Pissed Off in the Heartland

Fuck Starbucks

2008-05-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Anyone who reads my bullshit with any sort of regularity knows that I go to Starbucks. Not, like, every once in awhile. I mean I really GO there. Like twice a day if not more. I have, for years, been an unapologetic patron of the Starbucks Corporation, for a number of reasons: being anti the antis, proximity, ease of operation to name a few. First and foremost however, was the fact that by going to Starbucks I always knew exactly what I was gonna get. It was (fairly) cheap, and the Starbucks in Downtown Chico was essentially the same as the Starbucks in the Austin, Texas airport or on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas. Moreover, the employees of Starbucks are trained to be deferentially welcoming and personable in the extreme, which can be creepy, but also nice when you walk in and get your drink without ever saying a word. This employee training, as well as the comfortable, homey decor of most Starbucks locations are part of a marketing technique used by the company that attempts to brand Starbucks your "Third Place," after home and work, in which you feel most in your element. As contrived as this marketing scheme may seem, it certainly worked on me, as I found myself spending an inordinate amount of both time and money at the Downtown Chico Starbucks location.

Over the years, I'd cycled through a few different drinks of choice at my "Third Place," from coffee, to white mochas, to non-fat lattes when I started packing on the lbs, finally settling on the Americano, which is just espresso with hot water in it, like coffee only a little bit smoother. Of course, a nice piping hot Americano is all well and good in the winter time, but as the weather starts to turn hot, switching it up to iced is a must. But something just seemed wrong with getting espresso shots on ice, then pouring water over it. After all, all that ice is just water waiting to happen. So instead of getting an venti (which in Starbucks parlance is a "large") iced Americano, I just started ordering three shots over ice in a venti cup. Makes sense, yeah? I certainly thought so. The manager at the Downtown Starbucks however didn't seem to thrilled, however, with the fact that by buying three shots on ice, for $2.15, then adding my own milk from the condiment bar, I was essentially getting a Venti Iced Latte, which runs a dollar and change more. But it's not my fault that their menu has an obvious flaw, right? And besides, the profit margin on three shots of espresso in a cup with a little ice and a few ounces of milk is still probably nothing to laugh at, especially for a place with signs hanging all over the place saying things like "Your drink should be perfect every time" and that if anything was wrong with your drink, or you just didn't like it, you should have the barista remake it. If they were willing to eat the price of an entire drink just because some old lady thought it was too sweet, you'd think that someone buying a drink off of the menu, and paying full price, every single damn day of the year would be kosher, even if there existed the potential of bleeding one more dollar out of said customer. After all, this was my "Third Place."

Apparenty, times are tough in Starbucksville. After all, they only did $2.53 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2008, which only translated to $108 million or so profit. Sure that might sound like a lot to most people, but to Mr. Starbuck, in his penthouse office, $108 million doesn't even pay the phone bill. Maybe he was monitoring the closed-circuit cameras at the Downtown Starbucks this last week, because suddenly, instead of serving me my daily drink with a forced smile, knowing that there was a dollar lost but two gained, the manager of the Downtown Starbucks decided to finally call me out as the milk thief I am. "You're stealing," she said, as she lambasted me in front of a gathered assembly of morning coffee drinkers. I practically came in my pants out of pure shock. The old timer working the register seemed equally bewildered, as the process of trained pleasantries and customer-always-being-right attitude that had been drilled into his head in employee training was suddenly flying out of the window in the face of literally tens of cents worth of "stolen" milk. "Are you serious?" I asked, incredulous. "You're stealing," she repeated, demanding that I not only pay the extra $1.60 for my splash of non-fat milk, but in the process, acknowledge that my frugality was in fact criminal and I should be ashamed of myself. And maybe I should be. But guess what? I'm not.

Long story short, I feel like the dude whose friends all told him the girl was a whore, but he kept dating her anyway, until she gave him Syphilis and he died. Starbucks gave me emotional Syphilis and it's my own damn fault. If you go to Starbucks, stop. If you don't go there, don't ever start going there, unless you have to take a shit some time, then you should definitely go there. If you work there, quit. If you don't work there, don't ever apply. If you're the landlord of Downtown Starbucks, raise the rent immediately. If you're reading this, Mr. Starbuck, here's a drink for you: one-pump White Mocha straight from the bottom of my balls, extra hot, extra whipped. If you're good maybe I'll even throw in an extra shot.

Life Sucks Die

2008-04-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

How's this for cynicism? The Wall Street Journal last week advised savvy investors to stock up on food. Yeah, as in the kind you eat. Cans of Tuna, bags of rice, basically the sorts of long-term, non-perishable food items that any Yankee Hill militia-man or God-fearing Millennialist would have in his stockpile. But the WSJ wasn't warning of any sort of forthcoming apocalypse, I mean if you don't count the food riots that are already happening overseas that could very well start happening here in the near future if food prices keep skyrocketing they way they have. Rather, they were advising that this very skyrocketing in food prices has made food a better short-term investment choice than putting your money in the bank. " If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax," says the story. "Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%." Anyone else getting hungry?

The only real problem with all that, besides the fact that its utterly and completely fucking stupid, is that, not really a lot of people seem to have any sort of short-term cash sitting around these days. I mean, food ain't the only fundamental living cost that's getting expensive. Beer, pussy, gasoline, drugs, everything seems to be inflating these days. Maybe it'd be easier to try to list the things that are getting less expensive. How about houses! Houses are dropping in value left and right. Hell a house that cost $400,000 two years ago can be had for $280,000 today. That kind of rules I guess, unless you're the person who owns that house, and probably still owes $385,000 on it. And besides, even if the house itself costs less , unless you have a few hundred large sitting around your house, getting a loan is definitely getting more expensive, thanks to all the lopdicks who bought 4-bedroom villas with granite counters and swimming pools with interest only mortgages thinking they were gonna make a killing when prices went up another 200%. Instead, they fucked the entire US economy, accelerating the demise of the dollar as the worldwide currency standard, and ending the post-Cold War pseudo-hegemony enjoyed by the good old US of A. Thanks guys!

Not like it matters, though, really. After all the world's gonna end soon enough anyway. Four years, to be exact. You see 2012 is the end of the current Procession of the Equinoxes. Plato called this the Great Year. Astrologers call it an age, as in the Age of Aquarius, which coincidentally is the age in which we will be proceeding into (we're currently in the Age of Pisces. Whatever you call it, 2012 marks the end of it, and also of the earth. You don't believe me? Ask the Mayans, man! They called that shit WAY back in the day. Like back when post-Roman White Europe were to busy dying of the plague to read, write, bathe or really do much of anything. Don't trust them, ask the Hopi Indians, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Sumerians, all sorts of people knew what was up with 2012, but we're just now starting to figure it out. I mean, sure, people said the same thing about 2000. But that was just too obvious! 2012 sounds way more believable. And if it makes you feel any better, the end of the world isn't as bad as it used to be. Once upon a time, the "end of the world" was all about hellfire and pain and death and disintegrating into nothingness, but these days, the end of the world is almost a good thing: a paradigm shift into a more utopian state, or at least something other than what we've got now. I don't know about you but I'm ready for a change. Maybe the next world will have some cheaper gas.

Fuck Life

2008-04-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

It's finally official! I'm no longer just plain old fat, but I'm actually obese, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A person is considered obese when there body mass index, or BMI, is above 30. At 5'9" and 219 pounds, my BMI is 32.3, placing me squarely into the "obese" category. But hey, on the bright side, at least I'm not 'morbidly obese', which is the distinct honor bestowed upon anyone with a BMI of over 40. Give me a couple years though, and maybe I can get there.

Thankfully, I'm a guy so I don't really have to worry all that much about looking like a fatass. I mean, look at Buddha, that dude's BMI was probably like 50 and he still stacked fame. And even at 219, I'm still not as fat as I was in my days anchoring the O-line for the 1997 Willows Honkers high school football squad, which was ULTIMATE fame. Besides, by present standards, if you're a guy over 20 and you can still look down and see your own dick you're doing pretty good, especially if, like me, you're not exactly John Holmes (though if you are packing some Holmes-esque heat, you could probably weigh 500 lbs and still wreck as much P as you wanted).

The problem, however, is that as comfortable as I am with looking like a fat piece of shit, being obese does carry with it a plethora of health related consequences. Just this week, in fact, a new study was released showing that individuals with an excess of visceral fat, the technical term for people with big ass beer guts, significantly raise their odds of developing dementia or Alzheimer's later in life. One could argue, of course, that perhaps Alzheimer's is the ultimate form of Zen (thus explaining the obese nature of the Buddha) but I would hope that Nirvana doesn't involve adult diapers and bed restraints. And even if it was, you still have to live long enough to see it, which is hard when you're suffering the other ill effects of obesity, which is basically every bad thing that could possibly happen to a person: heart failure, diabetes, cancer, depression, erectile dysfunction, stroke, carpal tunnel syndrome, infertility, gout, arthritis, sleep apnea, asthma, and so on into infinity. It seem like the only thing worse for your health than being obese is being dead.

