Handsome

This Is A Handsome Man.

More drug war horseshit

Tennessee douche bag cops torture an illiterate penny ante dope dealer, trying to get him a consent to search form. (No warrant) They beat him, threaten to shoot him in the heard and APPLY ELECTRODES TO HIS NUTSACK. And his wife surrepticiously taped it.

A fucking horrifying listen.
(via Radley Balko's theagitator.com)

...lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy...

... out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing...
Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny on wimp-jazz sax wanker Kenny G. It's an Internet classic that I reread from time to time just to bathe in the vitriol. You should read it, too.

Very life affirming.

Essentials for a decent city neighborhood.

These things should be accessible to you, even if you have to show a little effort to access them. If they aren’t, you need to move. Your town might suck.

*Well stocked Indie-record shops with scowling clerks who act like Russian border guards, if they aren’t know-it-all loud mouth pricks. On the stereo: Big Star. And you had to ask? You suck and are a bad person.

*Cheap tempura shacks that smell amazing, but the food never tastes as good as it smells, but it’s still pretty good.

*Expensive sushi bars with sadistic sushi technicians who smirk knowingly as they serve you. Everything taste like a cloud of tits, so you don’t mind.

*Burrito sheds where the guy preparing your taco/burrito/torta holds up a squirt bottle with a fiendish green liquid and lifts an eyebrow questioningly, like “You’re sure? Because you know what this shit is going to do to your lower GI tract, right?”

*Old man bars were no one talks and everyone stares at you through rheumy eyes when you walk in. You only order beer and they serve it in a short glass.

*Empty hotel bars that look like the bar at the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. The bartenders are even wearing those white tunics. The bar MUST have some ridiculous specialty drink, like an Irish Coffee or a Pisco Sour that you order once on your first visit and never order again. One bartender must have an intricate knowledge of the city you are in and he MUST have a good mustache.

*Microbrew place that serves expensive, lousy food. Although the potato bar is usually pretty good.

*A Bookstore staffed by
1.) skulky mime-quiet middle-aged clerks with thick glasses. Men have ponytails. Women have thinning hair.
2.) a chunky sensitive tough guy with ironic thick glasses and facial hair. Wears t-shirts for an obscure roots music label or for some alternative circus. Is usually reading a William S. Burroughs anthology.
3.) Pretty, skinny woman is moderately more friendly than the rest of the staff, but not by much.
The selection is merely pretty good, but the magazine section rocks, even though it’s heavy on yoga publications.

* Toy store that sells big Corgis, expensive toy soldiers, kites, Playmobiles, Lego and lots of weird junky Chinese stuff.

*Hobby shops/Gaming Shops/Magic Shops/Tobacconists/Sci Fi bookstores/Comic Book shop. All creepy. But you manage to poke your head in from time to time. You get skeeved out pretty quick though, especially if the clerks are arguing about something.
(Tobacconists don’t argue, as there is usually only one, and he has a pulsing knobby growth on his forehead. He merely stares at you as you check out the Greek fishermen’s caps, the Meershaum pipes, the Toby Mugs, and the sword canes. You buy your rolling paper and fucking SPRINT out of there.)

*A park with a sandbox where neighbors donate their old shovels and pails, so the kids can dump sand on each other while their Dads can blather on and on about redwood decks and skiing Banff.

*A store where proper cheese is sold. Runny cheese, stinky cheese, farty cheese. Good cheese. Not cheddar. Not Monterey Jack (shiver). CHEESE. I mean Stilton, motherfucker.

*Some sort of shop that sells authenticish delicacies from other parts of the country. Cheese steaks. Montechristo sandwiches. Cuban sandwiches. King cakes. Jambalaya. LA style Vietnamese sandwiches. San Diego style fish tacos. Barbeque (preferably the thinner vinegar style rather than the gloppy Kansas City variety). Rueben sandwiches. Etc.

*A creepy store that sells dead things. I have one on my block that sells freeze-dried cats and dried dung beetles. It comforts me that it’s there.

*Strange storefronts that are never open, or at open apparently at the owners whim. They usually sell office supplies or do sewing machine repairs.

*Decent ice cream place that does not sell coffee or cell phones.

