Drunk Thoughts on Syria
28 Aug
Last night I consumed a pint of Christian Brothers® brandy from Royale Junior Liquor Market and sat down to determine my position on U.S. Intervention in Syria. This was not inspired by Drunk History:
I kept thinking about a guy peeling potatoes.
Originally I pictured him in one of Assad’s palaces. I heard on NPR, an expert speculating. Maybe the US would bomb the palaces to send a personal message to Assad. So I thought of a guy who works in the kitchen there. You think they let them leave when they’re going to get bombed? I’m sure there are guards standing around with AK’s, making sure the staff stays put. I kept thinking about this guy. He has a kid maybe, a girl. He was having issues with his wife, some pain in the ass in his day. But good things happened, too. His daughter did something cute, brought home a picture from school. He was employed. Lucky to be. And what other jobs are out there. You get a job for the king, you gotta take it. So he’s peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Everyone is nervous. They heard the Americans are going to bomb the country. Scared chatter. Someone makes a joke. The dark mood is broken. Then they’re all vaporized in fire. Skin blistered off, organs boiled inside their bodies. His daughter hearing the news. Continue reading
Don’t Kill Yourself
27 AugMy dad is 65, was diagnosed with bone cancer 15 years ago and given six months to live. Since his childhood he drank like a fish, smoked a pack a day, and used hard drugs. He is still living. Came to visit me. He’s beat up. Can barely walk up the hill to my apartment. His mind is slipping. He speaks slowly. Moves slowly.
But he is still alive. I introduced him to a couple of the women in my life. His mind is slipping, but he still knows nice eyes, nice skin, nice ass, nice tits. I took him to Joshua Tree. He’d never seen it. Hard to show that motherfucker something he’d not seen in this country. He’s been all over. But this was new. He had trouble walking. Had trouble speaking. But every new bird, every new rock, every new flower blew his mind. When night fell, every new star– there is so much to see in this life. So much to know.
Of course, the old man was also deeply interested in the 19 year old Hong Kong chick walking on our hiking trail. Son, you better make a move on that. She’s interested. Tell her to take your picture.
You will lose your mind, your body, your dick– whatever you value. But life still has things to show you. Life isn’t done with you. I get why people kill themselves. I get it, but they’re wrong. Seeing a god damn road runner drinking from a mud puddle changes my life every time. And it changed the life of a 65 year old man who I’d thought had seen everything. You could live for a thousand years and never run out of wonderful shit.
I get why people kill themselves. I contemplate it every day. Still. Don’t. It’s an arrogant thing to do. It’s saying: I know all the secrets. Bullshit. You never know. Tomorrow a seagull could steal a kid’s ice cream cone in front of you and you’ll laugh harder and better than you ever have in your life.
Women: Why Don’t You Read When You Shit?
22 Aug 
- image stolen from flickr user “Lesley Looper.”
Or do you? Is it just every woman I know who doesn’t? I’ll be out with a girl. A real she-bro with whom I can talk honestly. She’ll remark that she has to take a shit. An odd choice, the “social hours” shit– the wise person knows to train his body for the morning one-two punch: shit/shower. If your schedule is off, sleep holding it in. Let your bowels marinate a fuming hot sauce log. Suffer dreams of goblins gutting you with hot knives. With one night’s pain you reset the clock. You buy the ultimate human achievement: blissful ass purge followed by the hot womb of the steam. Every day. A perfectly clean asshole. Think of it like beating jet lag. Continue reading
Jesus Christ, Now What
21 AugReading Charles Bukowski poems. They will keep you honest. But honesty is a bitch when you’re employed and don’t hate your boss and don’t drink too much and don’t give a shit about women. Honesty is nothing. I think and feel nothing. Wake up, healthy breakfast, bike to the train, sit down and nod kindly at my fellow commuters. Open the laptop. An hour with no internet. A gift carved out of the day. Nothing comes out of your fingers because nothing’s there.
I don’t hate anybody. I don’t care about the government. Women are just women. They’re still out there, I still want them. But wanting to fuck some teenager on the street is so old now it’s like the weather. Nothing happens. I go to the gym. I’m unhappy that they got rid of all the good magazines. That’s the only emotion I feel in a day. Cook chicken and jerk off. Three dollar bottle of wine, fall asleep watching a movie. Nothing.
Having a normal life feels like waiting out the clock to die and even knowing that gives you nothing. People are out there writing things. Elaborate novels. Political screeds. They get pussy and make a living. But he’s right, that’s all nothing. Even these words about those things being nothing are nothing. If it isn’t exploding out of you then don’t do it, he says. Well what the fuck am I supposed to do then? Something’s gotta show up on the page. People need new words to read on the toilet. Take their mind off of work.
You need pain to make something. And it can’t be fake pain that you chase. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get hit by a truck.
OKCupid: Water Water Everywhere
16 Aug
Back on OKCupid for a minute. The women have gotten worse. They’re not less attractive physically. But the banality of their profiles has, impossibly, increased. Used to be 90% of women were the “live learn laugh love” people. Now it’s 99% . The if you want to know more about me just ask. The I love my dog, I love my job, I love my family and friends. Everything in my life is perfect I just need the right man to share it with. The anything by Haruki Murakami and David Sedaris women. Radiohead. All music except country. Or all music except rap and country. The PLEASE READ MY PROFILE BEFORE MESSAGING ME I AM NOT INTERESTED IN CASUAL SEX cast into the deaf wind like a prayer to a dead god.
The meaningless Meyers-Briggs letter jumbles. Science’s version of Cosmo’s Are You Good Girl Sexy or Bad Girl Sexy test. I have a kid, I love my kid, you have to understand that my kid comes first. Never I have a kid and I put him in one of those bigass industrial tupperware bins with a bunch of plants when I fuck guys off the internet. I’m hoping it will create a biodome. Continue reading
Reader Mailbag: Career Advice
10 Aug
image stolen from nynjgoodwill.wordpress.com
Bob Marley writes:
Since you know so much about careers, I wanted to ask for your personal opinion on which would be wise for a young lad in England to pursue.
I’ll take to heart whatever your decision may be.
Work is fundamentally evil. No matter what, it will make you unhappy. If you do what you love as work, you will come to hate it. Maybe this is not true of rock stars. But no future rock star ever asked for career advice.
So it doesn’t matter what you actually do for work. Live cheaply, and work at the place with the most pretty girls. Continue reading
This Motherfucking Guy
7 Aug
Six foot fucking four, a surfer, law degree, sometime male model. He has been in the army. They sent him to Iraq, Congo, what he cheekily calls “DMZ” with no further clarification. Every chick in the world then googled DMZ. His profile is perfect. Arrogant as shit but backing it up. Funny. No angst, no real self deprecation. Why would there be. There is nothing wrong with him.
Lives on the coast. Founded and sold a software company in his 20’s. Now he makes his money as a lawyer when he is not surfing with various dolphins and whales. He takes great pains to talk about the whales. But it’s tongue in cheek enough that it doesn’t come across as bragging. He is the sort of person who surfs with dolphins but knows that the sort of person who talks about surfing with dolphins comes off as a fucking dork. He manages to work it in perfectly. I would tell you the exact language, and you’d agree with me. But I don’t want you to google him. Continue reading
New Book
delicioustacos 