Hawkshaw

Someone told me I had to be more of a dick. That ought to give you a taste of what I am like in person versus what I am like in print. Unless you know me really well (or you have caught me on a really bad day) you would probably think that in person I am one of the more accommodating people you will ever meet. I’ve been told this is a Midwestern trait. I’ve been told that I hate confrontation. I’ve been told that I’m simply too nice at heart to be directly mean to people. 

Yeah, that’s a fucking knee slapper, I agree. 

For me the truth may be a fair amount of the former two concepts peppered with a dash of the third. Throw in a repressed sense of rage and you have a delicious neurotic idiot souffle. Mmm . . . souffle. 

For me it boils down to this: when considering the realm of kindness, there are nice people and there are friendly people. Sure, friendly people can be nice, and often are. And yes, nice people are often friendly. Look, don’t be a dick and cloud the issue here, okay? For the sake of argument let’s break it down along these lines . . .

Friendly

Being friendly means that, generally speaking, you relate to others in a way that denotes someone who is a friend. A friendly person is thoughtful and open with expressing it, they ask how you are doing in a caring sort of way. Friendly people invite you to social functions without regard to how openly inhospitable you outwardly are towards the idea of directly interacting with almost anyone. Friendly people have a genuine gift for making you feel like you actually matter to them without their necessarily having to resort to disposable platitudes and castaway horseshit compliments so obviously calculated to fool you into thinking they actually give a shit, when at heart they might not give not a mote of a shit (a trait shared by both friendly and nice folks). 

For the record, I am not particularly friendly. 

Nice

A nice person is someone who is agreeable to others during social interaction. When someone is a nice guy they are the sort of person who doesn’t like to make waves. These are the people who make the effort to make others at ease, who go to extremes to insure that others aren’t having to waste their time dealing with things the nice person damn well ought to have a handle on themselves. Nice people tend to be fairly composed, don’t blather at the drop of a pin as if everything they have to say is so fascinating, so utterly engrossing, no one in their right mind could possibly not pay attention to every endless outburst lest they miss a single moment of brilliant deliberation. 

I am a fairly nice person. 

Having said that, here are some secrets about me that you might want to jot down were you interested at all (you aren’t, trust me) in having anything to do with me . . .

Yes, I am a pretty nice guy. I actually think that in general it’s in poor taste to be loud and forceful in the company of others. I am pretty much offended by people who seem to be compelled by their desire to command a room even if nobody asked them too, even if it ought to be readily apparent that the whole room is offended by your mere presence alone. (I know that there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes you have to be loud, direct, forceful - I accept that. What I am talking about here is the sort of person who uses this form of expression as some sort of guiding principle. Those people suck ass and need to be culled from the herd). 

Please note that just because I am generally a nice guy that in no way means that I am a friendly guy. And, to go one step further - one giant leap for man further - just because I am a nice guy in no way whatsoever means that I like you. In fact, if you happened to be a mathematician, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to write a formula to discern that I really don’t like too many people too much on balance. 

But that doesn’t stop me from being nice!

On top of that, if I am in the throes of an internal bout of totally hating you, something I try to reserve for the most egregious of offenders, I generally will take the tack of being silent in front of you before I will select the ultimate solution and go straight for not-nice. 

And so we come to the grandaddy of all theorems when attempting to decipher the labyrinthian stupidity that is my brain. To be perfectly honest - as an operating principle you might be best served to look at me as someone who just doesn’t like you. That way you won’t be disappointed when I totally blow off your requests for my company, something for which I am aware would ordinarily be a facet of life that renders things bearable, that would shed light into the chasm of otherness that we all share ironically as one. If you think of me as someone who doesn’t like you, it will be that much nicer when you see me as someone who is that much nicer than my behavior might otherwise belie. 

And really, come the fuck on, who wants to spend their time around someone who is really fucking friendly, anyway? Who actually likes people that always want hugs, want to go out, can’t function alone, need mandatory high fives and ultimately don’t even seem to exist beyond their relation to others? 

Fuck, not me. 

Now, nice people? Bring ‘em on! 

I tend to see the world at large as one gigantic cesspool of assholes, so I find it somewhat amusing when somebody tells me I ought to be more of a dick. The dicks, I would have to say, pretty much run the place. Here’s why - if you are a nice person, then you probably aren’t going to stop at nothing to get what you want much in the way that a total dick will. Dicks really don’t have those built-in stopgaps that cause them to give pause whenever the I-want-to-crush-you-because-I-want-something-out-of-life side of them is throwing its own shit around and walking on its knuckles. The rest of us, those who are semi-nice/semi-dicks and then the two or three left who are actually nice, will agonize at varying lengths of what is the right way to go about getting things done. When you boil it down to the dicks versus the nice people, I hate to tell you this but the dicks have a huge advantage because they are only hindered by how stupid they might be. Dicks have no problems with being dishonest, cruel, deceptive and outright shitty. 