*Decent coffee place that is not Starbucks. Peet’s is okay because they put crack in their coffee.

*A wine shop whose clerks swear when describing various wines. Also, a discount liquor superstore for parties.

*A travel agent with a sun faded poster of Tahiti. There is one woman staffing the place and she is either playing computer solitaire or staring out the window.

*Movie rental place staffed by pale teens with sunken chests. They must be enthusiastic and overly articulate in their opinion about the movie your renting, even though you know it’s probably stupid and there’s a good possibility you’ll never watch it. Extra points it’s Hayao Miyazaki movie, in which case you’ll spend a polite ten minutes wondering if one of the tiny rubber bands that secure the clerk’s dental appliance will come flying off as he raves about the master of Japanese yadayadayada. Never do you point out that you’re renting it for your five year old.

*A hippy sandwich shop. Not a hairnet in sight, but the homemade bread makes up for the general hirsuteness. Too reliant on avocado, though. Like that fools anyone anymore. Try the soup. It's usually lentil.

*An Italian deli/sandwich shop with excellent cold-cuts and homemade ravioli in the cold case. Giant jars of pickled pepper and pimentos, and giant bottles of Chianti shaped like muskets or boots. No one ever buys these items, and when you ask about them, the old lady merely shrugs. They put salad dressing on their sandwiches.

*Strange Chinese produce market that smells like ginger. You can buy all the regular stuff, as well as some weird ass pears and breadfruit. Occasionally, you bring home some alien melon that just sits on the counter mocking you until you throw it in the outside garbage can.

*A bus stop where you are invariably joined by an older woman who has a Byzantine knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the 43 Line. She drops science on you vis-à-vis the local bus routes until the bus finally comes about like 45 minutes. You walk to the back of the bus and feign interest in the classifieds section you find stashed in the crack of the seat.

*A mail box on the corner by your house. It has been repainted a gazillion times. Nice.

Spreading my pointless garbage even thinner

Have been invited to spread my filth on another, better designed blog, called two nil blank blank. It is owned by a man called Jack who is English, thus my reputation has yet to reach his pearly virgin ears.

So if the seven of you who come here on purpose want a sassy new scene to check out, you can clog up Jack's servers. Don't all go over at once.

Now my suckiness is twice as strong.

Of course, you can also check out these other fine institutions who continue to tolerate me:

Crackpot Press.
Broken By Design.

My play for lambchops is rebuked.

I share my MAXIcube with a Irishman named Michael. He's considered charming as hell, which I think is a result of being prematurely gray and sort of otter-like.

Rob, our boss, came across Michael walking back from the market in the pouring rain, pulling his thin Adidas jacket across his narrow Irish shoulder, carry a sad little salad.

Rob:"Michael, you look pathetic. You like lambchops? I'll buy you some lambchops for lunch." (I think potato famine guilt came into play.

When I heard this, my jaw dropped. FUCK! Why couldn't I be pathetic and charming? I love fucking lambchops!

So I took to sighing conspicuously in front of Rob. Haunting doorways, looking forlorn.

Nothing fucking works. The problem is I'm not charming.

Finally, Rob is telling the story of buying lambchops for Michael to a woman we work with. "He looked so sad with his little salad in the rain."

I clear my throat... Rob looks up.

"I have a profound despair that only lambchops can assuage."

Rob laughs. My lack of sincerity FUCKS me again.

What I see when I close my eyes.

You can find it here.


(If you're high, you might end up like Syd Barrett after viewing this. Be careful.)

You might want to skip this one. Seriously.

Keef Richard’s Flesh Sex Ball For Perverts.

VO: Keith Richards. Gravelly, hoarse.

((SFX: Sounds like a dog whimpering))

Hello, I’m Keef Richards. You may know me as the legal guardian of Sir Mick Jagger’s stuffed corpse. Look for us on tour this summer. If you’re like me, human sex is long past dull. Every gaping maw starts looking the same, and choosing which one to penetrate in the writhing mountain of limbs and rubber goods one keeps handy in one’s sitting room gets to be just another chore, like pressing warm compresses to Ron Wood’s lumbago. Just yesterday I was in a threesome with a sheet of A4 and Bridget Bardot. Did nofing for me, really. That’s why I’ve developed this – Keef Richard’s Flesh Sex Ball For Perverts. It’s a fleshy ball of multiple orifices grown in a lab and untouched by human hands, that is until you get your mitts on it. Heh. I’ve worked closely wif, uh, whatchacallit, SCIENTISTS in perfecting this delightful smorgasbord of grasping, undulating love.

