl by the age of 23, I never will. And even if I never do, over the course of the 40 or 50 or more years I have left on this planet, well, I suppose I'll be able to live with that. At the very least, I'm sure I'll have one or two good friends somewhere.

The last thing I told my friend was that I feared living a meaningless life. I didn't mean that I feared not being rich, famous, and/or powerful, since most of us get over that delusion by high school at the latest. I simply meant that I feared living a life that didn't do some good, impact some people in some way: my eventual wife, if I ever have one of those; my kids, if I ever have any (and I hope to, someday, though it might be better if my genes weren't passed on); the rest of my family, whom I love dearly and would not be the same without; the people I work and play with throughout my life; hopefully people I never actually meet, whom I might be able to help through things like charity. I no longer fear that I won't have some impact, because I think I will. I'm a reasonably intelligent person who's lost a lot of his cynicism and most of his misanthropy, and I think I can offer a lot over the course of my life, even if it ends up being to only a few people and only those few people will ever recognize it.

Those are the things I told my friend that night over a year ago. But last night, while engaged in another struggle to find sleep, I came to fear something else. It stemmed from a conversation with my little sister, who interviewed our last surviving great-aunt over the phone for a paper, something having to do with a psychological stage in everyone's life when they "take stock" of their life. Aly told me that this great-aunt of ours said, though not in so many words, that at the age of 85, she doesn't really think her life has been worth living. She lives alone in a tiny senior's apartment, on meager government benefits, the Canadian equivalent of Social Security. Her husband left her in the mid-1960s, forcing her to raise a child alone under the social stigma and economic pressures of that time. Her daughter, now in her 40s, has gone through three marriages (so far), had two kids by two of those husbands, both of whom (husbands and kids) are rather worthless. This daughter doesn't really give a damn about her anymore. Both of her sisters are long dead. She has no friends. She is unable to look at old photos without crying. The only thing that brings her pleasure is the rare phone call she receives from her nieces and nephews (mostly just my mother, her sister, and her brother) and grand-nieces (mostly just Aly; I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't talked to the woman in years). She is alone and believes she has nothing left to do in this life and entreats God nightly to let her die, just as her own mother did for 15-some years, until she finally did at the age of 99.

I would not call my Aunty Helen's life meaningless, though she at least partially seems to believe so herself. But having heard that story, I now have a new fear. I believe now that my life will be essentially good, as I said above. But I was up till nearly five in the morning last night, wondering. What if, decades from now, I'm living alone, old and decrepit, everyone close to me dead or indifferent to my continued existence, unable to think about the past without feeling profound depression, praying to die, and thinking that my entire life was not worth it?

Honestly, the thought scares the fuck out of me, and gives me one more reason to hope that I die relatively young, fifties or so, before I ever have the chance to find out. And if someone from the future could visit me now and tell me that, 62 years from now, at the age of 85, I have ended up at that awful point, I think I would reach for the nearest gun and put one into my brain stem right now. Why would anyone want to live that long to end up considering themselves a failure? What in the hell would be the point?

Okay, I really had to get that out of my system. If you actually read this far, kudos for your perserverance, and I hope I haven't thoroughly depressed the hell out of you. Later.

2004-04-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

Cartoons will never be the same

Let me begin with two things: (1) Lyrics Week was indeed a really dumb idea that I pretty much forgot about within 24 hours, and so, forget it, back to normal posts; and (2) I was really really drunk when I posted late Friday night. If you saw it (and I know at least three people did, and were none too pleased), well, forgive my drunken attempt at humor, hope I didn't offend too badly, and if you didn't, well, I deleted the post, and it's probably better that I did, so forget about it. Moving on.

At work on Saturday night, I don't know how it came up, but I was talking with one of the two Bens I work with, Benny T., during a lull about cartoons, and at one point I said something like, "You know, cartoons really will never be as good as they once were," by which I meant the "Golden Age" of the baby boomer period, post-WWII to the mid-60s or so. You know the ones I mean, the Warner Bros. shorts with Bugs and Daffy and Elmer Fudd and all that crew. We talked about how falling anvils and rocket packs strapped to the back of Wile E. Coyote and Daffy's bill getting wrapped around his head after taking a shotgun blast to the face and all that classic stuff was simply the most hilarious shit ever. Then there was the other big cartoon maker of the time, Walt Disney and the "Merry Melodies," with Donald Duck and Chip 'n' Dale and Goofy. The spoofs with hundreds of Goofys playing hockey and football and downhill skiing and what-not were sheer mania, the kind of thing I still laugh out loud at when I catch them late at night on the Disney channel. Then you had the various Donald Duck cartoons, which were probably my all-time favorites, both the ones with just Donald and his three rambunctious nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Luey, and the ones with just Donald being endlessly tortured by the psychotic duet of Chip and Dale. Donald, being the total asshole that he was, always deserved whatever crap that those two incredibly inventive squirrels did to him. Oh, and then you had your Tom & Jerry, though I don't remember which studio put those out, which were funny sometimes, though I think second-best when held up to Warner Bros. and Disney cartoons.

The really sad thing is that you can't watch those cartoons on TV anymore, except very very late at night on certain channels, like Disney and the Cartoon Network. I remember watching Looney Tunes on the Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show on early Saturday mornings as a kid, I believe it came on at 10 AM Mountain Standard Time on ABC. Often my parents would join my sisters and I to watch, and laugh just as hard as us kids did. But the Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, to the best of my knowledge, is no more. Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies are nowhere to be found in a time slot that actual kids can watch them. Somewhere along the line, they got deemed too violent and subversive for little kids. This makes me really wonder about how fucking stupid kids in America have become, because I know I sure as hell never thought I could get away with shooting a shotgun at someone or dropping an anvil on them or fall off a 500-foot-cliff with nothing but some dust on my shoulders and a cartoony lump on my head. They were fucking CARTOONS! I knew the difference between them and real-life as a 5-year-old and so did all the other 5-year-olds I played with! Have kids become so stupid that they no longer have even that modicum of common sense? I don't think so. I should probably be blaming adults who have no sense of humor whatsoever and think that all kids are too damn stupid for their own good. Sure, every now and then you get some really moronic little twat who blows his little brother away, thinking it'll work just like in the cartoons, but that moronic little twat is a big fucking exception to the norm, and perhaps it's better that at least some of those moronic genes got taken out of the pool. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I don't care. Truth be told, the real blame is on their goddamn parents for letting the TV raise their kids. I bet in every case where some kid stupidly emulated a cartoon, the parents of that kid never bothered to make it clear to their kids the difference between TV and real life.

So those cartoons went away, and got replaced by watered-down PC versions starring characters from a bygone era. Duck Tales, and Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Bugs Bunny on the big screen with Michael Jordan. We had G.I. Joe in the '80s, which to this day I maintain convinced a lot of boys of my age that war was fun and harmless--nobody ever got shot, all you saw was blue lasers flying one way, red lasers the other, and when planes got shot down, the pilots always parachuted out in time. Some weird anti-Soviet propaganda, indoctrinating young boys just in case war ever broke out? Maybe, who knows? The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed is beside the point; those cartoons were all made years before the Berlin Wall came down. But I think at the very least, G.I. Joe was probably more to blame for kids shooting each other accidentally than Bugs Bunny was, since the result of firing a gun at another person was never shown, even in a cartoony way.

Cartoons these days are pure crap, for the most part. The last really good cartoon aimed at a kid's audience was the Animaniacs, which was fucking brilliant, the exact kind of insane humor from Looney Tunes, absolutely tongue-in-cheek the whole way. There were obviously parts of it that little kids wouldn't get, but teenagers and adults would. The Wheel of Morality? Fucking genius! Absurdism at its finest. Since that, I mean, yeah, Spongebob Squarepants is definitely funny, and every now and then they do a nod to the adult audience that makes me howl (like when Sandy was tracking down a worm that was devouring buildings in Bikini Bottom, and comes across a sign with an arm pointing ahead that says WORM on it, and she says "Worm-sign!"), but it's just not the same as the old-school 'toons.

Now bear in mind I'm not talking about adult-slated cartoons here, a phenomenon begun by the Simpsons, furthered by Futurama, turned into brilliant social commentary masked in potty humor with South Park, made brilliant with The Family Guy, and perpetuated with varying degrees of success with Adult Swim (Sealab 2021 rocks, for example, while personally I find Aqua Teen Hunger Force fairly good and Home Movies mediocre most of the time). Adult cartoons are great, there's no denying it, and they're a fine example of how to take a kid's medium and make it legitimate for grown-ups. I watch Futurama and Family Guy back-to-back at 10 almost every night on the Cartoon Network, and I always get at least a few out-loud laughs even if I've already seen the episode.

But they're no Looney Tunes, that's for sure. May you Godfathers of Cartoons rest in peace.

2004-04-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

Back To The Motor League

Seeing as it's Friday, it seems appropriate to begin Lyrics Week with this song by Propagandhi, one of the angriest bands I have ever heard (and remember, kids, I listen to a lot of punk rock). Also one of the most talented and intelligent. You can download this song free and legally here, along with a lot of other good music from the good folks at Fat Wreck Chords. Without further ado:

"I like to party fucking hard. I like my rock and roll the same. Don't give a fuck if I burn out. Don't give a fuck if I fade away."

Hmm, I think the partying bit tends to apply to pretty much everyone I regularly associate with, and as I said, since it's Friday, it felt appropriate to start off there. But let's move on to the rest of the song:

"Back to the Motor League with me before I'm forced to face the wrath of a well-heeled buying public who live vicariously through tortured-artist college-rock and floor-punching macho pabulum. Back to the Motor League I go. Once thought I drew a lucky hand, turned out to be a live grenade (oh my god... holy shit!) of play-acting "anarchists" and Mommy's-little-skinheads, death-threats and sycophants and weiners drunk on straight-edge. Fuck off. Who cares? I'd rather hi-lite Trip-Tiks than listen to your bullshit. Fuck off. Who cares about your stupid scenes, your shitty zines, the straw-men you build up to burn. It never ceases to amaze and as I'm suffering your perfection it reminds me of my own race to redress my own sad history of mouthed feet. Eaten hats. Teated bulls. Amish phone-books. Drunken brawls. But what have we here? 15 years later it still reeks of ‘Swill and Chickenshit Conformists with their fists in the air; like-father, like-son "rebels” bloated on Korn, Eminems and Bizkits. Lord, hear our prayer: take back your Amy Grant mosh-crews and your fair-weather politics. Blow-dry my hair and stick me on a ten-speed. Back to the Motor League. I guess life is just a popularity contest. Success, the ability to perform within a framework of obedience. Just ask the candy-coated Joy-Cam rock-bands selling shoes for venture-capitalists, silencing competing messages, rounding off the jagged edges."