So, I will take your request to be more of a dick, file it away, and then use you as an example of someone who is such a total dick that I would rather die by my own hand then ever be like you. 

And yes, I will continue to be nice to you. Nice to you, yes, but never friendly. Yeah.

God is a Gorelick

You step on an elevator and you hear it. You wait in a doctor’s office, and there it is. You await the return of your attorney, so he can help you take care of those horrible charges against you, and over the noise in your head is the carping, the simpering, the lifeless bleat.


Kenneth Gorelick.


It’s fairly easy to understand why Kenneth Gorelick went ahead and dropped the Gorelick down to a simple, more awesome G, and also shortened the somewhat formal Kenneth to a more playful and almost childlike Kenny. 


Kenny G. Arguably the worst musician of all time. 


That little ditty, Songbird, from his quintillion-selling sonic rapefest, Duotones, is almost assuredly the single worst piece of music in the entire Western canon, hands down. Stephen Hawking with all his intellectual resources could not make a convincing case for why this track is not the single worst of all time. If you were to dig up Einstein’s corpse, locate his brain, install the brain into his dusty remains, reanimate his sepulchral hull and then force him to defend the merits of Songbird, it could not be done. The challenge would far outweigh the difficulty of bringing Einstein back to mount said challenge. Call it the Gorelick Conundrum, and then upload it on Wikipedia, it’ll catch on like wildfire, I bet.


So, keeping this in mind it might leave one feeling as though we are in the midst of an all-out silent war when it comes to culture. Why war, you ask? Well, consider that no matter how repulsive you find Songbird to be, no matter how sinister and threatening it is to your sanity, there are nonetheless literally millions upon millions of people out there who think it is simply wonderful. 


What is wrong with us as a race that so many of us could accept this single piece of music as something that would comfort us, soothe us, give us pleasure in this dark tunnel of a life? 


I know next to nothing about Kenny G. I know that he plays saxophone. I know he has horrible hair. I know that Kenny G somehow convinced some woman I assume to be deaf to marry him. I know that morons think that the proof that Kenny G is a total badass lies in his Guinness Book of World Records record for playing a single uninterrupted note. He used the circular breathing technique to play a 45 minute E-flat, which had to be the worst 45 minutes in the history of mankind. That pretty much covers my G knowledge. 


For the sake of this essay, know that I am using Kenny G as an analog for all that is insipid, unbearable and ubiquitous in contemporary music in public places. 


As children of the modern era, we have reached a very tenuous relationship with the technology that has come to expect more of us than we could ever expect of it. Not to get all Unabom on you people, but, we’ve come to the point where one might be amiss to not notice the ways in which we have usurped our freedoms in order to serve the beast that is our machines. 


Nowhere is this more viscerally and simplisticly evident than when we are on an elevator. Elevators are horribly uneventful places to be. So much so, in fact, that whenever the majority of us steps on one, we do so almost absentmindedly, much more preoccupied with whatever it is that consumes our minds, trusting the big metal box to pick us up and not drop us in a bloody heap back on the ground. As we stand encapsulated by technology, it is the little touches that bring tangible shape to the menace of being literally swallowed whole by a machine - little touches like music. And since people on elevators are in the process of going somewhere, somewhere probably very serious, not very fun, then, surmise the wizards that plan the ambiance of public places, what better than something easy, something slick, smooth, gentle, lilting? Therefore, if there is one musician that is the human embodiment of elevator music, it’s Kenny G. 


And that is why Kenny G is the perfect foil for bad culture. 


And so we come to the point of this.


I have a long and intimate history with music. I have made it, been paid to perform it, recorded it, slaved over it, studied it, taught it and actively listened to it in some fashion for almost my entire life. Music is very important to me. As I have grown in my taste for music, I have developed a taste for many types of music that are considered challenging, or difficult, or too heavy, too noisy, or my personal favorite - music that most people don’t even think is music. That’s fine. Whenever I play my music in mixed company (which for me could be one other person), I try to remain cognizant of the fact that others may find what I enjoy to be difficult. I don’t enjoy listening to music if the person next to me is developing a stroke because they think black metal is the same as listening to recordings of seal clubbing. Sure, on some base level I find that satisfying, but overall, I find that if the guy next to me is hurting I just turn it off and let him play another 200 hours of pop radio so he can return to his nest of safety and comfort. 