Thus, I am going to join the rest of America in the ultimate cliche middle-age pursuit: losing weight. In order to get myself into the healthy range of BMI, I need to lose about 50 pounds. I could accomplish this by meticulously crafting a diet regimen, following it diligently and adding in ample amounts of exercise and rest, while cutting out booze and caffeine and all those tight-gripping vices in my life. But that shit would suck. So instead I'm looking to do it the modern way, by acquiring myself an eating disorder. Anorexia is passe. Bulimia is too much work. But there's a new disorder making the rounds these days, one specifically catered to my lifestyle: drunkorexia. Drunkorexics replace food in their diet with booze, which besides just making them the funnest people to be around EVAR, also usually helps them stay trim, with all the puking, running from the guy you just tried to start a fight with, getting put in jail, etc. Genius! Ever better, recent studies have shown that moderate intake of alcohol actually helps prevent Alzheimer's, and if a little helps, I'm sure a lot is even better! My future is looking brighter already.

On Second Thought: The only thing better than eating a huge meal, or going out and getting drunk, is doing both at the same time, or at least in rapid succession. Fuck it. I don't care if I end up a fat, old, demented, cancer stricken, infertile, impotent, sleepless diabetic, I'm still walking down, this very goddamn minute, getting a burrito, with extra cheese, and a 40 of Bud Light beer and celebrating the real essence of American Zen: mindful acceptance of the present moment, free of judgment, full of beer.

Fuck You

2008-03-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

It goes without saying that Americans, by and large, are an extremely greedy, selfish and fortunate to the point of being spoiled, people. And though the lion's share of the American largesse is concentrated in the notorious "top 1%", the remaining majority of Americans are still living pretty high on the hog. But don't try to tell them that. Middle class Americans might as well be caste Hindu untouchables for the amount of bitching and woe-is-me-ing being done any time gas prices go up a few cents, or their taxes get raised a quarter of a percentage point. Despite the fact that the level of consumption presently practiced by Americans - even those considered 'poor' by whatever arbitrary standard is in use at the time - is far and beyond any sort of realistically sustainable level, whenever a crack starts to show in the facade of neverending supply meticulously constructed to meet our neverending demand, American's react with an uproar that would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. While billions of people elsewhere in the world are watching the price of grain and wondering if they will be able to afford bread next week, Americans are bemoaning the fact that cigarettes cost a quarter more a pack than they did last year. While many around the world worry about the cost of heating oil, hoping that they can continue to stave off the winter cold for a few more months, Americans are worried about the cost of jet fuel, up in arms over the fact that a cross-country flight costs $20 more this year than it did last year, what with the impending recession and all. And they don't even serve you an in-flight meal anymore.

You can read in the newspaper every day, the tragic tales of the economic dire straits faced by everyday Americans in the wake of the recent subprime mortgage debacle. Foreclosures are running at historic highs. People are being thrown out into the streets. However most of these people are folks who bought homes well-out of their realistic price range by way of ill-advised multiple or adjustable-rate mortgages. Instead of settling for less they did things the American way: spending until you don't have any more, borrowing, spending some more, then borrowing some more, rinsing and repeating until your finances are in a nice foamy lather. Sorry about their luck. Of course this process serves as a nice little microcosm of American consumerism as a whole, in that it only works for so long. Traditionally this period was only as long as it took for your creditors to figure out you were a no good motherfucker and call in your debts. But lately, its been extended. Creditors just pass the borrowing up the ladder, selling debt like a real, tangible product. Debt somehow became a commodity, and not just any commodity, but one that you could make a mint on. Selling debt is like selling a thought, only more speculative. Yet there were plenty of huge financial companies, some of the bedrocks of American financial markets, who battled for the right to buy it. And thus irresponsibility once contained to individual greedy Americans got slowly transferred to greedy American companies, who had, of course, always been greedy, but never in such a blindly irresponsible way. These banks and financial institutions became like bears, too lazy to forage, instead seeking out dumpsters and trash cans for an easy meal. But bears who do this too many times, of course, get shot. And thus is the story of....(DRUMROLL) Bear Stearns, formerly one of America, nay the world's, largest investment banks, who like many of its peers got caught up in the subprime feeding frenzy and ended up paying the same price as the individual "victims" of the mortgage crisis, namely: everything. On the verge of bankruptcy last week, Bear Stearns was bailed out by the federal government, who backed a sale of the company to rival JP Morgan, only after the company's value had contracted from some $10 billion to $236 million over the span of one weekend.

Like the individual tales of woe, the stories printed by the mainstream media in the wake of the Bear Stearns debacle were stunningly indicative of the deeply entrenched sense of entitlement that forms the basis of modern day America. One such story, in the San Francisco Chronicle attempted to show the utter devastation wreaked upon Bear Stearn employees by this sudden failure. "James Cayne, the firm’s chairman and former chief executive, holding on to his Bear stock was a point of pride, and he rarely, if ever, sold," said the story A billionaire just over a year ago when Bear’s stock soared past $160, his 5.8 million shares are now worth about $28 million." Only $28 million dollars?? How is he supposed to LIVE!!!! HOW WILL HIS KIDS EAT!?????? The lesser employees of the company found themselves in even more dire straights. "'My life has been flushed down the drain,' said one person. There was talk Monday that with their life savings nearly depleted, some executives had moved quickly, putting their weekend homes on the market." Oh man. Selling the weekend home? Might as well get out the revolver and just end it all. America: when things get bad, sell your weekend home.

On Fucking Broadway

2008-03-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

Jaywalking is Serious Business: Crossing Broadway at the corner of 3rd the other day, I began walking across the empty street, not a car for a block in either direction, just a few seconds before the light changed from red to green. Unfortunately, an eagle-eyed officer of the law had witnessed this incredible act of daring lawlessness and took the time to give me a stern warning. I would've thanked him for keeping such a tight ship, had I not been so busy stepping over sleeping homeless dudes in feces-washed jeans, hurrying past aggressive panhandlers, trying to avoid eye contact with the various resident schizos, all while attempting to keep out of the way of kids on skateboards hurtling down the sidewalk. I guess the only laws that apply in Downtown Chico are those that involve Jaywalking, Parking and Drinking Holidays. Need somewhere to sleep or take a shit? Pick a door! Any door! But don't EVER try to park in front of that same business for more than 2 hours!!!!!11 EVAR!

Shelter for Homeless and Runaway Youth: Right up the street from where I work, over on 6th and Broadway is the newly opened Drop-In Center for Homeless and Runaway Youth, where teenagers, and young adults up to the age of 24 can come, watch TV and take a shower, check their e-mail and eat some food from noon to 8 PM, before heading back out to do whatever it is teenagers and young adults who are homeless and runaway youths do after dark. I look in the window on the way to work and see dudes not much younger than myself, lounging on the couch, watching a TV, one of those nice new ones, with the crisp colors and sharp picture. It makes me wonder if maybe I'm the one who's fucking up? Spending my entire day chasing down enough money to pay the rent, pay the cable bills, pay the power, when I could just be kicking it on the couch, eating some shit, watching Spongebob? Granted, I'm sure its not exactly the fucking Hilton over there, but hey, you can't beat the price.

Dogs: After the first couple of times I had to start walking on the other side of the street, because there's always a bunch of dogs and tough looking kids outside, and I already have enough shit to deal with. Last thing I need is a fucking dog biting at my ankles or another shithead eye fucking me. But this didn't make my daily moments of self-doubt any less. It just makes me feel like more of a failure. You see, I'd love to have a dog, but I really can't afford it, what with the shots, the food, not to mention the fact that it'd be too hard to cram a dog into the townhouse I share with 3 other people. I guess thats the advantage of not having a house: you don't have to worry about fitting a dog in it. And as far as shots go, I guess if you can't afford it, you don't have to worry about it. Maybe it's like BIggie said: Mo' money, mo' problems. Maybe I should just say fuck it, right here, right now; give away all my shit, move out of my house, get myself a dog and start spending my days at the 6th St. Drop-In Center, and my nights taking part in the epic brawls going down in the Park Plaza lately. Sounds like some adventurous shit. I could be the William T. Vollman of Chico.

Brawls: It bears noting that the aforementioned fisticuffs in the Downtown Park Plaza, which according to an unnamed source who witnessed them on consecutive nights a week or so back, ultimately drew (and only after some time had transpired) a lone police cruiser, who upon skronking his siren and scattering the combatants, surveyed the area and not feeling the need for further action, got back in his car and left. After all, there weren't any parking violators, jaywalkers, or college students drinking in the area to be cited.

