You know, when I was in highschool, everybody was terrified of AIDS. I mean, it’s almost hard to explain, because the entire end of the 80’s ramped up this fear of this disease (brought about by the shadow-cabal of the queers and the drug users no less) and then in the 90’s, right around the time when my dick was taking off its robe and getting ready to enter the ring, BOOM! Massive fear of sex rampantly distorted the entire social environment. Now, to be fair, AIDS is a terrible disease. I’m not in any way trying to belittle that. In fact, I have a very close family member who passed away in the 80’s (way before it was cool to die from AIDS too. There’s probably a really tasteless hipster joke that could be inserted here) and I was, like everyone, terrified of the disease, and that’s not weird. I mean, fuck. It kills people. That’s about the worst result that can come out of a night of wanton boning.
So yeah, I get why people were afraid, I guess I kind of don’t get why people aren’t afraid anymore. I mean, I know AIDS isn’t like having a black guy in the same bathroom as you (something that used to be terrifying but now is for the most part fine). I know people still don’t want any AIDS, but when I was a kid, I was so terrified of sex that it was all I could do to beat off feverishly and jump through any possible hoops available, no matter how high or awkward to desperately attempt to have sex with anyone who was possibly dumb enough to have sex with me. BUT that was followed by weeks and months of chronic terror. And it wasn’t just AIDS. I was worried about herpes and drippy dick and the warts and syphilis and the whole deal. I don’t really hear too much about that stuff anymore. Why is that?
Well, the obvious answer is that I’m married and I haven’t been out there dipping my wang around any dirty pools for a while and the whole thing becomes irrelevant pretty quick when that happens. Also, I don’t go to health class and I don’t have the kinds of friends who come up and say things like “I think I may have gotten crabs from that skanky waitress from the other night (ha! What kind of disease is crabs anyway? It’s like the Aquaman of STD’s. “Okay, I know a lot of the good ideas are already out there, but check THIS out: some bugs in your pubes! What do you think?” “Um, so what does it do?” “That’s the best part! It ITCHES! And it’s gross!” “um, okay…uh, how do you clear it up? Can’t you just shave your bush?” “well, um…probably. But you may need to buy a special shampoo! Huh? Huh? ” “uh, okay, I guess it works. Put it in the back by the Aquaman comics and the Matisyahu albums”)” which is good, because I don’t want friends telling me about their gross sores and pussy drainage. It’s not cool. The other thing, however, is I think there’s a new attitude about STD’s that just didn’t exist when I was a kid.
Thanks to scare tactics and misleading statistics and the wonderful adaptability of mankind (coupled with the new global transparency of the hyper-modern age [thank you interwebs!]) people now realize (a weird word, because so much of this stuff is, like I said, misleading) that everyone is infected with something or other, so it’s really not that big of a deal. This is, at the big top of the scale most obvious with the way that AIDS is no longer considered to be a death sentence (which is GREAT on a lot of levels, in terms of a reduction in the stigmatizing of victims and of course because uh…deadly disease=bad 100% of the time [and puh-lease don’t talk to me about doomsday population control clearcutting, space making diseases that save the earth by killing people either, I don’t want to hear it, dorks] and to a lesser, but vastly more accessible degree, all the statistics about HPV and herpes (over 50% and in lots of demographics up to 80% infected, often with strains that leave no symptoms!) have sort of made people feel a little less like a good old fashioned social disease is the end of the world than they used to. I mean, fuck, if there’s a disease with no symptoms and about 80% of my demographic has it, isn’t it, it’s a little bit like it’s more of a disease to NOT have it, right? Yeah, so uh…whatever.
The whole thing has convinced any teen or young person that’s sexually active that they’re infected with SOMETHING for sure, and you know what? If that’s the case, fuck it. That means anyone who’s gonna fuck me back is also infected with something and at this point it becomes like a reverse game of Gin Rummy where it’s just a matter of hedging your bets and determining who’s giving the worse disease to who.
I remember overhearing someone at a bar saying something to the effect of ‘yeah, she wanted to fuck without a rubber…but I figured she was more likely to get something from me than the other way around, so I just went for it” which is a HIGHLY fucked up thing to A) do and B) talk about C) in earshot of strangers but I kind of understand the mentality. There’s no way out. Everyone’s infected with SOMETHING and this dick isn’t gonna suck itself, so uh…let’s get out there and try to live a little. Hey, that’s what you get for implementing a fearmongering approach to sex education in this country. What’s the point of taking responsibility if no one else is? Why throw your garbage in the bin when you’re already standing in the dump, and so forth.
I dunno. I should state unequivocally that safe sex is very important and having STD’s is no joke AND that HPV while often symptomless can lead to cervical cancer and is nothing to fuck with and all that, but I’m curious…y’all ever get gonorrhea or anything? In the porn star blogs I read they talk about getting that shit all the time. I don’t know of anyone that I know ever getting that, but it seems pretty rampant.
Also, herpes? I know some herpers I think, but they seem pretty happy, at least most of the time. And I’ve got kids. And it COULD be argued that kids are a pretty permanent STD.
I do have a friend who got crabs. He apparently went into his local pharmacy at 2am and bought a mountain dew and crabs shampoo. The cashier was a dude that he knew. Heh.
Whatever. There’s a big storm a comin. Batten down your hatches, folks!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Oscar fever, anyone?
Okay, so yesterday, before we got into the segment that I’d like to unofficially call ‘why all parents are lame,’ we were discussing the Oscars. Now, in that entry, I mentioned that I haven’t so much as seen any of the best picture contenders, which is true. BUT, then I realized that I’m so incredibly pop culture savvy that it doesn’t matter. I’ve driven the information superhighway in and out of the global village for my whole life, bro, and as such I know enough to recognize the tropes and well-worn techniques that make something “Critically Acclaimed” right? Of course I do. It’s as easy as looking at the current crop of films through the lens of the past. And that’s what I’m gonna do for you all today.
Now, I’d like to preface this exercise by saying that I’m not looking any of these films up at all, so this is the culmination of what little I already know and/or what I can guess from what little I know. In the case of movies where I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, I’m just gonna blindly guess (this means don’t get all pissy if I get stuff wrong or if my guess differs from your opinion. People love to say that comparing opinions is like comparing apples and oranges [an asinine phrase, by the way], because opinions are fundamentally different if they come from different people, but comparing opinions to guesses is like the general life-philosophy of Tommy Lee, in that it’s just fucking stupid.)
So, without any further ado, I present to you a completely (COMPLETETLY) uninformed guide to this year’s best picture Oscar Contenders:
127 HOURS- The lovely heartwarming story of a handsome guy playing an ugly guy who gets stuck in a ravine and has to hack his own arm off using nothing but a swiss army knife. It’s kind of a Passion of the Christ meets Castaway story with a tiny bit of Cliffhanger outtakes thrown in for good measure. This one’s based on true events so that could help it out, and the one-armed guy in the crowd is gonna be hard for the voters to look at if this doesn’t win, AND it also sounds like it’s generally torturous to watch (in that it vacillates between being super gruesome and unbearably slow, two things the academy seems to revere for some dumb reason). James Franco also claimed in a recent interview that he beats off like seven times a day. That’s a philosophy I can fully relate to. What?
BLACK SWAN- What was missing from Single White Female? I’ll tell you: super fruity (and subsequently highly creepy) high art undertones, chicks that were actually good looking and overt muff diving (I’ve seen neither movie, by the way). If you’re the kind of person that obsesses about the passion of highly attractive people going crazy about their various desires and the way ambition can become creepy/terrifying, OR if you just want to see simulated pussy eating and your work firewall blocks Unratedperez.com, well, this is probably worth it. This is the kind of movie you go to with a date and afterwards you don’t fuck even though you’re both pretty horny. Like Shrek 2 but for different reasons.
INCEPTION- Shit that’s super weird is always a good time, especially if it’s full of good looking people. And this movie features the extremely handsome (Leo) and the button cute (Juno) teaming up to steal things from people’s dreams or something. This movie occupies the space where big budget crap like Avatar meets highly weird shit like that one backwards movie with the Australian guy where Trinity spits into his coffee…but the big selling point of Inception is that the end apparently bums everyone out. THAT’S oscar fodder, folks. Think about this: the end of Rocky=everyone’s bummed=Oscar winner, whereas the end of Rocky IV= people are standing up cheering and punching Russians in the face due to the spontaneous outpouring of patriotic joy=didn’t even get nominated.
THE FIGHTER-Combine the desperate family pathos of pretty much any movie set in Massachusetts with the ‘pookie’ character from New Jack City and add in a little Rocky just for flavor and you’ve got the winning tale of a former Funky Bunch Member brooding around while a cracked out Batman looks on and does his best impression of Mick from the aforementioned Rocky crossed with Steven Tyler or something. Oh, I’m guessing there’s a woman that cries a lot in this one. That’s the kind of thing that you just can’t leave out when you’re talking about disappointing men. Ask my wife/mom.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT-A sloppy, dumb, predictable movie that wouldn’t even be given the time of day if it didn’t feature middle aged (gasp!) lesbians (gasp!) living a fairly happy life (gasp!). Now, I think Juliette Moore and Annette Benning are both super hot, and I’d love to see a movie about their lesbian relationship, but this is not that film.
THE KING’S SPEECH- Essentially a historical Rain Man or My Left Foot for the stodgy Anglophile set, this movie features everything that makes academy turds get boners: Geoff Rush, characters based on historical figures, Fancy period mise-en-scene and of course a guy who’s got a disorder that requires “acting” to exemplify. You know what? If I want to watch a guy learn to get over a stutter, I’ll just wait a few years ‘til one of my kids develops one of their own due to my shoddy parenting. Fuck, what’s next? A movie about getting braces?
THE SOCIAL NETWORK- Now, this quaint little movie stars that weird, remarkably unlikable version of Michael Cera as a wealthy, privileged child who grew up with every advantage to beat no odds and finally claim his birthright as one of the richest people in the world and have the unique distinction of getting a movie made about him that features him getting laid all the time and hanging around with Justin Timberlake…all before he turns thirty. Who wrote this, Mark Zuckerberg? I mean, I dig, it’s the story of ambition realized and money and power. But people are saying it’s unfair to Zuckerberg? Um, no. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s like Blow without the sad ending. It’s also about facebook. There is no script and no performance and no statue that will ever alter that it’s about facebook, folks. It’s about facebook.
Facebook.
TOY STORY 3- This is kind of like Lord Of the Rings: Return of the King in that it’s the third of a highly entertaining series of movies and is probably far and away the most fun to watch of any of the nominees, BUT, it’s animated. And if an animated film wins best picture, then it’s just a matter of time before everything goes out the window and all Hollywood is just robots talking to other robots about their sex lives and committing robot-on-robot crimes and suddenly there’s no work for Jake Gyllenhall anymore and the whole thing goes topsy turvy. The academy is nothing if not deeply and fundamentally indebted to the status quo. Therefore, I’d say this has about as much chance of winning the oscar as Fuck My Tender Pink Pussy #27 (also a highly entertaining sequel).
TRUE GRIT- A western hosted by the Cohen Brothers and starring the Dude. It’s probably pretty good, even though that whole thing in the trailer with Matt Damon making fun of Jeff Bridges for only having one eye is downright retarded. Well, and my uncle said the end was pretty stupid, so there’s that. Still, gimme this over most of this crap.
WINTER’S BONE- All I know about this is that my mom knows the dude who wrote the book. It’s apparently about the meth life down in the Ozarks, (where my mom lives) and uh…aside from people high on meth being generally pretty entertaining (from a distance), the powers that be in the Ozarks let motherfuckers just keep tigers in their yards down there, so this movie is probably pretty good.
Okay, that’s my completely uninformed take on the best picture nominees. Without having read any other takes on this, I’d say my version is probably the best. Happy Oscar season, everyone!
I’m going to the zoo.
Bye.
Now, I’d like to preface this exercise by saying that I’m not looking any of these films up at all, so this is the culmination of what little I already know and/or what I can guess from what little I know. In the case of movies where I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, I’m just gonna blindly guess (this means don’t get all pissy if I get stuff wrong or if my guess differs from your opinion. People love to say that comparing opinions is like comparing apples and oranges [an asinine phrase, by the way], because opinions are fundamentally different if they come from different people, but comparing opinions to guesses is like the general life-philosophy of Tommy Lee, in that it’s just fucking stupid.)
