Friday, December 4, 2009

this machine is toooo fucking expensive

I want to play the guitar. My guitar is a piece of shit though. It sucks. It used to be okay, and for a while it was ‘decent’ but here’s the thing: it’s a cheap guitar and I’ve had it for twenty years. It’s no longer good, but for the longest fucking time it was good enough, which prevented me from upgrading it. “It’s just for dicking around with at home” I told myself. “I don’t need anything more than this crappy epiphone. WELL, guess what? I do. Now, my guitar is kind of fucked up and hard to play and I’m old, and the idea of having a nice guitar kind of excites me. And that’s cool. I mean, I’ve got a couple of really nice basses. Why not have a nice guitar too, right? I’ll tell you people why. Because those shits are fucking expensive, that’s why. I went to four (FOUR!) shops yesterday and I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t embarrassingly reprehensible for under fifteen hundred bucks. Who do they think I am? The sultan of Brunei? Tim McIlrath? I mean, come on. Waste of time, that’s what that shit was.
My wife has been out of town for a week and she comes home today. I’ve got dead hookers all over this place and the dogs and the kid have just been running free, shitting wherever they want/can and scavenging food from the floor. I’ve gotta go to work in fifteen minutes and I don’t really know how I’m gonna ‘spruce up the gash’ so to speak, before she gets home. What’s a good lie to tell to your wife when she confronts you with your pile of dead hooker parts? “Uh, I’m letting the med students house some cadavers here while they clean out the cooler at Northwestern. Hey! I’m an alum! What was I gonna do?” nah. Chances are good she’d bring up the decomposing flesh and the baby and the maggots and all that. I gotta hire a maid. That’s all there is to it. But a man maid, someone with some strength and guts. Steve Segal, maybe, or Bruce Willis.
Fuck. My head’s not in the game today. After my hideous experience with the guitar shopping, I juggled my kid for a few hours and then went to band practice way after I should have already been asleep. The falcon, my other band, is playing a secret (shhhh!) show tomorrow, and we had to get the dust off our dicks and relearn the songs. The good thing about the falcon and the bad thing about the falcon are the same: we just have a few songs. That makes it easy to practice and write a setlist, but hard to change up too much. Whatever. The songs are all golden hits about sucking penises in back alleys or down on the docks and drinking strong drinks to sanitize your tonsils afterwards. Don’t know if you guys knew that, but it’s true. Oh, there’s some anti religious, anti stupidity, and pro stupidity jams too. For those of you keeping score. Whatever. They’re almost all getting played tomorrow (and a couple of surprises! Yay!) so come on down, provided you already have tickets, that is. Shit’s private, yo. So you can’t just show up and get in. Plus, it’s in a secret location. How’s THAT for classing up the shit? MmmmHmmm.

As you all may or may not remember, I give advice here too. Recently, one of my dogs of war wrote in for advice. Seems he dumped his long term old lady for the chick that he’s been pining over for years, who also happens to be his GF’s close friend. The problem arose when the new chick wanted to take shit slow. He freaked, because he’s used to being in a long term relationship, and wanted to know if he should patch shit up with his ex or go for the casual dating with the new chick, though the casual nature of it made him uncomfortable. THEN, he wrote in to say that I could just forget about the advice because they neither one want anything to do with him anymore.
Well. Well. Well. What do you think I have to say to this?
Sounds to me like he engineered the switcheroo pretty well (they ended up making out and then severing ties with their various significant others) but then something went wrong. What was it? Hmmmmmm….Anyone? Bueller?
Confidence, man. You can do anything you want. It’s like the fucking invisible bridge in the Last Crusade. If you just have faith that it’s there, it WILL carry you through to the other side. This dude was NOT confident with casually dating a new girl (which, let’s be frank, you HAVE to do. You can’t just start up with a new chick where you left off with the old one. Doesn’t work that way.) and the results? Everything blew up in his face. No one wants to see effort or strain or uncertainty. You can look at a man’s suit as an example of this. People don’t want to see the way it gets put on. That’s why the belt goes over the clasp, the tie goes over the buttons and the collar goes over the tie. The illusion of impossible simplicity. No one wants to see the effort. Confidence is the ONLY WAY TO IMPRESS UPON OTHERS THAT YOU ARE WORTH A SHIT. AND, once again, IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT ALL (I wish I could make that ‘all’ even more capitalized), REPEAT, ALL WOMEN FIND ATTRACTIVE. Nine times out of ten if you’re having a problem, it’s because you’ve failed to understand this simple and applicable maxim. This time, this was it.
Okay, these corpses aren’t gonna stuff themselves into hefty bags. Gotta run.
xo

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Secret show? Damn. My birthday is today and what a celebration that would be eh? Any chance I didn't know about this but my girl did & got me tickets? Nah. No fucken way...

FranklinStein said...