Caveat Me: Lest anyone take me for harboring any sort of ill feeling towards policemen or bums, let me know take a moment to insure you that I do not, on either account. I'm just a little jealous of the former, and bitter about the latter. After all, if I was cop, or a bum, I'd probably do the exact same shit. In fact, who knows, I might be one, or both of those in due time. After all, if you can't beat 'em, join' em.

Cum Trees

2008-02-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

I enjoy to no end this time of year in Downtown Chico, the crisp afternoons, the people excitedly emerging from their sweater and coat cocoons into shirt-sleeved sunshine butterflies. Best of all are the Cum Trees in full blooming regalia. I know not the actual scientific name of these semen scented arbors, if they are fruit-bearing trees, or merely ornamental. For the rest of year I take no note of them, as I go about my business in the Downtown area. But for a few months each year, these trees occupy a place of distinction above and beyond that of the orange trees, shrubbery and assorted other vegetation of downtown. They are the Cum Trees. And they smell exactly like Cum. And I mean exactly.

Perhaps my favorite way to spend a sunny day is to do exactly as I'm doing right now, sipping a bottle of Bud Light beer while looking out of a window at it. Sorry, but I'm not much of a Frolfer. However, every few beers I make a point of taking a bit of a promenade, in order to enjoy the above-mentioned olfactory sensations, as well as the other sites to be seen around these parts. And I don't mean Bidwell Park. I like to dig the dudes selling drugs in the Downtown Park Plaza, the schizophrenic guy in stilted women's heelsholding one of history's most storied debates with an unseen foe, the hawks screaming at each other in the skies above the parking lot at Second and Flume. It almost makes me wish I had the moxie for psychedelics. But my limited studies in that field during college, all of which ended in rather spectacular failures, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that my imagination was already active enough without any help, chemical or otherwise. So I stick to beer, and the occasion taste of liquor for variety. As they say, it "takes the edge off." Besides, as Emerson said "Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time." A shot of time, with a beer back never fails to send me reeling through the streets, drunk on hours, on days, on years. Even those anonymous characters of the street are not immune to this intoxication. Here's one beat old soul, a Bukowski in his own right, who has been haunting downtown since time immemorial with his gray beard and weathered face, now relegated to a wheelchair, a vehicle which doubtlessly serves only hastens his journey to a place from which no one has yet returned. Here's a man that has had too much time! Where were the counselors, the teetotalers, the interventionists when he was killing himself with time, every single day? Why has their yet been legislation written to regulate, if not outright ban the consumption of this most deadly of substances, this most vile of vices?! It seems time is one addiction that refuses to be taken in moderation. One hit and you're hooked. And it's all downhill from there.

Drunk on time and booze I find myself wondering how it's possible, that in a town of 80,000 people, that one who spends the majority of their days and nights frequenting the bars and coffeeshops and restaurants of Downtown can see without fail, the same 100 people day in and day out. For years. It seems like it's all a big lie, some sort of joke you weren't let in on. You feel like your life is a sitcom, and maybe it is. Maybe its the Truman Show, only everyboy's Truman. Everybody is the protagonist of their own show, with its own audience, it's own discussion bulletin boards, its own ratings. God is just the guy calling the shots, what Jack Kerouac called the "Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven." Of course he was talking about himself, but hey, I could think of worse Gods than Jack Kerouac. There was a man who could handle his time, man. Booze though, not so much. No one's perfect I guess.

Sick as Fuck Bro

2008-02-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

Like everyone else in this godforsaken town, I'm currently suffering from the crazy AIDS, black death flu that's hit Chico at a seemingly pandemic level. Whatever happened to all those wonderful advances in medical technology that were supposed to be happening in this 21st Century? How come we can give some broad someone else's face after her first one got chewed off by her dog, but the flu, that ancient scourge of humanity is still beyond our capacity for prevention? How come the best we can come up with is the flu "vaccine" which, oh by the way, doesn't work against the strain currently waylaying every man, woman, child and beast in Butte, Glenn and Tehama Counties. Sure, there are "medicines" one can use sick with the flu. But there's a good reason you have to show your ID when purchasing these supposed medicines: they're basically nothing more than distilled meth, watered down and cut with a bunch of fancy sounding chemicals that don't do much except mask the symptoms of the illness. So instead of people taking a few days off of school and life to get over their flu, we have a bunch of people gagged out on legal meth pretending they're not sick and in the meantime coughing and sneezing and leaving their vile disgusting germs on every door handle and countertop they come in contact with, thus allowing even the relatively few people who practice the time-tested preventative measures--hand washing, not fucking touching their eyes and mouth every 5 seconds--little chance of escaping catching this dread disease. My favorite part is people who think they're being all polite by coughing or sneezing into their hands, then immediately start touching every thing in site. Especially when the "thing" they're touching is a sandwich that will soon be going into your mouth. Fuckers.

I guess it wouldn't really make any difference, if they actually had any sort of real flu prevention or treatment medicine. It's not like I'd be able to afford it any way. And I actually have health insurance, unlike the majority of people I know. My health insurance is awesome if I get fatal brain cancer or if I get hit by a car and break every bone in my body. But other than that it's pretty much a waste of time. If you haven't got around to watching Michael Moore's movie about the sorry state of American health care, Sicko, drop whatever you're doing and rent that shit right now. Actually, you probably don't even have to. Anyone who's lived in America for longer than two weeks is probably well aware of how bad our health care system has become. Like I said, I actually have insurance, but still the best I can usually get when I do get sick is one of the pseudo doctors at Immediate Care, who just throw as many drugs as possible at any sort of sickness in the hope that one of them will work, usually antibiotics, pain pills and the above-mentioned legal speed. And I don't blame them. Medicine is hard. That's why it shouldn't be turned into a fucking fast-food restaurant. But what do I know?! Americans don't care about their bodies. They take better care of their cars. How is it that not having car insurance is against the law, but not having health insurance is the norm? How is it that we have the second worst infant mortality rate in the developed world--slightly ahead of Latvia but trailing such technological titans as Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia--yet also have the highest percentage of automobile ownership in the world. Sicko blames our health care ills on the System, which certainly should assume some part of the responsibility. But the system is nothing more than a creation of the people operating within it, so I say, all of us sick, fat, unhealthy, dying Americans really have no one to blame but ourselves and our backwards priorities. Which begs the question: what are we gonna do about it?

The Answer?? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!111 Pass me the Nyquil! Let's go wash and wax my jacked-up truck! But let's hurry, American Idol is on in 20!!!!onehundredeleven!!

Fuck This Blog

2008-02-25T15:55:00.000-08:00

I have no idea why this blog takes about 3459 minutes to load these days. Maybe its because its the only part of the entire Mesh website that's been updated in the last few months. Eventually I guess I'll take my ball and play elsewhere. In the meantime, take the hours you'll spend loading this page, open a new tab and write me a message on myspace telling me how much you want to buy me a domain name and design me a page and a template easy enough for stupid people to use and port the 4 years worth of content in this blog's archives over to said web site. THNX

Fuck You

2008-02-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

I'd really like to extend a sincere thanks to the person or persons responsible for sneaking onto my back porch last night, while I was home, cutting the lock off of my radical road bike and stealing it. No really, thanks. I had almost forgot that Chico is a town half full of degenerate scum fucks, or, depending on how you look at it, half-empty of decent, literate, at least somewhat ethical people. Just the other day, I was lambasting a colleague of mine for moving from Chico to Yuba City, wondering how any one could ever leave some a picturesque, tree-lined burgh such as Chico for a forlorn, rusted outpost like Yuba City, but now I see! At least the people in Yuba City know that they live in a dump of a town. In Chico, you sometimes are able to fool yourself into thinking that you're somehow spared the desperate idiocy present in most of America, that somehow you've found the island of hope in an ocean of degraded unscrupulousness. Then some kind samaritan steals your bike and it hits you like a diamond bullet: people in Chico huff as much dong as their counterparts throughout the greater Northern California area. REALLY!

And I got off easy. I mean, sure it was a rad bike, but a bike is a bike. I'm too fat to ride a road bike anyway. But two of my nearest and dearest friends suffered break-in burglaries last week as well, in which the thieves made off with computers, televisions, cameras, cash, basically anything that can easily be sold on Craigslist for enough money to buy a few eight-balls of meth or a pound of weed or whatever other stupid shit people who rob houses want so bad that they resort to breaking into people's houses. I mean, it'd be one thing if the people who broke into houses and stole shit actually kept the shit they stole. I mean, it'd still be fucked up, but if someone broke into my house and stole my camera in order to pursue their dream of becoming a world-renowned photojournalist then there would at least be some continuity to the thing. There'd be some rationale. But as it is, the entire thing is just anarchy and not the peachy utopian kind that they talk about at punk shows, but the ugly kind that makes capitalist greed look pretty damn good by comparison.
Of course any good anarchist would probably say that the root cause of peoples stealing shit is the capitalist system, in that it creates a not just a culture or "haves" and "have-nots" but that it also compels those in the "have not" category to strive, above all else, to "have" by whatever means necessary. They would say that the real problem is not that one person is stealing another person's private property, but that the concept of private property itself not only exists, but has become to paramount motivator in the lives of most people in the world. While I'm nowhere near smart enough to formulate any sort of rebuttal to that argument I will say this. Even though I might "have" some shit, I definitely don't have much. And what I do have I'd like to keep. If you want to rob someone, rob the government, they have a few dollars to spare. Go steal from Wal-Mart. But don't steal my fucking bike.

