The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seven

Nothing too bad, a steady incline, I'd say, but the summit disappears above the clouds and I took the escalator too much. What am I going to remember 2007 as if I live to be forty? Starting this blog maybe. Punching Sean in the stomach maybe. Some girl I'll probably never see again leaving her pants with fifty dollars in the pocket maybe. Becoming tired of education. Dustin's wedding most likely and all the strange associations that still echo from San Diego months later. My feeling like an idiot trapped in a retard's body half the time and the smartest fuck on earth the other half. Shaking my head at other people's behavior and then turning around and doing shit just as bad the next second. My mom's cancer clearing up. Micah's transformation from a dull caterpillar to an electric moth. Listening to more music. Unexpected side effects. Laughing more, it seems like. Writing more for sure. Drinking more for sure. Smoking more for shits. Probably, I won't be able to distinguish this year from its sisters when I'm forty, but it was important, despite mistakes I made and whatever else. When the rain falls, you can see one drop apart from all the others coming down from the sky and for a second under a street light and then it falls into the puddle, but it was still there in the air when you saw it, wherever it is after it becomes a part of the puddle. A dream you don't remember is maybe more important than months of your life.

New Years Resolution: Figure it all out in the next year.

!!!!NINE GOLDEN RINGS!!!!

And so is the torrid throws of winter…or the holidays I suppose. I headed back to Wisco with a head full of steam or something. The holidays are great for seeing friends, seeing family, singing the wrong words to Christmas songs but most of all depressing the shit out of melancholy motherfuckers like myself.

My brother and his wife rolled into town about the time I did. Which is a good thing because they can cook. Well in fact.

I hit up Milwaukee to start with which was chalked full of hanging with sweet people and cheap beers. Honestly it would be cheaper to fly back to Milwaukee every week just to drink. Drunks love cheap drinks…and so do I…because I’m a drunk.

Really its not as bad as it seems. Not like I’m an old drunk, like this guy from the town where I grew up named Rooster. He was this red haired dude that would always buy us booze in high school, we had to throw a few dollars in his pocket but that’s “the game”. I bought some forty’s for some high school kids at the 7-11 the other day, they gave me 15 bucks, I suddenly saw the attraction.

Saturday we played the FTT seven-year reunion show. It was tight and the Milwaukee kids in Novel made it through the completely ridiculous fog to shake the floors at the armory. We drank our weight in whisky and stumbled to the after party at Dub’s parents house.

I miss a lot of people and realize it right away. My fam and me watch some football (Viking blow it at the end of the year and miss playoffs, go figure) some 30 rock (funny as fuck) and The Wire (one of the best shows I’ve ever seen). The WW crowd is right on and we rage at the bars.

Anyhow, I missed my flight then the rest got cancelled because of the snow and I went back to hang with Lady L, C-note and the Hempler. It was pretty sweet for missing the flight and all. Those kids are just neat, damn neat. I spend nearly all the next day at the airport. See, after flights get cancelled people get pissed and thousands of Illinois alumni trying to get to the Rose Bowl fit into that category. So I wait around and sleep when I can, my ass stinks and my feet hurt. I eventually lay some sob story on one of the fine people at United and they hook my up with a ticket in first class. I watch some shitty Josh Hartnett movie and give John Cusak an approving nod. Like he needs it.

I end up back in LA and feel pretty good about it. Now to get a job, or a clue.

Hornet's Stripes, Stings and Hives

Randy Jackson had 4 kids.
It took his all to keep them hid.
When he thought of his lonely child,
he kicked his dog, coughed blood, and smiled.
Eleven minutes after birth,
he said, “Hey son. Welcome to my turf.”
For dinner they had oatmeal
and for their birthday they got hay.
In March, he slipped on a banana peal.
His back has never been the same.

Never in my life have I seen that:
an eight year old in a yellow hard hat.
He put them to work to pay his bills
while Randy jerked off and swallowed pills.
One day, the state come to Randy’s home.
They come about that desperate moan.
The one that leaks from the basement at night
because Randy’s kids had to fight
over stale bread and rusty water.
His wife was as bad, but they never caught her.

Randy’s last child was a daughter.
A man came there one day and bought her.
He raised her like a charmer raises snakes;
he said nice things and never made mistakes.
Together, they traveled this old blue globe.
They were as happy as the rich man Job.
She had a talent for cooking,
and baked all through the day.
She made a cake when no one was looking
and then went on the hammock to lay.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Last night: I thought it was MLK day.
I lost in Pictionary.
I saw someone cry laughing.
I made macaroni and cheese with two kinds of pasta, two kinds of cheese, and some good spices.
I found out my friend does not like AC/DC.
The clam dip went over big.
I had one drink.