So, without any further ado, I present to you a completely (COMPLETETLY) uninformed guide to this year’s best picture Oscar Contenders:
127 HOURS- The lovely heartwarming story of a handsome guy playing an ugly guy who gets stuck in a ravine and has to hack his own arm off using nothing but a swiss army knife. It’s kind of a Passion of the Christ meets Castaway story with a tiny bit of Cliffhanger outtakes thrown in for good measure. This one’s based on true events so that could help it out, and the one-armed guy in the crowd is gonna be hard for the voters to look at if this doesn’t win, AND it also sounds like it’s generally torturous to watch (in that it vacillates between being super gruesome and unbearably slow, two things the academy seems to revere for some dumb reason). James Franco also claimed in a recent interview that he beats off like seven times a day. That’s a philosophy I can fully relate to. What?
BLACK SWAN- What was missing from Single White Female? I’ll tell you: super fruity (and subsequently highly creepy) high art undertones, chicks that were actually good looking and overt muff diving (I’ve seen neither movie, by the way). If you’re the kind of person that obsesses about the passion of highly attractive people going crazy about their various desires and the way ambition can become creepy/terrifying, OR if you just want to see simulated pussy eating and your work firewall blocks Unratedperez.com, well, this is probably worth it. This is the kind of movie you go to with a date and afterwards you don’t fuck even though you’re both pretty horny. Like Shrek 2 but for different reasons.
INCEPTION- Shit that’s super weird is always a good time, especially if it’s full of good looking people. And this movie features the extremely handsome (Leo) and the button cute (Juno) teaming up to steal things from people’s dreams or something. This movie occupies the space where big budget crap like Avatar meets highly weird shit like that one backwards movie with the Australian guy where Trinity spits into his coffee…but the big selling point of Inception is that the end apparently bums everyone out. THAT’S oscar fodder, folks. Think about this: the end of Rocky=everyone’s bummed=Oscar winner, whereas the end of Rocky IV= people are standing up cheering and punching Russians in the face due to the spontaneous outpouring of patriotic joy=didn’t even get nominated.
THE FIGHTER-Combine the desperate family pathos of pretty much any movie set in Massachusetts with the ‘pookie’ character from New Jack City and add in a little Rocky just for flavor and you’ve got the winning tale of a former Funky Bunch Member brooding around while a cracked out Batman looks on and does his best impression of Mick from the aforementioned Rocky crossed with Steven Tyler or something. Oh, I’m guessing there’s a woman that cries a lot in this one. That’s the kind of thing that you just can’t leave out when you’re talking about disappointing men. Ask my wife/mom.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT-A sloppy, dumb, predictable movie that wouldn’t even be given the time of day if it didn’t feature middle aged (gasp!) lesbians (gasp!) living a fairly happy life (gasp!). Now, I think Juliette Moore and Annette Benning are both super hot, and I’d love to see a movie about their lesbian relationship, but this is not that film.
THE KING’S SPEECH- Essentially a historical Rain Man or My Left Foot for the stodgy Anglophile set, this movie features everything that makes academy turds get boners: Geoff Rush, characters based on historical figures, Fancy period mise-en-scene and of course a guy who’s got a disorder that requires “acting” to exemplify. You know what? If I want to watch a guy learn to get over a stutter, I’ll just wait a few years ‘til one of my kids develops one of their own due to my shoddy parenting. Fuck, what’s next? A movie about getting braces?
THE SOCIAL NETWORK- Now, this quaint little movie stars that weird, remarkably unlikable version of Michael Cera as a wealthy, privileged child who grew up with every advantage to beat no odds and finally claim his birthright as one of the richest people in the world and have the unique distinction of getting a movie made about him that features him getting laid all the time and hanging around with Justin Timberlake…all before he turns thirty. Who wrote this, Mark Zuckerberg? I mean, I dig, it’s the story of ambition realized and money and power. But people are saying it’s unfair to Zuckerberg? Um, no. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s like Blow without the sad ending. It’s also about facebook. There is no script and no performance and no statue that will ever alter that it’s about facebook, folks. It’s about facebook.
Facebook.
TOY STORY 3- This is kind of like Lord Of the Rings: Return of the King in that it’s the third of a highly entertaining series of movies and is probably far and away the most fun to watch of any of the nominees, BUT, it’s animated. And if an animated film wins best picture, then it’s just a matter of time before everything goes out the window and all Hollywood is just robots talking to other robots about their sex lives and committing robot-on-robot crimes and suddenly there’s no work for Jake Gyllenhall anymore and the whole thing goes topsy turvy. The academy is nothing if not deeply and fundamentally indebted to the status quo. Therefore, I’d say this has about as much chance of winning the oscar as Fuck My Tender Pink Pussy #27 (also a highly entertaining sequel).
TRUE GRIT- A western hosted by the Cohen Brothers and starring the Dude. It’s probably pretty good, even though that whole thing in the trailer with Matt Damon making fun of Jeff Bridges for only having one eye is downright retarded. Well, and my uncle said the end was pretty stupid, so there’s that. Still, gimme this over most of this crap.
WINTER’S BONE- All I know about this is that my mom knows the dude who wrote the book. It’s apparently about the meth life down in the Ozarks, (where my mom lives) and uh…aside from people high on meth being generally pretty entertaining (from a distance), the powers that be in the Ozarks let motherfuckers just keep tigers in their yards down there, so this movie is probably pretty good.
Okay, that’s my completely uninformed take on the best picture nominees. Without having read any other takes on this, I’d say my version is probably the best. Happy Oscar season, everyone!
I’m going to the zoo.
Bye.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Listen up!
Hey, did you assholes know that I write stuff? Yeah, okay. I know you know that I write great stories about my own and other dongs (I retroactively pissed myself in the Field Museum yesterday in a rush to put away my junk and get to the dinosaurs so my kid could bask in their glory before our parking meter expired…but that’s another tale for another time) and that every once in a while I wax philosophical about dying and seizing the day and that kind of crap, but did you know that I also do freelance copywriting for marketing agencies, publicity firms, various record labels, freelance design people and other companies that produce shit (like furniture or cool outfits or whatever)? Did you know that?
I figured that most of you didn’t. So I decided to tell you. Do YOU need to hire a copywriter to spruce up your dumb ad or make your bio sound like you’re not a dork? Then I’m your guy. Sure, I can be conversational and crass (see the four hundred plus page writing sample that you’re currently reading) BUT! I’ve also written copy for national print ads, scripts for internal company instructional videos, business proposals, company bios, press releases and light erotic fan fiction about Dinosaur Train and more. It’s true, folks. Mrs Pteranodon is a hot piece of tail, after all.
Now, I know most of you are seventeen year old pimply teens and huge breasted beautiful women who don’t really need to work, but for the other 3 or four of you that actually have jobs and function in society, I’m guessing that you’re thinking something along the lines of: Oh my god! Of course I’m gonna farm out some great projects to Beex. He’s the perfect voice of my new (pet store/vegetarian magazine/liquor brand/dildo concern/graphics company/etc) but that’s not all! Every bit of business that comes my way frees up my time, as the more money I make writing, the more I will need to make time for writing, which means the more I will need to hire a nanny which means (brace yourselves) the more time I will have to write and record more music for you turds. Now, I’ve got four songs demoed, but man, I could have a record out by now if it wasn’t for these meddling kids (shakes fist).
So yeah. There you go. All your copy needs: solved and in less than half the time it took you to take that morning dump. You can contact me via the email address on my profile, which is linked just to the right on this very page.
No. Thank YOU.
I figured that most of you didn’t. So I decided to tell you. Do YOU need to hire a copywriter to spruce up your dumb ad or make your bio sound like you’re not a dork? Then I’m your guy. Sure, I can be conversational and crass (see the four hundred plus page writing sample that you’re currently reading) BUT! I’ve also written copy for national print ads, scripts for internal company instructional videos, business proposals, company bios, press releases and light erotic fan fiction about Dinosaur Train and more. It’s true, folks. Mrs Pteranodon is a hot piece of tail, after all.
Now, I know most of you are seventeen year old pimply teens and huge breasted beautiful women who don’t really need to work, but for the other 3 or four of you that actually have jobs and function in society, I’m guessing that you’re thinking something along the lines of: Oh my god! Of course I’m gonna farm out some great projects to Beex. He’s the perfect voice of my new (pet store/vegetarian magazine/liquor brand/dildo concern/graphics company/etc) but that’s not all! Every bit of business that comes my way frees up my time, as the more money I make writing, the more I will need to make time for writing, which means the more I will need to hire a nanny which means (brace yourselves) the more time I will have to write and record more music for you turds. Now, I’ve got four songs demoed, but man, I could have a record out by now if it wasn’t for these meddling kids (shakes fist).
So yeah. There you go. All your copy needs: solved and in less than half the time it took you to take that morning dump. You can contact me via the email address on my profile, which is linked just to the right on this very page.
No. Thank YOU.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Which one of these means 'big wang?'
For the past day or so the dorkosphere and presumably the booths at the county fair that sell dream catchers and healing stones have been abuzz with the news that someone in Minnesota has figured something out and corrected the zodiac calendar. Not only does this mean there’s a whole new astrological symbol that many people have been unwittingly existing under since the days of the frost giants and titans, old, leathery women draped in scarves have been whispering to each other, BUT! It’s pretty much re-organized the whole fucking thing, and now everyone is just finding out for the first time that they’re a whole different zodiac sign! People are outraged! Former proud Leos are now nothing but pig dicked Cancers, and uh…so forth. I mean, first a little girl is senselessly killed in Arizona and now this! What kind of a fucking depraved shitscape are we out here dying in anyway? Up is down, day is night, cats and dogs are living together and out there on twitter and facebook, female humans are FURIOUS and confused about this new turn of events, or more accurately, this new attention to detail that repaints an ancient and highly respected calendar in totally different strokes. People don’t know who they are anymore, man!
Well, yeah. Okay. I was once a virgo. This made a ton of sense as I’m highly fastidious and organized, very clean, kind of anal retentive and sensible and above all, a virgin. Well, turns out I’m a leo now, which makes no sense because, well…see above. I’m a virgo, bro. These highly vague character traits that don’t apply to me at all are what I’ve been raised to believe are my uh…celestial ingredients and I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna go changing that now. I’m like Tarzan, man. If my mom’s an ape and my dad’s an ape and all my friends are apes, you’re not just gonna come along when I’m in my thirties and tell me that suddenly I’m a man! I’m a virgo (ape) not a man (leo)! Get out of my jungle! AAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYAYYAAAAA!
‘But wait!’ Some of you may be saying, ‘you (and I’m [you’re] talking about ME here) actually DO posess more of the traits of a leo. You are, in fact a GREAT example of this thing finally righting itself and turning out to be more accurate. Besides, isn’t ANYTHING cooler than being a fucking virgin?’
Okay, firstly no. Being a virgin is really cool. According to my catechism teacher and my health teacher and my guidance counselor, being a virgin is about the coolest thing you can be, thank you very much and besides…um, it’s my identity. Was that shit about Tarzan lost on you folks? Come on! And finally, (and this final point can’t be overstated) there is absolutely NOTHING so stupid as the zodiac and putting any sort of stock in it. Sorry girls. It’s true. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll happily go into it again, as it seems to be timely.
People obsessed with the zodiac bug the shit out of me. it’s pretty much set in stone that if I meet you and in the course of the first meeting you ask me what my sign is, I’m not gonna pay too much attention to you, nor am I gonna take anything you’ve got to say very seriously. It’s a little bit like if it came out right away that you were a scientologist or if you had to interrupt our conversation to take a call from your pet psychic. It’s just uh…it’s not by any means a HATABLE offense, but it’s kind of an eye roller for sure. If you, in trying to get to know me, want to plug in your data regarding my sign, our compatibility as friends and my potential character strengths and weaknesses well…I’ve got a pretty good notion of our compatibility already. I don’t tend to hang out with people that obsess over wack bullshit that’s the dominion of sixty something divorced women who can fake gypsy accents and have no marketable skills and who therefore operate businesses out of their living rooms while smoking and watching CSI. So yeah.
Now, to take this a step further, when you (and you are ALWAYS either a girl or a really femme gay dude in my experience [not that there’s not some big burly bearded dude with a thermos out there talking about this somewhere, but I just haven’t met him yet]) explain your own actions by way of your zodiac sign, well, I’m gonna dislike you. “Oh, yeah, again, I’m a Pisces so I’m really impulsive so I just went right up to her and….” is a great example of a way that one may express this and about when I stop listening entirely.