At least now I can work more hours to buy some shit I already bought. Wait, that's not much of a bright side. Ummm...at least now I can wake up an hour earlier to walk what would be a 15 minute bike ride to work. Fuck! How about: at least I can just go ahead and drive to work everyday, furthering global warming and helping to usher in the global cataclysm that will finally break the capitalist stranglehold on the western world and allow a new age of shared prosperity to dawn in it's place. 2012 here we come! If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, you need to read yourself some Daniel Pinchbeck. On the double. You've only got four more years*.

I Get Warts

2008-02-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

The worst part about growing warts on your fingers and hands, as opposed to a less accessible body part like the knee on your balls or whatever, is that fighting off the urge to bite it off becomes, at a certain point almost impossible. OK, I might be alone on this one. Maybe I'm the only person in the world who bites off their warts. I mean, most people probably only get warts a handful of times over the course of their entire life. But not me. Since as long as I can remember, I've gotten warts. Big warts, little warts. Plump warts that look like some kind of new-fangled vegetable growing out of my skin. Whole families of warts, sharing a secret interlinked root system deep underground like honey mushrooms. I've seen about every kind of wart there probably is, all in the comfort of my very own body! My body is like a museum of Dermatological Curiosities, and the collection is ever-growing. And it's not just a museum, its a learning institution as well. A number of respected local PAs, Dermatologists and other medical professionals have cut their teeth treating my various skin maladies. If there was a medical college at Chico State, I could probably teach the unit on treating viral skin tumors, because I've done it all. I've had my warts frozen off. I've had my warts burned off. I've had my warts killed with acid. I've had my warts superheated by a miniature welding torch and scooped out like the first serving of casserole. But far and away my personal favorite treatment when it comes to removing warts is far less modern. It requires no tools save for those that come standard with the human body; A coupled of teeth, some jaws, and the steeled resolve needed to tear into your own flesh. Yes, I bite off my own warts. But at least I don't swallow. Usually.
Its hard to believe that something as badass as the human body could get tricked by something as stupid as a wart, but somehow, when a wart really gets rooted in, it starts to become almost like an appendage. Your body starts feeding it blood like it would a finger or an arm. It starts to get feelings like "Sorry guys, I have to go inside, my wart is starting to get cold." And while this is great if you're trying to grow yourself a real Blue Ribbon wart for next year's county fair, if you're a dude like me, who's ugly enough already without a fucking legume growing out of your index knuckle, this can be problematic, especially if, like me, your wart cure of choice is the old fashioned bite-off. For starters, it fucking hurts. Imagine trying to bite off your own nipple, and take the pain down like one notch. And although this pain is only temporary, there soon comes another problem. Warts bleed like motherfuckers, especially since there is usually quite a bit of what the military refers to as "collateral damage." There are no smart bombs in the war against warts. There is only carpet bombing. Your finger becomes Dresden and your mouth is a fleet of allied bombers, bent on destroying the enemy at all costs. You see, warts get real comfortable, sucking off your veins, fucking up your beautiful body. They don't want to go. So they latch on real tight. They sink their anchors in deep in the soil of your musculature, seemingly right down to your bone. Sometimes you can't even get them on the first bite, so you have to just keep going. Blinded by pain your tactics quickly shift from surgical accuracy to maniacal gormandizing of your own flesh. You become a Hungry Hungry Hippo but instead of marbles there's only a finger. When all is said and done, where once was Wart City is now only rubble. And blood. Its a tough job, but someone has to do it. If you think that shit's gross you should see my toenails. Seriously. Next time you're sick, save yourself the $25 you'd spend on Penicillin and just come over and chew on my toenails for awhile.

Fuck It

2008-02-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

Hung: The thing about drinking a bunch of Olympia's one night, then waking up in the morning and barfing like a newborn, is it makes you feel incalculably old and frail. All those nights of teenaged abandon, drinking cases of watery domestic beer in orchards and rice fields and staying up till dawn without so much as a headache seem like an impossible eon ago, when a baker's dozen worth of Olympia cans can turn you into Karen Carpenter. It almost doesn't seem fair, that after 13, 14 years of rigorous cross training, indulging in beer, booze, wine, sake, all sorts of homemade swill, that a body could get less acclimated to the inevitable next-day aftereffects of alcohol. You would think there'd be some sort of hardening of the system, some internal steeling taking place, that would render a body impervious to the ravages of the drink. However, the only organ that seems to increase its tolerance to alcohol is the brain, thus forming the ultimate irony of the adult drinking world: it takes more to get drunk, but less to get hungover. What this means, of course, is that in order to accomplish the former, you have to be willing the incur the latter, in copious amounts. Which brings us to today.

Barf: I've always been a puker, long before I was even introduced to the magic of booze. Even as a child, the surefire cure for anything that ailed me was to just yak a few times. It got to the point that my parents would try to make me puke by talking about all sorts of gross shit, because they knew that as soon as I did I would feel way better. And this wasn't just for physical ailments. Whenever I got really nervous, it was pretty much a given that I'd throw up too. Big football games? Throw up. Piano recital? Puke my guts out. Try to get up the nerve to talk to some hot girl in my 10th grade Algebra class? Definitely gonna be losing my lunch beforehand. Physiologically, I'm sure puking isn't the healthiest of all habits, but it's really not that bad. It's like taking a shit only quicker and less smelly. I guess its just a matter of getting used to it. I mean, for some people, throwing up is a big deal. Like "I'm not gonna come into work today because I was throwing up all morning." As weird as it seems to me, some people only puke once in a great while, maybe every few years. I can definitely empathize though. I'm sure if you only took a good hard shit every couple years, that would seem pretty scary too. Like "I'm not coming in today, there a bunch of gross brown stuff coming out of my asshole" To me though, barfing is just like another part of the day. Wake up, take a shit, brush my teeth, eat some cereal, get some coffee, puke a few times, whatever.

The Holy Trinity: No matter how many times you puke, no matter how nonchalant the pre-, and post- becomes, the actual pouring forth the contents of your stomach into a given receptacle never loses its spectacular nature. It's like sex, in that, no matter how many times you have sex -- with someone else or with yourself -- no matter how boring the pre-, and post-coital ritual becomes, for that one moment of, shall we say, full release, its just like the first time, every time. Over 27 years of living life, I've barfed probably upwards of a few thousand times, yet I still moan like zombie, I still get tears in my eyes, I still have to brace myself on the wall to keep from falling to my knees. And I imagine I always will. Booze, cumming and barfing: three things that your brain may get used to, but your body never will.

Heroes: All this has given me an entirely new respect for those hardy souls who wake with the dawn, slick back their hair and head down to the old Towne Lounge for first call at 6:00 AM. That takes guts, but literally and figuratively. Those dudes probably puke without making a goddamned sound, calm as Hindu cows, and wash it down with a shot of Wild Turkey, beer back. Some day that will be me. I'll be the best damn puker the world has ever seen. They'll erect a fountain in the Downtown Park Plaza with a bronze likeness of me in the center, sucking in water and puking it back out for all the bums and dirtheads to bathe in, for all of eternity. My mom will be so proud.

2008-01-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

Vote Yes on No: So today I got my mail-in ballot for this year’s California Presidential Primary Election. Yeah, super stoked. Voting ranks on my priority list somewhere between looking for worms in my cat’s ass and staring at the wall. Its not like I don’t appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the democratic process. Actually, I kind of don’t. Voting is like joining the Army. You don’t have to because some one else who cares way more about it always will. And besides, what do I know about anything anyway? For example, Proposition 92 on this year’s ballot “establishes independent community college districts and Board of Governors. Requires minimum funding for schools and community colleges to be calculated separately and blah, blah, blah.” What the fuck do I know about funding for schools and community colleges? Don’t we pay people to know about this kind of shit already? And I actually graduated from college, unlike the majority of dumbfucks who will probably actually vote one way or another on this proposition. Why would I waste my time making a studied, factual based decision on something like this, when I know that the votes of 34,534,459 ignorant pieces of shit are going to count just as much as mine? People who vote are like the people who write letters to the newspaper. If they knew shit about anything they’d either be writing for the newspaper already, or too busy actually doing something worthwhile to bother pissing in the wind by penning a letter destined to be read only by all the other bored people on the outside looking in on the world of influence. Voting is like trying to go to Sears and pick out some really cool clothes: you know, and I know, that they don’t sell that shit at Sears. Anyone I’d actually wanna vote for wouldn’t be allowed within 50 feet of a ballot, even in California. And propositions? Wigga please. Voting yes or no on a proposition in like voting yes or no on whether the sun is gonna come up tomorrow. You think that some shit that enough people with enough money want bad enough is gonna be derailed by a bunch of powerless middle class folks using the Power of the Vote? Hell no. I guess its pretty cliche, to be the apathetic middle-class white male twenty-something. Maybe if I was a woman, or a minority, or someone who had pulled themselves up from the depths of poverty by the power of sheer will and determination I might be a little more excited about trying to change the world one vote at a time. But as far I'm concerned the world is pretty much fucked no matter what anyway so who cares? We could have a handicapped, black, femaie Green Party president and we'd still be doing the same stupid shit, all the while cutting down forests worth of trees to make the paper on which to print up 100 million meaningless ballots every year so people can feel the warm placation of "deciding" to agree or disagree with what those with real influence have already determined will happen.