((SFX: Sudden loud whine))

Hush, little one. Daddy’s talking.

Each of the 31 apertures has been carefully calibrated to a specific level of elasticity, moisture, and relative smooveness. Stick with an old favorite, or, keep things fresh by rolling your Keef Richard’s Flesh Sex Ball For Perverts and aim for wot’s on top.

Caring for your Keef Richard’s Flesh Sex Ball For Perverts is as easy as using it. The more you prong it, the healthier it gets. It feeds on you, if you see my point. And for years of pleasure, be sure to use Keef Richard’s Exclusive Flesh Sex Ball Douches to keep your genetically engineered playmate fresh as the day it was harvested.

((SFX: Suddenly the Whine is very insistent.))

Insatiable, aren’t you my lovely? Well, off I go, back to the work.

Remember, Keef Richard’s Flesh Sex Ball For Perverts. Ask for it at the shops.
Down, Carmela. Down girl. Let me get me truss off.

--fin--

Pretty Much Ruined My Day.

Just found out that Lemmy's son is the tour guitarist for Colin Hay.


What ever you do, don't tell Lemmy. It would break his old heart.

Berkeley. My town. Oof.

Berkeley is my town. It’s not a place for the timid or the easily offended. So, it’s a good place. It was named after Bishop Berkeley, an old Irish toss who ventured that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter".

Whatever that means. All I know is I’m begrudgingly proud of my idiot city. Here are some highlights and pestilences:

Very, very earnest old people – They eat neutered groats. They have weird rusty iron sculptures or amorphous lumpy ceramic things in their front yard. They wear fleece and cotton turtlenecks. They never seem to smile, or if they do, it’s accompanied by a slight wince; perhaps it has something to do with their low protein diets. When they talk it’s like the cry of baby hummingbirds. They have ancient dogs of the same temperament.

They walk with their mates, stooped, not talking. You get the sense, if this were 13th century they haven’t worked up to calling each other “thou”.

Pizza – There is a good pizza joint run by the local VERY EARNEST cheese co-op called Cheeseboard Pizza. No sauce. Just olive oil, very good, VERY EARNEST cheese, and some vegetables. Simple. Earnest. De-lish.

Revolution Books – A Maoist bookshop that has been wedged into a forgotten shopping arcade that takes up the bottom floor of a parking garage. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, yet I rarely see anyone in there. I’ve never gone in, because it gives me the creeps. Presumably is staffed entirely by vanguard cadres. I wonder if they get good benefits.

Many weird cheap food joints – For students. The Chinese place that actually advertises ONE DOLLAR FOOD. The Crepe place is good.

Loads of flicker shows – Seven movie theaters in a mile radius, including the Pacific Film Archive, which shows creepy, campy and aggressively dull EARNEST movies exclusively.

The Cyclotron – I live in a city with a small cyclotron. I also live in the ONLY CITY ON EARTH that has an element named after it. That’s right bitches, BERKELIUM.

The Teddy Bear Fountain – A fountain in the un-American traffic roundabout by the North Berkeley fire station. It features creepily anthropomorphic rat bears. Cute.



The ______ Guy – Berkeley attracts, or used to attract, good solid weirdos. Local color, you might call them if you were polite or unjaded.

The Naked Guy was a Cal student that went everywhere in a backpack and tennies, otherwise naked as a j-bird, all a-dangle. Might have worn a long coat in cold weather.

Hate Man. Older guy in a sundress who would give impromptu discourses on why HATE is really a form of LOVE. Hmmm. In his later career he was aided by a young adjutant, called Hate Boy. He wore a dress as well. I think it was slightly prettier than Hate Man’s.