I mean, is there a more concise way to broadcast your wack ideas about what’s cool and your stupidity simultaneously? I guess a juggalo face tattoo does a pretty good job of that…and you almost certainly smell worse if you’re the kind of person who has a juggalo face tattoo…Huh. I guess I’m kind of stumped here…Listen, my point stands. If you’re the kind of person that feels very strongly that you’re guided by the stars (and that you can use that as an explanation as far as why you’re so impulsive/headstrong/stubborn whatever) then you’re a dork. Oh, and this is also true for people who say things like “yeah, Steve would rather sit home and stew than be out with us at this place because last month they wouldn’t put on the chargers game for him.”
“Oh my god! He’s such a Taurus!”
“That’s what I told him as I was leaving!”
Suck a dick, folks. Suck. A. Dick. That’s what I’ve got to say about that.
Now, finally, as I wind this whole thing down, I’d like to point out that since the entire celestial calendar is a bunch of pseudoscience bullshit akin to auras, female orgasms, talking dogs, dungeons and dragons and dentistry, that you need not really worry about the fact that the cusps have shifted. Hell, this is your big chance to just straight up seize the sign you’ve always wanted. Who cares if it’s half way around that dumb circle grid thing from where you were born? It’s all complete bullshit anyway, so get out there and become a Cancer if you want to (because, let’s face it…who doesn’t want to be called ‘cancer’? it’s a great way to identify yourself [n.b. there’s probably something to the notion [that I’m just coming up with right now] that while people that are ‘cool’ signs like aquarius and leos and shit are probably a little more likely to be into the zodiac, people who are cancers probably put a lot less stock in it. Just a theory.
Anyway, I’m a Leo now, which means I’m brash and I just stop doing things when I get bored. I’m on to the next thing like a motherfuckin
Well, yeah. Okay. I was once a virgo. This made a ton of sense as I’m highly fastidious and organized, very clean, kind of anal retentive and sensible and above all, a virgin. Well, turns out I’m a leo now, which makes no sense because, well…see above. I’m a virgo, bro. These highly vague character traits that don’t apply to me at all are what I’ve been raised to believe are my uh…celestial ingredients and I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna go changing that now. I’m like Tarzan, man. If my mom’s an ape and my dad’s an ape and all my friends are apes, you’re not just gonna come along when I’m in my thirties and tell me that suddenly I’m a man! I’m a virgo (ape) not a man (leo)! Get out of my jungle! AAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYAYYAAAAA!
‘But wait!’ Some of you may be saying, ‘you (and I’m [you’re] talking about ME here) actually DO posess more of the traits of a leo. You are, in fact a GREAT example of this thing finally righting itself and turning out to be more accurate. Besides, isn’t ANYTHING cooler than being a fucking virgin?’
Okay, firstly no. Being a virgin is really cool. According to my catechism teacher and my health teacher and my guidance counselor, being a virgin is about the coolest thing you can be, thank you very much and besides…um, it’s my identity. Was that shit about Tarzan lost on you folks? Come on! And finally, (and this final point can’t be overstated) there is absolutely NOTHING so stupid as the zodiac and putting any sort of stock in it. Sorry girls. It’s true. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll happily go into it again, as it seems to be timely.
People obsessed with the zodiac bug the shit out of me. it’s pretty much set in stone that if I meet you and in the course of the first meeting you ask me what my sign is, I’m not gonna pay too much attention to you, nor am I gonna take anything you’ve got to say very seriously. It’s a little bit like if it came out right away that you were a scientologist or if you had to interrupt our conversation to take a call from your pet psychic. It’s just uh…it’s not by any means a HATABLE offense, but it’s kind of an eye roller for sure. If you, in trying to get to know me, want to plug in your data regarding my sign, our compatibility as friends and my potential character strengths and weaknesses well…I’ve got a pretty good notion of our compatibility already. I don’t tend to hang out with people that obsess over wack bullshit that’s the dominion of sixty something divorced women who can fake gypsy accents and have no marketable skills and who therefore operate businesses out of their living rooms while smoking and watching CSI. So yeah.
Now, to take this a step further, when you (and you are ALWAYS either a girl or a really femme gay dude in my experience [not that there’s not some big burly bearded dude with a thermos out there talking about this somewhere, but I just haven’t met him yet]) explain your own actions by way of your zodiac sign, well, I’m gonna dislike you. “Oh, yeah, again, I’m a Pisces so I’m really impulsive so I just went right up to her and….” is a great example of a way that one may express this and about when I stop listening entirely.
I mean, is there a more concise way to broadcast your wack ideas about what’s cool and your stupidity simultaneously? I guess a juggalo face tattoo does a pretty good job of that…and you almost certainly smell worse if you’re the kind of person who has a juggalo face tattoo…Huh. I guess I’m kind of stumped here…Listen, my point stands. If you’re the kind of person that feels very strongly that you’re guided by the stars (and that you can use that as an explanation as far as why you’re so impulsive/headstrong/stubborn whatever) then you’re a dork. Oh, and this is also true for people who say things like “yeah, Steve would rather sit home and stew than be out with us at this place because last month they wouldn’t put on the chargers game for him.”
“Oh my god! He’s such a Taurus!”
“That’s what I told him as I was leaving!”
Suck a dick, folks. Suck. A. Dick. That’s what I’ve got to say about that.
Now, finally, as I wind this whole thing down, I’d like to point out that since the entire celestial calendar is a bunch of pseudoscience bullshit akin to auras, female orgasms, talking dogs, dungeons and dragons and dentistry, that you need not really worry about the fact that the cusps have shifted. Hell, this is your big chance to just straight up seize the sign you’ve always wanted. Who cares if it’s half way around that dumb circle grid thing from where you were born? It’s all complete bullshit anyway, so get out there and become a Cancer if you want to (because, let’s face it…who doesn’t want to be called ‘cancer’? it’s a great way to identify yourself [n.b. there’s probably something to the notion [that I’m just coming up with right now] that while people that are ‘cool’ signs like aquarius and leos and shit are probably a little more likely to be into the zodiac, people who are cancers probably put a lot less stock in it. Just a theory.
Anyway, I’m a Leo now, which means I’m brash and I just stop doing things when I get bored. I’m on to the next thing like a motherfuckin
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
more technical stuff
I want to write a song today. There’s something about hanging out with your kids all day that can make you feel kind of useless. Anyone that tells you otherwise is A) lying or B) hasn’t ever done it as a lifestyle thing. Spending one day with your kids is great. It’s highly rewarding. Spending every day with your kids with no sign of a break in sight is literally working at a 7 day a week job that starts the second you get out of bed and goes until about 830 or 9, where your bosses are never satisfied and often want you to do completely contradictory things, and then yell at you when you screw it up, as you inevitably do. Oh, and they follow you into the bathroom and are right there while you eat. It’s like that. AND, you don’t get paid, AND you feel like everyone has the following thoughts when they consider your ‘workday’: “eh, that dude’s not even working…loser” or “that shit’s easy” or “man, I wish I could just hang out with kids all day…I hate my fucking shitty job.”
Now, look, I know that taking care of kids isn’t working at a factory. Shit, there are several great moments with these monsters every day, and I feel really lucky to be able to hang with them all the time, especially when they’re small, but man, don’t go so far as to think that means that it’s not a little bit soul destroying in its own right. It is. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but when I start missing a lot of sleep, I start to feel helpless, and the desire to become a useful human being starts to overwhelm me (I know that raising kids is one of the most useful and important things I can do…this is what’s known in the business as ‘grapling with the irrational feelings’ bro) and in order to feel like a useful human being, I tend to write things, particularly songs. I thought I’d talk about that a little more today.
One thing I like to do when I’m writing songs is pick a band I’ve heard of but have never listened to, and try to write a song that approximates what I think they’d sound like. It’s a good exercise if you’re a songwriter, and it’ll send you down some interesting paths. Now, I don’t know about what you’ve listened to and what you haven’t, and this doesn’t even need to be an exercise where you pick obscure bands. Let’s say, for example (and this one’s probably pretty bad, but it should get you on the right track) that you’ve never really been a fan of the Clash. Sure, you like ‘em well enough. You’re familiar with London Calling and you’re familiar with Rock the Casbah, and maybe you know ‘lost in the Supermarket’ or something but otherwise, you’re not really a fan. You have nothing against the clash, you just don’t, you know, really know them.
Well, what would a b-side off the London Calling single sound like? How bout from the Sandanista/Rock the Casbah era? What if you’ve never heard At The Drive In, but you know Mars Volta and you know that they used to be in a spastic punk band. What would that sound like? OR, what if they’re your favorite band, and you know that a lot of people say that ATDI sounds like the listened to a lot of Rites Of Spring but you’ve never heard them…What would the band that influenced your favorite band sound like? What does Nomeansno sound like? All you’ve got to go on is the name and the weird picture of the cow on their record. Write a song that sounds like Nomeansno.
That’s one exercise I like to use, especially to switch shit up. Another thing I like to do is find songs that I really like, and take my own words, and without figuring out the chords, try to guess what the chords are and use my own words to approximate the same feel. This almost never winds up sounding even remotely like the song I’m trying to copy (as I don’t figure it out beforehand, leading to weird chord changes, and I’m using preexisting words, which lead to different melody rhythms). This is a good way to try out a groove or a feel that you’d normally not try. A variation on this is finding a melody in a great bridge, breakdown or outro, and basing your main verse or chorus melody on the single line of that non-repeating melody.
But again, we get stuck on words, eh? How do you get good words out? Last time I talked about really nuts n bolts shit re: lyrics, but this time, I’m just gonna throw out a few techniques for potentially shocking your brain into creating something. One thing I like to do is start with a single word and let stream of consciousness take over. For example when I was in the shower one day, I decided for some reason that I wanted to start a song with the word “leveling.” It’s not that interesting of a word, but I felt like it had lyrical potential because something that’s leveling is something that necessarily brings someone or something down to another plane where suddenly they’re equal to something they were once above. I thought about this word while I was in the shower and it came to sound pretty pathetic in my ears.
Leveling was something that really kind of kicked your dick into the dirt. So, in using the form of the word (the gerund) for stylistic purposes and the meaning that I’d latched onto, the next word when I sat down was ‘groveling’ (matched for its phonetic, formal and contextual similarities) and from there I went into ‘gravely’ and ‘groans’ because the alliteration appealed to me and the notion of pathetic whining implicating someone as an equal really seemed like an interesting twist on my initial take on ‘leveling.’ By that time, there was a mood that existed that enabled me to kind of bust out into more sentence-esque lyrics. But it all started as a very simple stream of consciousness exercise.
There’s nothing worse that you can do as a person that wants to be creative than wait until you’re feeling inspired. That’s when you find yourself in ruts. It’s when you have no fucking idea what to do, when you need to create from a wacky compulsion or because you’re on a strict regimen (both things that I’m under the yoke of, and not necessarily always happily, just BTW) and you’re forced to think about how to do things in a different way than you’re comfortable, that’s when shit gets cool and weird.
AND nothing motivates like success. When I finally crack through and do something interesting, usually after trying some desperate technique (I touched on this in another entry…switching up how and where you write is really productive. I used to always write with a pen when I wrote lyrics. For my newest record [4 demos soon to be done] I wrote a lot of the lyrics on the computer. This creates a whole different speed of working. With a pen, sometimes by the time I got to the end of a sentence, my mind will have thought of a different or better word to use than I was intending when I started the sentence. Sometimes, with a computer, I can more easily keep up with my racing thoughts and capture ideas that escape me when I’m using a pen. I do things as simple as switch from lined to unlined notebooks, or take my computer to the dining room table instead of my desk. These techniques are vastly more effective than they may sound) the results of being happy with my output (for a change) are so inspiring that another song almost certainly follows that’s similarly inspired. I wrote On With The Show and March of The Elephants on the same day. I wrote Cut It Up and Recovering the Opposable Thumb and Key to the City in a two day period (cut it up being the first. It was actually, to bring this full circle, my take on a song by some scumbag rocknroll band I’d never heard…I can’t remember who it was, but I remember that I wanted the song to sound like the kind of song that bikers listen to in their clubhouse while they bang prostitutes and do gross drugs….depraved. That’s not to say that’s how it ended up sounding…matching your intention and your results aren’t important AT ALL. What’s important is pushing yourself to do something interesting, and fuck, if it happens on accident, well, penicillin happened on accident. Booze happened on accident. Car tires happened on accident. There’s nothing wrong with fucking around until you stumble onto something. It’s the opposite that’s true. You’ll NEVER do anything worth a shit if you’re not doing something that you may very well fuck up terribly). If you write a song you like, that you really think is above and beyond, the worst thing you can do is stop. That momentum will very likely take you to bold new creative places.