Now, if you downloaded the song, you know he manages to rock out all of those words in a song 2 minutes, 42 seconds long. Impressive, to say the least. I could only understand maybe a third of the lyrics before I looked them up online, it's that fast. More impressive is the fact that these guys rip into pretty much everything to do with their "scene" with hearty enthusiasm. This song is the mark of three guys who realized exactly how lame at least three-quarters of the people involved in punk rock (and music in general) really are and flipped them a huge verbal middle finger. I'm not gonna bother breaking it down line-by-line, and honestly, I don't understand some of the references in there, but hey, I'm just a pseudo-punk, remember?

Anyway. That's the start of Lyrics Week. Look for a drunken post about inconsequential bullshit (as if this wasn't...) later tonight, maybe, and more of Lyrics Week tomorrow. Later.

2004-04-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

Lyrics Week

Okay, so here's an experiment in daily posts. For the next week, I'm going to try to post every day, starting each post with a theme, namely, song lyrics. I'm one of those people who doesn't much care for poetry in the traditional sense; I don't much enjoy reading it, and I don't really care to hear people read their poetry aloud, except if I happen to know the poet personally and it's actually good. But poetry set to music I like. Sometimes I wish I could write decent poetry and then set it to music, but alas (or perhaps thankfully, depending on how you look at it), I realized how crappy a poet I am back in high school. So instead I'll share poetry set to music that is actually good, with commentary following. This may be a really dumb idea, or it might not. If I decide it's really dumb, this experiment will end ahead of schedule. But we'll see.

2004-04-14T16:14:00.000-05:00

Death and taxes

Well, crap, it's that time of the year again; once again, I have let my taxes go until almost the last possible moment. If I had any brains, I would've done it back in January when I got my W-2s from work, and by now the money the guvmint owes me would have already arrived, probably, and I could have promptly spent it on booze and smokes. Now I imagine I won't see that money till July or so. Oh well. "C'est la vie, said the old folks..."

So what the hell was the press conference last night all about? I didn't even know there was one, and by the time an online friend of mine mentioned it to me (he principally objected to its interruption of regularly scheduled Fox programming), it was over. Today I can't seem to find anything about it in the online news sources I regularly read. The online friend said he wasn't really watching the conference, but remembered some talk about Iraq and continued vigilance and all that stuff. Why the hell can't I find anything on this now? I admit I've only done a cursory search, but one would think it would be major news. Did the conference last night have anything to do with today's news that the U.S. has dramatically changed its position on many aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Because that seems to be all I can find in the news today, but my understanding is that this announcement was made sometime this morning, not last night. Can someone enlighten me here? I'd really be interested to know what exactly Dubya was saying last night.

Speaking of today's announcement, I have to say, I sat back and winced as I read about it. Though traditionally the U.S. has almost always sided with the Israelis, my preliminary conclusion is that Bush's enthusiastic backing of Sharon's plans today is a bad choice that is only going to cause Palestinians, along with other Arab nations, to hate America even more than they did before. I can't agree with Arafat's statement that the decision effectively put an end to the peace process, but I do have to agree that it's going to lead to an upswing in violence. By approving of Sharon's plan to allow many Israeli settlements to remain in place in the West Bank, Bush is shoving a big ol' stick into the ant's nest. Palestinians are NOT happy about this. Check out the whole story by clicking any of the News links I have; it's on the front page of the major news sources at the very least. (I'm too lazy at the moment to create hyperlinks and save you one or two mouse clicks; sue me.)

In other news, did ya hear about the CVS pharmacy employee who refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills to a woman in Texas, saying that she morally objected to birth control? Ahh, good ol' Texas, it really is a land apart from the rest of us. See the full story here (yeah yeah, it's hard to track this story down, so I'll give you the link).

In non-politically-motivated news, I'm in something of a quandry right now. As some of you may know, my mother has MS. She was diagnosed about three years ago, though she has probably had it for most of my life; it was simply misdiagnosed as attacks of encephalitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, Meniere's disease (an inner-ear disease), and others for fifteen years or so. Since being formally diagnosed, my mother's had a rough time of it, swinging from periods of almost normal functionality to times where she can't even get up and down the stairs without someone supporting her. Obviously this is an issue that affects my family greatly. To wit, my sisters have signed up for an MS walk in Madison coming up on the weekend after next, and they would like me to go with them. Now, I would like to go. Despite the fact that I smoke too much, I used to be an avid hiker and I can still maintain a brisk walking pace for long distances (ask Bade, the little bitch can't stand walking to the bars with me and always makes me slow down). The 3.2 miles of this walk would be easy for me. But sign-up starts at 9 am on a Saturday, and it's in Madison, which means getting up around 7 am. Uggh... I haven't been awake at that time of day except when I haven't gone to bed yet. I love my mother, I really do, even when she's crazy (and she often is). But I get little enough sleep as it is, and waking up early on a Saturday morning seems like sheer insanity to me. I feel really guilty, not wanting to give up sleep-in time while my mother's body falls apart on her, but... ehh, I'll stop now.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to get to the library so I can do my damn taxes. And then I have to do my senior portfolio self-analysis assignment (most useless class ever, the bane of English majors... grr). Maybe I'll have time to party a little tonight. Sure hope so.

Later, kids.

2004-04-08T00:06:00.000-05:00

So this is fun...

Right off, let me tell you about a first for me. At least, a first for the past four or five years: I went to bed before midnight last night. Honestly, I have not done that in years. I was so tired I felt like I was gonna fall over every time I stood up, and my brain was so burnt there's no way I could do any more homework, so I went to bed, like a rational human being would normally do. Of course, I couldn't sleep for four hours anyway, but I was in bed before midnight last night. A new trend? Un-bloody-likely. But I thought it might interest my faithful readers to know.

I'm hiding in my room while RAs bust the party next door in Theta Land. I'll give it a few more minutes and then wander back. I can still hear the bass from someone's stereo, so I know the party is nowhere near its completion at this point. As long as everyone's in a room, hey, presto! it's cool. Actually, at this point, I have nothing else meaningful to say, so I'm just gonna post this and I'll come back in a couple hours and post some more. Let's see if any more fat, ugly girls will hit on me...

2004-04-03T04:48:00.000-06:00

And I'm back!

Over a month without updates... wonder if anyone even looks at this thing anymore...

I'm pretty tired right now. I guess that's a good place to start this rant. I got about five hours of drunken sleep, slapped the snooze, somehow turned off the alarm without meaning to and missed class and thereby got another hour and a half or so of slightly less drunken sleep. Finally dragged my ass out of bed. Hungover till I got drunk. Yeah yeah, par for the course.

So... I get about a dozen emails a day from all the various politcal action groups I'm subscribed to. The last two or three weeks, I've had a really hard time caring about any of them. My animosity towards the Dubya administration has not lessened in the slightest, mind, but I think it was the thrice-daily emails from Kerry's campaign asking me for money that finally turned me off. Hey, I know I'm just a name on a list of millions of other people, but I'm a poor college student, and both of my credit cards are maxed out and I can barely afford the minimum payments on them, not to mention my phone bill, so when some politician who's married to the heir of the Heinz ketchup fortune keeps pumping me for money, I get a little pissed.

Then there's this whole Clarke bruhaha. Part of me really wants to believe it, and to be honest, I'm sure most of it is. But part of me thinks it's way too convenient that this shit is coming out at this time, just when the election campaign is starting to really heat up. I think the man is probably mostly honest; god knows I don't trust anything that comes out of Jr.'s mouth any farther than he can spit it. It wouldn't surprise me for an instant to know absolutely, without a doubt, that W. ordered Clarke to find an Iraq link to September 11. I like that it's forcing Condie to testify publically, and I'm really hoping that sometime down the road she'll get charged for perjury for what she says there, because I think the woman might possibly be even more even than Rumsfeld (though not as evil as Mr. Piss-On-The-Constitution Ashcroft). But I'm still leery. There is no ironclad proof at this point. As Mulder said, "I want to believe." But this just seems way too convenient...

On an entirely different note... ran into a kid tonight, he was walking past Miller's just as Bade and I were leaving. He had a jacket covered in punk rock patches and pins. Made me feel good, he even had the same Clash patch on his jacket that I've got on mine, which is what prompted me to strike up a conversation with him. He recognized the Misfits button on my hat, which only about 4 people have since I put it there back in October. He's young, not even 18 yet I don't think, way too ideological still, way too emphatic about which bands are posers and which aren't. (I love the acid test that punks put each other through--"Whattaya think about Band X? And how 'bout Band Y?" Basically asking, "How hardcore are YOU?" Hilarious, it really is, especially once you've grown out of that stage.) But he's smart, and he'll grow up. Smart punks are kind of a rare thing, and I love running into them whilst stranded here in Wisconsin.

Good Lord, how arrogant and condescending was that? Shut up, old man, back to your wheelchair... Jesus...

Anyway. Not much else to bitch about at this particular moment. I plan to get back to regular postings pretty much now. Let's see if I can get this bitch up to 2000 hits soonlike. Gonna have to remind everyone this place still exists...

Laaaaaaaate.

2004-02-27T14:27:00.000-06:00

Bitchinism

Well well. Again I let over two weeks go by without posting anything new. Oh well.

So I won't bother going into stupid weekend crap, we all know what went down. A week later, I'm almost amused by it now. Though not really. Whatever.

In the political arena, I'll simply direct you to Joe's fabulous blog for what's mainly on my mind right now. He pretty much shares my views on the subject, thus I feel no need to say basically the same thing here. Suffice to say, Dubya is a flaming retard. I really need to buy one of Fat Wreck Chord's fantastic Not My President T-shirts . Or maybe seven, one for every day of the week. Maybe we should all buy one, and declare a "Not My President" day on campus, like when it gets warmer so we don't have to cover them up with jackets. Can you imagine three or four hundred Ripon students or more all walking around campus with that T-shirt on their backs? I bet we could get on the news if we all marched on downtown after our last class of the day and put up flyers up and down the block.

Anyway, moving on. The main subject of today's bitch is this: music these days sucks donkey balls.

No no, hear me out. I'm not talking just about the obviously shitty stuff, your Britney Spearses and N'Syncs and other manufactured bullshit pop stars. They're a gimme, no further discussion needed. I'm talking about almost all of it. Most modern rock, soft or hard, that gets any degree of airplay sucks ass. Most hip-hop or R&B that gets any degree of airplay sucks ass. Most dance/techno music that gets any degree of airplay sucks ass. In short, if it's playing on the radio or on MTV in even slight rotation, there's a good chance it sucks ass. Your classic rock stations continue to play the most boring of the era they claim to represent: the same three Zepellin songs, the same two Hendrix songs, same same same.