Look, I get comfort, I do. I get security and sanity. It’s crucial. I go totally out of my mind if I don’t have it, so I can relate to being threatened by the sound of a heavily distorted guitar, or the unceremoniously brash and direct sound of a skronking saxophone. It can be very jarring. 


But all I can say is this. Consider all the years of pop radio, all the years of interminable MTV rotation, all the bus rides, doctor’s offices, grocery stores, in-store playlists, wating rooms, and yes, all the god damn, motherfucking elevators. One Albert Ayler CD is not going to unravel your stranglehold on the cultural evidence cache of the 21st century. You’re good, everyman. Rest assured that once Coltrane is done schooling the cosmos with his hour-long rendition of My Favorite Things in the Japanese bootleg that you can put Duotones back on and all the planets will realign, and you can go back to your total cultural dominance. You can go home that night and masturbate in front of your full-body mirror surrounded by photos of yourself, content in the knowledge that Jesus still has a very special place just for you. 


See, here’s the rub. This has nothing to do with music. It’s actually about Jesus. Yeah, that semi-dead guy again.


We live in a Christian nation, plain and simple. We were founded on a bed of generally Judeo-Christian ethics, more or less, and that’s how we butter our bread. Like anything, it’s not that simple. Much of the implied theistic outpouring from the founding fathers probably was overlaid atop a more accurate ground of deism, and possible even agnosticism were one to calculate the effects of that time versus this one (yes, it’s speculative, but it’s also within reason). What I mean to say is that most of these guys believed in something out there greater than ourselves. Most of them probably agreed that whatever was out there may well have been responsible for life, the universe and all that cool jazz. From there it could get sticky. A theist is someone who basically believes that the greater power we are speaking of is a self-aware power, a being of sorts. This is the basic modern view of god in the western perspective. God is widely seen as being a thing. Whatever form, or not-form this thing takes is the subject of much debate, but most then, and most now see God as a self-aware being. Deists believe that this greater power, which may well be responsible for everything we see, hear and know, is intangible in the purest sense, which is to say that is more of a natural underlying force, and not so much something capable of making decisions, of therefore being self-aware. Many scholars (I am not a scholar, in case you were wondering (I know you weren’t, but you know what I’m saying)), believe that there is sufficient evidence through historical documentation that a number of the fathers were actually deists. The problem lies with the fact that this was never really a powerful political position upon which one might hang their hat. It’s just so much more sexy to claim to be guided by the hand of the almighty, no matter how improbable that concept might actually be. People want there to be a sweet, sweet end to the story, a tidy package in which to tie up the questions regarding suffering (the ultimate question of life), and what comes next (the ultimate question of the end of life). That we become one with a continuity of natural fluidity isn’t too sexy either, so it makes sense that the fathers just went ahead and told everyone they were on board the Jesus train. 


So here we are, a couple hundred years later, and that dead Jewish guy still has us in his thrall. So much so, in fact, that his mug is everywhere. People wear his murder around their necks in the most morbid display known to man. We beg him to give us stuff, save us from pain, save others, etc ... ad nauseam. 


As time has gone on, the threats to the cultural dominance of this phenomenon have risen. They have risen to the point that there are some compelling enough voices in the discussion on the existence of a theistic God with an earthly son, or any God for that matter, that the believers have felt very threatened. Personally, I think that a tenet of a faith-based belief system, any one, that flies in the face of probability and logic is something that ought to be open for constant debate, and a great deal of skepticism. Especially if you are to consider that articles of faith are the sort of thing that have a way of putting one on a constant defensive by its very nature. You are basically telling the world that you subscribe to the belief in something that has absolutely no tangible evidence, no compelling evidence outside of an ancient oral tradition, which itself has been “borrowed” from other ancient traditions which are ironically in open confrontation with our version of the God story here at home. To be perfectly sincere, I don’t even have an objective argument against that idea. Believe what you want, really. 


My problem is that I personally have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the existence of an organized higher intelligence, responsible in any way for the world as we know it. I simply don’t believe it. And it’s not a political statement for me. It’s a simple, almost sublime fact. I do not believe in Gods outside of what we think them to be. 


I don’t think that’s a radical idea at all, at least as far as I’m concerned. But, I know better. 


In America, non-belief is a declaration of war in some circles. This can be tantamount to a call to arms. And we all know what sorts of behaviors are spawned in the wake of extreme fundamentalist faith.