Speaking of bold new places, I’m going to the gym.
Later. Fuckers.
Now, look, I know that taking care of kids isn’t working at a factory. Shit, there are several great moments with these monsters every day, and I feel really lucky to be able to hang with them all the time, especially when they’re small, but man, don’t go so far as to think that means that it’s not a little bit soul destroying in its own right. It is. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but when I start missing a lot of sleep, I start to feel helpless, and the desire to become a useful human being starts to overwhelm me (I know that raising kids is one of the most useful and important things I can do…this is what’s known in the business as ‘grapling with the irrational feelings’ bro) and in order to feel like a useful human being, I tend to write things, particularly songs. I thought I’d talk about that a little more today.
One thing I like to do when I’m writing songs is pick a band I’ve heard of but have never listened to, and try to write a song that approximates what I think they’d sound like. It’s a good exercise if you’re a songwriter, and it’ll send you down some interesting paths. Now, I don’t know about what you’ve listened to and what you haven’t, and this doesn’t even need to be an exercise where you pick obscure bands. Let’s say, for example (and this one’s probably pretty bad, but it should get you on the right track) that you’ve never really been a fan of the Clash. Sure, you like ‘em well enough. You’re familiar with London Calling and you’re familiar with Rock the Casbah, and maybe you know ‘lost in the Supermarket’ or something but otherwise, you’re not really a fan. You have nothing against the clash, you just don’t, you know, really know them.
Well, what would a b-side off the London Calling single sound like? How bout from the Sandanista/Rock the Casbah era? What if you’ve never heard At The Drive In, but you know Mars Volta and you know that they used to be in a spastic punk band. What would that sound like? OR, what if they’re your favorite band, and you know that a lot of people say that ATDI sounds like the listened to a lot of Rites Of Spring but you’ve never heard them…What would the band that influenced your favorite band sound like? What does Nomeansno sound like? All you’ve got to go on is the name and the weird picture of the cow on their record. Write a song that sounds like Nomeansno.
That’s one exercise I like to use, especially to switch shit up. Another thing I like to do is find songs that I really like, and take my own words, and without figuring out the chords, try to guess what the chords are and use my own words to approximate the same feel. This almost never winds up sounding even remotely like the song I’m trying to copy (as I don’t figure it out beforehand, leading to weird chord changes, and I’m using preexisting words, which lead to different melody rhythms). This is a good way to try out a groove or a feel that you’d normally not try. A variation on this is finding a melody in a great bridge, breakdown or outro, and basing your main verse or chorus melody on the single line of that non-repeating melody.
But again, we get stuck on words, eh? How do you get good words out? Last time I talked about really nuts n bolts shit re: lyrics, but this time, I’m just gonna throw out a few techniques for potentially shocking your brain into creating something. One thing I like to do is start with a single word and let stream of consciousness take over. For example when I was in the shower one day, I decided for some reason that I wanted to start a song with the word “leveling.” It’s not that interesting of a word, but I felt like it had lyrical potential because something that’s leveling is something that necessarily brings someone or something down to another plane where suddenly they’re equal to something they were once above. I thought about this word while I was in the shower and it came to sound pretty pathetic in my ears.
Leveling was something that really kind of kicked your dick into the dirt. So, in using the form of the word (the gerund) for stylistic purposes and the meaning that I’d latched onto, the next word when I sat down was ‘groveling’ (matched for its phonetic, formal and contextual similarities) and from there I went into ‘gravely’ and ‘groans’ because the alliteration appealed to me and the notion of pathetic whining implicating someone as an equal really seemed like an interesting twist on my initial take on ‘leveling.’ By that time, there was a mood that existed that enabled me to kind of bust out into more sentence-esque lyrics. But it all started as a very simple stream of consciousness exercise.
There’s nothing worse that you can do as a person that wants to be creative than wait until you’re feeling inspired. That’s when you find yourself in ruts. It’s when you have no fucking idea what to do, when you need to create from a wacky compulsion or because you’re on a strict regimen (both things that I’m under the yoke of, and not necessarily always happily, just BTW) and you’re forced to think about how to do things in a different way than you’re comfortable, that’s when shit gets cool and weird.
AND nothing motivates like success. When I finally crack through and do something interesting, usually after trying some desperate technique (I touched on this in another entry…switching up how and where you write is really productive. I used to always write with a pen when I wrote lyrics. For my newest record [4 demos soon to be done] I wrote a lot of the lyrics on the computer. This creates a whole different speed of working. With a pen, sometimes by the time I got to the end of a sentence, my mind will have thought of a different or better word to use than I was intending when I started the sentence. Sometimes, with a computer, I can more easily keep up with my racing thoughts and capture ideas that escape me when I’m using a pen. I do things as simple as switch from lined to unlined notebooks, or take my computer to the dining room table instead of my desk. These techniques are vastly more effective than they may sound) the results of being happy with my output (for a change) are so inspiring that another song almost certainly follows that’s similarly inspired. I wrote On With The Show and March of The Elephants on the same day. I wrote Cut It Up and Recovering the Opposable Thumb and Key to the City in a two day period (cut it up being the first. It was actually, to bring this full circle, my take on a song by some scumbag rocknroll band I’d never heard…I can’t remember who it was, but I remember that I wanted the song to sound like the kind of song that bikers listen to in their clubhouse while they bang prostitutes and do gross drugs….depraved. That’s not to say that’s how it ended up sounding…matching your intention and your results aren’t important AT ALL. What’s important is pushing yourself to do something interesting, and fuck, if it happens on accident, well, penicillin happened on accident. Booze happened on accident. Car tires happened on accident. There’s nothing wrong with fucking around until you stumble onto something. It’s the opposite that’s true. You’ll NEVER do anything worth a shit if you’re not doing something that you may very well fuck up terribly). If you write a song you like, that you really think is above and beyond, the worst thing you can do is stop. That momentum will very likely take you to bold new creative places.
Speaking of bold new places, I’m going to the gym.
Later. Fuckers.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
ah, fuck. Let's just get this out of the way right now.
I started to write a thing about that nut that shot up everyone in Arizona. It started out with me being sad and kind of generally really creeped out by his picture. Then it went into this whole thing about how he’s gonna spend a lot of time with dicks in him starting real soon, and then I was gonna segue into my real point which was about how all these people that are blaming the right, blaming the tea party and blaming Sarah Palin for inspiring violence with aggressive and divisive political rhetoric are complete fucking assholes.
There’s no doubt that political maneuvering is pretty ugly in this day and age, but there’s just no fucking way that a graphic with crosshairs, or someone making some statement about war or guns as a metaphor for a heated campaign inspired anyone to shoot anyone. That’s fucking nonsense. You know who kills people? I’ll tell you. There are two kinds of people that kill people: 1- people who are suddenly put in situations that they never thought they’d ever be in and react, and 2- complete fucking nutjobs. That’s pretty much it.
The first kind of person can be someone that comes home to find someone has broken into their house, or someone who’s walking down the street and gets mugged or someone who walks in and sees their wife blowing their best friend or something like that. The second one is pretty straightforward. Wacked out, crazy motherfuckers just want to kill. That’s how they come to be called ‘wacked out crazy motherfuckers.’ There’s really no way else to put it (now, sure there are people who are trained to kill, like people in the military, for example, but come on…that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, for one thing, and for another thing, soldiers fire something like 2000 rounds wildly for every single fatal bullet. Regular people, soldiers included, don’t tend to want to kill, even in war).
So, let’s take me as a perfect example of someone who’s not a nut. I’m not gonna go kill someone because someone tells me to. I’m definitely not gonna kill someone because someone says the word “gun” in a metaphorical context somewhere in my vicinity. I’m actually not gonna go kill someone, period. Now, let’s take this dude that ended up killing these people. He’s gonna kill. He’s gonna kill even though he’s not supposed to. He’s gonna kill even if no one ever EVER compares speaking your mind to shooting someone in earshot of him and even if no one ever refers to the people he winds up wanting to kill and/or killing as Hitler.
The evidence, besides the pile of bodies that he’s recently amassed, is in the interviews with everyone that knew him that are coming out now. Everyone knew this was a crazy sumbitch that was about to snap. BUT IT’S NO ONE’S FAULT THAT HE SNAPPED BUT HIS! To argue otherwise is completely retarded.
It’s that same rhetoric that implicates Judas Priest for those kids killing themselves. There’s nothing so fucking self important and shitty than saying “well, obviously, there are lots of stupid people out there just waiting to be told what to do by their heroes (be they Palin or Ice Cube or Danzig or Glen Beck) and well, we can’t have them saying this shit because people can get hurt.” THAT, folks is dangerous rhetoric. Not recapitulating an ideological disagreement as a war, not making up rhymes about ripping the heads off little girls or shooting a carful of dudes. Suggesting that regular people aren’t able to control their impulses and that if free speech is left to run unchecked, we’re all gonna be in grave danger, that’s fear mongering, man.
Now, I’m not gonna go calling anyone Hitler or anything, but…well, that’s a party line for dumbdumbs. And I don’t like Sarah Palin. I think she’s woefully unqualified to be telling anyone what to do or make policy, but you know what? I’m not gonna stoop to the level of blaming her for some crazy asshole’s behavior. She’s already enough of an asshole. I can blame her for the things she actually did and does and will do. This is a different thing. One guy’s at fault here, and he’s nothing but a fucking nut killing people. That’s all.
Okay, that’s that. Um…what else? The Holy Mess is a great band that you should all be listening to, and um felching is hilarious. Follow me on twitter @badsandwich and uh…what else? I dunno. This is exhausting. I’m gonna go shoot some speed into my nuts. You guys should do it too, unless you’re girls, in which case, shoot it into your tits. Okay, bye.
There’s no doubt that political maneuvering is pretty ugly in this day and age, but there’s just no fucking way that a graphic with crosshairs, or someone making some statement about war or guns as a metaphor for a heated campaign inspired anyone to shoot anyone. That’s fucking nonsense. You know who kills people? I’ll tell you. There are two kinds of people that kill people: 1- people who are suddenly put in situations that they never thought they’d ever be in and react, and 2- complete fucking nutjobs. That’s pretty much it.
The first kind of person can be someone that comes home to find someone has broken into their house, or someone who’s walking down the street and gets mugged or someone who walks in and sees their wife blowing their best friend or something like that. The second one is pretty straightforward. Wacked out, crazy motherfuckers just want to kill. That’s how they come to be called ‘wacked out crazy motherfuckers.’ There’s really no way else to put it (now, sure there are people who are trained to kill, like people in the military, for example, but come on…that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, for one thing, and for another thing, soldiers fire something like 2000 rounds wildly for every single fatal bullet. Regular people, soldiers included, don’t tend to want to kill, even in war).
So, let’s take me as a perfect example of someone who’s not a nut. I’m not gonna go kill someone because someone tells me to. I’m definitely not gonna kill someone because someone says the word “gun” in a metaphorical context somewhere in my vicinity. I’m actually not gonna go kill someone, period. Now, let’s take this dude that ended up killing these people. He’s gonna kill. He’s gonna kill even though he’s not supposed to. He’s gonna kill even if no one ever EVER compares speaking your mind to shooting someone in earshot of him and even if no one ever refers to the people he winds up wanting to kill and/or killing as Hitler.
The evidence, besides the pile of bodies that he’s recently amassed, is in the interviews with everyone that knew him that are coming out now. Everyone knew this was a crazy sumbitch that was about to snap. BUT IT’S NO ONE’S FAULT THAT HE SNAPPED BUT HIS! To argue otherwise is completely retarded.
It’s that same rhetoric that implicates Judas Priest for those kids killing themselves. There’s nothing so fucking self important and shitty than saying “well, obviously, there are lots of stupid people out there just waiting to be told what to do by their heroes (be they Palin or Ice Cube or Danzig or Glen Beck) and well, we can’t have them saying this shit because people can get hurt.” THAT, folks is dangerous rhetoric. Not recapitulating an ideological disagreement as a war, not making up rhymes about ripping the heads off little girls or shooting a carful of dudes. Suggesting that regular people aren’t able to control their impulses and that if free speech is left to run unchecked, we’re all gonna be in grave danger, that’s fear mongering, man.