Commercial radio stations, more than three-quarters of which are owned by one massive, stupendously evil conglomerate, the ubiquitous Clear Channel, are pandering to the lowest common denominator and milking every new breakaway pop hit for all it's worth until people get bored with it and eagerly look forward to the next breakaway pop hit. If it isn't infectious and catchy yet easily forgettable, a song has no value to commercial radio; such songs don't sell albums in the millions of copies.

Now this diatribe should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, given the kind of music I tend to listen to most often, namely, punk rock. I prefer music with a fast, loud beat and a political or social or non-sappy emotional message behind it. (And believe me, I can't begin to tell you how incensed I am that bands like Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and the like have ripped off the sound and turned it into a whiny "I'm a lonely, underappreciated teenager" facsimile of the punk rock I know and love.) But I am not saying by any means that punk is the only music of value. It just happens to be the variety of underground music that I prefer.

The key word there was "underground," folks. Now, I'm not one of those idiotic punks who calls someone a sell-out as soon as they sign to a non-indy label. But the nature of this nation's recording industry is not to produce good music, but to make money. They want to exploit any act they can find to make as much money as they possibly can before moving on to the next big sensation. If that act happens to survive the exploitation and become more than a one-album wonder, hey, even better, they can make even more money off that since everybody already knows who that act is from the previous album's saturation and so they need merely say the act's name and "new album by" for their promotions, and boom, 10 million more copies sold in the first week alone. So I'm not surprised that little of value has come to the pop music scene in recent years. There have been a few exceptions, of course, but for the most part I gave up a long time ago. Thus I will continue to look to the underground scene for my music--be it underground punk rock, underground metal, underground hip-hop, underground electronic, underground whatever.

But more than anything else, I will continue to avoid Phish-esque jam bands like the motherfucking plague and gladly listen to as much pop music as I have to if it means I never have to hear another Phish or Yonder Mountain String Band or String Cheese Incident song as long as I live. Fucking hippies...

2004-02-11T15:36:00.000-06:00

Back to the lecture at hand

So. You may have heard about a federal subpoena being issued to Drake University ordering them to turn over a list of all people involved in antiwar activities after a peaceful demonstration back in November. Well, today the subpoena was withdrawn, though nobody's saying why. Probably something to do with the fact that it was fucking bullshit.

The apparent cause of the subpoena had to do with "alleged trespassing at the Iowa National Guard headquarters in Johnston that happened while a protest against the war in Iraq was taking place nearby on Nov. 16. He said the protest, in which 12 were arrested, was not the problem," according to the Associated Press. So I guess the idea was to subpoena activists and start a grand jury investigation because of something that happened close to a legal, peaceful protest. And actually I guess the real point was to try to intimidate the hell out of those activists so they wouldn't cause more trouble. Or maybe that's just the conspiracy freak in me talking, the part that trusts the Bush administration about as far as I could spit a dead rat.

Then again, the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, has compared these tactics to those used during the McCarthy era of the '50s. He says: "We've heard protestations from the FBI that they've learned from those mistakes, but what's going on at Drake means that we have a lot more to be concerned about. We now find that the government is doing precisely what it promised it wouldn't do, which is to target individuals engaged in lawful First Amendment activities." Hmm. Guess I'm not the only one with misgivings, eh?

Okay, that's all I've got at the moment. More bedwetting liberal boo-hooing (hey Tim, can I have some Kleenex to mop my tears, you friggin' Republican?) as events warrant.

2004-02-08T01:40:00.000-06:00

Blah blah blog...

Yeah, so I'm well aware I haven't posted anything in like two fucking weeks... I haven't felt up to it, and, to be honest, I haven't done very much that's worth talking about. School. Work. Drinkinism. The usual. I just got home from work, and I'm really rather tired at the moment, not to mention, somehow, still a little hung over from last night's 100 Days party. I don't really remember how much beer I drank at the bowling alley, but I know I was pretty wasted when I got back on the bus. I do remember drinking two double Red Bulls and vodka, one double gin and tonic (mixed by Mike, so they were strong as hell), and then I switched to beer and lost count again. I sang some karaoke, which was a lot of fun.

Around 2 am, I think, I suddenly realized how fucking wasted I was and decided to leave (I know, I know! I actually left before bartime for once in my fuckin' life!). This turned out to maybe be not such a smart move, leaving by myself, since on the walk home a car drove by and honked at me. For some reason I was in a rather shitty mood by then, so I flipped them off. Next thing I know--yep, you guessed it--brake lights come on, they throw the car in reverse and back up, and three large guys (I think they were Merry Men, since they were driving that way, but I wasn't seeing too straight) piled out. They talked a lot of shit and I basically continued to act like an asshole, because I didn't give a damn if they kicked the shit out of me--most likely, given how drunk I was, two or three punches would have made me fall over and pass out anyway, so I doubt I would have gotten very hurt. I don't really recall how exactly I avoided a beating, but they settled for pushing me into a snowdrift and drove off. To be honest, I found that hilarious--what is this, grade school? You don't like a kid so you push him over, laugh a lot, and walk off?

Well, anyway, I picked myself up out of the snowdrift, brushed myself off, and continued on my way. I dropped into bed about ten minutes after getting home and slept the sleep of the dead (or very inebriated) until 1:30, at which point I had to get up and go to work. It pretty much sucked, though I did make a lot of money. Considered hitting the bars, but thought better of that, considering how much money I blew there last night (I was a quite shocked, actually, to find that I only had 30 dollars in my wallet today, when there had been 80 in it when I was at the bowling alley). So I grabbed a sixer from the cooler at work and got a ride home. Now here I sit, drinking one of those six, informing all you lovely people about my rather boring last 24 hours. Well, except for almost getting beat up. That was pretty exciting. I should antagonize dumb, large guys more often, just for the adrenaline rush.

Awright, I'm gonna go see what's going on down in Theta. Later, faithful minions.

2004-01-21T15:11:00.000-06:00

KEGGER!!!!

So my sisters have decided that their birthday present to me this year will be a keg party. That's right, a keg party. It will be held at my parents' house (yes, they are out of town). Feel free to come by. I really have no idea how many people are coming at this point. I realize most people would rather avoid the cold and just party on campus, but hey, how often do you get to go to a townie house party, especially when you know and love the townie as much as you know and love me? *wink wink, nudge nudge*

On another note... well, there are no other notes really. I could rant and rave about the piece of morbid comedy on the television last night (i.e., Junior's State of the Union Address) but there's really no point. You're all thinking, rational people who can come to their own conclusions, and I'm sure the conclusions you came to were pretty similar to mine. I will make one observation, however: has anyone ever noticed that when Dubya gives a speech, every time his speech notes tell him to pause and wait for applause, he gets this deer-in-the-headlights look in his little beady eyes and looks out on the crowd expectantly, and every single time the applause registers in his head, the left corner of his mouth twitches up as if he wants to start grinning uncontrollably but he manages to restrain it to something like a fatherly smirk? I think I know what's running through his head every time that happens: "Oh man, I wonder if they're gonna by this load of total horseshit? Oh... wait... oh! Yes! YES! They bought it! They're clapping! Holy shit, I can't believe I got away with that again! Ha ha ha! Man, I'm glad Dad bought me this job! SUCKERS!!!"

Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Maybe it's simply: "Stop readin' th' big words out loud... look up... golly gee, they really must love me, lookit them clappin' away! Hot dayum!"

By the way, does Laura Bush remind anyone else of a dog that's been bred too much, the way her smile never quite leaves her face and her eyes are too wide apart and have no sign of life behind them? I swear, I don't think I've ever seen such a vapid looking woman, the way she claps her hands like a seal slapping its fins together to beg for some fish. I figure between her too-wide eyes and Dubya's two-close-together eyes, their children managed to defeat the appearance of generations of Southern inbreeding and ended up with normally-spaced eyes. But I think they're just as stupid.

A couple other noteworthy things about the speech: first off, you will have noticed (at least I hope so) that most of the times that the cameras showed young military servicemen-and women in the audience, they did not look happy. They were usually clapping when everyone else was, but with very sour expressions on their faces. After one particular comment, when Jr. was praising our boys and girls in active service and talking about what an honor it had been to meet them "on an aircraft carrier and in a mess hall in Baghdad" (your two best publicity shots so far, Dubya), the young officers looked like they wanted to throw up. One in particular, a black man in his early twenties, would not even clap until everyone else had been doing so for 15 or 20 seconds. Then he clapped grudgingly, slowly, and rose to his feet belatedly after everyone else had, the whole time looking as if he would have shot the "President" if he had had a gun in his possession at that particular moment. And just think, kiddies: if these were the reactions of young military personnel who were for some reason given the honor of attending this speech (an honor also, for some insane reason, bestowed upon the quarterback of the fucking New England Patriots--oh wait, that's right, the outcome of the fucking Super Bowl is oh-so-important to the State of the Union, I forgot), what do you think the reactions were of all those thousands of others who had to listen to the speech over the radio while they live in squalid conditions and get shot at regularly somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan?

I really can't blame them for being pissed. After all, Dubya hid out from Vietnam in the Texas Air National Guard, and was AWOL for nearly a year at one point with absolutely no disciplinary action, yet he has the audacity to pretend he gives a damn about the men and women he's sent into grave danger, hundreds of them to grievous injury or death. He's talking about reinstating a draft to fight his oil war when he never once saw a day of active combat service. And he won't even attend a funeral or memorial service for any of the over four hundred fallen soldiers! What an insufferably hypocritical bastard!

And one final item: shame on all the major networks for the manner in which they usually shot crowd scenes during periods of applause. They did a spectacular job of showing the entire crowd when they were standing and applauding one of Dubya's comments in unison. But on issues where there was dissension (and there were a fair number), the cameras often failed to film the Democratic half of Congress, usually when they were not standing, not even applauding. I didn't notice it myself until halfway through the speech, when I caught the edge of the Democratic side at the bottom of the screen, in which about two dozen people were sitting stock still and not clapping while the Republican side went ape-shit. I watched for it through the rest of the speech, and it happened again no less than a dozen times, with the camera showing the entire Republican side giving Bush Jr. a standing ovation but the Democratic side sitting firmly on their butts, not clapping or giving only token applause. What sort of bullshit was this? They would occasionally zoom in on Ted Kennedy looking pissed off (just as I was pissed off), but they only twice, that I can remember, included the entire hall in their panoramic shots when the Democratic side were not applauding while the Republicans were. If this isn't bias of the press on a contemptible scale, I don't know what is--not everyone in that hall was happy with what Dubya was saying, and it was their responsibility to show that, not to merely zoom in on one disgruntled senator and a small group of obviously pissed-off military personnel over and over.

Anyway. I guess I had more to say about the speech than I thought I did at first. If you missed it, well, I hope you had a good excuse, because during it Junior outlined everything he intends to do to fuck over this country more in the coming months before he is either kicked out of the Oval Office in November (let's all hope, children...) or (shudder to think it) re-elected, and I for one was glad for the heads-up so I can get cracking on doing my part to forestall all those things now, rather than when they become imminent issues.