Today: I saw a white horse grazing snow with orange sunlight coming at it sideways.
I came down with a cold.
I helped clean up.
I met an old racist.
I deflected energy rays with my lab coat.
I got a gift certificate.
I took a Benadryl.
I saw the Stardust and it sparkled.
I thought about some things.
I drove home.
I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, Happy Christmas to All and to All a Good Night.

A Couple Diddies

"Margine"

Margine, please, won’t you marry me?
When you’re tired of the canaries?
Your hardness is a parody.
Outside, I think they cannot see,
They barely hear the goner’s plea.
It’s a rusty lock and you’re the key.
Margine, please, won’t you marry me?

Margine, please, won’t you lose your clothes?
I’ve been wanting all day to look at those.
The pain thins out when you are close.
Without your love, I’m levied toast.
You’re beautiful, a blind man knows.
I hope my golden love for you shows.
Margine, please, won’t you lose your clothes?

Margine, please, won’t you look at me?
I hate to think we’ll never be.
Can’t you hear this goner’s plea?
My neighbors are afraid to see
the beast I am that once had glee,
when you let up and laid with me.
Margine, please, won’t you look at me?


"Seventeen or Eighteen"

Seventeen, eighteen days a week,
a rats nest busts inside my cheek.
Never had a deal so square,
as when I saw you in your underwear.
Those canopies, they cannot be,
they’re better than a dream.
That summer when I met you,
I got to know your knees.

One hundred and thirteen, two hundred and eight
are numbers that do not equate.
They see you in that brand new dress
and they just turn into a mess.
Abundancies, insanities,
there’s nothing much to bitch on.
You paid me for two rainy weekends,
I never learned addition.

shoot

.:Update Your Theme Song:.

When you lose your job there are many reactions you can have. You can of course, wallow in a deep puddle of your own self pity or go on an angry bender and get locked up in a mexican jail cell. Both of these are totally acceptable. what i did was dive headfirst into a weekend of booze, burger king and pro football.

On friday night i ended up going out with a few friends from San Diego. We hit up some party in the valley that had a wide range of snacks and jello shots. I spent most of the night by the snack table downing rum and cokes until i was drunk enough to have any decent conversation. I stay until the party is over and end up sitting on the couch with two other Sean's. All three of us spelled it differently.

One of said Sean's. How can i be so self centered?...said Shawn was awesome and is friends with another awesome dude who plays for the Detroit Lions. That in mind we kicked it to San Diego on Saturday. It's a good day and we grab some steaks and drink a bunch of booze. We leave the hotel because our gridiron pal has to hit the hay. We end up going to some dance club where i don't dance, i hardly say anything but have a good time. We go get some BK for the second time that day. Things happen and my ride ends up leaving San Diego at 3 am. Leaving me hard up on the cold side of Pluto.

Anyway, Sunday fuck yeah. The Lion don't put up a very good effort but pro football is amazing to see live. LT does the damn thing and some guy throws up behind me. For some bullshit reason they wont give me extra cheese with my jumbo pretzel. They say,

"the pretzels don't come with cheese." i offer to pay for it of course but no dice. my question is this: how can you even serve jumbo pretzels without the option of cheese? Fuck'd if i know. I get over it and watch a girl get escorted out by the police, she kicks a random guy. he was suprised.

I catch a train back to LA which is actually kind of rad. I sleep and read and the conducter tells me i don't have to pay for the trip. Random acts of kindness.

By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!

I don't know if there are any blog readers left that I haven't personally offended on this site, but if there are, then they are much bigger assholes than anyone I've mentioned before. Now that there is officially not a single reader of this blog, it is going to be sold to a fetish porn production company at midnight tonight. Sean and I are being handsomely payed and will be spending the next months aboard a diamond yacht, cruising the open sea, saving fair damsels from pirates and smoking blunts with kings. You can also catch us occasionally on the new World Wide Dirt site in our own series of fetish porns, entitled "What's Being Rubbed on Sean's Nipples Today?"

So I Am Legend was really pretty amazingly good. I went in thinking I was going to see an okay movie, and I realized in the second scene of the movie that I was watching a fucking movie. It's a version of The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, which is also a badass movie, but not as badass as this one. Like finding one M&M mistakenly placed in a chocolate chip cookie is badass, but fucking Sara Silverman all night is fucking badass. Will Smith is his most likeable since the Fresh Prince. I could watch a TV series about him and his dog walking around post-apocalyptic, vampire-ridden New York and getting in adventures for whole seasons. He was really good. The monsters were really good. The ending was slightly less cool than the rest of the movie, but still badass, and what else do you want? How about Bob Marley as a soundtrack. Then I went X-mas shopping and had to borrow money from my sister to buy her a present, which was God's way of telling me that I am on the path.