Now, I’m not gonna go calling anyone Hitler or anything, but…well, that’s a party line for dumbdumbs. And I don’t like Sarah Palin. I think she’s woefully unqualified to be telling anyone what to do or make policy, but you know what? I’m not gonna stoop to the level of blaming her for some crazy asshole’s behavior. She’s already enough of an asshole. I can blame her for the things she actually did and does and will do. This is a different thing. One guy’s at fault here, and he’s nothing but a fucking nut killing people. That’s all.
Okay, that’s that. Um…what else? The Holy Mess is a great band that you should all be listening to, and um felching is hilarious. Follow me on twitter @badsandwich and uh…what else? I dunno. This is exhausting. I’m gonna go shoot some speed into my nuts. You guys should do it too, unless you’re girls, in which case, shoot it into your tits. Okay, bye.
Monday, January 10, 2011
....or smoking pot out of a bong...
It’s pretty weird to wake up one day and realize how old you are. For most of my life, and especially most of my life as a dude in a band, I was always kind of one of the babies. When my first band started touring, we were all between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. By the time I was in the band I’m in now, I was in my early twenties, but I was still very young for a guy who had been touring for a really long time. However, one day shit spun all out of control and suddenly I wound up in my mid thirties and I’m totally old. I really didn’t see it coming, but here it is. My friends are old, I’m old and (and this is the really weird part to me) the music that I like, or grew up with, is now old.
I mean, that’s crazy to me. music is obviously an important part of my life and it’s totally mindbending to realize that musicians that I think of as somewhat contemporary are (in music generations) generations removed from what’s happening now. I don’t think of the Queers (for example) as an old timey band, but their great album is fifteen or so years old. I don’t think of myself as having been in old bands, but fuck…I was touring when lots of the people that come see my band play were literally not even in kindergarten.
With that in mind, I’m gonna walk you people through a few records I grew up with, some records that I spun relentlessly. See, rock and roll is constantly evolving and the results are that lots of shit that was once seen as awesome or cutting edge ends up lame or forgotten or totally misunderstood. There are also bands (like the Misfits, for example) that are so fucking out there and ahead of their time that their records are every bit as mind blowing today as they were when they came out. This is sort of a very brief compendium of the music I listened to. Some of it’s super lame now, some of it’s awesome. It’s a chance to maybe check out something you missed, because lord knows that I didn’t have any guide to the old timey punk rock back when I was discovering stuff, and as a result, I can’t (for example) name a single song by the Germs (well, there’s that one about the panther…what’s that called? Who cares. It sucks. Sorry. True.). SO, check it out. Or don’t. Fuck. What do I care?
Bad Religion- No Control: This is the record that totally changed my life. It’s smart and bad ass and it just rips your face off for about 21 minutes and then it’s done. The song No Control is not even 2 minutes long and it’s as close to a perfect melodic punk song as you’ll ever find anywhere. It blows my mind that this record is considered to be ‘too old’ for some of the new BR fans. This is THE defining record of my life as a punk rocker and it’s something I still listen to.
Fifteen-Buzz This band has some shit that’s good, some stuff that’s pretty forgettable, whole albums that are embarrassingly terrible and a couple of songs, here and there, that are pretty much the greatest songs ever. This record, Buzz, is the best of the bunch by far. It’s dark and out of tune and it’s so packed with visceral emotion that the fact that no one can play or sing in time or in tune actually adds to the whole experience. This was the other record that changed my life. If bad religion taught me that music could be aggressive and smart and exist completely outside the mainstream and still be slick and polished and every bit as cool as whatever you’d see on MTV, Fifteen taught me that you don’t even need to be slick. There’s beauty in the ugliness of trying. I understand when people say that they think fifteen sucks, but those people generally haven’t sat down with Buzz, one of the best, best, best records in the Genre. Also a record I still listen to, and a crucial record in understanding where a whole generation of sloppy gruff bands got their ideas. Also, check out the songs Petroleum Distillation and End of the Summer from the Choice Of A New Generation album. Great shit.
The Queers- Love Songs For the Retarded- The queers are like a pop punk version of McDonalds. They crank out records like almost no other band. The songs are usually okay, and the lyrics are stupid and the whole thing reeks of really, truly not giving a shit. They have a record called “Beat Off” for fucks sake. Now, most shit by the queers, while decent, isn’t really worth revisiting. If you’ve heard one Queers record, you’ve kind of heard them all: decent pop punk that’s real catchy and typically just okay, not great, not terrible. There are, however two exceptions. Don’t Back Down is a really solid and enjoyable record and Love Songs For the Retarded is a straight up idiot masterpiece. It’s a kind of concept record where Joe Queer walks us through his life where his parents hate him, he’s a gleefully unemployed waste of space that has no interest in pulling it together at all, and instead wants to fart and get drunk and mock hippies. This is all set to 1950’s beach boys type melodies. The lyrics are completely retarded and reading them is like flipping through a mongo teenager’s trapper keeper, but man…it’s brilliant. It’s a real unique and bizarre concepty record that is too dumb to be as smart as it is.
Goo Goo Dolls Hold me Up- I’m dead serious when I say that this is the record that the Lawrence Arms entire program is based on. Listen to it and you’ll see. The bassist sings faster, raspier more aggressive songs and the guitar player sings the more melancholy or thoughtful jammers with a clean voice that dampens panties up to 2 miles away. I actually sing the way I do based on just trying to imitate the bass player dude’s voice when I was younger. Yes, they’ve gone on to be this toxic avenger version of Bon Jovi that makes the soundtrack to middle aged moms masturbating by candlelight in their jaccuzzis, but man…this record killed me when it came out. Great prince cover too, and I tend to hate shit like that.
Jawbreaker Unfun- I was 12 and standing in Reckless Records looking for some new music when I first heard this record. The clerk was playing it over the system there and she told me that they’d be coming through and playing in the store 2 days later. That was my first concert. I was twelve, and one of 6 people watching this band playing in a record store. The show, I don’t remember if it was actually good or if I was just so psyched to see something so cool happening (I was pretty small and going to a concert was about as kick ass as things had gotten up to that point [I wouldn’t touch breasts for another year]) but the record that they were touring on, Unfun, became a staple of mine and my friends. We eventually got all the Jawbreaker records and watched them get huge and went to almost all of their Chicago shows. The thing is, however, I never loved Jawbreaker as much as everyone out there always assumed I did, and this made me a little bit resentful of the band, which is highly illogical, but what are you gonna do? While we were starting out, we were getting written up as a bad, third tier Jawbreaker clone band. The thing is, we were, if you’ll look above, just ripping off the Goo Goo Dolls and trying to do something a little bit more reckless than Jawbreaker, who can be kind of stuffy and foppish at times. I’ve read some interviews with Blake of Jawbreaker where he says some stuff that really bums me out (I’m not gonna get into it here, but it seems like we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things) and the ultimate results of all this are that I’m always really hesitant to throw too much praise this bands direction. The fact is, though, that I was pretty fucking obsessed with Unfun and had more than a passing fascination with all the subsequent albums. 24 hour revenge therapy hasn’t aged particularly well to me. I kind of think it’s overwrought, self important and stuck in the 90’s but at the time I thought it was absolutely fucking brilliant. Unfun, however, was always just a rocking good time, beginning to end and it’s still good, even if you can’t understand a single fucking lyric besides “I want you” .
Okay, that’s enough for now. I gotta get my shit together. Happy trails!
I mean, that’s crazy to me. music is obviously an important part of my life and it’s totally mindbending to realize that musicians that I think of as somewhat contemporary are (in music generations) generations removed from what’s happening now. I don’t think of the Queers (for example) as an old timey band, but their great album is fifteen or so years old. I don’t think of myself as having been in old bands, but fuck…I was touring when lots of the people that come see my band play were literally not even in kindergarten.
With that in mind, I’m gonna walk you people through a few records I grew up with, some records that I spun relentlessly. See, rock and roll is constantly evolving and the results are that lots of shit that was once seen as awesome or cutting edge ends up lame or forgotten or totally misunderstood. There are also bands (like the Misfits, for example) that are so fucking out there and ahead of their time that their records are every bit as mind blowing today as they were when they came out. This is sort of a very brief compendium of the music I listened to. Some of it’s super lame now, some of it’s awesome. It’s a chance to maybe check out something you missed, because lord knows that I didn’t have any guide to the old timey punk rock back when I was discovering stuff, and as a result, I can’t (for example) name a single song by the Germs (well, there’s that one about the panther…what’s that called? Who cares. It sucks. Sorry. True.). SO, check it out. Or don’t. Fuck. What do I care?
Bad Religion- No Control: This is the record that totally changed my life. It’s smart and bad ass and it just rips your face off for about 21 minutes and then it’s done. The song No Control is not even 2 minutes long and it’s as close to a perfect melodic punk song as you’ll ever find anywhere. It blows my mind that this record is considered to be ‘too old’ for some of the new BR fans. This is THE defining record of my life as a punk rocker and it’s something I still listen to.
Fifteen-Buzz This band has some shit that’s good, some stuff that’s pretty forgettable, whole albums that are embarrassingly terrible and a couple of songs, here and there, that are pretty much the greatest songs ever. This record, Buzz, is the best of the bunch by far. It’s dark and out of tune and it’s so packed with visceral emotion that the fact that no one can play or sing in time or in tune actually adds to the whole experience. This was the other record that changed my life. If bad religion taught me that music could be aggressive and smart and exist completely outside the mainstream and still be slick and polished and every bit as cool as whatever you’d see on MTV, Fifteen taught me that you don’t even need to be slick. There’s beauty in the ugliness of trying. I understand when people say that they think fifteen sucks, but those people generally haven’t sat down with Buzz, one of the best, best, best records in the Genre. Also a record I still listen to, and a crucial record in understanding where a whole generation of sloppy gruff bands got their ideas. Also, check out the songs Petroleum Distillation and End of the Summer from the Choice Of A New Generation album. Great shit.
The Queers- Love Songs For the Retarded- The queers are like a pop punk version of McDonalds. They crank out records like almost no other band. The songs are usually okay, and the lyrics are stupid and the whole thing reeks of really, truly not giving a shit. They have a record called “Beat Off” for fucks sake. Now, most shit by the queers, while decent, isn’t really worth revisiting. If you’ve heard one Queers record, you’ve kind of heard them all: decent pop punk that’s real catchy and typically just okay, not great, not terrible. There are, however two exceptions. Don’t Back Down is a really solid and enjoyable record and Love Songs For the Retarded is a straight up idiot masterpiece. It’s a kind of concept record where Joe Queer walks us through his life where his parents hate him, he’s a gleefully unemployed waste of space that has no interest in pulling it together at all, and instead wants to fart and get drunk and mock hippies. This is all set to 1950’s beach boys type melodies. The lyrics are completely retarded and reading them is like flipping through a mongo teenager’s trapper keeper, but man…it’s brilliant. It’s a real unique and bizarre concepty record that is too dumb to be as smart as it is.
Goo Goo Dolls Hold me Up- I’m dead serious when I say that this is the record that the Lawrence Arms entire program is based on. Listen to it and you’ll see. The bassist sings faster, raspier more aggressive songs and the guitar player sings the more melancholy or thoughtful jammers with a clean voice that dampens panties up to 2 miles away. I actually sing the way I do based on just trying to imitate the bass player dude’s voice when I was younger. Yes, they’ve gone on to be this toxic avenger version of Bon Jovi that makes the soundtrack to middle aged moms masturbating by candlelight in their jaccuzzis, but man…this record killed me when it came out. Great prince cover too, and I tend to hate shit like that.