I have always thought it odd that so many American Christians are so threatened by not only the words of nonbelievers but their very presence, as if the Christian stranglehold on the cultural seismograph in this country is tuned exclusively to their channel. As a nonbeliever I don’t see why it is that I should not be allowed, or shall I say frowned upon for speaking up about the way I see things. There is room for variety without either end being destroyed in the process. 


Everywhere we go there are churches, there are bumper stickers, billboards, pamphlets, phone calls, spam e-mail, pushy relatives, neighbors, coworkers, TV evangelists, radio talking heads, the list is endless of people, voices pushing the Christian agenda down our throats. 


The family and I ate an otherwise forgettable dinner at a greasy spoon once, and the waiter came off at first as a refreshingly friendly guy. He spoke to our kids in a non-pedophile-vibe sort of way (something you will never stop looking for as a parent), and even went so far as to give us a generic Christmas card (yeah, we took it as a rather quaint plea for a bigger tip, but we still appreciated the gesture). Our warning flags raised, he delivered on our suspicions when he told us about his faith in Jesus Christ, his personal lord and saviour, a fact that has nothing to do with pancakes and omelets as far as I know. I guess I have just grown so used to this that I don’t blink anymore at this sort of needling comment, but my girlfriend had the presence of mind to tell him thank you for the service and that she was an atheist. His eyes widened, “Okay,” he said with obvious surprise. 


We talked about the exchange as drove away. The surprise on the man’s face wasn’t so much that we didn’t believe, but more that we would have the nerve to tell him as much. 


You can’t order sunny side up eggs anywhere without the constant chance that someone is going to drop the Jesus card on your table. You can’t buy yellow-jacket caffeine pills at the corner shop anymore without running across the anti-abortion sticker on the window. You can’t go anywhere on a Sunday without getting stuck in traffic laden with Christians on their way home from bolstering their God credit at service that morning, no matter that they now think you owe them the very road before you so that they may go eat brunch at some overpriced restaurant, go home, change and then fuck hideously all within the guidelines dictated by their pastor, Dr. Ed Young during his advice for married women service. You can’t do a fucking thing without being reminded that you are at the mercy of the believers, that it’s their world, you just live here, shut the fuck up and move on. 


Christians are like Kenny G. God is a Gorelick. He is everywhere, ugly, meaningless, empty and without soul. God is omnipresent, it’s true, but only in a herpes sort of way. 


No, suburban armies of aging and conservative Christian blue hairs, Kenny G isn’t God, not quite. You’re close, but you’re not quite there. I’ll lay it down and you can pick it up, polish it off it as you like, and then shove it right up your ass, ‘cause I’m playing Albert Ayler, I’m playing Wolves in the Throneroom, I’m playing whatever the fuck I want today, because all you need to know is that Kenny G isn’t God, God is Kenny G. 

Kick em" While The're Down

Still riding high on the attention from my last blog I think I will pander for more. Mind you I didn't say praise. Some people got held too much as infants, some not enough, I must have had a cardboard box. I've been graced by technology recently ,I.E. my introduction to the DVR and now" It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". Of course there's "My Name is Earl, Frisky Dingo, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and a slew of other stupid childish diversions for me. I've never been a big TV person. I was not a "TV baby" thank you, Gus Van Zant. I've always shared the view of Terrance Mc Kenna that television is the worst drug ever as the dealer controls the high. But ( I love beginning sentences with conjunctions, it's very liberating) being able to pick my shows and miss commercials turns the tables a bit. Don't you agree?
I've been asked to work on my grammar as well , sadly.....I will not . I don't see it as ignorance ,but rather lethargy...with which, I can live. I won't be learning which which to use either ....I'm using that one. As for there, I think I've got that ....their is plural ownership, they're is a contraction for they are and there's one more....but I'm not sure what it is. Fuck all that. If it's so much trouble to infer meaning form content.....you aint need be readin my shit no way. Fine, I'm technically illiterate.....in speech, I'm articulate as fuck yo? So blow it out your ass.
I had a strange dream last night. Some friends and I went to a skating rink, and the Klan was there. They had the white hoods but were wearing Confederate army uniforms. They had brought a bunch of underprivileged black youths there as a good will gesture. They were passing out quarters by the handfuls (to everyone) for video games. ....and WHITEY COULD SKATE!!!!! They were awesome! Especially considering that the hoods had to have obscured their (correct one?) vision a bit. I kept waiting for them to pull out gas masks and kill us all through the buildings air vents, but it didn't happen. When the D.J. played "Take the Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven during couples skate everyone had a good laugh. You think that means anything? I'm hoping, it does not.
The following is a list of appoliges I hope YOU never have to make.