Broken Criptogram

box medicine rain
dream gate felt pastor
cry goof coerce nail
vein cave hundred volt
cup colt forest till
jam past savor college
cold heat bear bright
forage hefty climb bet
list prairie go nest
hide heal never kneel
fast matter cover drop
mild cast globe color
hen nape be steal

Here's the key: A=S. The answer is also a list of tips on how to stay warm this holiday season. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Interlocking

Here is a story from the always awesome Mitch Paulrudd Olson.

Born under a rock, Mitch was covered with slime and green stuff.
-Karl Olson

A lively tapping, once over and then over again. A march, really; an index finger and stiletto pencil demarcating passing time, slowly scoring and gouging a dog-eared copy of In Our Time. My mind strolled the static tables, taking quiet note of pairs and singles and beehive groups trekking across a scholar's wasteland; straining eyes scanning stacks, removing volumes, frowning and replacing them. Always, it seems, they scramble unsure in the wake of the proper words, hoping someday to overtake them. I absent-mindedly grasped a cardboard-sleeved, sub-par Starbucks coffee blend I'd picked up at the campus store for an egregious price, and, once again, tried to take a drink from a cup I'd emptied hours earlier. I was supposed to be researching the eleventh century Investiture Conflict in the Holy Roman Empire. I chose to waste my time in thought. I regret nothing.

At the table next to me, an average-sized, bespectacled, clean-cut young man surreptitiously searched for the hand of the girl sitting next to him. She tried to hide her smile as she found his, their hands interlocking. He leaned over confidently and whispered in her ear. She laughed, at first surprised and loud, and then abashed and quiet. The look she shot him expressed mirth and chastisement. A pretty young brunette walked by, glancing inquisitively at the couple and then the empty seats across from them. He nodded imperceptibly; she grimaced and released his hand. I returned my attention to the poor copy of Hemingway's prose and resumed the cadence.

Tap, ta-ta-tap, ta-ta-tap-tap-tap, tap, tap, ta-ta-ta-ta-tap.

A few more seconds; gone. I supposed my eyes swim in an inky sea in perpetual search for equilibrium; constant insomnia had poked holes in the deck, but still, somehow, I remain afloat, adrift, awake. The librarian bit her lip in silent contemplation as she handled the returns with deft familiarity. She sorted them swiftly on to a small fleet of metal racks, with the occasional heavy tome prompting a wheel to squeak in protest. An awkward student approached the circulation desk, his eyes scanning the area as if there were more than that one sedulous woman. He spoke softly, but I could imagine it quite clearly. Excuse me, ma'am. Yes? Her brow furrowed in well-concealed secret irritation. How can I help you? I have a fine to pay. Her eyebrow cocked in homage to that ancient librarian conflict between needing money and needing books on time. She typed a name quickly into the system; Dviorak, or Dumas, or Dostoyevsky.

The traffic outside passed intermittently, their frequency dictated by the lights outside the laundromat. East Johnson is only rarely deadlocked, and today, Sunday, it hummed happily along. I reached the final word with a relieved sigh. Wading through The Brothers Karamazov is swimming in the rip tide. I did admire Alyosha, though; the pure impossibility of his existence fascinated me. A virgin in every sense to every sin in every eye, and, by virtue of that, entirely sinful. I shut the cover as the buzzer dinged, rising from my seat to leave Dostoyevsky forever across from me.

Hello? Mitch? Suddenly back in the library. Oh! Hello! Sorry, I was totally lost in thought. What's up? Haven't seen you in ages. Oh, not much, same ol', same ol'. Her demeanor and her conversation begged an obvious question. She spoke it. Do you have a pencil I could use? Or a pen? Or whatever? Or whatever? Well, it just so happens I have a quill made from the extinct heath hen and an inkwell of the finest iron gall around here somewhere. I rummaged through my backpack. I just hope it hasn't spilled! She giggled, but it sounded force. I found an weathered Bic pen and reached to give it to her, but it slipped from my fingers and to the floor. We reached to grab it at the same time, and my head, face down, made an accidental thud as it landed softly on her chest. I jerked back in surprise; she did the same. She giggled nervously; this time not so forced. I smiled amused, and joked, Geez. I hardly even know you. She waltzed off gracefully.

Across the reference desk a group of four gathered in casual debate, bouncing ideas off each other with indifferent difficulty. No one wanted to be there, doing that, and in their present company. One guy shifted his weight anxiously from one sandaled foot to the other, trying to nonchalantly get a glimpse down his neighbor's v-necked carmine sweater. She acted as if unaware, although it appeared as if she was shrinking shorter...and shorter...and shorter. The corners of her mouth crept upwards coyly, her breathing increased, and her obviously blue eyes obtained a peculiar glint. A boy, tall and lank, accoutered in hooded, zippered sweatshirt, observed with invisible amusement, all the while shuffling wrinkled papers from arm to arm. The fourth, a short, downcast girl, paid none of them much attention. From beneath heavy mascara and thick eyeliner, she either stared beyond me...or at me.