Jawbreaker Unfun- I was 12 and standing in Reckless Records looking for some new music when I first heard this record. The clerk was playing it over the system there and she told me that they’d be coming through and playing in the store 2 days later. That was my first concert. I was twelve, and one of 6 people watching this band playing in a record store. The show, I don’t remember if it was actually good or if I was just so psyched to see something so cool happening (I was pretty small and going to a concert was about as kick ass as things had gotten up to that point [I wouldn’t touch breasts for another year]) but the record that they were touring on, Unfun, became a staple of mine and my friends. We eventually got all the Jawbreaker records and watched them get huge and went to almost all of their Chicago shows. The thing is, however, I never loved Jawbreaker as much as everyone out there always assumed I did, and this made me a little bit resentful of the band, which is highly illogical, but what are you gonna do? While we were starting out, we were getting written up as a bad, third tier Jawbreaker clone band. The thing is, we were, if you’ll look above, just ripping off the Goo Goo Dolls and trying to do something a little bit more reckless than Jawbreaker, who can be kind of stuffy and foppish at times. I’ve read some interviews with Blake of Jawbreaker where he says some stuff that really bums me out (I’m not gonna get into it here, but it seems like we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things) and the ultimate results of all this are that I’m always really hesitant to throw too much praise this bands direction. The fact is, though, that I was pretty fucking obsessed with Unfun and had more than a passing fascination with all the subsequent albums. 24 hour revenge therapy hasn’t aged particularly well to me. I kind of think it’s overwrought, self important and stuck in the 90’s but at the time I thought it was absolutely fucking brilliant. Unfun, however, was always just a rocking good time, beginning to end and it’s still good, even if you can’t understand a single fucking lyric besides “I want you” .
Okay, that’s enough for now. I gotta get my shit together. Happy trails!
Friday, January 7, 2011
I PEEEEEEEEEEEED!
So, I’m in the process of potty training a human male toddler and it’s pretty amusing. He’s got this potty set up in the living room so he can just pee and keep watching television (because, in the course of my research, it’s been revealed to me that the number one thing that keeps these monsters from focusing on using the potty is being super distracted [like, by a favorite show, for example] and the result you end up with is lots of little wet pants and stained couches) and every time he pees successfully, he gets a mini nutter butter cookie.
Generally, he’s an ace at the pissing, but the shitting is a bit more elusive (and by elusive, I mean, he shits his pants constantly and he’s getting big and he eats regular person food and the whole thing is almost unspeakably gross. Have YOU ever washed a full sized human shit log out of a pair of tiny underoos in your bathroom sink? It’s terrible. There’s just no way to avoid doing so many things that you’d really rather not do…it’s gross) and as a result, he gets more than a cookie when he shits into the potty (it should be noted at this point that I’m not using the term ‘potty’ as some sort of sweet euphemism for crapper, it’s actually just a little toilet shaped dish situation designed for little people. It would be wrong to call it a toilet and I don’t know what else to call it. Believe me, using the term ‘potty’ in a conversation among adults makes me as uncomfortable as it makes you).
In fact, when the boy shits in the potty, he gets a lollipop, which he refers to as a ‘pop.’ It’s a big deal. Pops are his very favorite form of earth matter that exists and will probably remain so until he discovers the wonder of burritos and pussy (in that order, most likely), although, until very recently, the notion of having to shit, hitting the potty and getting a pop as a result haven’t quite connected with him. But yesterday, that all changed.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented feat of shitting the boy shit four times(!) and every time, he used either a toilet or his TV potty and the results were dual: 1) he got 4 pops (a fucking KILLING on the local pop-eating circuit) and 2) he realized the connection between accuracy-crapping and candy. And the subsequent behavior today has been pretty amazing.
Now, to digress a bit. Yesterday I read an article about the production of testosterone in women and how when that slows (very often due to hormonal birth control) it leads to dry beavers and decreased sexdrive (two things that can be totally related [ie, “I’m not even remotely horny and you’re bumming me out so my clam is dusty”] but need not be, and in this case we’re talking about two uniquely different physical results of a lack of testosterone in a female: dryness, and on another note, lack of desire to bone, blow, put things in one’s ass etc.). Of course, too much testosterone in women gives em beards and headaches and zits and all sorts of shit. It’s a delicate balance, which I think has a lot to do with why there’s not some sort of pill or something that makes women horny (because, let’s face it, that’d really clock in above all the Viagra and propecia and ipads and world peace and .3% unemployment and everything else on earth in terms of things that humanity wants to see, wouldn’t it?) but with men, it’s way different.
We’re just gross horniness tanks, fuelled by organs that make testosterone by the bucketload. We get zits and beards and go bald and all that and you know what? Fuck it. Who cares? Anything around here to fuck? Anything at all? Attractive sheep? Dude that looks like a lady? Jelly sandwich? Hole in a bit of fibrous insulation? Anything? Men are just walking around with the desire to constantly bone coursing through their veins. And Unlike women, who exist through hormonal changes which will change them from cock starved 19 yr olds blowing a room full of dudes to a 40 year old mom that would rather hold a log of shit in her hand then fuck with the lights on, dudes have no point where the madness stops or even really slows down all THAT much. They just learn to live with it.
So what’s my point? And what does this have to do with my son learning to shit into the potty? Okay, when I was a teenager, as a result of my veins coursing with pure testosterone, the things I’d do to try and get laid were ridiculous. I’d tell my mom I was going to the library and then hop on two trains and go a hundred miles out of Chicago to sit on some girl’s bed and listen to her talk about pearl jam and her dumb friends’ stupid party. I’d forego sleep, education, leisure time, important shit…I’d put myself in physical peril. I’d drive a car with no brakes, I’d sneak out and hitchhike in the middle of the night. I’d, in short, do anything at all to get to a point where someone may POSSIBLY pull down their panties on my behalf. And it almost never worked out, but the possibility was enough. That prize was worth all the risk of whatever nightmarish fate may have befallen me, be it grounding, expulsion, failure, gross manglement, whatever.
Well, as I sit here and look at my kid, I’m reminded of that singleminded sense of purpose. In the pursuit of (lolli)pops, he’s decided that he’s just gonna sit on the potty all day and attempt to squeeze out turds. He’s got his dinosaurs around him and he’s just happy as a clam, sitting there, trying with every fiber of his little being, to make fiber shoot from his little being so I’ll reward him with a pop. It’s not enough to sit on the couch, or play on the ground near the potty. He’s coiled and ready. I don’t think testosterone is really playing a role, but man…he’s in the grip of something mighty, that’s for sure.
Was this weird? Have a good weekend.
Generally, he’s an ace at the pissing, but the shitting is a bit more elusive (and by elusive, I mean, he shits his pants constantly and he’s getting big and he eats regular person food and the whole thing is almost unspeakably gross. Have YOU ever washed a full sized human shit log out of a pair of tiny underoos in your bathroom sink? It’s terrible. There’s just no way to avoid doing so many things that you’d really rather not do…it’s gross) and as a result, he gets more than a cookie when he shits into the potty (it should be noted at this point that I’m not using the term ‘potty’ as some sort of sweet euphemism for crapper, it’s actually just a little toilet shaped dish situation designed for little people. It would be wrong to call it a toilet and I don’t know what else to call it. Believe me, using the term ‘potty’ in a conversation among adults makes me as uncomfortable as it makes you).
In fact, when the boy shits in the potty, he gets a lollipop, which he refers to as a ‘pop.’ It’s a big deal. Pops are his very favorite form of earth matter that exists and will probably remain so until he discovers the wonder of burritos and pussy (in that order, most likely), although, until very recently, the notion of having to shit, hitting the potty and getting a pop as a result haven’t quite connected with him. But yesterday, that all changed.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented feat of shitting the boy shit four times(!) and every time, he used either a toilet or his TV potty and the results were dual: 1) he got 4 pops (a fucking KILLING on the local pop-eating circuit) and 2) he realized the connection between accuracy-crapping and candy. And the subsequent behavior today has been pretty amazing.
Now, to digress a bit. Yesterday I read an article about the production of testosterone in women and how when that slows (very often due to hormonal birth control) it leads to dry beavers and decreased sexdrive (two things that can be totally related [ie, “I’m not even remotely horny and you’re bumming me out so my clam is dusty”] but need not be, and in this case we’re talking about two uniquely different physical results of a lack of testosterone in a female: dryness, and on another note, lack of desire to bone, blow, put things in one’s ass etc.). Of course, too much testosterone in women gives em beards and headaches and zits and all sorts of shit. It’s a delicate balance, which I think has a lot to do with why there’s not some sort of pill or something that makes women horny (because, let’s face it, that’d really clock in above all the Viagra and propecia and ipads and world peace and .3% unemployment and everything else on earth in terms of things that humanity wants to see, wouldn’t it?) but with men, it’s way different.
We’re just gross horniness tanks, fuelled by organs that make testosterone by the bucketload. We get zits and beards and go bald and all that and you know what? Fuck it. Who cares? Anything around here to fuck? Anything at all? Attractive sheep? Dude that looks like a lady? Jelly sandwich? Hole in a bit of fibrous insulation? Anything? Men are just walking around with the desire to constantly bone coursing through their veins. And Unlike women, who exist through hormonal changes which will change them from cock starved 19 yr olds blowing a room full of dudes to a 40 year old mom that would rather hold a log of shit in her hand then fuck with the lights on, dudes have no point where the madness stops or even really slows down all THAT much. They just learn to live with it.
So what’s my point? And what does this have to do with my son learning to shit into the potty? Okay, when I was a teenager, as a result of my veins coursing with pure testosterone, the things I’d do to try and get laid were ridiculous. I’d tell my mom I was going to the library and then hop on two trains and go a hundred miles out of Chicago to sit on some girl’s bed and listen to her talk about pearl jam and her dumb friends’ stupid party. I’d forego sleep, education, leisure time, important shit…I’d put myself in physical peril. I’d drive a car with no brakes, I’d sneak out and hitchhike in the middle of the night. I’d, in short, do anything at all to get to a point where someone may POSSIBLY pull down their panties on my behalf. And it almost never worked out, but the possibility was enough. That prize was worth all the risk of whatever nightmarish fate may have befallen me, be it grounding, expulsion, failure, gross manglement, whatever.
Well, as I sit here and look at my kid, I’m reminded of that singleminded sense of purpose. In the pursuit of (lolli)pops, he’s decided that he’s just gonna sit on the potty all day and attempt to squeeze out turds. He’s got his dinosaurs around him and he’s just happy as a clam, sitting there, trying with every fiber of his little being, to make fiber shoot from his little being so I’ll reward him with a pop. It’s not enough to sit on the couch, or play on the ground near the potty. He’s coiled and ready. I don’t think testosterone is really playing a role, but man…he’s in the grip of something mighty, that’s for sure.
Was this weird? Have a good weekend.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
It's the end of the Year as We Know It (part 2) 2010 edition!
Okay, as promised, here we are at part two of the greatest and most definitive list ever compiled with regards to 2010. I’m not gonna waste your time with an intro, as I know you’re all slathering at the bit like a bunch of horny horses with rabies looking at a horse-pussy-shaped salt lick, so here goes:
Best gay dance hit that sucks but with a little tweaking would be an awesome rock song- Raise Your Glass by Pink.
Okay, this song is so painfully lame that it almost causes me to double over. You know how the government has developed like, super measles and extra deadly ebola, or how because of our obsession with antibiotics, gonorrhea can kill you now? Um…no. Not quite the right analogy…how bout this: in food labs, scientists develop the essence of flavors, they distill it down to just a liquid that they can drop on something and make it taste and smell exactly like something else. This is a common practice for fast food places that serve you plastic food in order to make it taste like real food. In Schlosser’s super awesome (highly sensationalist) muckraking masterpiece “Fast Food Nation” he talks about this and there’s one particularly memorable passage where he mentions that the essence of green pepper is so strong that a single drop will completely flavor six or so Olympic pools worth of water. That’s what this Pink song is like, but instead of green pepper flavor, it’s lame dorkiness. It’s the most concentrated, distilled, essence of lame that’s ever been turned into soundwaves. Ever.
It’s pointless to even examine any one line because every single sentence and phrase in the song is so cringe inducingly horrendous that to isolate any one is to deny the almost sublime shittiness of all the rest of the lyrics. The chorus, however, maybe actually deserves special notice, because unlike the rest of the song, which is simply mindbendingly wack adolescent wordplay with that highly annoying ‘sass’ that has become Pink’s trademark, the chorus is literally BEGGING us, the audience, to choose this song as our anthem. It says ‘c’mon and raise your glass’ but it may as well be saying “please! Pretty please raise your glass and be partying and sing along and love this song and by extension, me! PLEASE!!!!”
And folks, that sucks in a way that shit like “if you’re too school for cool” just can’t even compete with, no matter how fucking stupid it is.