Im sorry I threw up on your dog.
Im sorry I threw up no your boobs.
Im sorry I peed in your vegetable crisper.
Im sorry i cut off your finger.
Im sorry I wrecked your car...........into your moms car.
Im sorry we burned your brothers mobile home down.
Im sorry you woke up in Oakland.( from Houston )
Im sorry I slept with your sister.
Im sorry i slept with your girlfriend.(to same guy at the same party)
Im sorry I knocked up your Mom. (different guy)

I get really annoyed when people get all thin skinned and whiney. I hate hoppy beers and beers with sediment. filter that shit! If you're going to put a bunch of cilantro on food ...take the time to find a dog to feed it to.....IF you can gat the little motherfucker to eat it......that's a spice, not an ingredient and it tastes like ass!!! A PINCH in a POT of beans is fine but if i can see it .....you just made garbage. And guess what dumbass....no one gives a fuck about how much YOUR God loves THEM. If they needed one, they would have picked one by now! Also, if you're not going to drive fast , get out of the fucking "fast" lane because your pissing people off! I love Indian food and hate curry. Spanish olives are too salty for pizza. I was born with no appendix. Don't paint interior walls green, ever. Crocs are comfy as fuck but look to stupid to leave the house in. I have a fear of SOME antique furniture. Medical care should be free. Big ass rims look stupid on ANY vehicle. This rant is officially thin skinned and whiney. I hate golf and I'm pretty good...I love to bowl and I suck. Finally, despite any premonition you've had....it is NOT OK to skating with the Klan! I'm not sure where that came from.
Fuck You. I needed to purge. Hopefully this won't become a weekly exercise.

REB

Fart

I find it curious, I don't really understand why I should be considering that I've been doing it since I was born damn near half a century ago, but there you go, lads. Curious. About what, you ask. I find it curious that any time I go into a public place like, say, Walmart, I am simply overwhelmed by the parade of lunacy that is the everyday American citizen. Surrounding me in traffic, in their cars, driving by, blowing my ears out with the most idiotic and simplistic beats imaginable, yelling obscenities at me because I have a long beard, whistling at any woman short of a one-legger (and then again, they would probably give them a good "WOOP!" were a one-legger to hop by after all), it's like the starting line at the Surrealist 500. Driving among them is bad enough, to be sure. Yeah, but no, but yeah - but if you want to get the full Salvador Dali shaving a masterpiece into your back hair level of weird, head into Walmart.

I wandered in to one today. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't like I've never done it before. If I need dirt-cheap groceries and want a dose of the humble, there is no better place. Traipse on into one, you'll see.

There's a few oddities that seem to always have to get out of the way the moment you walk in. I swear it's in their mission statement or something. I somewhat suspect they actually keep these people on the payroll just to insure the full Walmart ambiance. If you're gonna buy a three dollar box of generic tampons then you're going to have to deal with this within seconds of walking in:

1. The cataract-ridden old guy. He's all cloudy corneas and tilted head on the axis and reeks of basement brand cigarettes and stale urine, and even if he wasn't gnawing on someone you might be forgiven for assuming he was a member of the undead. Instead, he pretends to check receipts at the door. An exercise in futility if ever there was one. You could walk out with someone's child and this guy would smile, draw a highlighter line on your receipt, fart and send you on your way. And that's guy one.
2. The woman who is so obese, morbid is at least two levels shy of a reasonable description of her planetary mass. You can smell her, she smells like rotten pork chops in your trash which have been sitting under your old fryer grease while you were on vacation. In case you were getting turned on, her face is covered in gumdrop sized moles sprouting hairs the size of aloe stalks. She is walking out, every time you are walking in, she is walking out with a cart full of frozen burritos, shredded cheese, lard, fruit danish in the family pack, five cases of Squirt and a three dollar box of generic tampons. 
3. The part-time cholo. He's wearing Jessie James brand Dickies work shorts with white crusty stains on them (never ask, never, never ask), a doo-rag in his back pocket, the prerequisite 1/4 inch buzz, teardrop tattoos, aluminum fronts and is always a number of steps in front of his black-eyed bun in the oven old lady charged with pushing the cart, which along with their groceries also houses their infant who is playing with daddy's butterfly knife.

Mind you, you just stepped in the door. I was in there so that I could check out some coffee makers since my coffee pot exploded on me the other day while I was performing the offense of cleaning it. I always steel myself so that I might be able to handle the Fellini carnival that awaits me, and every single time I am so totally ill prepared for what awaits me.