I should visit the library more often.

Five Things I learned This Week - Fuck Me Edition

1. If you listen to a live album while you walk around with your iPod, it
feels like a whole crowd of people are cheering you through your day.
2. Schrödinger: If you don't know shit, then you won't know what the fuck is
going on, but if you do know shit, then there is absolutely no disputing the
shit that you know. And remember to feed your cat.
3. Bad things come in 3's, 11's, and 457's.
4. The best way to get someone's attention is meanness.
5. If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he would be appalled at petty
differences that are tearing this country apart. He would also be older
than fuck.

Dubs

1. You can’t always get what you want, really you can’t, and don’t fucking argue with me. I am not in the fucking mood.
2. if living is any proof, the world is a demon, yeah its got teeth, knives no sheath, get real little bitty, it wont change anything.
3. Every time I sleep with a married woman it goes bad.
4. Losing your job is like losing a child. Unlike losing a child, where you cry and stare listlessly out the window, losing a job motivates you to drink and smoke a lot of weed, then see movies by yourself. Losing a child is in a way the worst thing that can happen to a person, losing your job is kind of awesome.
5. Fuck. Me.

Dirt

New York Friar's Club Roast of Dirt Dirtleson

Sean’s sole purpose in life is to give AIDS back to the monkeys.

He keeps his jobs about as long as his dad can keep an erection.

There is one career that Sean is looking at right now. He’s been in so many gaping holes that he could work for the geological society as a cave surveyor.

Sean’s not an organ donor, but he says every once and a while he meets a girl he likes so much that he lets her hold onto one of his for a while.

What I admire about Sean is his commitment. You know, he gave a hundred percent at the school he used to go to and the band he used to sing for and the relationships that he used to be in.

Really, though, Sean is a sweet guy. He’s my best friend and he has his qualities. His brother Dustin said that Sean’s dick is one of the biggest he’s ever sucked.

Yeah. Dustin wanted to be here tonight, but he was arrested for impersonating his wife.

Good night, everybody. Drive home safely.

How an English Major Jerks Off:

The Staring Contest

Dizzy in the day

Light on my eye

A fucking joke

Right about clobberin’ time

Kill it, Ray

Kibble for the little guy

Loopy last night

Where did that go?

Dry hair dusty with disease

Happening to the other dude

He’s gonna crack

There’s a sundae with gummy bears on it on the line

What a joking jacking japing juniper?

What a numbskulled nincompooped ninny

What a galloping gyrating gizmo

What a fallen forgotten faded fellow

What a happening hardy heartfelt halo?

What a satisfying scintillating scientific sick sin?

What a betraying benevolent baptizing battalion

What a ratifying raging redheaded rafter

What a debilitated disembodied deep dill diabetic

What a quantifying quarreling questionable quitter

What a calcifying captive commemorating caption

What a trembling tall tantalizing titillation

What a putrid portly portentous powerhouse

What a momentary mumbling methodical membership

What a late litigating lefty lollygagger

What a wooden wondrous whimpering winter

What a zagging zoological zygote

What a keen kilted keepsake kiln

What a gregarious gimped giving garage

What an abominable atheistic attainable atonement

What an offering offensive osteopathic other overage

What an edible evident exact effigy

What an undiscovered uncovered utilizing utterance

What an indelible inflammable incapacitating interest

What a varied veiny vinyl venereal vestige

What a xenophobic Xeroxing x-factor

What a yipping yelling yeah

Happy Holidays

It's time again for Norway's Globenschlob Festival, a one day extravaganza of traditional folk music, goat amputation, and blind fornication driven by a sweet liquor they make from a berry unknown in North America.
To commemorate the event, Sean will be playing a show on Sunday with his new side-project, Sweet Willy and the Know-It-All-Know-Nothings, covering some classic Norway folk tunes. Those of you lucky enough to be in Norway this Saturday can see him at the Heorot theater.

If, like me, you're stuck at home and can't make it to the show, the closest way to approximate the Globenschlob festival would be to start drinking within ten minutes of awaking, play whatever record speaks most directly to your heart (mine is "Jagged Little Pill"), and be drunk enough that just walking is a hassle. At this point in Norway, the plump housewives would be pulling steaming hot lamb pies out of their ovens, so eat whatever is closest to that in your home (for me, granola bars and hot dogs). The food will have taken the violent edge off your drunk, so you'll need more drink and any other drugs can't hurt at this point. Then its important that you reenact the sacred goat amputations of Globenschlob, wherein one goat in the village is decided to be the most meddling of all other goats and so all of his limbs are severed in the town square as a warning to the other goats and so that the farmers may exhibit the frustration they've been penning up all year whenever a goat has kicked them or they've had to clean goat shit off of their pants. The nearest thing is to find some sort of animal that has been bothering you and inflict physical harm in some way. Time, drunkenness, and illegality restrict us from the awesome display that the goat amputation provides Norway with yearly, and you just being one man, woman, or hermaphrodite will probably be unable to recreate it fully. This year, I've selected my roommate's cockatiel Basil, and I am planning to just give him one square punch in the face to make up for his alarming chirping that has woken me from the retarded womb of sleep many times.