On that note, I'm out of here. Remember: kegger, tonight, 8-9ish till wheneverish. Later.

2004-01-19T23:24:00.000-06:00

And I'm back!

So, no updates for almost a month. Am I the king of apathy or what?

I won't bother explaining what I did since I last posted, because it mainly involved a lot of senseless drinking, and failing that, nothing of any interest whatsoever. I read. A lot. That's about it. All in all, it's been one hell of a boring break since New Year's. I wish I could say I'm happy to be back at school, but to be honest it's more relief to be out of my parents' house. Man, do I hate it there. It feels good to sleep in a bed again, I can tell you, rather than the amazingly uncomfortable couch that I've been forced to use since break started.

It is nice to be back in the dorms, but to be honest, I haven't been much into the whole beginning-of-semester partying and socializing that's gone on so far. Part of it is that I'm slightly sick (the glands in the right side of my neck are swollen up so bad it hurts to swallow sometimes), but most of it is that I just turned 23 and I feel very old and useless right now. When I went out on Friday at midnight, I wasn't drinking to celebrate, I was drinking to try and attempt to forget that I was bummed out as all hell. I really don't like birthdays, to be honest with you, or at least not mine. Even my 21st was anticlimactic, since my birthday is invariably over winter break, so there are rarely any college kids around and I didn't have any townie friends at that time. This year, Friday was all right, sang some karaoke once I'd loosened up a little, drank a fair amount of Glenlivet and G&T's and Guinness. Saturday I just felt tired. Not hung over, just tired, I think from being sick mostly. So I didn't much enjoy Saturday. Sunday I mostly hid in my disgustingly messy room and read all day, at least until the Sunday night partyers showed up and began bothering me. I forced myself to be social for a couple of hours, then kicked everyone out and watched a movie on the new TV I got for my birthday (one benefit of the occasion, I suppose).

Registration was today. Yippie. 17 credits this semester. Not too big a deal I guess, though I once again have one of those awful MTWF 10 o'clock classes with Smith. Don't get me wrong, I like Smith and his material, but his classes are invariably too large for any meaningful discussion, so going to class just seems pointless. I could get what he wants us to get just from the books. But he's a cast-iron son of a bitch about absences, hence why I got a C+ in his class last semester despite the fact that I had nothing less than an A- on any of the papers I wrote for him. Apparently I'd racked up more absences than I thought.

Whatever. Just gotta get through this semester, then I get to walk the stage. I don't get my degree, mind, since I'll be three credits short of graduation requirements, so the folder they hand me will be empty. But that's what the Maymester in Oshkosh is for--history of World War II, taught by Major Bolstad of the military sciences department. I like history, and I know a good deal about World War II as it is, so it should be easy enough. The unfortunate consequence is that it means another summer in Ripon, probably working at Roadhouse again, at least until I either find a better job or get off my ass and arrange a flight to Trinidad to live with my aunt for a few months. Maybe never come back--duck my credit card bills and student loan payments and never return to the good ol' U.S. of A. ever again. Live near the beach and make a living on a fishing boat or something. Yeah, I could deal with that.

Ahh, wishful thinking. Though that kind of Hemingway-esque existence does sound fun, doesn't it?

Well, nothing more of interest to say now (as if the above was interesting, right?), so I'm off. Rest assured, gentle readers, I'll be posting regularly now that we're back at school. Later.

2003-12-28T03:03:00.000-06:00

So, then...

So my night last night was quite adequately explained on Scott's blog , so I won't bother to repeat it. Except to explain that the reason I asked if Dante had duct tape is because my glasses are broken and the left lens keeps popping out. Very annoying. Anyway.

I hate Christmas. Fortunately, this year my dad had to pull a shift on Christmas day, so we got both the Christmas Eve and Christmas day bullshit all taken care of just on Christmas Eve. I also got extremely drunk, argued with my neurotic mother and ignorant little sister about politics, got yelled at by my dad for arguing politics with my mother (who is the most irrational person ever), drank some more, did the dishes, drank yet more, read the second Harry Potter book until I passed out, then woke up.

And then the real fun began.

Since Christmas day wasn't really Christmas for us, I went to the gym and worked out for the first time in many months, nearly killing myself in the process. Then I went back home, took a three-hour nap, and woke up to get ready for the Christmas Party. Oh, this is a fun phenomenon. All the townie dirty hippies I knew from high school throw this big party every Christmas night. Everyone must dress up nicely, and yes, thank you very much, I looked better than every other guy there because I actually own a good suit, not some piece of shit I bought in a thrift store like most of the guys there.

And there was a keg. Of Sierra Nevada. Brilliant beer. Unfortunately, it was gone by 11:30 (wait... why does this sound familiar?) so we had to run to Amoco and buy four cases of High Life. Those lasted till, oh, I'm guessing 2:30 or so. I was quite buzzed at that point and didn't much care, because I was having way too much fun making out with a very cute girl named Jamie whom I went to high school with all night long. That was a blast, except for the fact that it was next to impossibe to find any privacy in that house, so we kept having to move around, until we gave up on that and just started making out in one corner of the main room. Hey, wasn't like everybody there didn't know what we were doing anyway, might as well make them blush a little...

So that was fun. Slept about three hours before Ryan's ex-girlfriend brought their kid over, cuz it was his day to look after the kid, and screamed us awake because he was so drunk still he wouldn't wake up. Jamie and I got off the floor, she drove me home, I promptly passed the fuck out again. Slept a couple more hours, then went to Milwaukee, slumbering peacefully most of the way, except for the times Abby nearly fucking killed us on the freeways cuz she's such a shitty driver... gah... never letting her drive outside of Ripon again...

Tonight? Feh. Been lame as fuck. Wandered to every bar in Ripon trying to find somebody I knew, even dirty hippies, with whom to hang out and drink. Ran into big Luke and Courtney as I was leaving Miller's on my way to the Nest; they were pussies and left after one drink. Then to Der Bier Haus (aka Schneider's), which was loaded with old townies, so I bitched out of that right quick. Over to Bert's, lame; had a Guinness and left. Detoured to put Bade and Phil's mail under their door, which I was supposed to do yesterday but forgot about (no big deal, it was just a newspaper). Timmons, just walked through, went out the back, Jack. Hit up Pastimes; again, lame. Thought about Red's, then shook my head and went back to Miller's. One last beer, then called a cab and went home (yes, a cab--it's been raining heavily since 9 o'clock and I wasn't about to walk home in that shit; just going bar to bar I got half-drenched).

So now I find myself back here, and I can't find anymore alcohol in this house except for a really expensive bottle of wine that I can't open, and all I can think is that, while I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, making out with Jamie was a really bad move. Why? Because now I want to do it again, and I think if I had ran into her tonight she would have too. That would not be at all bad, because she's damn good looking and I quite like her, but (yes, there's inevitably a big "but" in all my stories) she lives in Minneapolis and will be returning there shortly. So nothing will come of this aside from physical gratification. And I'm kinda tired of random hook-ups that go nowhere.

I'll admit it; I'm lonely as all hell and I'm not young enough anymore to find meaningless one-night-stands all that fun a day or two after they happen. Mostly they just make me feel like an idiot for doing something I shouldn't have done or make me feel even lonelier than I was before. In this case, it's the latter. Seems like every girl I become interested in is somehow unavailable--dating someone else, not at all interested in me, or, now, living so far away that I would never see her.

Which is a goddamn shame, as far as I'm concerned. We were flirty with each other when I ran into her on Thanksgiving, and I knew before I even saw her at this party on Christmas that we'd hook up just from the way she said goodbye to me at Thanksgiving. I so wish she lived near here, or I lived near her (that would be cooler, cuz I'm growing to hate this fucking town more than I ever did before, and that's a bold statement), because god knows most college girls hardly give me the time of day, so I don't feel that much shame about digging a former townie.

Mostly, what I keep thinking is that it would have been better if I had never seen Jamie the other night, because if I hadn't, even though I had a ball with her, I would not be feeling as lonely as I do right now.

But whatever. What's done is done. I had an all-too-brief but very enjoyable space of hours with her, and passed out on the floor with her--I'd forgotten how nice it is to fall asleep and wake up again with a girl in your arms, even if it is on the floor.

Fuck it. Being three in the morning, I should now go pass out on the couch (since my parents turned my bedroom into a fucking storage room... fucking couch is so goddamn uncomfortable...). Smoking one more smoke and giving the finger to the sky, because it won't stop pissing on me.

Late...

2003-12-19T19:49:00.000-06:00

Dumb shit

So, apparently "my goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Lucky Shizzlemah," at least according to this stupid thing that I found on Phil's stupid blog. After reading through all the people Phil entered, I must confess, Shizzlemah is a pretty common ghetto surname. But I notice nobody else got the super-cool Lucky as their first name. Hence, I rule. Oh yeah. Can anyone else tell how bored/sleep-deprived I am right now?

So I slept for a little over three hours before going to my anthro final this morning--which sucked donkey balls, thank you very much for asking. First off, I walked in 45 minutes late because I was so tired I didn't set my alarm to the right time, and as a result of that I didn't have time to finish the last essay question. Second off, I have never in all my thirteen semesters at Ripon College (ha ha, that's a joke, son; that would imply I have been going to school here for six and a half years, whereas really it's only four and a half--get it?) had to stay right till the end of a final exam block, but there I was, the last person left in the room and still scribbling away when the church bells outside tolled eleven and she told me to put my pen down. God, was that embarrassing... the last person to finish, and I didn't even actually finish... kill me now.

Anyway, so by my calculations, this now makes it about seven hours I've slept since I woke up at noon on Wednesday. Do the math, kids--that's seven hours of sleep in fifty-five hours! And really those seven hours don't count for much because mostly it was the kind of fitful, tossing-and-turning half-sleep that I typically experience when I'm on the verge of a fucking PANIC ATTACK every other second because I have so much shit to finish. I still haven't finished those goddamn anthro papers. The grades are due Monday morning at eight. I have to get these fucking things done... fuck...

Bah. So I usually start hallucinating once I hit the sixty-hour stage of sleep deprivation, which is always fun. I believe the American Psychiatry Association considers you temporarily insane, or temporarily deranged, or some such thing, after fifty hours, so I think I'm well on my way to an acquittal if I decided to murder someone right now. Of course, I'll have to make sure I delete this post before I get arrested. You know--evidence, and all. Now for my first victim... shall the method be gangland execution-style bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head kinda deal, a la Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, or the ever-popular throat-slashing and multiple-stab-wounds, a la OJ? Hmmm, the possibilities... Perhaps comment with suggestions, all you folks who secretly dream of going on a blood-soaked kill-crazy rampage but never quite got up the nerve? (Pussies...)