But: I still voted for myself, as a write-in candidate. Hey, no one's perfect.

Think Before You Talk: The best part about my little anti-voting spiel above, is the absolute 100% certainty that a bunch of people will make sure to tell me how stupid I am for not voting, that it’s people like me “who let George W. Bush become president.” Actually, its the fucking millions of dumbass Americans who voted for his ass who let him become president. And if I’m so stupid, why would you want me to vote anyway? If I’m such an idiot, shouldn’t you be glad that I’m not deciding your laws, your leaders? If all the people I thought were stupid didn’t vote, I might actually do it, because there’d be about 5 voters, total. And they’d all vote for me. So before you get all hot under the collar, take a moment to realize how much stupider you are than me, then write me a letter thanking me for providing you such insight, free of charge. You’re welcome. Then vote for me, as a write-in candidate.

Just Kidding: I don’t want to be president. I’m too busy sticking my finger in the top part of my ass crack, then pulling it out and smelling it. Its a strange combination of sweat and shit. Like a sneeze mixed with a fart mixed with an old gym sock. Plus it never seems to get old. When you’re president you can’t really do shit like that because there’s always a bunch of dudes with those little ear-pieces in their ear watching everything you do. And things like smelling your own ass crack need to be done in total privacy...which is why I’m writing about it for everyone I know to see. Wait, what?

Solutions and Resolutions

2008-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Words: If I remember correctly--which I do only every so often--at this same juncture last year I regurgitated a bunch of word jazz regarding the etymology of the word "resolution," about how it implies the solving and re-solving of the same problems year in and year out, and how the obligatory New Year's Resolutions are for the most part an exercise in futility; a recounting of the litany of personal failures we are all bound to suffer. Later on, I began to realize that basically everything in life is an exercise in futility. I thought about jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge for awhile, but I could never find a ride to San Francisco, so instead I drank a bunch of booze and read some books and beat my brain back down into the jar of hopeful living, and now, one year later, here I stand, ready to continue playing the game of Life and I don't mean the one with little wheel made by Milton Bradley (though that game was pretty legit). I mean the game of Life as in Everything that Ever Happened and Ever Will, EVER. The way I figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Thus, here are my word jazz-free, totally sincere and unqualified New Year's Resolutions for 2008. Read 'em and weep. With pure joy.

I Will Lose 10 Pounds And Find It Hiding Inside My Ass: People are always trying to lose weight or whatever, but its way easier just to lower your standards of personal appearance. I predict that by the end of 2008 I will no longer to stand straight up, look straight down, and see my dick. And I'm alright with that. I mean, I've spent the better part of 15 years looking at that thing all the time and I'm pretty much tired of it anyway.

I Will Read All The Books On My Bookshelf That I Bought To Make Myself Look Smarter But Never Actually Got Around to Reading: Proust, Betrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, For Whom the Bell Tolls; to look at my bookshelf you'd think I was someone who hangs out at Naked Lounge. But in reality, I have never actually got around to reading any of these books. And those are just the ones I've bought. There are still more that were gifts from people fooled into thinking I was smart--Milton's Paradise Lost, dumbass David Fosters Wallace--that are even further down on stack. So this year, instead of just reading Journey to the End of the Night and Ham on Rye 3452 more times, I'm gonna actually force myself to at least have a little literary dignity and quit being such a poser.

I Will Stop Looking for UFOs: I've come to the conclusion that aliens are like hot girls. The best way to meet up with them is to stop looking. Since I was, like, five years old and watched hella Unsolved Mysteries, I've wished more than anything to kick it with some aliens cats and do gangster alien shit inside a UFO. They can stick probes in my ass, take my sperm for use in creating alien/human hybirds, whatever!; I just want to see some shit, man. So my new tact, is to stop looking. Stop trying. Stop even thinking about it. Then when I'm least expecting it, a big cat-eyed pink alien dude will peek out from behind some shit like that scene in Communion where Christopher Walken sees his homeboy behind his dresser. If you dont know what I'm talking about, drop this paper immediately and go rent Communion. The truth is out there.

I Will Try to Care More About Shit That I Know Really Doesn't Matter: Its not about winning or losing. It's about playing the game.

Oh, Wait

2007-12-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

’08: 2008 will mark the fourth year of my lies and filth being published on this here blogspot. Of course I haven’t always sucked as hard as I do now. Once upon a time I actually wrote shit on here with a certain amount of regularity, sometimes even things worth reading. But at a certain point you just run out of shit to say. Mostly now I just talk shit about people whenever I get pissed off, or talk shit about God or whatever. If you're one of those people, or God, I offer my sincerest apologies. I’ll try a little harder in 2008 to not be such a dick to everyone.

Freudian Slip: When I wrote that last sentence, then went back and read it, I realized that I had actually written, “suck a dick” instead of “such.” Coincidence, or not? Freud might say such a gaff actually indicates a subconscious desire to actually tell people to fuck off, but that would be silly, I mean, why would I do that? I’m turning over a new leaf in ’08 man, let me tell you what.

Suck a Dick: However, as of this moment, it’s still 2007, so why not end the year on a low note? After all, there are definitely a few special somebody’s who deserved to be recognized for their stunning achievements in the area of Hella Blowing It for the year 2007. Thus, the following people can feel free to orally copulate my metaphorical member…

The Dude Who Stole My Scooter: I mean sure, I made it easy by leaving my keys in the ignition and all but still, what has society come to when a man can’t even park his goddamn scooter outside a shithole bar for a few hours without someone making off with it? What was even worse though, was the sliver of hope that remained for months after the fact; hope that one day I’d get the call “Sir, we’ve found your scooter.” I mean, even if it was fucked up, at least I’d have closure, and maybe that completely rad pair of striped pink gloves I left in the seat. But nope. No word, no sign. In some backyard deep in the heart of Chapman Town no doubt lies my scooter in a state of moldering repose, and someone is responsible for this. If it’s you, you seriously, sir or madam, fail at life.
Dudes Who Have Loud Cars/Trucks/Motorcycles/Pedi-cabs/Leaf Blowers: We’ve covered this many times, but it still deserves to be repeated. If you’ve modified your vehicle’s exhaust system to be purposely louder than it needs to be, you have personally contributed to making my life a living hell as well as lowered the quality of life for any and all residents of not just Chico, or America, but the entire World. They don’t call them “mufflers” because they’re supposed to make your car sound like a fucking locomotive; they’re there to “muffle” the obviously unwanted noise coming from your engine. By circumventing this process you are going against technology, progress and the will of humanity as a whole. Likewise, if you’re older than 17 and installed a stereo in your car for the sheer purpose of allowing people outside of your car to hear it, you seriously should’ve just saved your money for a dick-lengthening surgery. I have a way cheaper idea, why don’t you get a big bell and tie it around your fucking neck. It’ll have the exact same effect: Everyone will still hear you coming from a mile away, everyone will totally turn to look at you as you pass and you’ll still look like a total and complete lopdick, all for like, $5 tops! I won’t even bother talking about leaf blowers other than to say: If you’ve ever operated a leaf blower, or plan to any time in the near future, please consider sterilization immediately. Thanks.

Honorable Mentions: People who read books inside coffee shops and try to act all bothered by people there to actually talk to people and get coffee; there’s a new invention called your bedroom, check it out, totally sweet for reading books in bro!…People who “have a great idea for a column in Synthesis.” A) I don’t care. B) You probably don’t know shit about anything. C) Even if neither A nor B applies, talking to me about it is like going to Taco Bell and telling the dude at the counter that you have a great idea for a new kind of Gordita…Bike Nazis… People Who Don’t Know All-over-print is done...North Face hippies…Dumb people…Ugly people who don’t know it….Wiggers…Wapanese girls… Everyone…Me.