BUT!!!!!! And this is significant: The melodies in that song are fucking AWESOME. The way the verse builds, the way it coils up before the chorus, the all important third line of the chorus melody alteration, the sparkling, beautiful notes in the bridge that decays to a single a cappella line, this shit is good. It leaves me with one conclusion: Namely, that someone who really knows how to write songs wrote all the music and melodies and then Pink came in and cavemanned the words. What’s the end result? Something that sucks but that you don’t turn off. Something that you want to hum along with, because singing along with it forces you to articulate things too stupid to ever come out of your mouth.
So, here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna take that dumb song’s melodies and make it into a cool song. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe you should. It’s SO close to being a great song, but as it stands now, it makes me want to beat up nerds, not drink. And that’s saying something, as I’m a heavy drinking nerd.
Best Website- Bad Sandwich Chronicles
For the third year in a row, this mustard and bloody diarrhea flavored interweb page has run away with this highly esteemed and important honor. You need dick jokes? Introspection? A long rambling near-nonsensical essay about a completely irrelevant pop song? Well, BSC is your place. Somebody should really give the genius who writes that website some money and a big, fancy contract to write a book, or spruce up their dumb writing. That’s what someone should do, all right.
Best Blog- Guess Her Muff
In this day and age, you can find almost anything on the internet. Fuck, someone just tweeted me a link to a fucking forum where people go on road trips with their fuck dolls and post photos of their fuck dolls (for example) lounging at the pool with some other wealthy masturbator’s fuck dolls. So there you go. There’s nothing left. Officially.
However, in the midsts of this cyber hellscape of depravity, there’s a shiny beacon, a place where the simple pleasures of seeing a woman clothed, and then seeing her pussy are highlighted. They aren’t the fanciest place on the internet. They’re doing something very simple and they’re doing a hell of a job. Think of it as the In N Out Burger of internet porn.
Best place to send pictures of your tits/beaver/balls-Bad Sandwich Chronicles
Come on. Did this even need to be said? Have I EVER betrayed any of your trust and posted the pics of your clams/tits/dicks that I get? Of course not. That would be gauche. So, so very gauche. So. Very.
Best drug- Alcohol
(to the tune of ‘The facts of Life’ theme song) It makes you sweat, it makes you fart it tears your fam-i-ly apart, it’s alcohol, and you drank it all. Your liver dies your nose explodes you get sores on your ass and choad it’s alcohol, you woke up in the hall. Cuz the world never seems to be li-vin up to your dreams suddenly you’re drinking bleach and no one’s gonna tell you what to do! Doo-oo-oo-oo-oo.
Best Movie- Um…did Avatar come out this year? No? Fuck. Well…I didn’t see any movies this year except for pornography, but that Lily Labeau seems like a nice girl. How bout something with her in it?
Year end list of the year (highly myopic. The following little essay is for true, die hard regular readers only)- Now, this was a close one, and almost always, Bad Sandwich Chronicles wins this one, but this year things are a little different. As you can see, this isn’t “Best” of the year this time. It’s just the list ‘of the year’, much in the same way Time does the person of the year and it’s been Hitler, and it’s been Mark Zuckerberg (a billionaire jew who spins the loom that weaves the fabric of society together to a degree that you’ve gotta imagine it would make Hitler pretty nervous if he was still alive [and, well…good. Because {and this is a highly controversial statement, folks} fuck Hitler. I mean, am I right? Woo. That felt good.]) and it doesn’t mean that they’re endorsing anyone or anything. It’s just a commentary on the person that seems to have stirred up the most shit for the year. Well, this year the year end list of the year goes to the guy in the sock drawer who did the list of “top Faggots” or whatever the fuck it was just before Christmas.
That’s right.
And here’s why: Firstly, there’s nothing quite so great as a community based awards ceremony. Sure, this one was mean spirited as shit, but hey, you know what? The world is mean spirited and the interworld (my own, soon to be trademarked term for the cybersphere [ooh, I’m doing that one too…] is even meaner than the real world, which is saying a lot. Now, this guy (who’s funny, but mean, and [in what I think may be a stroke of genius, but which is vastly more probably just a showcase of the weakness of his source material when spread too thin,] he’s wildly uneven in terms of quality output; something he seems to be especially unforgiving about with regards to some of the other posters) put out a list where he called a bunch of the people who post in the comment section here ‘faggots’ and gave each person a brief description regarding why they are such faggots.
He (and this guy has to be a he) then gave an ‘honorable mention’ to another group of people, who he purports to like but also mostly insulted, which, well…that’s pretty amusing. He left out my personal favorite poster (the black professor that loves little Richard) but otherwise, he did a decent job of touching on most of the regular posters down in the sock drawer and well, I appreciated the effort to create some sort of compendium of the community’s populace, even if it was kind of mean. I figured, hell, the people that read this shit are tough sumbitches. They can take a little ribbing from an anonymous internet dildo, can they not?
Sadly, the answer seems to be no. Since our friend, who’s handle suggests that he’s the ghost of the dead brother of the guy that played the one young alien that’s actually old, but who was also in inception (which uh…there’s that virtual visor guy who also seems inspired by Inception. Is there something to that? Who cares?) posted his list, the people who once posted here have vanished, scattered into the shadows like mice, or non-cannibals in a post apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy situation. There’s been no retaliation (an admittedly stupid idea, as internet fighting is like two people with Down Syndrome fighting [regardless of which side wins, both are retarded]), no sense of coming together, no witty response. Nothing. At. All. Just an immediate ‘hey! That’s mean’ and then silence. Dusty, tumbleweed ridden silence. It’s amazing. Not great. Not terrible. Simply and literally amazing.
Have you ever heard the expression “If we stop doing (blank) the terrorists win”? Probably not. It’s not really something that people just bandy about in America to justify doing any shitty, selfish thing that they want to do nowadays.
Anyway, here’s what it means: When someone’s a dick to you, and you let it change your life, you become the very definition of what they think you are: weak, cowardly and willing to sacrifice doing the things you want to do as so not to be further tormented. That, in essence is when people who torment you go “wow. That worked. They WERE soft, ineffectual pussies hiding behind their precious soft, easy lifestyles. This tormenting people shit is all right!” That’s quite a precedent to set. Is that what you want, sock drawer? Is it?
So yeah. He wins. He wins the award for list of the year. Good on ya, ghost of the brother of the guy who played the alien in the show with Jon Lithgow (highly talented, criminally underrated). You seem to have easily and handily vanquished your foes.
But for the record, I like those kids.
Okay, that’s it, folks. Come back next year for more crazy lists. Oh, and tomorrow we’ll get back to the regular program where I pretend to be outraged about something and then call someone a wiener-flosser or something.
xoxo
Best gay dance hit that sucks but with a little tweaking would be an awesome rock song- Raise Your Glass by Pink.
Okay, this song is so painfully lame that it almost causes me to double over. You know how the government has developed like, super measles and extra deadly ebola, or how because of our obsession with antibiotics, gonorrhea can kill you now? Um…no. Not quite the right analogy…how bout this: in food labs, scientists develop the essence of flavors, they distill it down to just a liquid that they can drop on something and make it taste and smell exactly like something else. This is a common practice for fast food places that serve you plastic food in order to make it taste like real food. In Schlosser’s super awesome (highly sensationalist) muckraking masterpiece “Fast Food Nation” he talks about this and there’s one particularly memorable passage where he mentions that the essence of green pepper is so strong that a single drop will completely flavor six or so Olympic pools worth of water. That’s what this Pink song is like, but instead of green pepper flavor, it’s lame dorkiness. It’s the most concentrated, distilled, essence of lame that’s ever been turned into soundwaves. Ever.
It’s pointless to even examine any one line because every single sentence and phrase in the song is so cringe inducingly horrendous that to isolate any one is to deny the almost sublime shittiness of all the rest of the lyrics. The chorus, however, maybe actually deserves special notice, because unlike the rest of the song, which is simply mindbendingly wack adolescent wordplay with that highly annoying ‘sass’ that has become Pink’s trademark, the chorus is literally BEGGING us, the audience, to choose this song as our anthem. It says ‘c’mon and raise your glass’ but it may as well be saying “please! Pretty please raise your glass and be partying and sing along and love this song and by extension, me! PLEASE!!!!”
And folks, that sucks in a way that shit like “if you’re too school for cool” just can’t even compete with, no matter how fucking stupid it is.
BUT!!!!!! And this is significant: The melodies in that song are fucking AWESOME. The way the verse builds, the way it coils up before the chorus, the all important third line of the chorus melody alteration, the sparkling, beautiful notes in the bridge that decays to a single a cappella line, this shit is good. It leaves me with one conclusion: Namely, that someone who really knows how to write songs wrote all the music and melodies and then Pink came in and cavemanned the words. What’s the end result? Something that sucks but that you don’t turn off. Something that you want to hum along with, because singing along with it forces you to articulate things too stupid to ever come out of your mouth.
So, here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna take that dumb song’s melodies and make it into a cool song. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe you should. It’s SO close to being a great song, but as it stands now, it makes me want to beat up nerds, not drink. And that’s saying something, as I’m a heavy drinking nerd.
Best Website- Bad Sandwich Chronicles
For the third year in a row, this mustard and bloody diarrhea flavored interweb page has run away with this highly esteemed and important honor. You need dick jokes? Introspection? A long rambling near-nonsensical essay about a completely irrelevant pop song? Well, BSC is your place. Somebody should really give the genius who writes that website some money and a big, fancy contract to write a book, or spruce up their dumb writing. That’s what someone should do, all right.
Best Blog- Guess Her Muff
In this day and age, you can find almost anything on the internet. Fuck, someone just tweeted me a link to a fucking forum where people go on road trips with their fuck dolls and post photos of their fuck dolls (for example) lounging at the pool with some other wealthy masturbator’s fuck dolls. So there you go. There’s nothing left. Officially.
However, in the midsts of this cyber hellscape of depravity, there’s a shiny beacon, a place where the simple pleasures of seeing a woman clothed, and then seeing her pussy are highlighted. They aren’t the fanciest place on the internet. They’re doing something very simple and they’re doing a hell of a job. Think of it as the In N Out Burger of internet porn.
Best place to send pictures of your tits/beaver/balls-Bad Sandwich Chronicles
Come on. Did this even need to be said? Have I EVER betrayed any of your trust and posted the pics of your clams/tits/dicks that I get? Of course not. That would be gauche. So, so very gauche. So. Very.
Best drug- Alcohol
(to the tune of ‘The facts of Life’ theme song) It makes you sweat, it makes you fart it tears your fam-i-ly apart, it’s alcohol, and you drank it all. Your liver dies your nose explodes you get sores on your ass and choad it’s alcohol, you woke up in the hall. Cuz the world never seems to be li-vin up to your dreams suddenly you’re drinking bleach and no one’s gonna tell you what to do! Doo-oo-oo-oo-oo.
Best Movie- Um…did Avatar come out this year? No? Fuck. Well…I didn’t see any movies this year except for pornography, but that Lily Labeau seems like a nice girl. How bout something with her in it?
Year end list of the year (highly myopic. The following little essay is for true, die hard regular readers only)- Now, this was a close one, and almost always, Bad Sandwich Chronicles wins this one, but this year things are a little different. As you can see, this isn’t “Best” of the year this time. It’s just the list ‘of the year’, much in the same way Time does the person of the year and it’s been Hitler, and it’s been Mark Zuckerberg (a billionaire jew who spins the loom that weaves the fabric of society together to a degree that you’ve gotta imagine it would make Hitler pretty nervous if he was still alive [and, well…good. Because {and this is a highly controversial statement, folks} fuck Hitler. I mean, am I right? Woo. That felt good.]) and it doesn’t mean that they’re endorsing anyone or anything. It’s just a commentary on the person that seems to have stirred up the most shit for the year. Well, this year the year end list of the year goes to the guy in the sock drawer who did the list of “top Faggots” or whatever the fuck it was just before Christmas.
That’s right.
And here’s why: Firstly, there’s nothing quite so great as a community based awards ceremony. Sure, this one was mean spirited as shit, but hey, you know what? The world is mean spirited and the interworld (my own, soon to be trademarked term for the cybersphere [ooh, I’m doing that one too…] is even meaner than the real world, which is saying a lot. Now, this guy (who’s funny, but mean, and [in what I think may be a stroke of genius, but which is vastly more probably just a showcase of the weakness of his source material when spread too thin,] he’s wildly uneven in terms of quality output; something he seems to be especially unforgiving about with regards to some of the other posters) put out a list where he called a bunch of the people who post in the comment section here ‘faggots’ and gave each person a brief description regarding why they are such faggots.