Anyway. Anthro papers. Gotta finish at least one tonight. Yeah. I'll just keep telling myself that...

2003-12-18T19:13:00.000-06:00

One more day... one more day...

So it's been nearly a week since I updated this damn thing. For those of you who have bothered to stop by, sorry about that, but judging from the very very slight increase of my hit counter, not a lot of people have bothered to stop by, so no big deal.

Too tired to go into my customary Angry Kid rant mode, though there's lots to be angry about right now, politically, that is. (Take the initiative, kids--explore some of my links and learn without me holding your hand! There you go; feels good, doesn't it?)

My chem final was this morning, and I slept not a wink before it due to all the stimulants in my system. I managed to get in an hour-long power nap before I had to go into work for a couple of hours, and when I got back I felt awake enough to watch an episode of Buffy on FX and Six Days, Seven Nights on USA with Katie. When that was done, I was hell-bent on hitting the books for my anthro final, which is tomorrow morning. (I also, for those keeping score, have to write two 5-page papers for this class sometime before I go to work on Saturday afternoon. That or, well, fail the class.)

However, upon getting back to my room, the awesome power of sleep-deprivation thwacked me upside the head and all I could do for an hour was read stupid celebrity gossip and lists of places I must see before I die and the News of the Weird and other inane bullshit that requires not one iota of brainpower to comprehend on MSN.com. Now I sit here updating my blog because my mind really does not feel up to the task of studying the intricacies of applied cultural anthropology.

I think I'm going to take another nap. And I think I shall instruct Katie to hit me with a cattle prod to make sure I actually wake up by nine o'clock. Or maybe I'll just dose myself up with massive amounts of caffeine and over-the-counter amphetamines and see how long I can go until I finally keel over from exhaustion. Decisions decisions...

Look for the return of your favorite marginalized and pissed-off Pseudo-Punk sometime next week. Probably Sunday night. We'll see. Late.

2003-12-12T04:28:00.000-06:00

Sweet fuckin'... it's really late

Past four in the morning and I just finished my final paper for Smith's world religions class. I had to work all night and thus was tired when I started it, and I am even more tired now, and I'm pretty sure it's the biggest piece of shit ever. Fun part is, Smith loves me so much he'll still give me at least a B even if it is a total piece of shit.

So the barrel last night lasted less than 90 minutes. It blew me away, it really did; Denise finally got down here to tap it at about 10:30, and it was cashed by ten to midnight. This is really Denise's fault. At first the keg was just supposed to be for Thetas, ADPis, and a few select others. Then, at maybe 11:20 or 11:30, she tested the keg and found it still quite full. So she began handing out cups to everyone and their dog out in the hallway. Soon people who had no right to that keg (under the terms stipulated to me) are helping themselves. I thought about trying to get people to back off, but considering I couldn't get people to understand the concept of keeping the fucking door shut so my RA didn't bust our asses, I figured it was futile.

So maybe half an hour after Denise started handing out cups willy-nilly and turning my room into something resembling a New York subway car at rush-hour (I once counted twenty-six people in my room at the same time; I didn't think it was possible to fit that many people into a double without removing all the furniture), the keg runs dry. Everyone's incredulous. I figured it would hold out at least two hours. Every time someone learns that it's dead, they go over to pick it up and make sure, like we'd be lying about it (well, maybe we would, if we wanted them to quit drinking our damn beer, and in retrospect I wish someone had thought of that at the time). But alas. It was indeed empty. So like that, everyone clears out of my room and migrates back to Theta. But within twenty minutes, most people have left, because almost nobody in Theta bothered to buy beer tonight, figuring (quite reasonably, I think) that there was no need, considering there was a fuckin' half-barrel to go through.

So the house was dead by one in the morning. I stayed up and played some drinking games in Scott's room, until I finally realized at about 1:30 that I was very very tired. Not really drunk, mind (I only had maybe two full 35-oz. mugs before it ran out, and then two or three cans of beer in Scott's room). Just moderately buzzed and very tired. I fell asleep before 2 a.m. for the first time in I don't know how long and slept quite soundly till 10:30 or so. Then, for some weird fucking reason, I kept waking up every twenty or thirty minutes with an intense feeling of panic, thinking I had overslept and was late for work. (I didn't even have to be at work till 1:30, for chrissake.) So these panic-attack-wake-ups just ruined the next three hours of trying to sleep some more. Far be it from me to just wake the fuck up; I didn't have to be anywhere till 1:30, and goddammit, I wasn't going to get out of bed until I did.

So, yeah. I finally woke up and went to work, not hung over for once. It was surreal: no dizziness, dehydration, or body-wide aches. Trust me, it is a rare thing when I am not at least a little hung over when I roll into the Roadhouse. Work was actually boring as hell: it was really slow all night. Larry sent home two people by eight, leaving me to pick my ass and jump to answer the phone when it rang every fifteen minutes or so. Tips were decent though, for being so slow. Small comforts.

Well, now that you all have an up-to-the-minute update on what I've done recently, I think I'm gonna finish this cigarette and crash the fuck out. Just think, I get to wake up and go hand in this stupid fucking paper in about five hours. Great.

One more week, I keep telling myself; one more week and I will have five whole weeks of blissful freedom... before the final agonizing semester that I'll have to get through to finally get that piece of shit piece of paper that says I graduated from this pile of dung. Whee.

That is all. Return to your stations.

2003-12-10T21:59:00.000-06:00

Amusing... to me, anyway

So out of sheer boredom, I decided to do a Google search of my own name. Among the more amusing matches:

- a cricket player in England
- an Aussie Rules Shirtless player in Australia
- about a hundred other athletes, mostly football but some basketball and hockey too
- a couple of reporters, both in England
- a (shudder) Christian rock singer
- a partial match to the Hank Williams song "Luke the Drifter"
- about fifty matches on geneaology websites, including a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, a deaf, dumb man born in 1812 who 'apparently never married' (gee, wonder why...), and (this is priceless) a brother and sister from the early 18th century named Luke and Lea Williams

Honestly, I tried to figure out what their father's name was, but no luck. If it had even started with D I would have laughed my arse off.

And no, the keg has not yet been tapped. I'm tapping my foot waiting though...

More anon.

2003-12-10T19:58:00.000-06:00

I have a half barrel

Okay, so technically it isn't mine per se, but still... This is mind-boggling. There is a half-barrel of Miller Lite sitting in the corner of my room. Just sitting there. Three people just walked it on in and set it down. There it is, I'm looking at it right now. Hi there, Mister Keg! And I didn't have to pay a cent for it!!! It's oh so very sweet...

Story goes like this: some of the ADPi girls decided they wanted to give the Thetas a li'l quarter-barrel present to end the semester with. But Theta is in a li'l bit of trouble right now, something to do with a bullshit rush infraction leveled against them by one of the other houses. Due to this, they don't wanna risk throwing a kegger in the house. What a conundrum.

Fortunately for them (and me), I live right next door to them, get along fabulously with them, and have absolutely no problem with throwing a kegger in my room on their behalf. Best of all, if I get busted, they'll cover the fines. A keg party with no consequences! I ask you, does it get any better than this? No, I don't think so either.

The keg will sit there and tease me till around 10 o'clock tonight, because we can't tap it till then. So until then, I will sit and blissfully contemplate the absolute drunken excess that will no doubt come of this. Fear not, however, my loyal subjects, er, readers: I plan to take it easy tonight, as I do not want to go into work tomorrow afternoon feeling as massively hungover as I did last Thursday afternoon. Methinks it will be much more fun to simply sit and watch and chuckle to myself. Oh yes. This will be a good night.

On to my accustomed rant. I would like all you good people to take a look at this. It is also linked under Activism as Grand Theft America. Now I know most of you realize how big of a stinking pile of dogshit the 2000 presidential election was, but I think this Flash animation does one hell of a job of striking the point home. I knew about most of this before, but I was under the impression that it was 8000 people who got turned away from the polls, not 58,000. Just blows my mind... Anyway. Check it out. (The soundtrack is just the right amount of creepy for the final message, too.)

In other news... let's extend our sympathies to Matt Gonzalez, who narrowly lost the San Francisco mayoral race 52-48 percent yesterday. If he had won, he would have been the first Green mayor of a major American city. But still, losing by such a narrow margin is still something of a victory, considering he had only one-tenth of the campaigning funds as his opponent and entered the race just four months ago. Better luck next election, Matt.

Oh, and the Supreme Court today made an historic ruling against "soft" money campaign contributions. Read the full story here. Us Wisconsinites can count ourselves proud that one of our own, Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi.), along with Senator John McCain (D-Ariz.), first made the push for the bill that the Supreme Court ruled on today. I've already sent Sen. Feingold a thank-you note, and you should too.

And finally, the Bush administration has pissed off a hell of a lot of nations with their announcement today that nations that have opposed the war and occupation of Iraq will not be allowed to bid on major reconstruction contracts. Major nations affected, of course, will be France, Germany and Canada, along with 13 or 14 others, all of whom are pretty fuckin' pissed off right now. Makes sense, of course; by cutting such nations out of the loop, American companies like Dick Cheney's Halliburton and Donald Rumsfeld's Brechtel will get that much more of the action for themselves. Ahh, the smell of democracy in the morning... smells like... like... [cue projectile vomiting soundtrack].

With that, I'm going to read up on some shit for a paper a little more before this puppy gets tapped and people get shit-faced.

Oh! In the time I've been typing this, I nearly had a heart attack, as about ten minutes ago, my RA, Paul Neuberger, came and knocked on my barely open door and then let himself in. I left it open a little bit for the girls who were bringing back ice and such, not out of sheer stupidity, believe me. My knees are still a little shaky. I'm still not sure how I managed to get him distracted and keep his back turned to the keg, but somehow I did, and (I think) got him the fuck out of my room without him seeing it. I promptly shut and locked the door, and it will remain that way until we tap the fucker. Man, that was a close call...

Anyway. May be back to rant semi-drunkenly later tonight. May not. Viva la quarter-barrel!!!

2003-12-09T00:53:00.000-06:00

The revolution grows...

The hit counter surpassed 100 tonight, which was a build of something like 20 or more hits since I checked in on it before I went to sem. Everything is falling into place... soon the world will be mine... mwahahahaha!

Whoops, the voiceover in my brain just took on a Monty Burns accent. Terribly sorry.

In all truthitude, most of those hits probably came from Bade, Phil, and/or my sister, so I shouldn't be getting as excited about this as I am. But I am anyway. Oh, and fuck all y'all for not commenting more. So far I just have yet another admonishment from my sister about drinking too much. Pfft.