Some Shit About God or Whatever

2007-12-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

Sudan: You might remember Sudan from such roles as being the country we shot a bunch of cruise missiles at back in the ‘90s in a failed attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden or its cameo in the cinematic classic White Men Can’t Jump (“No, no, no, no...Billy Boy, this is Ghana. You, my friend, are shooting for The Sudan!”). Recently however, it has won rave reviews for its star turn in the remake of timeless favorite Genocide!. The Darfur region of Western Sudan is quite possibly The Worst Place in the World right now, with as many as 500,000 people dead, 3,000,000 more displaced over the course of the current five-year conflict, along with the types of raping, pillaging and all-around hijinx you’ve come to expect from African warlords. With that sort of shit going on, you’d think the government of Sudan would be pretty busy, you know, trying to save children from starving to death and those sorts of things. BUT! As a hard-line Islamic theocracy, the government of Sudan has more pressing matters to attend to, such as the trial, conviction and subsequent imprisonment this week of a British schoolteacher under Article 125 of Sudan's penal code for insulting Islam for…get this: allowing the schoolchildren in her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Ah, Justice! Here in Sudan, we might allow our own children to starve to death, but we never, ever allow teddy bears to bear the name of G_d! One wonders how many children, or even grown men named Mohammed have died in the Darfur conflict? After all, Mohammed is a fairly common name in that part of the world. The judge presiding over the case was named Mohammed Youssef and the defense lawyer was named Ali Mohammed Hajab. Thus, it was not surprising that Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher in question, did not question her class’ decision to name the teddy bear Mohammed. But never underestimate the sensitivity of the Sudanese people. After the ruling last week, thousands of protestors took to the streets, not in support of Gibbons, but rather to insist that she be immediately put to death. Armed with clubs and swords, the crowd chanted, "Kill her! Kill her by firing squad!" One protestor interviewed by Associated Press showed the logic behind this sentiment. “It is a premeditated action, and this unbeliever thinks that she can fool us?” said Yassin Mubarak, a young dreadlocked man swathed in green and carrying a sword. “What she did requires her life to be taken.” I guess the lesson here is clear. Don’t go to Sudan. For any reason. Ever.
God <3 Huckabee: But before we go patting ourselves on the back for being such a progressive country with a far more benevolent state religion (Oh didn’t you hear? This is one nation under God), we need to realize that we’ve progressed only insofar as, instead of committing our atrocities and injustices in the name of religion, we do them in spite of our religion. A fine example of this sort of convenient Christianity was on display in last week’s Republican Presidential debate. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, widely regarded as the most Christian Conservative of all the presidential candidates, was posed a pretty straightforward question: “The death penalty: What would Jesus do?” After hemming and hawing through a bullshit answer, moderator Anderson Cooper pushed Huckabee to actually answer the question, which he did with, “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office, Anderson. That's what Jesus would do.” Well ain’t that just CLEVER! I mean, that same reasoning can be applied so perfectly to so many things. How about Abortion? Jesus was too smart to ever get someone pregnant, so I guess it’s all good! Or even greed. Jesus was too smart to ever get rich, so don’t you worry about sharing! Maybe that’s why the terrorists hate us so much. We were smart enough to make up a religion that lets you get away with basically whatever you want.
Weekly Bible Verse: Deuteronomy 23:1 “A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the Lord.” Sorry about your luck, all you kids out there with crushed testicles dreaming of someday going to seminary. And just to make sure no dudes with wrecked balls try to be down with the Lord, this rule is repeated elsewhere in the Bible as well, such as in good old Leviticus, 21:16-20 which states, “no one who has a defect shall approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a defect shall approach: a blind man, or a lame man, or he who has a disfigured face, or any deformed limb, or a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles." I mean, I can understand telling dudes with no dick to beat it, but hunchbacks? Man, that’s just cruel!

Emo Christmas

2007-11-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

Solstice of Suffering: I’m sure you’ve probably heard the old wives tale that “suicide rates are highest around the holidays.” And even though that idea has long been proven to be horseshit, its understandable that people still believe it to be true. After all, the month or so between Thanksgiving and the good old Winter solstice is quite possibly the most miserable and depressing time of year. And not just because Thanksgiving and Christmas are both bullshit holidays. In fact, these holidays exist precisely because this time of year sucks so much D. The three hours a day in which the sun actually shows its damn face are usually marred by wind or rain or clouds or fog or all of the above. If you’re one of those unfortunate people who has to actually work a job to get by, you’re usually up before the sun, and home after it, making things seem all the more Arctic. Even though people these days like to claim that they “like it better at night” or, like the song says, they’re “only happy when it rains,” it’s a physiological fact that a lack of sun fucks with your mind and your body. I mean, even emos and goths need to get some rays every once in awhile.
There is Hope: Fortunately, being humans and all, we’ve come up with some clever shit to keep us from killing ourselves every winter. These include the aforementioned holidays, which despite the urban myths to the contrary, actually serve to decrease suicide rates, by roping people into some of the other fun constructs we’ve created to keep ourselves happy, or at least occupied: religion, tradition, family, booze, food, etc. Ah the endless depth of human ingenuity! If necessity is the mother of invention, then abject boredom is the cuckold father, and looming mortality is the neighborhood milkman, he who shall not be mentioned at the dinner table of life!
Close Your Eyes, Count Backwards: Thus we busy ourselves as much as possible through these miserable weeks, unconsciously counting down the days until December 22nd, when the sun will stand still for a day before slowly making its way back up the sky and into our faces for longer and longer each day. We, of course, are trained to appreciate this countdown at an early age, when we are provided with all sorts of fun mythical figures to associate with the season, Santa Claus and Jesus and all that. I guess that’s kind of a cheap shot. I mean, I guess if you’re the Son of God or whatever, it’s not a giant stretch to think that your birth would be in sync with the astral calendar in more than a few ways. It’s just, you know. Kind of convenient. I guess that’s why they call it faith. But if you’re unfortunate enough to, like me, have your doubts about the existence of BOTH Jesus and Santa Claus, the unconscious countdown becomes a little more conscious. And if you’re really unfortunate enough to, like me, suffer from some profound mental problems, you become basically obsessed with the countdown. You wait with bated breath for that glorious day to come. You’re no longer an agnostic because the sun becomes your God. The sun of God. Wait…that sounds familiar. Fuck. Maybe I’ve just seen Zeitgeist too many times.
Zeitgeist: If you don’t know what Zeitgeist is, you should watch it next time you have a couple of hours and some suspension of disbelief to spare. It’s one of those newfangled Internet movies you might have heard about on the TV. Actually it’s the Internet movie, proving that religion is dumb, that 9/11 was an inside job and the entire economic and political structure of the United State is built solely for the gain of the Rockefellers (who also want to outfit the entire populace with microchips) all in like, two hours. I mean, it’s probably all bullshit, but that’s not the point. The point is that that’s TWO HOURS less until the solstice, man. Only a few hundred more to go.
When In Doubt, Quote Nietzsche: “To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.” Ho, Ho, Ho.

Something That Happened

2007-11-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

What I’m Thankful For Vol. XVIII

2007-11-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

I'm heading to Willows tonight to get drunk for awhile. In the meantime here are my thoughts on Thanksgiving from the wonderful world of the Synthesis Weekly.

Not Being an Indian in Colonial America: Chronologically speaking, the first thing I’m thankful for is that the world started at some point. Big Bangs and all that shit. But after that, I’d say I’m most thankful for the fact that I’m a white person in 2007 and not a Native American in the time of the Pilgrims. Those dudes got hosed. I mean, the supposed backstory of Thanksgiving is that, in appreciation for teaching them how to grow corn and catch eels or whatever and basically stay alive, the Pilgrims hosted a celebration for the local Indians and the two lived together happily ever after. But the real story was that, after learning how to stay alive, the white people probably got hammered on booze, cruised down to the Indian village and clubbed infant Indians like baby seals, raped the hot women, took the young bucks as slaves and sent the rest on a few-thousand-mile walk to some godforsaken prarie outpost with a cartload of smallpox-infested blankets. And some Bibles.

Exaggeration: Ain’t it a wonderful thing?

People Who Suck At Life Hella: Thanks for failing. You make my stupid life seem almost worthwhile. Almost. If you’re wondering if this means you, it probably does.

People Who Win At Life Hella: To the people from whom I’ve stolen words, phrases, anecdotes, clothes, girlfriends, money, beer and everything else that supposedly makes me unique, thanks for making me cooler than I really am. If you’re wondering if this means you, it probably doesn’t.

Bar Tenders Who Don’t Have to Ask Me What I’m Drinking: Maybe it’s just because I watched Cheers too much as a kid, but when I walk into a goddamn bar, I don’t want to have to order. I just want to sit down and get stiff off a few cold beers and regale the boys with tales of fame and glory. You make this possible, you paragons of Mixology! Please accept this dollar with my sincerest thanks.