This leaves only the blind fornication left to complete the activities of Globenschlob. It is best not to plan the blind fornication. As with life, despite what plans you make, the blind fornication will take its own unexpected turns; it is a willy-nilly phenomenon. The surest path to it is to become as drunk as is possible without needing hospitalization and to let Providence take care of the rest. However, a back up plan does help and so I have selected my roommate's cockatiel Basil for this honor as well.
Good luck and God-speed, you black emperor

Feel Good Flick Of The Year!

My brother said that Noah Baumbach probably had a terrible mother, after seeing Margot at the Wedding I don’t see how you could strongly dispute it. True to form Baumbach has his characters acting in unacceptably inappropriate ways including Jack Black Drawing pornography at the kitchen table, Nicole Kidman being venomous towards her son and sleeping with a man who is not her husband and also an asshole.

John Turturro stops in and is awesome as usual and Jennifer Jason Leigh makes me feel a little “Fast Times” weak in the knees. This wasn’t the best film I’ve ever see but the whole time I was happy to be sitting there watching it.

If you like Nicole Kidman and Jack black which I do, you should check this out. If you don’t like either, get your head examined.

All I Really Want to Do

Is skip my physics homework, then skip the class, and the snowy, sunny walk. Skip the lunch I'll want after class, skip walking home, or working out, or doing dishes, laundry. Skip taking day trips to Chicago and skip staying in the same place. Skip having to breath or chew or see myself in the mirror or think of something to say, skip selecting the next song that will play on my computer, skip evaluating and commemorating the scrapes we make on space-time when we move, skip millions of years of evolution, thousands of civilization (life has nothing to do with the tracks already fading from the trail), skip a future of things that could fall this way or that, the old towers swaying in the breeze and betting quarters on which will go first. Skip memory or thought or myself or everyone I've ever known well.
All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.

Counting the Ways

Madison's Seven-Day Forecast (props to local meteorologist Gary Cannalte):

TONIGHT:
Mostly cloudy and cold.
Low: 14
Wind: Light and Variable

TUESDAY:
Mostly cloudy and cold with occasional light snow developing in the afternoon.
High: 26
Wind: E 8-15 MPH

TUESDAY NIGHT:
Mostly cloudy with occasional snow tapering to flurries late; total accumulations of 2-4” likely.
Low: 19
Wind: NE 8-15 MPH

WEDNESDAY:
Mostly cloudy and cold with scattered flurries ending, then becoming partly sunny.
High: 26
Wind: N/NW 8-15 MPH

THURSDAY:
Partly sunny and quite cold (becoming mostly cloudy at night with light snow developing).
Low: 8
High: 25

FRIDAY:
Mostly cloudy with light snow and flurries ending, then becoming partly sunny.
Low: 18
High: 29

SATURDAY:
Becoming mostly cloudy and not as cold with light snow, sleet, and freezing rain developing late in the day or at night; mixed precipitation mixing with or changing to rain late at night.
Low: 14
High: 34

SUNDAY:
Mostly cloudy with light rain or mixed precipitation changing to light snow late in the day or at night.
Low: 33
High: 35; temperatures steady/slowly falling to the lower 30s by evening

MONDAY: Mostly cloudy and a little colder with light snow or flurries ending early, then becoming partly sunny.
Low: 23
High: 30

Yikes!

“strings run through the jaw

and kill its motion without asking

fuck sick and dying and never was

and even trying happiness before returning it for the

full refund –

the rollercoaster with a morphing track,

but keeps passing the same balloon salesman with lupus,

plastic vomit tubes and no destination

the sun-filled wind can whiz at you so fast that

it becomes a space known only to you and the great cosmonauts of yore

your sweaty skin is an airborne prison,

the prisoner gets vacuumed away if he breaks out of its walls

the third place greyhound enjoys Purina with every taste bud,

but his master can’t go on”

do you want to listen to that other Bob Dylan record?

no

do you want to have sex?

no

do you want to eat chicken?

no

do you want to go to the zoo?

no

do you want to go crazy?

no

do you want to cover ourselves in pancake batter?

yes

okay. get naked. we’re going to want to do this in the bathtub.

(he takes a bowl out and starts cracking eggs into it while she starts taking off her clothes)

CUT TO: INSIDE HER MIND- SUNRISE

(she is sorting through scratch-off tickets in the waste bin, looking so helplessly for a winner that she runs her hands through her hair, and he sits next to her and finds it with no problem. the ticket has three cherries in a row and it can be exchanged for $25)

gosh, that was lucky.