By now I am in a daze, I am walking slowly trying hard to not get noticed by the finger pointing pod people. All it takes is for one of them to catch a whiff of me and it's curtains. They will surely hold me down while they all take turns ass raping me and filling my cavity with their spores so that I may turn into the human road map acne casualty metal head with the Fear Factory t-shirt, shit stains, tent-like oversized black bell-bottom pants, GBH back pack, skull necklace, giant hole directly where my balls are located, black fingernails, terrible black dye job (which is growing out) and a Kool Menthol behind each ear.

Now I have the fear. I am pretending to weigh the merits of the Keurig over the Tassimo. Now I am pretending to debate with myself over which refurbished iPod Touch would be best for me. Now I'm perusing the cosmetic aisles trying desperately to get the calamine lotion I promised C. Now I am walking briskly to my car as I turn back and notice the cataract man standing in the yellow painted walkway at the front doors. His bony arm outstretched, his impossibly long finger aimed directly at me. His mouth opened wide, a ghostly wail emits forth, his minions stop and turn towards me. I fumble for my keys. They are advancing towards me now. I turn the key, the engine starts. They have broken a full run. I slam it in reverse, back out, run two of them over, they deflate like puss-filled balloons. I dart out of the parking lot, a coterie of aliens in pursuit.

I swear, as I do every single time - I will never, never, ever go to that place again.

And then we need toilet paper.

A Pound of Flesh

From where will my pound of flesh be cut? Sssssh! It's a surprise. Creation out of obligation . Singing for my supper. Not to the Butcher, no. To a far sterner master. What do you know about Nebraska? Children of the corn? Good college football? The ONLY good Springsteen album? Yea well, there's those. And there's work. that's why I'm here . Drinking a lot (even for me) wearing burnt orange (not that i give a fuck about sports, except for baseball (though there's hockey on constantly here(which is awesome.!!!))). A great job offer, until it snows, and they find out I can't drive in that shit. I may have to get actual car insurance for the first time since high school(i turn 40 next week( just order a 6 month policy pay the first installment and keep the card( they never check( and drive carefully cause if you wreck, your fucked.)))). I should be writing about that.....turning 40. But I don't care about that either. I confronted my mortality so many times I'm comfortable with it . No really. I'm living for ......well you got me. Just breathing out of habit really. I guess it's the little things now. Vicoden, oral sex, bluegrass and barbeque.
Ill know when this piece is done as I have a six pack of PBR tallboys here(beer one gone), and when they're gone so am I . Dancing to the tune of the master, let me share some things with you that I have learned. Dogs, women, men, cattle and about everything else that walks, crawls, slithers or swims will respond to confidence. Act like you know what you're doing and people will line up behind you. Second , desire is the cause of all suffering. I'll let you figure that one out , or you can go get a copy of the Tao Te Ching and get it explained to you. It's a good read. Like an owner's manual for the soul. Next...... smell things before you eat them. This advice is only partially about food. And last, despite the ignorant, hate filled, caustic, wretched, fucked up, selfish, shitty world we live in............love is the overpowering force in the universe. Beer two.
Empathy and compassion...... an ounce of either, will overpower a metric shit ton of hate. Tell them I said that. Quantum mechanics, string theory......and all theoretical physics are the closest we will ever get to understanding anything else. Luck, God yourself, whatever...you will have to find faith. Why? Because you're a stupid animal. No better or worse than a slug. No greater spiritual value. No higher purpose.
Monkey.
You.
Deal with it.
No God, only Schlong, but whatever you gotta tell yourself yo? I'm into Hummers and peanut butter cookies, that........I can worship. Beer Three.
Speaking of bananas.....Fruit. I make noises like NAUMMMNNAUMMNNAUMMMMNNNN when i eat fruit. I would rather eat a mango than a slice of pizza. Same for a peach, banana, strawberry, fresh pineapple, some grapes, any type of melon, or a tomato. But probably not an eggroll........them bitches is bomb yo? What the fuck am I writing about? Beer four.