Dawg,
After a nearly two year dry spell, I found myself dating two girls simultaneously. This was early November. I eventually left the other chick who I had been dating since late September because she was saving it for marriage or "the right guy". In fact, after the second date, in which I drunkenly tried to get in her pants, she called me the following night and said flat out, "we're not going to have sex in this relationship". I accepted this because making out's kinda cool, but after about a month of several nights leaving her house with blue balls, I simply stopped calling her. I was looking to bang, and the new chick seemed much more promising for making that desire a reality. Things started out intense but have waned CONSIDERABLY over the past 2 weeks. I'm trying to take a hint, but she continues to return my phone calls, saying things along the lines of, "hey! call me back!" (like last night, for instance) and when I do, she doesn't pick up (like last night). She's the type who will get your phone call and not return it for several hours. It's ridiculous. Phone tag is MAD gay. Perhaps she enjoys stringing me along like this. I don't feel "hurt," I'm just annoyed and confused by her actions. I really thought in the beginning that some good ol' fashioned bangin' would come from this. After a month, I feel like her toy. Dawg, we should bang soon. Like, hard and long.

Unknown said...

dude bk...are we talking electric or acoustic guitar? cause for a cheap workhorse the new fenders are awesome for 300 and they have great electronics. check it out.

planespotting said...

Are you so much of a high-falutin' dandy that you can't go out and purchase a Fender Standard (Mexico) strat like the rest of us? Musician's Friend has 'em for $499.99 with free shipping, so you can probably get them at a Chicago area music store for less than $600. The Mexico Teles are the same price.

And you can probably get a decent upgraded Epiphone Les Paul for under $1,000.

Or is that not good enough for you, fancy man?

Unknown said...

I'm with Chris, there is no reason in the world to drop $1500+ on an a guitar.*

There are plenty of great options for far less, especially if you know someone handy with a sodering iron. A high-end Epi LP (that is set up properly) can play and sound just as nice as a Gibson with some upgraded pick-ups. Same goes for Mexican Strats and such.

Check out: http://store.guitarfetish.com/pickups.html

Boutique style pick-ups without the ridiculous pricing.

Also, though they have a reputation for being more geared to metal, the Schecter C-1 series of guitars play wonderfully and are pretty versitile.

*Unless of course you have the money. A cheaper guitar will probably not ever be better than the more expensive ones, but they'll be closer than you think and worth it for the savings.

JSIN said...

Steve Seagal and Bruce Willis sounds like the ultimate clean up team! "Who do they think I am? The sultan of Brunei? Tim McIlrath?" That shit is GOLDEN! This was a super funny and quite enjoyable post today Thanks~

Dustyfloors Happy Birthday-Mines tomorrow-I'ma go see NOFX, Mad Caddies and Dead To Me tonight to celebrate cause my wife is that cool.

Bueller?

Maggie said...

That suit metaphor was awesome! I came here just to say that. Also, buy a Smart car... it can store more dead hookers than it looks like it can... just ask my dad.

~die~ said...

Those robits are toooo damn expensive!

Robb said...

Speaking of Seagal - Have you peeped that new reality show "Steven Seagal: Lawman" on AMC? He is now apparently a FULLY-COMMISSIONED DEPUTY with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in Lousiana, and he's cleanin' up the streets! Alas It's far more exciting in theory than in execution! Oh well!

Robb said...

pardon me - it's A&E, not AMC

Jake Regier said...

Shit, man. For one, I'm more glad that you've blogged consecutive days than you can possibly imagine. As far as guitars go, just grab another Epiphone or a Mexican Fender. The guitars are the same as the 'Merican or, you know, Gibson ones, but a lot less expensive.

Unless you and your prog-cock band are going on tour, you don't need a guitar over $500. I'm telling you, that shit can be pretentious. And, you know, you're only going to cherish this expensive beast for a while, and then you're going to wish you'd spent the money on something else, like a clean-up crew.

I mean, I don't know what your funds are like because I see you as a dude who should be raking in millions of dollars while you're just a dude raking in what is not millions of dollars.

Jake Regier said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jake Regier said...

Wow, there're a lot of loose ends in that comment I should probably tie up.

Save your money, ride a cowboy. Then, while he's asleep, take one of his guitars. Cowboys always have a bunch of guitars.

Scott said...

see you tomorrow. can not freaking wait

Sean said...

You should get one of those Gibson "robit" guitars... they have a device that automatically tunes it for you!

... ridiculous, i know!

http://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/guitar.html

Jesus said...

Why not just have a BSC auction? Auction some of your worthless shit (Like your said piece of crap guit-box) to us die hard fans to raise money for your new one?

You could probably even sell Candice your old jizz-stained tidy-whities?

While you're at it, why not sell some rare and unreleased TLA arms stuff? Like that DVD we were promised and shirts? Or a bonus disk of the Falcon practicing?

I'd give you some of my government money that's supposed to be going into my education!

Candice said...

i already have paper towels with dried brendan sweat on them so i definitely need underwear with dried brendan jizz to complete my collection.

i'll pay top dollar.

Blake said...

DAMMIT, SEAN! I wanted to invent the self-tuning guitar for the longest time.

Felix said...

There's this great european website for music instruments that is called Thomann. It has loads of fairly nice guitars and sells them really cheap. You should check it out, BUT i don't know if they do shippings in the U.S.

Anonymous said...

ALL?

Garfield Roscoe said...

No Broadways, no Slapstick. Falcon rules, but I was slow-jerking for Broken Down or Kitchen Floor...