(her condescension does not come through to him)

i always have been.

(they kiss and before her eyes open they are in an enchanted forest, a panther purrs in a limb above their embrace. an older man with a walking stick crosses their path and she gives him the ticket and he also kisses her for a long time and his white fur is somehow comforting to her. the panther kills the older man in a spectacular display of blood, rainbow-like in its momentary simplicity and baffling arcing splendor, and feeds the body to his family for nourishment)

CUT TO: 70 YEARS LATER- DAY

(she is an old lady breathing in a mask and floating on her hoverchair through the halls of the retirement community on the moon that her family has put her in. he has blundered his way into an autumnal period of wealth and he wrote a check to a doctor who gave him a young man’s body and he volunteers at the old folks home on the moon, reading to them and serving them meals out of some strange guilt for being wrongly young. she sees him walking toward her with his young smile and she hovers next to him)

do you want to be mine forever?

i’ll be yours for the last seventy years.

Get That Knowledge Olie!

So I never did take the opportunity of last week to talk about what we are all thankful for. Honestly probably too little or in some cases too much. It seems as though we are in the throws of just another year. Were 22 and kicking and really that’s all that matters, so here is my belated toast to love, life, family, friends, the struggle and the party. The only things that mean a god damn on this spiraling fuck-ball of pollution.

FIVE THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK

1. Getting locked out of your house will make you, for the amount of time until you get back in, homeless.
2. Getting down to brass tacks is like getting to it or shagging ass, as Royal Tennenbaum would say.
3. Getting drunk before a flight is absolutely no fun until you land hung over on the other end.
4. Getting to know your younger siblings now that they are older is like meeting someone cool who you feel you should be friends with.
5. Getting away with all the things you do doesn’t prove that you are suave or sneaky or cool but that you are as you always thought, an asshole.

Dirt

1. The definition of "effluvium."
2. Fried boners is neither a real food or an appropriate Thanksgiving dinner
topic, even if it is an intriguing idea.
3. There's no place like home to feel baffled about your life.
4. Kisses that taste like cigarettes are a beautiful and allergenic symptom
of the times.
5. Our children are going to think we're dumbies when they realize we could
have aborted them all and spent the money we did to raise them on on some
great generational year-long vacation to a savage and misty island, where
love and freedom are as plentiful as batteries and grape soda are here,
where making love is as thoughtless as breathing, and infinitely greater
because it will have no foundation in our diseased consciousness, but
instead levitate somewhere between the sunshine and the clouds, there are no
children and there are no old people and no niggers and no chinks and no
kikes because the old man is also the boy and the kike is also the nigger
just as the wind is both my feeble breath and a cyclone capable of taking
thousands, and all of us will stand on the mountain, not even knowing who's
dream it is or what strange collage of reality and brainwaves could have
given birth to it, and scream to the world the name of our island.

Dubs

It Simply Does Not Explain

Eulogies, you lucky
you lovey-dovey
yule logs doubly burn
your love doubts soon
soon is near and rear is rare
with a southern accent
a subdued accident
Sutpen's arsenic
sunny apprenticeships
ships that sail under water are submarines
i'd make a sub-par marine
supper morning?
asian-american soft mourning
adriatic corning
amnesiatic coarse courting
shooting one and one
hone in on the honey
shoes are one and thirty
your flapping soles are purty

!!!!BUY THIS ALBUM!!!!

So some of Milwaukee's slickest characters are in the band Father Phoenix.
They just put out a new album.

they can drink a lot and grow facial hair. what have you ever done thats cooler? thats what i thought.

also the bass player from Supergrass broke his back in a sleep walking accident. who ever said life was fair.

Ribs for Lunch and Lobster for Dinner

Saw I'm Not There at the Sundance Theatres yesterday and that movie was a fucking ride, a phantasmagoric gumbo of story and aesthetic, ultimately not really about Bob Dylan but some kind of meditation on identity, on life, on carrots and wastebaskets. Ultimately, the movie is so overwhelming that I truly don't know what to make of it. Epic and unconventional and I've been thinking about all day; it cruises through all the lives and wives and wonder and horror that a person could experience in a moment or in all eternity. A great big colorful exciting dream.
Also saw No Country For Old Men yesterday after I had got back from I'm Not There, exercised, ate, walked to get my roommate's car from Pizza Di Roma, saw my sister taking a smoke break outside of Triangle Market, ate again at Pizza D's, then drove back to the Sundance Theater, where I had to choose my seat before I went into the theater even though there was nobody else there, but they have comfortable seats and no commercials. So, this was an amazingly good movie. Some kind of contemporary The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, three amazing characters, three different wild journeys, all leading them to an epic and fantastic climax. No Country does not end in a graveyard three-way duel like Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but some place just as amazing and compelling, and much more unusual. I don't even think of it as a Coen Brothers movie. It's unlike all of their movies in the same way that it's unlike any other movie I've ever seen, though it does play on a very familiar crime plot with a large bag of money as the key motivator for the film's action. On the other hand, a lot of the film's action is completely unmotivated and hopelessly random, just like "the bad" Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic force of nature that is the film's villain, which is part of what makes this such a special movie. Besides that, several Great performances from the entire cast (including Garret Dilahunt from John From Cincinnati and Deadwood), several beautiful moments that are so real and poignant and unusual to see in a movie that they have stayed with me all day, along with Todd Hayn'es images from I'm Not There and that pepperoni slice from Pizza Di Roma.