I'm gonna roll out and see if anything fun is going on in Bovay. It is now 11:33 p.m. I have thoughts for what I'm going to ramble about next, but I'll save that for whenever I get back. Don't worry, faithful readers, I will simply let this screen sit here and continue when I get back.

(dot dot dot)

Yeah, so it's 12:07 a.m. Tim, Meghan, and Schreiner are kinda watching stupid anime cartoons on Adult Swim. Phil compelled Tim to download the Harry Potter 3 trailer, and I must confess that it looks kinda cool. I should really read those books one of these days, maybe over break, just so I can understand the pop-culture cult that is Harry Potter. I'm not worried about getting sucked in because a) my little sister has all the books to date, and if I care enough I'll read a 500-page book in a night, so I can tear right through that shit if it interests me sufficiently, and b) nothing will ever compare to The Lord of the Rings as the best fantasy series of all time. (I am, however, ashamed to admit that in a recent online test, I only scored 3 out of 10 questions correctly; I swear to shit, the questions were so obscure that even someone like me, having read the entire series every summer since I was 11 years old, couldn't get most of the answers right. I mean, seriously, who remembers the exact names of the pipe-weed brands that Pippin lists in Book III of The Two Towers? And don't you dare try to dig out your copy and post the brands in my comments...)

Moving on. (God, I'm such a geek...)

The intended purpose of tonight's post shall be (drum roll, please): me bitching about how hungry I am.

No no, seriously. Very sorry. I'm feeling kinda goofy; as I mentioned last rant, I didn't sleep much last night.

Since I'm in this goofy state, I didn't much feel like digging up new shit to post concerning my favorite subject, i.e., how much I think Jr. should be locked in a box and shipped to Abu Dhabi (though I would feel so sorry for the good people of the United Arab Emirates for having to deal with him when he arrived... but they'd probably just kill him, and he would deserve it, the shithead, so whatever). So, since I'm feeling lazy, I'm just going to spit out some information I obtained from the good people of PunkVoter, being some of my favorite absolutely, insanely, stupid quotes from our "president." Seriously, somebody needs to run this moron through some psychiatric tests for dyslexia. If the man has a viable mental health condition that makes him speak this way when he hasn't had hours and hours to practice a speech, fine, I feel very sorry for him. Otherwise, he's a fucking moron. In either case, he shouldn't be in charge of the most powerful nation on the planet. So. My top nine (just to be difficult, I'm not going to do ten) favorite Bushisms (verified by my own research, in case you care to check up yourselves), from least incredulous to most incredulous, with my own color commentary in parentheses:

#9 - "More and more of our imports come from overseas." -- Beaverton, OR, 9-29-00 (... too easy)

#8 - "The Bob Jones policy on interracial dating, I mean, I spoke out on interracial dating. I spoke out against that. I spoke out against interracial dating. I support the policy of interracial dating." -- CBS News, 2-25-00 (If you didn't think he was an imbecilic racist redneck before...)

#7 - "Arbolist... Look up the word. I don't know, maybe I made it up. Anyway, it's an arbo-tree-ist, someone who knows about trees." Crawford, TX, 8-21-00 (This may explain Jr.'s current environmental policy, methinks)

#6 - "I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question." -- Reynoldsburg, OH, 10-4-00 (... What?)

#5 - "And so, in my State of the--my State of the Union--or state--my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation--I asked Americans to give 4,000 years--4,000 hours over the next--the rest of your life--of service to America. That's what I asked for--4,000 hours." -- Bridgeport, CT, 4-9-02 (... WHAT?!?)

#4 - "I understand small business growth. I was one." -- New York, NY, 2-19-00 (.... I could yell 'what' even louder, with some nifty italic and bold action... but again, too easy)

#3 - "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." -- New York, NY, 4-23-02 (All I can do is shudder and wince and cringe and pray to the Powers That Be that this man does not die until the day he gets voted out of office, because NOBODY wants Dick Cheney in the captain's chair)

#2 - "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -- Washington, DC, 12-18-00 (I don't give a good goddamn if he was joking when he said this, and by all indications he wasn't. Saying something like this just weeks on the heels of the worst election scandal in U.S. history, in which his brother appears to have arranged it so that hundreds of black men and women with misdemeanor, not felony, criminal records were turned away from the polls in Florida, in which the voting forms so confused elderly voters that many of them, a large number of them Jews, accidentally voted for fucking Pat Buchanan... ahh, fuck it, I don't need to connect the dots)

#1 - "I don't read what's handed to me." -- New York, NY, 3-15-00 (... ... ... ... WHAT?!?!? You were the governor of Texas! You were authorizing the executions of more people than any other state in the union! Aside from everything else I could bring up, you weren't bothering to read the specifics of the cases of men appealing to you for their lives?! And shall I apply this to your current term as "president"? You aren't reading the bills that come across your White House desk to be signed? Oh, wait, they're hundreds of pages long; hell, not even senators and congresspeople read them most of the time. But still. You're not reading any American or international newspapers? Eh... you're in the same bracket as the majority of Americans. But wait... you don't even read the daily foreign and domestic news briefs prepared by your staff, written in the same fifth-grade-reading-level-language as a typical newspaper, that are written up solely to update the President of the United States on what's going on in the world? You don't read those either, huh, Jr.? Oh wait. Boy, is my face red... Can you read? Because, if you can't, that's a perfectly legitimate excuse... if you're in kindergarten.)

Fucking Junior.

2003-12-08T14:26:00.000-06:00

Victory!

Well well well, looks like Diebold may not "deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" after all, as Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, who is a major fundraiser for the Republican Party, stated in a recent letter. (Read the full story here.) Why won't they be doing this? Because with any luck the bastards are going to get shut down before their voting machines can rig the next election and give us another four years of Dubyaism.

Seems that more and more scrutiny is beginning to be leveled on Diebold, who manufactures electronic touch-screen voting machines that are being implemented all over the world, in light of leaked internal company emails that raise serious concerns over security issues with their machines, including sidestepping proper testing and vulnerability to hackers. As some of you may know, copies of these emails have been proliferating all over the internet for months now, with Diebold routinely filing takedown orders against websites posting their emails, claiming copyright protection of those emails under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. But, as ZDnet reports today, the company has withdrawn its threats of legal action against those who refused to take down the emails, and as a warning to companies who would try to bully little people into not speaking out about such serious issues, two Swarthmore College students are countersuing Diebold. Good show, guys! Call me old-fashioned, but I personally believe voting should be done by checking a little box next to the name of the candidate or party you want to vote for. It may take longer to tabulate the votes, but I can wait a few extra hours.

Meanwhile, the Republican-backed Medicare reforms have been passed and Thomas Scully, the administrator in charge of the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, has resigned his position, citing personal reasons. Personally, I'm glad the guy is gone, but I fear who might replace him. If you want to learn some more about what exactly this bill is going to do, go here and click on all the fun links they provide as references. Honestly, Medicare needed to be reformed, but the way they've done it is just going to screw the fuck out of a lot of seniors and disabled persons on prescription drug costs, and it looks as though the Republicans are basically trying to privatize Medicare.

And on a final political note (see, I got back to the original purpose of this blog eventually; doesn't it make you happy?), Newt Gingrich, of all people, says that the U.S. has gone "off a cliff" in Iraq and that "the White House needs to get a grip on this," according to a piece in today's Washington Times. Jesus Christ, Georgie, when Newt Gingrich starts calling you on your shit, you know you're in trouble. Oh, and check out Howard Dean's comments at the end of the article. Interesting theory indeed, though obviously, as he notes, it can't be proved. And fuck RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie; we don't have enough people questioning Jr. as it is, and until he starts complying fully with the investigation into the September 11 attacks, I say float all the theories you want, because not complying sure makes it seem like you've got something to hide, doesn't it?

With that little dose of reality to your otherwise hum-drum lives, the Angry Kid goes back to his sem, which is now due in a little over four hours. Yay. All I can hope is that I don't fall asleep while everyone else gives their presentations. I really don't think I slept at all last night...

2003-12-08T03:07:00.000-06:00

Well, then...

Finally done writing that stupid-ass paper for chem. Extremely tired. Senior sem not entirely done yet and due in about 16 hours. (Good thing I've got four hours or so in the afternoon to finish the fucker off.) And, after a weekend of self-destructive drinking that has my body hating me, I find myself back here.

Firstly: sorry about the incredibly self-indulgent piece of tripe I posted on Friday night. Obviously I was very drunk, and not in the best of moods (actually, one of the worst moods I can get into), and thus the bullshit came streaming forth. I seriously considered just deleting the post altogether, but upon reflection, grudgingly decided against that.

"Because I was drunk" is a poor excuse for just about anything. When one is drunk, one may say things that they did not mean to, do things they'll later feel guilty about, sleep with someone they normally wouldn't have, etc. But most of the time, the things we do when drunk that we later regret are things that we wanted to do sober anyway. We were just too inhibited to do it sober. Often these things get exaggerated when drunk, but they are still things that we wanted to do anyway and being drunk gives us the liberation we need to get it out of our system. Yeah, I regret a lot of the things I've done when I was drunk, but I think at the same time I was being more honest by doing those things, rather than obeying typical societal standards and not yelling at someone who was pissing me off, not breaking something even though it's a lot of fun to break shit every now and then, and not showing my true emotions because I fear alienating everyone around me.

That being the case (or at least my own fucked-up opinion), I didn't delete the last post. Even if I'm very embarrassed about it now, some nuggets of truth came out in that rambling, whiny diatribe; the essential point of it (if there is one) is still something that I meant to say. At the very least, it will serve as a warning to me against ever again writing in my blog when I'm in a shitty melancholy drunken state. I'm sure it will happen again, but maybe I'll reconsider for a nanosecond or two before doing so.

Moving on.

So I punched Bade in the face and he punched me in the ear last night. Funny story. Somehow or other we got into a dick-waving contest and started sparring (you'd think I'd know better by now, what with getting my fucking hand broken by sparring with people in the past). It was good, sorta clean, mostly harmless fun, just the kind of stupid thing that guys do occasionally when they've been swilling cheap light beer from a keg all night. I would never start a real fight with Bade (if my previous rant said anything of value, it's that I am very opposed to getting in real fights), and I hope he'd never start one with me. But playfighting or not, these things are never a good idea.

The dangerous part of it is, of course, that when I'm drunk I tend to lose depth perception, and thus I misjudged the distance to Bade's face and accidentally clocked him one under the eye. Not real hard, but hard enough. Then, of course, Bade's hair-trigger temper snaps and he clocks me one in the ear out of instinct, again, not real hard, but hard enough. I think it was an act of providence that we were both throwing our lefts, because if it had been our rights we probably both would have been laid out on the floor moaning in pain and bleeding a lot. As it is, Bade didn't bleed at all (his face is just sore today; again, sorry, dude) and my ear only bled for half an hour or so (it's amazing how much a tiny little cut in the ear will bleed).