Larry Rare. Larry was a shirtless insane man who looked like long-hair era Henry Rollins. His shtick was approaching coeds and launching into an impromptu flex routine, all the time screaming RARE at the top of his lungs.

The Psychic Fair(e) – Every week around Thursdays, the signs go up for the Psychic Faire. Arrows point to some location that may or may
not exist in Euclidian space. I’ve never seen the Psychic Faire. No one I know has gone to the Psychic Faire. Perhaps it’s Brigadoon. Aye, the wee Psychic Faire.

Passive Aggression – A friend who moved to Brooklyn from Berkeley was amazed. “People yell at each other here. It’s really good.” In Berkeley, among some more affluent circles, if you do something that steps outside the limits of collective propriety – you yell at your kid for throwing sand, say, or you swear in a parking lot, or you wonder aloud whether adding another youth outreach program to the 70 already on the books is worth the tax increase, or you express joy in a zestful manner, or your feigned interest in someone else’s kitchen remodel is somehow not feigny enough -- you catch it in the corner of your eye: the head shake. The imperceptible tightening of lips into sphincters of displeasure.

These are the people who glare at you because your kids are talking loud at a motherfucking Fourth of July fireworks display.

They also beat their pets and watch scat porn.

Spring – Spring in Berkeley can be amazing. Trees blossom. Sun dresses (on women!). Going to the crappy little beach on a hot day. Outdoor movies at the Brewery. Woof.

Fleece –Dads at the park, dressed like they are doing anything but sitting on their asses on a park bench, ignoring their kids. Motherfuckers are all in fleece, in mountain climbing short with breathable crotch grommets to prevent chafing, water proof Kepis, and sandals with built in crampons.

They are on their phones, or talking way too loudly to some other fleece encased assblossom about wood decks or snowshowing or homebrewed beer or going to Reggae on the River, or some other gay-ass surplus economy motherfucking horseshit. Meanwhile, their motherfucking kids are beating infants with sticks.

Books – Being a ranty crank, I often need to find source texts that I can refer to, then scream "A-HA!" as I throw the book down in front of my long suffering wife. Berkeley has loads of excellent bookshops where ESSENTIAL TEXTS can be found, texts where all the PUZZLING EVIDENCE coalesces into... the Theory.

Neighbors who hang out and drink beer and read magazines – Always a good time. I’m particularly grateful for ranty neighbors who can come along with me on my feverish schemes.

Family Members – Family members (on the s-p-o-u-s-e’s side) wonder aloud when we’re going to join the rest of the clan in the Spielbergian Stucco Jungle, in the county out east. Every family event, we hear that same banshee’s howl. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

A chain grocery store that only carries sick-ass disgusting natural peanut butter – FUCK Trader Joes.

The Pub – This is a creepy beer-and-wine-and-cappucino joint set up in an old converted house. It seems that as D&D player become older, they become exotic pipe tobacco and imported beer dorks. They also congregate here, smoking their foul weeds and playing Risk in the backroom, because smoking in bars is illegal in Berkeley. The front room is quiet and there’s a fireplace. Sometimes, you might strike-out, however, and get stuck with some loudmouth Peter Pan in a Pantagonia fleece vests and Vuarnets blathering on and on about drinking Singha on some beach in Thailand, while you’re just trying to READ YOUR GODDAMN BOOK.

Anarcho-Capitalist hot dog sellers -- There is a chain of hot dog huts here called Top Dog. The hot dogs are stupendous, and each location is a shrine to radical libertarian philosophy. The wall are covered with anti-government rants and long articles about anarchism and individual sovereignity. Great stuff.

Democracy run amok -- Berkeley city council meetings are insane. The council members insult each other, there’s usually a full dock of aggrieved and/or insane citizens waiting to take the mic and start dropping the crazy bomb. The galleries are filled with yelling hecklers. It’s bedlam. Cool.

And the initiative process in Berkeley (although this is also true of California) is bonkers. In a bid for direct democracy, any petition can be fielded as a potential law as long as you get the signatures. A couple of years ago, a man nearly got a measure through that would have written the Reflexive Property of Equality (that is the property of a = a) into municipal law. It nearly got on the ballot.