O.K. We just played Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the PS3 for a couple hours so the beer, count thing is out the window. Moving from Austin Tx. to Omaha Ne. is absolute complete culture shock. Though its sweet to be the coolest person in the state. the bars suck . Downtown douchebags that i can talk circles around after 20 Guinnessses or 1000 suburban homo DJ'S, to borrow a phrase. And then....a ray of light. Barney O' Connors....or Murphy's....O'Rileys or some such shit. Market district...."downtown" Omaha. For 5 dollars you can commandeer the jukebox with Jane's Addiction, Monster magnet and Smashing Pumpkins(fuck you...I like them) and drink tap Guinness by a girl that knows how to pour it and switch to Shiner longnecks when the shots of Irish whisky (Catholic or Protestant) have you crawling. Flash fwd. 3 hours and shots are lined up on the bar. we're slapping backs and shaking hands trying to find time to talk to everyone. I get into a conversation about architecture with a guy from east bay(i lived in Santa Cruz). He's here to buy the old International Harvester building in Iowa (a few miles away) and convert it into artist lofts. I show him the Harvester tractor logo tattooed on my forearm and we're instant friends. I steal the bill Hicks joke about " eventually all malls will connect" . our discussion culminates in a rant ...by me....in which i explain that after all the shit that got torn down in this country after WW1 all we have left is these structures. they are our soul. they are America. I explained that by the time F.D.R. was done playing tonsil hockey with the Nazis and sacrificed Pearl harbor not to look like an asshole for not backing Churchill in the first place, we had a moment to breathe before Sept. 11. 1963 when Johnson poured Jack out onto Elm st for Armalite , Bell helicopter and the opium trade opening the door for Nixon and his bullshit. Before most people could get to their feet (ford and poor Carter) we got the Regan years and two double shots of Bush (why do I feel like flying a plane into something?). Those buildings mean a lot to me. I went on to tell him about the old Jeff Davis hospital in Houston (my fave building there(where my mother was born)). His company saved it. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." the moon landing was faked by the way. America is shellshoked, those who aren't are too stupid to be. Art, film, music, literature are a solid effort , but just in case its too late......STOP FUCKING TEARING SHIT DOWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!
As it happens the girl that runs the Jeff Davis hospital is one of my best friends and one of his favorite employees. Texts went out...." Yo bitch, I'm getting hammered with your fuckin boss!". Small world. Was I going somewhere with this?
On review.....I was not. In short, we are a cavity in gods mouth. he hates us and I don't blame him, but it won't get you anywhere. Just keep loving and fucking and try and help others through their bullshit....and appreciate the people around you. For me it's my son and my awesome ass girlfriend, and all my friends, especially you Stephen..... and the little shit..............and that's enough for now.

A Whole Lot of Nothing

I don't understand where they come from. They sit there, in the lot, in their sad, faded cars, and that's practically it. No fanfare, no excitement, no activity of note. They just sit in their cars, often looking into their laps. Are they resting? Reading? Weeping? Sure, there's the occasional pet walker. These people bring their dogs (almost always giant ones like Great Danes or Great Pyrenees, or Great something or other), and let them run free on the tiny strip of grass, shitting and pissing all around with reckless abandon. And then it's back to the Jeep, back to the Tahoe and off. Where do they come from?

It's a busy area. It's a crossroads of lucre, filth, desperation, greed and that old saw, that prevailing wind that is like a glue that binds us all - ignorance. 

Never underestimate the allure of ignorance. It is under the banal tide of ignorance that all of us seem to swim, a school of idiots, lost, confused, and always working the angle of the ultimate commodification of suffering. We're like walking banners for the product of ignorance. We labor tirelessly to reach dividends on the wages of our disinterest, our disconnected unity, however ironic that may be. 

Okay, so they are out there in the mornings, before the sun burns through and begins throwing its weight around. And I always imagine they will be gone by the afternoon, but instead, like clockwork, they grow in numbers. They are like an army of zombies who have traded in their insatiable hunger for human flesh for an insatiable desire to sit in a musky, aging car and silently ponder the air before them for several empty hours. And then what? And then they go somewhere else. Where? Home? Work? What sustains them? 

I don't get it.

I keep throwing logs into the fireplace, but the damn things keep going out. I've got a shit ton of ash and I'm running out of logs. 

Do you remember? What do you remember? I remember when the only shower in the house was in the basement. I remember, in fact still foster feelings for, the dank allure of the basement. Especially now that I live in a town that doesn't have any basements. Especially now that I live in a town that has such an intimate relationship to water that its mysteries seep into every facet of our practical lives. It's water that taints the air in the summer, making it virtually unbearable outside. It's water that threatens the most well-built house in a city full of very poorly built houses. It's water that gathers angrily, far too often, and organizes into a massive beast intent on destroying dreams and then beating a hasty northeastern retreat. Showering in the basement was always an adventure. It was always cold down there, no matter the season, always chilly and always damp. And worse, there were, far too often, giant house spiders that liked to hang out in the stand-up shower itself, perhaps hoping for the errant drip that worried its way into the drain on the ground. You had a few basic options in this case. 