Five minutes later, we're swilling cheap light beer again and laughing at ourselves for being such idiots. No real harm, no foul. We then proceeded to drape Schreiner's coat over one of the quarter-barrels at this party (a housewarming party for Noah, Graham, and Al) and carry it across the street to the apartment of Melanie and Ben, two of the people I work with. Actually, I did the carrying, along with a girl named Gretchen, who used to work with me, while Bade and Schreiner ran point. Now, lugging a tapped keg around Ripon at three in the morning is a dumb idea anyway, but it's even dumber considering that these two apartments are "on the square" in downtown Ripon, about twenty yards from and within perfect view of the cop station. A cop had even pulled up and gone inside two minutes before we ran the keg across the street. Fucking brilliant, hey?

But no tragedy (like getting a ticket or, worse, dropping the keg) ensued, and we continued to swill cheap light beer for I don't even know how long. Easily the most amusing part of the night was when Bade got cocky and decided to play two people at foosball by himself. To his credit, he only lost by two points, but he still lost. And because he was being cocky, he also made a bet with them. To pay up, he had to take off his pants and jog all the way around the block in his fucking boxers. The entire apartment was in stitches. I could hardly climb the stairs back up, my sides hurt from laughing so hard. God, I wish I'd had a camera... (doesn't that suck, how you never have a camera when the really good shit happens, but you always do when the only thing to take pictures of is something pretty lame like your fellow drunken folk at formal?)

I can't really remember the walk back to my room. It was cold, I know that. It nearly involved a collision with a parked car. It was damn late, well past 5 a.m., I think. Bade tells me he was raging until 6:30 or so, and he managed to annoy all the people staying at his house this weekend when he stumbled in. Oh, and good show puking in your garbage can, you douchebag. Jeez, was the toilet that far away?

Anyway. It was a fun night, as opposed to the shitty one I had on Friday. So I guess the weekend balanced itself out nicely. I know the hangovers of Saturday and today are pretty much comparable. At least I didn't have to work today.

So on that note, I bid you adieu, at least until tomorrow. (Just think: by this time tomorrow, I will be done with my senior sem. The sad part is, I have a lot of work for other classes to do still, so I won't even be able to properly celebrate my victory. What a bummer.)

Peace out.

2003-12-06T03:22:00.000-06:00

"Today I hate everyone"

Yes, the quotation marks signify something. I am quoting the chorus of a song by The Killjoys. I first heard that song when I was about 15 years old and I still love it to this day. Why? Why not... mainly because, hey, big fucking surprise, there are days when I hate everyone I run into. Are you going to claim you don't have those kind of days either?

Oh. You are? Well, shit, then I guess I'm the asshole.

Yeah, there it is. I am the asshole. Should I capitalize 'asshole', maybe? As in, 'Asshole.' I wonder... Just to strike the point home, like with a sledgehammer onto an icepick.

I don't really hate everyone. Sometimes I really don't like everyone. But I don't hate everyone. I don't like the word 'hate' at all. I really don't. I've spent the better part of the last two years trying to eliminate it from my vocabulary. Every time I evoke that word, I dislike myself more. (I was about to say 'hate myself more' but then I thought better of it). To me, hate equals violence, either emotionally or physically or mentally, and in any form, I hate violence. No qualification there; I hate violence; one of the few things I will admit to hating. There are a few others, but still, I hate the word hate.

Some may be saying now, "The Pseudo-Punk? Hating violence? HA! Good one, douchebag..." Yeah, well, you're not far off. I'm prone to it, I know. I know I am one of the angriest, most violent people on the face of the planet. I nearly kicked Cool in the balls three times tonight (and no one would blame me, because he deserves it). I didn't solely because of the vow I made to myself over a year ago, that I would never do such without real provocation.

This vow is sacred to me. I have been confronted with situations where I could have (and, by some people's logic, should have) responded with unrelenting, balls-out violence. Oh, GOD, did I want to... every time... it's such a natural instinct to me, on so many levels. But I haven't, not in a long time. I am proud by nature, but one of the things I'm most proud of is that I have not responded with unrelenting, balls-out violence in over a year now. I think this is a good thing.

But I still hate. And I hate that I hate. I know I said I I'm trying to eliminate that word from my vocabulary, but it's really fucking hard. It's so easy to hate.

Hatred is the worst thing ever. It's not even an emotion. There are three basic emotions (fear, lust, and anger), and hate, while close to anger, is not one of them. Anger is instinctive. Hate is something that builds up inside you, growing like a bacteria culture until it flows out of the Petri dish. It is something that consumes you. It is something that only humans experience. It's beyond emotion. Hate requires self-awareness and high intellect; only us homo sapiens are capable of it. Not even chimpanzees hate, and they share 97% of their genes with us.

Hate is the worst thing EVER. World War II would not have occured if not for hate. Neither would the American Civil War. Nor the French Revolution. Nor the Inquisition. Nor the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Nor ANY OF IT!

I hate that I hate. But even so... today, I hate everyone.

And I hate that I feel like I'm no longer joking.

I think I just need to get hit by a dump truck on my next delivery and slip into a coma for a few months. That might shake things up a little, give me some perspective. Wouldn't that be lovely?

(The preceding paragraph was sarcasm. Learn to understand the concept. Jeez, I'm not THAT far gone...)

2003-12-05T03:02:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I hate my job...

Before I get to the crux of tonight's bitch-fest, I feel I should apologize for last night's bitch-fest. Not all conservatives are mindless automatons. Some of them can make a logical, rational, and sound argument for their position.

I just haven't met one yet.

Moving on. So tonight was probably the shittiest night I've had to work at Roadhouse in a long while.

What was so shitty, you may ask? Better to ask what wasn't shitty.

First off, the "purple" car died last weekend. Larry calls it the purple car, when in fact it is maroon; Larry is old and probably slightly color blind, so we'll forgive him that. The "purple" car is, or was, a piece of shit '89 or '90 Toyota Tercel with almost 140,000 miles on it. The muffler was completely shot, so it sounded like a fucking lawnmower, and when you turned on the heater exhaust fumes came into the car so you'd get headaches and bouts of dizziness if you didn't open the windows all the way up (thereby negating the benefits of the shitty-ass heater). It had no torque, no pickup whatsoever. I've never managed to push it past 65 miles per hour even when I've taken it to Oshkosh. The clutch was almost as touchy as the clutch on Tim's piece of shit Daytona. In short, it was for sucks, as the Czech say. It died because there was no oil in it and the engine seized up completely.

Whose fault is this? That's right: mine. Never mind that at least four other people drive that car on a regular basis. Never mind that it was 13 or 14 years old. Never mind that I've been working at Roadhouse for, what, seven months, while that car has been there at least five years and every person aside from Anne Negri who has ever driven it has driven it as if it were a stock car, not a piece of shit '89 or '90 Tercel. Never mind all that, and many other reasons I won't bother to go into. The fault is mine because I drive it a little more than anyone else and I happened to be the last person to drive it before it broke down. Yeah. That makes a lot of fucking sense.

So Larry bitches at me up and down about this when I go into work today. He bitches at no one else, except for Melanie, whom he actually bitches to about me. Then he bitches at me some more because the car was a fucking mess when it broke down. Well, yeah, no shit. Ever since I started working there, the custom taught to me was that I clean the cars out at the beginning of our work week, on Thursday afternoons when I gas the cars up. So of course it was a fucking mess on fucking Sunday. If the car had lived till today, I would have cleaned it out again. But it didn't.

The oil situation? Hell, I checked the oil less than a month ago and added a quart. I've checked it without being told many times. I've told Larry when it was coming time to change the oil at least twice since I started working there, but both times he didn't send the car in to get the oil changed until it was at least 500 miles overdue. Fuck, I even offered to change the oil for him so he didn't have to pay a mechanic. He declined.

So the car died. Maybe I should have checked the oil again since the last time. Oh wait... I asked him if he wanted me to check it last Saturday, and at first he said yes, but then he noticed it was past four o'clock, when we open, and said never mind, he'd have someone check it tomorrow.

So my question is, naturally: HOW THE FUCK IS THIS MY FAULT?!

This is almost the last straw. Larry has been more and more of an asshole to me for weeks now, ever since I made the mistake of complaining about a fellow employee whom he happens to adore about six weeks ago. When he started bleeding internally and was in the hospital for a week and couldn't really work at all for three weeks after that, I worked three nights a weekend, over 30 hours in three days, for three fucking weeks--and in doing so missed out on a lot of cool parties, a lot of time I would have rather spent with friends or hitting on girls or just reading a fucking book. Over the summer, I worked 40+ hours every week (and since Roadhouse is only open four days a week, that's 40+ hours in four days) for almost three fucking months, often covering for other employees who were too hungover or too stoned or too coked out or all three to bother showing up. I have never missed a day of work, no matter how hungover or tired or whatever I was. I have never been more than ten minutes late, and that only a few of times. Only two other people I work with can claim these things. I do my job and I do it to the best of my goddamn ability.

Yet Larry has been treating me like shit more and more for almost two fucking months.

If it were any other job, I would have quit a long time ago. But I can't do that in this case. I was given this job based on the recommendations of two friends; I took over one of those friends' job when he went to Moldova for the Peace Corps. I like my job. I like the people I work with. And yeah, the money and the free beer is pretty damn nice. I really don't want to quit. But I can't fucking handle this shit anymore. It's making me feel even shittier than I usually do. I would not have gone to the Hawk's Nest and drank six beers in three hours (not enough to get me drunk, but if I was driving and got pulled over right now, I would be arrested) if not for this shit. The last thing I need right now is for my boss to blame me for everything that goes wrong when he can't blame it on anyone else, when I work just as hard, if not harder, than everyone else there.

Yeah, that's just about all I fucking need.

Fuck it. Bed time. I have to wake up in six hours. Not like I'll be able to fucking sleep anyway. And to think I was in a semi-good mood when I woke up today...

(On tomorrow's bitch-fest... "Will the Pseudo-Punk calm the fuck down a little? Will the Pseudo-Punk's anger ebb for more than twenty minutes?! Will the Pseudo-Punk have a good fucking day for once?!?!? The answer, tomorrow, on Angry, Young, and POOR!!!!)

(Oh, fine, I won't make you hold your breath: no.)

2003-12-04T03:56:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I'm fucked up. So what?

So... yeah. Forget all the grandiose promises of doing homework. Fuck that. I read a little and then I went out to seniors' night at Miller's. Fucking douchebags. They said they would do one dollar rail mixers. But no. Because someone stole a couple of their signs (including a Killian's sign that Tim was real pissed off that someone got to before him), they decided tonight would be fifty cents off rum cocktails. Ffft. I hate rum drinks. So does everyone but Bade, that pud. Cocksmokers. Fuck 'em.