!!!Me Or MY No Nines!!!

oh, i may have stolen some of this, and have been rifling through the writings of my more talented brother and more talented co-blog owner-er.

it’s the song or maybe the time,
that makes it happen,
just to prove,
just to prove that snow exists, it showers
artificial off the ceilings, off the rooftops
just to prove, just to prove
and I smoke too much,
so my lungs kill, and my doubt kills and
i shake the congratulations and have no place,
for them or the kind words,
i smoke too much just to prove,
to prove to my lungs, that I’m boss.

whether it’s the season of the weather,
whether it proves the selfish savage plunder,
its not the easy parts that flush the blood,
from under my fingernails, in the back seat,
of my parents car, my eyes are bruised and
My nose is raw,
mostly just, the cause and effect,
Just to prove that I can do anything,
or more so that I can’t be told what not to.

it’s the kid that’s brothers of a dead friend, who smiles
who remembers that I am indeed, not really
just a fabrication, of less the, more than, the asshole
I used to be, or vice versa, in which
I crush pills under a card and snort what happens,
I snort the science but its too late,
could have, would have been doing so much more
had the mirror been busted out sooner,
Now I just stand on the porch with Parker
and mind not our frozen hands, the sun
it comes also, it comes soon.

proving that I am not faking it I sit on the couch
and talk with numb face and lingering tone, just
wanting, and both waiting to sleep,
as the beauty of my grandmother, keeps always
In still retreating crane, bird of never ending prey
just to prove that sleep brings comfort,
they are sleeping in the corners by the Mexican place
before im even home from work,
just to prove that I don’t want to go home,
I drag my breaking shoes through the canal
I scuff the remnants just to prove
Snuffing out physical recollection, of wandering

now and it kicks like the mule of bastard winter
the night mare that shakes its head and neighs telling me
that this is proving,
me in the hallway or in the street, kissing through,
the “I’m sorry” and “I should haves”
in the bar or in my home proving I am a better
friend than son and worst of all, being that,
proving my useless sense of love,
which is of course proving that I cannot
love both friend and woman, and only
family because I must

I believed in the dead times, and the ones that come still

Great Movie

Saw Beowulf in 3-D yesterday and it was so damn good I'm going to see it again today. I saw that it's got mixed reviews from movie critics, so I guess there are a bunch of movie critics out there who don't like movies. Ken Turan and Roger Ebert are so fucking jaded that they can't see that they've just seen Citizen Kane. Beowulf is incomparable to nearly any other movie that came before it beside Citizen Kane. Director Robert Zemezkis has up and invented a new visual language for the film that rocks hard and takes every opportunity it has to make a transcendently kick-ass movie with the expanded limits of CGI motion capture and this new Imax 3-D process. Swords fly over you, blood runs over you, and Angelina Jolie's bare ass is right in your face. Amazing! The action and the horror scenes are more inventive and immediately visceral than any movie I've seen in years, and I watch a lot of movies. The monsters are all off the hook, with Crispin Glover as the pathetic and tortured Grendel taking the cake as the coolest design for a monster possible.

It was written by, I think, two of the coolest guys on the planet. Roger Avary wrote and directed The Rules of Attraction, which is a similar movie to Beowulf in it's narrative invention, and also one of the best movies of the last five years. Neil Gaiman wrote my favorite comic-book and piece of literature ever with his 76-part series of wonder and horror called The Sandman. These two lovely gents got together and cooked up one hell of a movie. Besides the amazing action, this movie has some of the best characters in movies this year. Even the monsters are amazingly well-written. Beowulf is an amazing hero both as the legendary square-jawed hero he is supposed to be and as the morally complex character he becomes later in the film. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his best performances in years as King Hrothgar, a central character to the morality tale that is being told and also just a vibrant, hilarious, and deep person that was interesting to get to know, as with the many other great characters in the film, with great performances by John Malkovich, Alison Lohman, Robin Writght Penn, and a bunch of others. Avary and Gaiman have also managed to pack as many great sexual jokes into a PG-13 movie as could be possible, and it's a damn funny movie. The best parts for me are with all these ancient badasses just hanging around the hall and alternately having an awesome party and telling good jokes and then fighting monsters.