Baristas Who Don’t Mind the Fact that I Don’t Tip: I don’t tip for coffee. Ever. Unless my girlfriend makes me, or if I get the coffee for free. But even then, it’s like, are you supposed to tip? Doesn’t that kind of cheapen the gift that has been given? I’ve always been of the mind that it was far better form not to tip when you get something for free, be it coffee, food, beer, sex, whatever. But that also might be due to the fact that I’m a cheap-ass motherfucker. Besides, the etymology of the word “tip” is as an acronym for To Insure Prompt service, which makes sense in a restaurant or bar setting, but in a coffeeshop? Not so much. You don’t really have any choice but to serve me promptly, so I don’t really see any need to insure it. Semantics aside, if you’re someone who gives me coffee for free even after I haven’t tipped for the umpteenth time, you have my gratitude.

The Word Count Feature on Microsoft Word: I used to go back and count, every word by hand. Then I actually learned how to use a computer. Now, I can look at any time and know exactly how much room I have left to talk about myself.

People Who Don’t Mind the Fact That I Talk About Myself Incessantly: Like you.

Getting Paid to Talk About Myself Incessantly: Stop for a moment and really focus on what you’re thinking right now. Really get a good hold on it, then write it down real fast, without thinking about grammar or structure or really even whether or not what you’re saying is actually interesting to anyone else except you. Now imagine somehow handing you a check for doing that. Yep.
Being Totally Modest: Modesty is one of the many exceptional qualities that I have. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty much the best person ever. Of all time. If everyone were just me, the world would be a better place. We wouldn’t have to have Thanksgiving because we’d all be totally stoked at all times and too busy going off at rock shows to have any time to kill Indians and bomb Iraq and watch football on TV and eat a bunch of gross processed foods that just make us fatter and more miserable. Hopefully, the advent of cloning will soon make the scenario a possibility, nay, an absolute necessity! So get ready. To be me, or at least kind of a me. Because I rule.

Fuck It

2007-11-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

Die Trying: The late great Charles Bukowski, from whom just about everything clever I ever wrote was stolen either directly or indirectly, wrote a lot of good shit in his time. But the best thing he ever wrote was on his own gravestone. It said “Don’t Try.” Really, that’s about as good as it gets. I’ve been trying lately, to figure out what my gravestone should say. Some early candidates are “Fuck It,” “Fuck You,” “I’m Dead, So Fuck Off,” just plain old “Fuck” or, on a more positive note, “Dead, BRB.” Which one do you think works best? Maybe I should just rip off Bukowski more and put “Don’t Try” on my grave too. But despite my best efforts, I did try. I tried pretty hard. So that wouldn’t be very sincere. And if there’s one time you should be honest. Maybe it should read “Tried and Failed.” That might be nice. “Here Lies Daniel James Taylor. He Tried and Failed. Now He’s Dead. Fuck It” I guess it’d have to be a pretty big grave to say that. Whoever it is who’s gonna have to pay for it is gonna be pretty bummed out. I guess I should stick to something short and sweet. “Here lies Daniel Taylor” leaving out the middle name, to save space. “He failed.” That’s pretty succint. Maybe I could just make it like a report card, but for life. Like “Daniel Taylor: F.” People would probably get it.

Try Dying: “Don’t Try.” You’d think it’d be easy enough to accomplish. You just don’t try. To do anything. But it’s deceptively hard. Like thinking about “nothing.” If you’re thinking about nothing, then you’re thinking about something, yeah? Likewise, if you’re trying not to try, you’re still trying. It’s a conundrum wrapped up in a quandary inside of an enigma kicking it with a mystery, having a few drinks. Trying is a seemingly inextricable part of being alive. The only way to not try is to be dead, which I geuss might be why Chuck, that sly dog, put that shit on his death hat. But I’m not ready to be dead yet. I mean, I haven’t even figured out what to put on my own gravestone yet. And I definitely don’t want some sentimental fucker writing that shit for me. “Here lies Daniel Taylor beloved son, nephew, friend, coworker, Myspace lurker, dude at the end of the bar with a can of Schlitz, guy walking around town in pants too tight for his fat ass, Burrito eater and writer of amazingly narcissistic and boring columns. He will be missed.” That’s just tasteless, man!

Alife: So until I learn how to not try without trying to not try, I’m just gonna try to do whatever. And by whatever, I guess I mean be cool. For example, this Thursday you can come see me try to play bass at the BMU Auditorium on the Chico State campus, and in the process get to watch a real actual band called The Format (who you canr read about elsewhere in this fine publication). That might be fun. If you don’t feel like paying for the privilege though, you can see me trying plenty of other places around town. I can often be found trying to walk around downtown, looking positively aloof. That takes effort!

Chuck: Luckily for me, Charles Bukowski provided a few other nuggets of advice that are a bit easier to impliment that the old “Don’t Try,” such as “Never get out of bed before noon” (which was used as the tagline for the epically horrible recent film adaptatation of Factotum). This one has become one of the paramount guidelines in my life, along with "Not many people in the world had very much money but the less money they had the better they seemed to live." Not really sure yet about that one, but I’m definitely giving it a good test drive. And finally “"Almost everyone is born a genius and buried an idiot.” Now ain’t that the truth.

Here Lies Daniel Taylor: Born a Genius. Buried an Idiot.

Hella Ween

2007-10-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

As far as I’m concerned you can take Halloween and shove it up your ass. And by you, I don’t just mean Chico, I mean everyone. If you want to wear a costume so bad, why not just wear one? Today, next Monday, fucking whenever. Why should it be that only one night a year, kids can walk around their neighborhoods getting treats? Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in the kind of world where any day, any time, kids could knock on a neighbor’s door and get laced up with a candy bar just for being a kid? How rad would it be if all year round, people carved pumpkins and lit them in their windows, or adorned their stoops with skulls and spider webs and plastic bats? “But what makes Halloween special” goes the logic “is that everyone celebrates it at once.” I say fuck that. Why make a celebration the exception and not the rule? The whole concept of a “holiday” is that people need to have a reason to have fun, to come together, to celebrate life and death and everything else. But why not just celebrate that shit every day? Maybe if we tried to make every day Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Arbor Day and Thanksgiving all put together, people would stop blowing each other up for awhile. KTHNX!
While we’re at it, there are a few other things that definitely need to get shoved up people’s asses. Number One is any sort of leaf blower. Since when did having no leaves or dirt on the ground become the number paramount priority of landscaping maintenance? What harm would befall an asphalt fucking parking lot if there were leaves on the ground for a few weeks? If you’ve ever lived anywhere near Downtown Chico, you know what I’m talking about. At exactly 7 AM (or, on awesome days like today, 6 AM) there is always at least one, often two, leaf blowing squadrons to be heard within a 100-yard radius of any dwelling. What exactly is being blown is often a mystery. Usually it is a handful of leaves and maybe some dirt. Maybe some trash. You would think about five minutes and a rake would be sufficient. But instead, it never fails to take two guys, armed with leaf blowers that sound like Mustang mufflers, at least 45 minutes. Of course, I’m sure performing this task weekly is entirely necessary, and isn’t merely done to, you know, get paid more or anything. And I’m sure the seemingly fantastic meticulousness with which this job is performed is done only for the sake of doing a good job, and would never be done just to milk the clock. What I really don’t understand, is how a band playing inside of someone’s house, or even inside of a venue, can get ticketed for a noise violation (like the Surrogate/Bear Hunter show last week at Café Coda which drew not just one, but two police cruisers), but two dudes blowing fucking molecules of dust around for an hour at 7 AM outside of my door is totally okay. Why doesn’t someone at the City Council draft an ordinance about leaf blowers, instead of just picking on college kids blowing off steam and dudes in bands trying to actually express themselves. Probably ‘cause they’re the same people who hire these fucktards to show up outside of their business once a week, and their houses too. Actually, they’re probably the people whose idea of blowing off steam is breaking out their personal leaf blower on Saturday morning and “blowing off the driveway,” and whose idea of expressing themselves involves writing laws that send two cop cars to a fucking all-ages rock show at a café, while across town dudes are shooting at each other on East Avenue and bums are taking shits in the doorways Downtown. GOOD JOB GUYS!
Also, to the guy who popping wheelies on his Vanilla Ice style ninja streetbike through downtown: what you're doing, rated on the scale of coolness, ranks almost as cool as assless chaps, and just a little bit cooler than jerking off to the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. No one is jealous of your wheelie riding skills. No one likes what you are doing. People look because they want to see you eat shit. I don’t want you to eat shit; I just want you to stop doing it because it’s annoying as fuck. Thanks!