So there you are. That’s my town. Rock on Berkeley. Go Bears.

Busy body creeps in Kansas.

(CHEAP IRONY WILL BE BOLDED.)

God, I'm such a CRANKYPANTS these days.

My latest sphincter clenching was inspired by an idiot school board member in Kansas (the vulgar and grasping cow Connie Morris) who DEMANDED the removal of an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster from the door of an 8th grade science class in Kansas.

According to Wikipedia, the FSM is

"the deity of a parody religion created by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. On the site and in the letter, Henderson professes belief in a supernatural Creator entity that resembles spaghetti and meatballs, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and suggests that FSMism should be taught in science classrooms, essentially arguing a reductio ad absurdum against the teaching of Intelligent Design."

Here is an craven image of the God in question:



It seems the jackbooted battleaxe Connie Morris was on an inspection tour of her personal Reich, when she can across an image of our Noodley Lord. Smacking the image with her riding crop, she demanded it be taken down IMMEDIATELY. ("Macht Schnell, motherfucker!") Why?

Because Connie Morris is a swine eager to piss away the grandeur of WESTERN MOTHERFUCKING CULTURE SO SHE CAN PIMP HER CORNPONE SLEAZY VERSION OF $%^!#$^~#$^~ REALITY.

Fuck. ME.

YHWH's Seven Day Plan for a New Universe gets a pass. Yet, somehow, the equally arbitrary Spaghetti Monster doesn't make the cut?

Do you see it? Do you see the irony?

We can't have fun any more? Teachers can't be goofy? Kids can't make up their goddamn minds? We can't laugh? All knees must bow befor Grand Inquisitor nincompoop school board thugs ? Is tacky shallow evangelical protestantism the official state religion? Is shallowness a mark of saintliness? Should the life examined be suspect? Fuck me. Fuck me to hell and Nevada.

Anyway, I say recall the twat.

And, yea verily, here is the The Gospel of the Fly Spaghetti Monster.

Wikipedia and the FSM in mentioned in one post. Hi, I'm a dork.

I'll try to be funny in the next post. I'm going through a ranty thing lately.

Dumb jack-booted hillbillies fuck up. Everyone gets an X-Box!

In the 2003, a crack team of Goose Creek, South Carolina’s very Special Weapons and Tactics unit went into the breach, storming the halls of Stratford High School in full riot gear, weapons a-drawn.

The freak-os, hop heads, and dope huffers were gonna pay. Pay BIG. Their days of peddling insidious hell weed and godless nihilism were finito, thanks to John Law.

Well, They cuffed a bunch of kids that happened to be meandering through the halls at the time, and found…nothing. No drugs, no… nothing. No uppers. No downers. No embalmers. No screamers. No Lady H. No tea. No Mr. Charlie. No Special K. No Method. No African Mind Fuck (I made that one up). Nary a gram of da kine oily skunk bud with the fucking crystals and purple hairs.

So now the school district, the cops and other shitheads have to drop $1.2 big uns to be divided by the kids they cuffed that day. I smell a new school bond!

An insufferable roommate with a pumpkin head.

I once had an insufferable roommate with a pumpkin head. We’ll call him L.

He was the son of a minister and lived a clean life, which must have been difficult for him, because he had me and Mark as roommates. We drank and smoked pot and had sex with our girlfriends, though not in front of him. The sex part.

He disapproved.

L.: Asian Supremacist

Roommate Mark was sitting on the stinking blue couch in the living room, holding his eyes, hung-over. L. is there, lifting weights.

Mark: “Got any aspirin or Tylenol or something?”

L (1,000 yard stare. Barely concealing his contempt for Mark’s indiscipline): “No, dude. I don’t drink.”

Mark: “Well, you don’t get headaches…you know, from stress or something.”

L: “No, Dude. Asians don’t get stress. We don’t get headaches. Just how our brains work.”

L. had another pet racial theory that he’d rant about from time to time: white guys can develop muscle mass without doing a goddamn thing, while Asians have to work their asses off to get manly muscles. Since Mark and I, while Causcasian, were toneless mountains of pale gelatin, and L. was fit as a fiddle, we were unsure what exactly sparked these rants. We would discuss it over bong loads. Strangely, we never found the answer.