So. On with the angry.

Do you know what I hate? (Aside from all the other things I hate...) I hate arguing with conservatives. Why? Why, thank you for asking. The reason? There is absolutely no point in doing so. You make a point. They rant about something else that might be vaguely related to the point you made. They make a point. You argue up, down, left, right, fucking sideways and diagonal. They shunt the conversation to a new topic that has nothing to do with the last topic.

Hey. aside from the fact that I hate anyone (including my fucking PARENTS) who call themselves Republicans, I am always up for a debate. Bring up any issue; bring up any topic. I'll debate all night. Know your goddamn issues. Learn your fucking platform. Because if you come up against the neo-anarchist pseudo-punk (haha, yes, I know what pseudo means, fucker), know your fucking issues. Shit or get off the pot. (And I have a nice, slightly tattered five-dollar bill for the first person who comments with the film and character reference, i.e., who said what to who).

Read a goddamn newspaper, any newspaper, The New York Times, The Washington Post, whatever. Hit up the BBC, if you're of the mind; they're slightly less biased than American media. Don't rely on MSNBC to tell you what's going on, and for God's sake, stay away from FOX (not even gonna provide a link).

Listen, I respect every viewpoint I hear, even if it does piss me off no end. If you have something to say, I will listen to you. I love and respect any system of debate. But please, people, please, understand what's going on before you start yelling at me. I'm really sick of people yelling at me for exercising my First Amendment rights because I don't like what they do. And yes, everyone else has First Amendment rights too, but personally, I feel that it's something of an insult to that First Amendment privilege when all one has to say is "Fuck you, ya spineless liberal fuck!!!"

Aside from all that... I'm drunk. No sense denying it. It is very much time for bed.

Oh! By the way... Mohammed believed that Jesus was a great prophet, as was Moses, as was Abraham. Hey, they're all connected. Imagine that. Peace, love, and all that.

2003-12-03T17:11:00.000-06:00

What's pissed me off SO FAR today

(1)

Being dragged out of a blissful state of unconsciousness shortly after eight in the morning by my cell phone ringing. I, being the idiot that I am, answered it in a state of half-consciousness without looking at the display to see what fuckhead could possibly have the nerve to call at this ungodly hour. So I answer.

"Nnnuhh... hello?"

"Good morning, can I speak to Mr. Williams?"

Mister Williams? Who the fuck is that? I'm pretty sure my dad doesn't live with me...

"Huh?"

"Is Mr. Robert Williams there?" (And for those of you who don't know, yes, my first name is Robert. Don't ever, ever, ever call me that.)

"Ah, fuck..." (Yes, I did say that over the phone.) "Yeah, s'me."

"I'm calling on behalf of Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and--" blah blah blah blah.
I hate these people. Ever since I took a semester off my sophomore year, thereby using up the six-month period where you don't have to make payments on your student loans, they start riding my ass every fucking semester about why I'm not paying my bills. Why? Because the goddamn registrar's office doesn't send out the letter to financial institutions confirming that one is indeed still a student until mid-November or so. Thus, I get these calls on average twice a week from mid-October till the end of the semester. Usually at such ungodly hours. And I have to explain again that I am indeed still a student, that I'm sure the letter confirming this fact will be arriving shortly, and for fuck's sake quit calling me so goddamn early. The cheeriness in the loan officer's voice usually departs within three minutes of every such conversation. I finally hang up ten minutes later, collapse back into bed, and make a futile effort of falling back to sleep.

(2)

I ran out of cigarettes and my sister wouldn't bum me one because she bummed me four last night. I explained in very rational terms over IM that I would be going to the store to buy cigarettes of my own, and then promptly pay her back. Just as soon as I took a nap. Apparently this argument didn't fly, because, as mentioned, she would not bum me one. I ground my teeth for a while then hit the hay for a nap that lasted straight through chem class. (Like anyone in that class shows up more than once a week anyway, right?)

(3)

I awoke, finally, and went to anthro. I like this class, I genuinely do. The new professor, Emily Stovel, is smart and engaging, she knows her shit, she's Canadian (woot!), and she's pretty hot, too (which, by the way, I think should be a requirement for all professors). Today we were talking about globalization, which, as you may imagine, is a concept that sets my teeth on edge, and thus I was fairly interested throughout class (as in, I didn't fall asleep).

But there's this girl in that class who just won't shut the fuck up. Now, I'm all for participating in class, if you're inclined to do that sort of thing. But for holy jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick's sake, is it truly necessary to ask questions every three minutes to clarify what seems to me are the most basic of fucking points? Must you ask, "By [very basic concept] do you mean [first nitpicking breakdown of concept] or [second nitpicking breakdown of concept] or [third absolutely fucking asinine breakdown of concept]?"

I swear, it's not just me who gets pissed off at this girl; I am not Overreacting Angry Boy (in this case, at least). I see other students near me glance over at her and roll their eyes. I see the professor suck in a breath as if counting to ten.

For chrissake, woman, shut the fuck up!!

(4)

Finally, the fact that it's Wednesday and by all rights I should be preparing for a night of getting nice and drunk and hitting on girls who are too young for me and all that fun stuff. But I've got such a shit ton of homework to do that if I get to party at all tonight, the partying will likely be winding down by the time I get to it, which means another pathetic night of me, bored and not sleepy, sitting in front of my computer until I've had enough to drink so I can sleep. Grr.

Oh, on a not at all pissed-off note, I did have a lovely dream last night. It's the second dream I've had in about a month in which I was cast in a play and I completely forgot my lines right before going onstage. Now, the first time I had this dream, it consisted of sheer, blind panic, and I woke up at four a.m. sweating and gasping for breath. (No no, it wasn't that kind of dream, you perverts.) Not pleasant. But last night, the dream was quite fun. It was quite a long and involved dream, as well, since it didn't end with the sheer, blind panic of realizing I didn't know my lines.

Rather, there was this insanely comic scene (in the dream, not the play) where the director shoved the script in my hands and cajoled me with, "You know this! You had your lines down perfect! Come on, just read through them real quick and it'll come back!" I do this. I think the lines have come back to the little teleprompter in my head. I get thrust out onstage, I watch attentively as the other actors deliver their lines, then one actor slaps a hand on my shoulder and asks me a question. I say nothing at all for a very long pause in which the crickets chirp quite loudly, and then I let out a fake scream of pure, abject terror and cower to the floor. (This was not my line.)

The audience explodes into laughter, because this kind of shit has been going on all night. Three other actors have already walked off the stage mid-performance because it was such a train wreck. With the exception of one actor (who is Shakespearean in talent, and getting more and more pissed off with the rest of us morons by the picosecond), nobody can remember their blocking and stumbles over their lines, mumbling and drawling and not projecting their voices. I have completely given up and have decided to just have fun with it, and the audience is loving it. The show becomes an improv of sorts, this weird parody of a play in which we play up the fact that we're all such horrible actors who have no clue what the fuck is going on. Even the director gives up and just laughs along with the audience eventually. It's only that one fuck of a good actor who's not happy, and both us as actors and the audience derive even more amusement from his fuming and exasperation. What a pud.

I woke up again at around 4 a.m. after this dream finally ended, but it was because I was giggling like an idiot in my sleep. I dozed off again with a grin on my face.

(See? Even angry pseudo-punks can be happy sometimes.)

2003-12-03T02:04:00.000-06:00

Wow...

That was a little more than a warm-up, I realized after rereading... so sorry. Oh, wait, no I'm not. That was mild, kiddies. Wait till I get into the full swing of things...

I think I accidentally wiped out the bullshit post that came before the rant in the process of writing it, too. Brilliant. Definitely time for bed.

2003-12-02T19:31:00.000-06:00

Coming together...

Well, I finally beat this bloody thing into something approximating what I want it to look like. More links added, comments capability in place (and someone, I suspect that bitch-ass Bade, actually posted something). There's even a counter! Ooooh... Still very much a work in progress, but hey, it's 1:30 in the morning and I'm getting tired.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "When is this commie pinko lefty fuck of a pseudo-punk gonna get on his goddamn soapbox so I can proceed to bombard him with hate mail?" (Yep, I added an email link, too!) Well, just for a warm-up...

As some of you may be aware, a few months back I got tired of hating the current administration yet doing nothing more than bitching about it every now and then when I was drinking and the topic came up. So I decided to do something about it. I am a poor college student who can barely make his credit card payments, so contributing to campaigns was out of the question.

But, I do have a cell phone with 700 monthly minutes that I never come close to using, so I began calling my representatives and urging them to vote against bills I feel are important. I also have a computer (obviously) and access to websites such as the ones to your right, which
allowed me to send emails to those same representatives, and for really important issues, sites like MoveOn.org will send free faxes to Washington. I have taken advantage of both email and faxes dozens of times. I have included my snail-mail address every time so they know where to reach me.

Thus far, can you guess how many of Wisconsin's three congressional and senate representatives have responded to me? Just one: Tom Petri. He responded on two issues, the proposed lift on the travel embargo to Cuba that came up a couple months back, and the debacle with the White House leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, pick up a fucking newspaper... or at least hit up CNN.com).

I got the first response back in October, and the second one today. Both were obviously form letters, and his "signature" was clearly one of those rubber stamp things. No doubt these form letters are printed off and stamped by the dozens every day by interns. I'd be surprised if Congressman Petri ever saw any of the shit I sent him. I wouldn't expect anything less; I'm not an idiot.

What pisses me off is that after all the calls, all the emails, all the faxes, I've only received TWO of those form letters! I mean, seriously, how much more obvious can these fucking assholes make it that they don't give a good goddamn what the 18-25-year-old voting bracket cares about? Even their fucking INTERNS can't be bothered to acknowledge what some shithead college kid thinks. I'm a fucking registered voter, and I'm registered for the draft too (with the situation in Iraq growing worse every day, that's a big issue on my mind, believe me). I vote and I pay my goddamn taxes, but these pricks don't give enough of a shit to even attempt to placate me with a blow-off form letter?! Fuck that!!!

Only one thing to do about this situation: send more shit. Of course, they're never going to listen to one punk-ass college kid anyway, but maybe one of these days they'll grow to recognize my name and groan in exasperation every time they see it. Wishful thinking, perhaps...

Of course, if the rest of the apathetic puds in our voting bracket got off their asses and did something about it too, maybe they'd find it harder to ignore us, hmm? There's a novel concept...

Okay, I'm about done ranting for the night. The last of Bade's rum is calling, and so is bed. Later.

2003-12-02T17:35:00.000-06:00

Everyone else is doing it...

Well, why the hell not? It's a good excuse to put off all the massive amounts of homework that I don't want to do anyway even longer. Let's see if I can dredge up what little html I used to know and make this fucker bend to my will... More anon, losers...