He (and this guy has to be a he) then gave an ‘honorable mention’ to another group of people, who he purports to like but also mostly insulted, which, well…that’s pretty amusing. He left out my personal favorite poster (the black professor that loves little Richard) but otherwise, he did a decent job of touching on most of the regular posters down in the sock drawer and well, I appreciated the effort to create some sort of compendium of the community’s populace, even if it was kind of mean. I figured, hell, the people that read this shit are tough sumbitches. They can take a little ribbing from an anonymous internet dildo, can they not?
Sadly, the answer seems to be no. Since our friend, who’s handle suggests that he’s the ghost of the dead brother of the guy that played the one young alien that’s actually old, but who was also in inception (which uh…there’s that virtual visor guy who also seems inspired by Inception. Is there something to that? Who cares?) posted his list, the people who once posted here have vanished, scattered into the shadows like mice, or non-cannibals in a post apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy situation. There’s been no retaliation (an admittedly stupid idea, as internet fighting is like two people with Down Syndrome fighting [regardless of which side wins, both are retarded]), no sense of coming together, no witty response. Nothing. At. All. Just an immediate ‘hey! That’s mean’ and then silence. Dusty, tumbleweed ridden silence. It’s amazing. Not great. Not terrible. Simply and literally amazing.
Have you ever heard the expression “If we stop doing (blank) the terrorists win”? Probably not. It’s not really something that people just bandy about in America to justify doing any shitty, selfish thing that they want to do nowadays.
Anyway, here’s what it means: When someone’s a dick to you, and you let it change your life, you become the very definition of what they think you are: weak, cowardly and willing to sacrifice doing the things you want to do as so not to be further tormented. That, in essence is when people who torment you go “wow. That worked. They WERE soft, ineffectual pussies hiding behind their precious soft, easy lifestyles. This tormenting people shit is all right!” That’s quite a precedent to set. Is that what you want, sock drawer? Is it?
So yeah. He wins. He wins the award for list of the year. Good on ya, ghost of the brother of the guy who played the alien in the show with Jon Lithgow (highly talented, criminally underrated). You seem to have easily and handily vanquished your foes.
But for the record, I like those kids.
Okay, that’s it, folks. Come back next year for more crazy lists. Oh, and tomorrow we’ll get back to the regular program where I pretend to be outraged about something and then call someone a wiener-flosser or something.
xoxo
Monday, January 3, 2011
It's the end of the Year as We Know It (part 1) 2010 edition!
Okay, so welcome to 2011. So far, I’ve gotta give the new year a big thumbs up. Sure, I feel like a sack of crap due to sitting around and drinking beer and eating chicken wings for the last 2 weeks, but you know what? I’m already in my gym clothes, I had a good night of sleep and I’m currently immersed in 4 of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Plus, if I do say so myself, my dick is looking better than ever. No small feat, considering its usual (remarkably high) level of resplendence.
And that’s good, because this year I’m gonna get back into reading a lot. See, I love to read, but having a new baby seriously cuts into reading time (and since nothing is harder than reading while you’re tired, it kind of becomes impossible to read at all during the first few months of a new person’s life), but now this monster is getting to the point where she can kind of just chill, and as such, I’m ready to feed my head again. Right now I’m reading Garner’s Modern American Usage (Bryan A Garner) The Bin Ladens (Steve Coll), the Innocents Abroad (Mark Twain) and 2666 (Roberto Bolano). It’s a nice curriculum. If you’re out there with nothing to do, go ahead and pick these up. The Garner isn’t really something to read cover to cover, but if you’re at all interested in writing or just language in general, it’s a GREAT thing to have sitting in the bathroom for a highly sophisticated crap sesh. 2666 is already shaping up to be up in the top five or so books I’ve ever read in my life and the other two are must reads for pretty obvious reasons. Yeah. So let’s leave it at that, kay? New year. Feed the head. Good game.
Now, to get down to brass tacks. Of course, no new year would be complete without a compendium of the successes and failures of the previous year and that’s where I come in. What sucked? What ruled? Look no further than this page, underlings, for I, your master am about to impart your official guide to remembering 2010. Ready? Good. Okay, without any further ado, the official End Of the Year as We Know It guide to 2010 starting with…
Best Place To Shit- Your pants.
‘The toilet’, ‘the sidewalk’ and ‘into a paper towel and then gently placed into the oven of an enemy’ were all strong contenders this year, but nothing really said ‘2010’ like taking a steamy dump right there in the pants your mommy dressed you in. I’m kind of hoping this trend goes into decline for ’11, but you know what? What do I know? I’m an old man. And if you kids want to shit your pants right there at the party, who am I to say it’s not the coolest (are you kids still saying ‘coolest?’), grooviest move out there. Cowabunga, bro.
Best Dick Substitute- Tube of Toothpaste
This is a hot category every year, with previous winners like cucumbers, gear shifters and wadded up socks (bulge subcategory) all being in strong contention this year, but here at BSC we decided that this slightly more whimsical entrant should get the prize. It starts out hard, it shoots paste, you wind up with it all over your face and in the end, it’s crusty and spent and your old lady tells you to put it away. Now THAT’S a dick substitute, folks.
Worst Off With Their Heads Record- In Desolation
There weren’t really a lot of contenders in this category, and uh…well, this one kind of ‘won’ by default. This is saying a lot, because this is a really, really good record, so you can imagine how great all the other OWTH records this year had to have been for this to get voted the worst, right? Yeah. Uh…moving on.
Ugliest Celebrity that I’d still bone- Joy Behar
This one’s a bit of a misnomer, because I really, really want to fuck Fred Armisen, but uh…that’d be kind of gay, so I’m just gonna fuck Joy Behar and pretend it’s him on the set of the SNL View.
Hottest Animal- Pixel
For those of you who were lucky enough to watch Animal Passions this year, you know that no single one of god’s creatures stood out quite like Pixel, the little pony. God, she’s a vision of loveliness. Waiter, the lady will have the salt lick and the bucket of oats and we’ll split a bottle of Dom, please.
Best Taco Bell ingredient- Beans
Ah, Taco Bell, is there anything you can’t make from your five voltron-esque ingredients? Well, this year, the beans seemed somehow even more necessary than the plastic cheese, the plastic meat, the plastic tomatoes or even the plastic tortillas. Beans win, for their mortar-like consistency, their complete lack of taste, their fecal appearance and of course their ubiquitous presence. Take a bow, Beans!
Best Celebrity Dick- T.I.
Nothing says ‘check out my hot dick’ like squatting naked in just a hat, watch and sneakers in a sort of furious “I’m about to take a dump right here in this sauna room” pose.
Best Celebrity Tits- Lindsay Lohan
Drunk tits are always great tits and Lindsay happens to have GREAT drunk tits. I can’t wait until the hoopla dies down and she can get back to flashing her drunk, high tits and beaver with the dignity and grace she’s brought to the vocation in the past.
Okay, well, as you guys know, a year end list can’t all come at once. This is just the first part (there is precedent here. Check out last years list or the list before that [I’ve been doing this for 3 years? Jesus…I need a job] for the general 2 part template and of course some of the hottest shit from ’08 and ’09) see you tomorrow with more of what was hot and what was not (heyo!) in 2010.
Keep watching the stars, folks!
And that’s good, because this year I’m gonna get back into reading a lot. See, I love to read, but having a new baby seriously cuts into reading time (and since nothing is harder than reading while you’re tired, it kind of becomes impossible to read at all during the first few months of a new person’s life), but now this monster is getting to the point where she can kind of just chill, and as such, I’m ready to feed my head again. Right now I’m reading Garner’s Modern American Usage (Bryan A Garner) The Bin Ladens (Steve Coll), the Innocents Abroad (Mark Twain) and 2666 (Roberto Bolano). It’s a nice curriculum. If you’re out there with nothing to do, go ahead and pick these up. The Garner isn’t really something to read cover to cover, but if you’re at all interested in writing or just language in general, it’s a GREAT thing to have sitting in the bathroom for a highly sophisticated crap sesh. 2666 is already shaping up to be up in the top five or so books I’ve ever read in my life and the other two are must reads for pretty obvious reasons. Yeah. So let’s leave it at that, kay? New year. Feed the head. Good game.
Now, to get down to brass tacks. Of course, no new year would be complete without a compendium of the successes and failures of the previous year and that’s where I come in. What sucked? What ruled? Look no further than this page, underlings, for I, your master am about to impart your official guide to remembering 2010. Ready? Good. Okay, without any further ado, the official End Of the Year as We Know It guide to 2010 starting with…
Best Place To Shit- Your pants.
‘The toilet’, ‘the sidewalk’ and ‘into a paper towel and then gently placed into the oven of an enemy’ were all strong contenders this year, but nothing really said ‘2010’ like taking a steamy dump right there in the pants your mommy dressed you in. I’m kind of hoping this trend goes into decline for ’11, but you know what? What do I know? I’m an old man. And if you kids want to shit your pants right there at the party, who am I to say it’s not the coolest (are you kids still saying ‘coolest?’), grooviest move out there. Cowabunga, bro.
Best Dick Substitute- Tube of Toothpaste
This is a hot category every year, with previous winners like cucumbers, gear shifters and wadded up socks (bulge subcategory) all being in strong contention this year, but here at BSC we decided that this slightly more whimsical entrant should get the prize. It starts out hard, it shoots paste, you wind up with it all over your face and in the end, it’s crusty and spent and your old lady tells you to put it away. Now THAT’S a dick substitute, folks.
Worst Off With Their Heads Record- In Desolation
There weren’t really a lot of contenders in this category, and uh…well, this one kind of ‘won’ by default. This is saying a lot, because this is a really, really good record, so you can imagine how great all the other OWTH records this year had to have been for this to get voted the worst, right? Yeah. Uh…moving on.
Ugliest Celebrity that I’d still bone- Joy Behar
This one’s a bit of a misnomer, because I really, really want to fuck Fred Armisen, but uh…that’d be kind of gay, so I’m just gonna fuck Joy Behar and pretend it’s him on the set of the SNL View.
Hottest Animal- Pixel
For those of you who were lucky enough to watch Animal Passions this year, you know that no single one of god’s creatures stood out quite like Pixel, the little pony. God, she’s a vision of loveliness. Waiter, the lady will have the salt lick and the bucket of oats and we’ll split a bottle of Dom, please.
Best Taco Bell ingredient- Beans
Ah, Taco Bell, is there anything you can’t make from your five voltron-esque ingredients? Well, this year, the beans seemed somehow even more necessary than the plastic cheese, the plastic meat, the plastic tomatoes or even the plastic tortillas. Beans win, for their mortar-like consistency, their complete lack of taste, their fecal appearance and of course their ubiquitous presence. Take a bow, Beans!
Best Celebrity Dick- T.I.
Nothing says ‘check out my hot dick’ like squatting naked in just a hat, watch and sneakers in a sort of furious “I’m about to take a dump right here in this sauna room” pose.
Best Celebrity Tits- Lindsay Lohan
Drunk tits are always great tits and Lindsay happens to have GREAT drunk tits. I can’t wait until the hoopla dies down and she can get back to flashing her drunk, high tits and beaver with the dignity and grace she’s brought to the vocation in the past.
Okay, well, as you guys know, a year end list can’t all come at once. This is just the first part (there is precedent here. Check out last years list or the list before that [I’ve been doing this for 3 years? Jesus…I need a job] for the general 2 part template and of course some of the hottest shit from ’08 and ’09) see you tomorrow with more of what was hot and what was not (heyo!) in 2010.
Keep watching the stars, folks!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy new year, you fucking mongoloids!
SO, tonight I'm gonna be nursing your sick, depraved asses back to life at the L and L tavern. I don't really do this 'serving the public' shit much anymore, so come down and hang and witness the spectacle. I'll be there from 9-3 for all your 'drinking away my bad decisions' needs. And coming tomorrow, the list to end all lists: the end of the year as we know it, BSC style. So sack up, pussylips, and come see me tonight and steel yourself for the most brutal year-end round up ever!
Are you on the list? Probably. Not.
I know I said 2010 was gonna be awesome, but I think actually it sucked. what's up with that?
Are you on the list? Probably. Not.
I know I said 2010 was gonna be awesome, but I think actually it sucked. what's up with that?
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