Its an epic adventure movie that is more maturely written than 97% of movies coming out this year, including bullshit dramas that are trying to be smart like that movie with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts that's coming out. I'll bet anyone $100 that I will hate that movie. Just go see Beorwulf and do it in 3-D. Will change your life.

NO MA'AM

One time I had a dream that I played Bud Bundy on Married with Children, but I couldn't remember any of my lines and Al and Kelly were just looking at me as if to say, "What the fuck is your problem, Bud?"
"I actually kind of like my family," Al once said in an episode. I think this was a healthy show for our generation to grow up with. It teaches you you well about life; as children, this was one of the examples of adulthood that we had to base our own lives on. Al does not have money, or a nice personality, or a caring wife, and he resents his family and his job every day, but at the end of the day, his life isn't that bad. He always keeps his sense of humor and when its really important, he's there for his family. He's actually a pretty sweet guy when it comes down to it.
It gives a child good expectations to have about life. Things might just suck all around, but that's how it is for everybody so it's not so bad, especially if you can make a good joke now and then. Hell, if Al can be a reasonably good father, then there is probably hope for me and my Vietnamese triplets I have on the way. By the way, cheer up, Sean, because I'm naming them all after you.

No Fun, When You Can't Get None

This is pretty much how i feel.

5 Things I Learned This Week:

1. I get no respect. When I was born the doctor held me in front of
my mother. He said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. We did everything we could,
but he pulled through anyway."
2. Horoscopes are only true for Aries people.
3. Motherfuckers have some balls in Evanston, Illinois.
4. Nuclear fusion is only 30 years away from being given up on.
5. Don't trust people that remind you of Martin Short.

Dubs

1. I should drive a car.
2. working is like loving a life sucking octopus.
3. Happiness is all the rage.
4. Nick Cage in Weatherman is like the uncomfortable uncle I never had.
5. Thanksgiving is about love, thanks and family and getting down with your bad self.

Dirt

Hells Bells and Night Mares

I had a dream last night with close to everyone i know in it. There is a website somewhere that make you believe there is a perfectly logical explanation for that and everything else that happens during dream time. Honestly though, give me a break.

I saw The Sleeping last night at the Henry Fonda. Doug has a huge beard and has a striking resemblance to Che'. I leaned up against the wall by myself like a jaded asshole but cheered when Bayside played a NOFX song.

There is a homeless guy that dresses like he's straight out of Water World that stands outside of the 7-11 by my work. recently ive been seeing him everywhere, which is strange for two fellows without cars, in a city this big. hell, maybe he's my junkie angel.

Maybe i'll go see Beowulf tonight. Fuck me.

I Shall Be Released

A cyclone went through Bangladesh today and it killed around 1,100 people including probably some people you would have liked if you had met them. And then that same cyclone destroyed the home of these people in the picture, which sucks for them. If that butterfly effect is right, then the cyclone could have been started by the applause at a Pantera concert years ago.

The good news is that even with the tragic loss of these 1,100 Bangladeshis to the great unknown, we still gained a couple of hundred thousand people on earth today because of all the baby's that were born all over the green and blue world. In fact, some smart scientists say that the human population is growing at a rate of 1.167%. So people die and people get born and it is not necessarily a good thing, but that's what happens and there's nothing else.

Road Trip!

I went to Evanston, Illinois this week for some reason. I stayed at my roommate's grandfather's house, which was very nice and on a John Hughes Chicago suburb street with enormous lawns. We drank his beer and ate his candy while we watched Friday and then we went out for a drink. Turns out they're not much on drinking there because no one was out and the bars closed by 1 and our bill was a hundred dollars after sitting there for a little over a half-hour. It was so painful to look at that I just started to laugh when I saw it, and we were going to ditch the bill, but I guess we were either not drunk enough or too drunk to run, so my roommate pulled out his Associated Bank card and we road off into the breeze that came from the lake and we smoked pot on the car ride home, and then watched the first half of Batman Returns (I could go on for pages about why this is both the best Batman movie and the best Tim Burton movie, but not today) before passing out in my roommate's cousin's bunk bed.

Hungover the next day, I took the best shower of my life and ate caramel corn for breakfast. We got high almost immediately and dropped off Billy at the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare. We stopped at an Old West Town that was built for some reason in Rockford, Illinois, but it was closed, so went to the steakhouse next door and admired the buffalo heads on the wall and met a cop named Randy. That day we drove back to Madison and decided it was a good idea to see a movie, so we say The Darjeeling Limited. That night I looked up that movie on wikipedia, which didn't tell me anything worth knowing, but I clicked on the Bill Murray page and saw this picture, which is of Bill Murray in 1971 when he made pizzas at a Little Ceasars in, of all places, Evanston, Illinois. Try to find a moral or lesson in any of this and I'll kill you.