1. You could try and kill the thing. 
2. You could try and get someone to kill it for you. 
3. You could shower another time. 

My favorite choice tended to be number three. No surprise there. And that's because ...

1. The squishy kill sensation when stomping a huge spider was a bit over the top for me back then. (Still kinda is.)
2. In my huge three story house, neither of my parents were going to come running down several flights of stairs to sample the very same squishy kill.
3. Showering another time meant putting off showering, something I didn't need a lot of arm twisting to achieve.

So yeah, the spider would live until at least someone else came to do their thing. 

I want to tell you about the first girl I ever kissed. It was in the 80s, I was in middle school. She had a glass eye. For her sake I'll spare you her name. I used to ride the bus to school. It was about an hour drive. I guess at the time the only school in the area was several miles away. it seems ridiculous now since the area has grown like fucking crazy, but there you go. I'm old, it was a long time ago. 

And really, the point of the story isn't the kiss, which was much like all first kisses, which is to say that it was fairly forgettable. No, this is about cruelty, because if there's one thing children are good at, it's being cruel. 

On the interminable bus death ride we had the pleasure of listening to the radio. General consensus dictated that we listened to one of two stations - it was either 79Q and their Q Morning Zoo, or it was 104 KRBE, a station that is still thriving on its recipe of mundane and unchallenging top 40 hits. This girl had a tendency to be annoying, she tended to make people angry. That's nothing new. It's pretty much the province of middle school. But whenever you are an asshole, you run the risk of retribution. And retribution to children usually takes the road most traveled - that being the obvious. Physical handicaps coupled with antagonistic behavior are the poster children of cruelty. 

This one is writ large across the wall like a warning sign. Anyone should have seen it coming (so to speak).

Once critical mass was achieved, it was all just a matter of timing, and thus it happened. 

The band R.E.O. Speedwagon was inexplicably massive back then, and it was their song titled Keep On Loving You that was really hitting big at the time. 

For those of you with knowledge of the song, I may not need go further. You have perhaps perceptively seen the savagery to come. 

For the rest of you, this is what transpired. 

She stepped on the bus one morning, the day after a particularly tough previous day of haranguing and verbal harassment. As she made her way up the aisle, many of the older kids broke out in a rousing chorus of, "You should have seen by the look in your eye, baby, there was something missing."

Brutal? Surely. Warranted? 

I thought it was too much. I didn't care how bad she was, it was obvious her bark was worse than her bite. 

I ended up kissing her one night out in front of my friend's house. I think we were sneaking beers, pretending to be more drunk than we were. It was the kind of bored thing we did in suburban Texas in the 80s. 

No, there's no connection between the kiss and the cruelty. I just thought of that scene, saw it playing out in my mind for some reason, and thought I would share. 

Guys used to have posters of Loni Anderson on their walls. That was like a necessity for boys who needed to prove to everyone else that they weren't gay, even though I knew the truth. Guys who liked to tear out the decks that were around their parents hot tubs because it meant they could salt all the slugs under the deck. Guys who thought putting toothpaste on their dicks would make them more palatable to the girls they dreamed would suck them. Guys who buddy up to idiots because they think it increases their tender in the world of morons. 

It's nothing but full-bore ignorance. 

I wonder if they sit in lots and stare. And if so, I wonder what they see.

Solutions?

I sometimes wonder if it’s worth knowing about all of the inhumane things people do to each other. Is the point of watching awful news to satiate our sadistic side, or simply to catch our attention? With few exceptions, it seems like we read of horrible injustices, yet we never do anything about them (granted, I know that in many cases, the most we can do is vote). All those stories do is reinforce our negative thoughts and cynicism about people in general, which is a waste of time in my opinion. Aside from the weather and world events, it almost seems like a waste of time to invest emotion and attention toward something you have no intention of trying to change. Not all knowledge is good knowledge. That energy could very likely be better used doing something else, something productive. We often see accomplishments posted (I like to read about them), but we rarely see anyone post acts of kindness. Cynicism gets old after a while. Just like Hipsters leech off of culture without adding anything to it, cynics poop the party without putting effort toward making things better. They’re too busy pointing out how messed up everything is instead of doing everything in their power to enjoy life. Not a lengthy post, but this has been on my mind lately, and yes, I am aware that I am only telling the story from one side of the coin. I’m often accused of being negative by those who are close to me, but even someone who “hates life” as much as I supposedly do would like to hear a heartwarming story once in a while.