Breaking the Record For Being a Broken Record

2007-10-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

Frantic, Like A Cat Tied to A Stick: There is nothing in life that scares me more than not being able to sleep at night. In all seriousness, I’d rather have ANYTHING—dick warts, ball cancer, anal fistual—than chronic insomnia. It wasn’t always this way. I occupied much of my misspent youth drinking whiskey until dawn, eating blacked-out breakfasts and enjoying the unique high of sleep deprivation, nature’s purest intoxicant. But like most other intoxicant, I’ve since lost my taste for it. In fact, these days sleep—good, long, dream-filled sleep—is now amongst the foremost pleasures in my life. When I can get it. Which is definitely not right now. Sleep is like walking, breathing, or getting a boner: once you think about doing it, it’s get a whole lot harder (except when you’re talking about boners, I guess it would be more appropriate to say “it gets a whole lot softer, but you know what I’m getting at…). And for me, trying to not think about something just gives me an excuse to think about it nonstop. And that’s bad. Because then its 5 AM and I’m still up Googling the side effects antibiotics I’m taking for my bronchitis/tuberculosis/bird flu. Bad idea.

A Pig in a Cage On Antibiotics: This is a mistake I never fail to make whenever I’m possibly suffering from any sort of malady, immediately looking whatever it is up on the internet. The internet is made entirely of FAIL, yet still I look. After 3 weeks of misery (painstakingly detailed in this space over the duration) I finally consulted my physician and got as a prescription a very pedestrial sort of everyday antibiotic. For normal people, this would be a good thing, yeah? Take some antibiotics, get better, go on with life. But for Mr. Google It First, things aren’t so easy. Actually I’m even worse than Mr. Google-It-First. I’m Mr. Actually-Reads-The-Information-That-Comes-With-a-Prescription, you know the little booklet that attempts to legally covers the drug-makers ass by listing every possible side effect that may occur with any medication, from the boring (Dry Mouth, Blood in the Urine, Death) to the bizarre (Involutary Upward Staring, Auditory Hallucinations). Instead of a medical savior, my bottle of Biaxin pills now has now become a torture device of epic proportions, a voluntary MK-Ultra with me as both subject and administrator. And then the Googling! The first site that came up, Askapatient.com, seemed harmless enough. It was basically a site that compiled user ratings of every kind of prescription drug. And it first it was indeed more or less harmless, with people detailing relatively the minor side effects they’d experienced with Biaxin, such metallic taste, upset stomach, etc. al. But soon came the real heavy hitters. Read for yourself: “Like an acid trip. Extreme hyperactivity, several days of insomnia, generally crazy behavior. Then substantial depression. I ended up calling the poison control center.” Uh….“Severe hallucinations, horrible nightmares, heart palpitations, tremors, sweaty palms, anxiety, metallic taste in my mouth.” Ummmmmmmm….”I write this to give comfort to those who may have the same experience that I did; taking this drug is the single worst thing that ever happened to me. I have NO psyche history, no history of depression, and am a successful, enthusiastic professional. After taking biaxin, I had the most devastating and crushing depression and anxiety, including totally irrational fears that I was going crazy, crying spells, and an inability to perform my job. I felt certain that I was going to die, and had a number of physical side effects, including pounding heart, numbness, insomnia, and severe GI problems.” CALL THE AMBULANCE! AND THE HEARST!

The Cure is the Disease: Well at least now I know have a good excuse to be up as fuck. Maybe I can sue Bristol Myers Squibb or whoever makes Biaxin for the emotional distress I’m experiencing right now. Maybe I could just settled out of court in exchange for a lifetime supply of Ambien. Throw in some Cialis maybe too. And some Morphine.

The Upshot: Though I can’t sleep and may very soon be experiencing numbness, hallucinations, involuntary staring, pounding heart, explosive mud butt and more—at least I don’t have to blow my nose as much! What an EPIC WIN! What a succint encapsulation of the modern world (get it? Pill? Encapsulation???> ZOMG!) where cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is not only the Norm, but the Cliff Claven, the Sam Malone and the Diane Chambers as well. Why would I want to sleep, when I can just be awake and on the internetz? Without having to blow my nose, like hardly at all?!! There’re ads to be clicked on, after all!!!! Click to live, live to die, peace until war bro!

Sleep: It is this, which I need.

Things I Have Now

2007-10-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

1) A Cat

2) Unstoppable Insomnia paired with Sleeping In Later Than an Adult Human Should

3) Bronchitis

4) A bad habit of eating a lot of burrittos and fro-yo and Mountain Mikes Fucking Pizza and getting super old man fat, stacking Chins like a mass grave of Chinamen.

5) Hella crazy extremely vivid dreams every night from the Biaxin I'm taking to get rid of my bronchitis. I guess this is one of the most common side effects. Along with killing yourself.

6) A bad habit of looking shit up on the internet.

7) A copy of the new MC Oroville record, buy soMETHing, which is on some OTHER shit

Dying of Death

2007-10-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Every single goddamn year, at about this time, I become infected with what I like to call the “Student Special,” a mysterious ailment that is equal parts cold, flu, sore throat, cough and fever; basically all those things they say at the end of the Nyquil commercial. I call it the “Student Special” because I’m completely convinced that the source of this mysterious ailment lies in the accumulation, and subsequent intermingling of the disparate germs brought to Chico by the assorted students of our two fine collegiate institutions. These germs, at least in my version of events, are initially confounded by their new environment, and lay low for the first month or so of their Chico lives, getting acclimated, meeting new germs, whatever. But after the first few weeks, they start to feel a little more active, and thus start going out into the world, starting germ families, inventing new fun hybrid diseases, and eventually, infecting me with the sickness of death. And it’s not just me; all of those who make Chico a permanent abode, toughing it out through the inhospitable summers, eeking out a meager living on the hardscrabble Downtown terrain, suffer this yearly affliction like so many Sioux Indians, helpless against the foreign diseases coughed upon us smiling invaders. Instead of the proverbial Smallpox Blankets, we get the buttsauce covered doorknob, or a virus filled handshake. It makes you feel a little unsettled, wondering at what point you indeed got infected with this Student Special. Was it the time you forgot to wash your hands all day, then ate a bunch of pizza? Was it the time you were at a show shaking a bunch of hands, high-fiving everyone in sight, only to rub your eyes and put your fingers in your mouth without first sanitizing them in any way? My particular favorite is biting my fingernails and swallowing that little black under-the-nail crust before I really have the chance to stop to consider exactly how many dicks and asses and vaginas worth of filth is probably accumulated in that gooey paste now making it’s way around my digestive system and eventually throughout my veins. Being one who has had more than a few jobs which included in their description the cleaning of public restrooms, I know all too well the filthy habits of a large share of the populace, one might even say the majority. When people smear their own shit on the walls (which happens way more than you would think) it’s safe to assume that they probably didn’t take the time to wash their hands afterward, and thus spread their shit germs on every door handle and counter top that they touch for the next few hours, probably even days. The same goes for other, more nefarious bodily fluids; there’s a lot of weird people doing a lot of weird things out there in this wild world. Especially in Downtown Chico. You have to assume that every handrail, every door handle, is probably covered in transient semen and dog shit and AIDS and everything else. Who else is hungry?

The one upshot to being super sick, especially when you have acute anxiety disorder like me, is that you basically start to assume that every day is your absolute last day on earth. Your upset stomach is the first sign of terminal ass cancer. Your fever is the onset of a rare and fatal blood infection contracted through tattooing. Your morning wood is in fact a priapism caused by a black widow bite that will soon start burning holes in your brain. And this is all OK. When you’ve accepted the fact that you’re gonna die, you find yourself filled with an interesting sort of ambivalence. Things don’t really matter as much. I mean, you would think that it’d be kind of a bummer, that instead of spending your last day on earth banging teenage Phillipino hookers or climbing Mount Everest or whatever, you’re just kicking it at your office drinking lukewarm Peet’s coffee and looking to see if your girlfriend changed her Myspace song yet, but it’s really alright. You figure out the seizing the day isn’t so much about doing some crazy shit as it is being able to see the beauty in the trivial things in life. Like washing your hands. Under really hot water. I’m talking like, burning hot.

So I guess the moral of the story is: if you work somewhere that I would ever go, you need to immediately grab your fucking bleach bucket or whatever and go whipe down every surface that a bum might have touched. If you’re a bum, stop being an asshole and wash your hands after spelling your name in shit on the bathroom wall. Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. KTHNX!

Oh yeah and I got a tattoo that says "CRED" What you got on that?

Flyers are the New Blogging

2007-09-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

Chances are you missed this show, this weekend:

And chances are probably good that you'll miss this show, since it's in about 9 hours:

And I imagine that you'll probably miss this show since you're in all likelihood not a 14 year old girl:

But hey. Whatever man.

I guess the moral of this story is that 92% of my time these days is spent playing silly ass shows, practicing for said shows, and being broke because instead of being on the grind for $$$$ I just play t00nz for b00z. But hey at least when I'm old I'll have a lot of rad memories that I probably won't remember anyway.

Sup

2007-08-30T15:33:00.000-07:00