L. gets an anatomy lesson.

L. lived in fear of his father, the minister. As such, he blinkered himself to the temptations of the world to such an extant that Mark and I could make up completely spurious facts, and have L. believing them for, say, most of an afternoon. We controlled his experience of the universe at will, in other words.

There was one patently retarded fact we passed along to L. that to this day astounds me that we got away with it at all.

Back when I was living with him, I think L. had maybe kissed a girl. He was a stylish, goodish looking guy, but extremely dopey and ascared of girls.

I’m unsure of the context, but one afternoon Mark and I convinced L. that, under certain conditions, a woman anus will whistle like a tea kettle during sex, and that if a fellow was so inclined, he could play it like a bosun’s whistle.

This understandably shocked L., and he began asking a lot of considered, deliberate questions about the female anatomy and the exact conditions that this phenomenon can created.

In other word, he believed us. For a glorious, delicious twenty odd minutes, L. believed this utterly half-assed piece of bullshit. How is it possible? What Jedi powers did we have over his pumpkin head?

It puzzles me to this day.

L. keeps the conversation going.
L. had the conversation skills of a loaf of bread. He was infamous for walking into the middle of parties in his sweats with a bowl of popcorn and turning on the TV. “Dude, SNL is on.”

My girlfriend at the time was responsible for bringing famous graphic designers to talk to the graphic design students at the University. The University was in a picturesque little Podunk cow town on the California coast, but the graphic department had a reputation for quality, so she managed to bring in some respectable names.

The speakers usually had dinner with the students at some local diner after the chat. L., then in his Senior year, and gearing up for a job search, went religiously to these things.

So, dinner at some bistro…the statesman like designer holding court with a dozen dewy-eyed undergrads. A lull in the conversation.

L. sees his opening, and makes a run for it: “I read that pigs are so intelligent that if they had arms they could operate simple machines.”

For some reason, the lull continued after that. The conversation was not marshaled. I wonder why?

Existence is Gay.

1. It has been raining for a month straight.
1b. It's supposed to go another two weeks.
1c. Rain means no park. No park means lots and lots of TV for the kiddies.
1d. Consecutive airing of "Ed, Edd, and Eddie" cause stupification
1e. No rain also means kiddies are in close proximity for a long time. Fight like curs.

2. We are 80 grand in debt
2b. I work like a bastard and make decent money. Where does it go?
2c. Wife is starting her own business. Hence no money.

3. Wife is sick.
3b. Strep
3c. A girlish complaint that manifests itself in dire ways. Consider yourself smiled upon that the details are not revealed here.
3d. Computer system is down at doctor's, so wife cannot find out if her culture was positive.
3e. Without positive culture, cannot get antibotics.
3f. Causes wife to fret in a dramatic manner.
3g. Wife fretting causes me stress

4. 3 year old son is sick, maybe.
4b. Has strep-like symptom.
4c. Would be third time this month he has strep.
4d. In the second go around, he had strep of the butthole. The doctor actually said: "Looks like Owen has strep of the butthole."
4e. Wife is panicked, as Owen has had fever induced seizures as an infant. While not dangerous, sucks ass to the 10th power.

(Note: Fatherly intuition, which is something different from Motherly intuition, is suggesting that the boy merely has a cold.)


5. Car is broke.
5b. Need two cars
5c. Wife, visiting doctor for her alarming girlish complaint, feels faint as she battling Strep and girlish complaint. Has only car. Needs two friends to come rescue her. (One to drive wife. One to drive car.
5d. It's the transmission. $$$

6. There is no food in the house
6b. Because Wife is sick, must take two fruits of my loins to the market solo.
6c. Thought of which causes distress in my GI tract.


7. The West is decline.
7b. The US has entered into its decandent phase. Bummer.
7c. Mediocrity rules the day.
7d. Am surrounded by nincompoops.

8. Am bored with self.
8b. Because self is boring.

So, QED: Existence is Gay.

(Postscript: My daughter Ruby is being a trooper. And I have joined a posse in Malaysia, which is nice. I also have a MySpace page, which is sort of cool, in a gayish way.)