Product Review: Kidde® Combo Smoke/ Carbon Monoxide Alarm, Model KN-COSM-IB

22 Feb

combo-smoke-carbon-monoxide-alarm_install

I woke up and a demonic metal brontosaurus was leaning over me, shrieking, and then murmuring in a woman’s voice.  Behind her was Satan, in a long black cloak with glowing red eyes.  I screamed and screamed.  “Low battery” said the demon.  What the fuck?  “Low battery.”  What– Satan was my coat, his eyes were the reflection of my alarm clock in the window.  The dinosaur was my lamp.  I must have taken my phone off vibrate, it was telling me to charge it.  Weird, it had never done that before.  I could hear the neighbors thumping upstairs, thinking I’d been gutted.  Their dog was freaking out.  I found the phone, turned it off.  Started drifting off again.  Dreamt I was on a boat in the ocean. Mona was there, her sun-warm skin, her belly.  The wind.  Sardines glimmering in the sunlight under the waves… Continue reading →

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Unemployment Diary: The Job Market

21 Feb

jobbureau

You get scared when you leave a white collar job that you’re gonna end up picking up trash.  Well, not to worry. You can’t get that job.  It’s a union gig.  A city gig. You get scared that you’re gonna get trapped in some soul-crushing civil service shit for years like Bukowski. But you can’t get a job at the post office.  They’re cutting back.  You have to know somebody.  You can’t get a job flipping burgers.  You’re overqualified (in my case, this is true). You can’t do shit labor on a construction site.  Half of Mexico is up here trying to do that.

So what can you do.  You can get a job in a STEM field, they tell you.  If only you had gotten your degree in a STEM field, you would be in great demand.  Science, technology, engineering, mathematics.  A computer programmer, in other words.  Do you know how fucking hard that shit is?  I could barely pass my intro to C++ class, and I’m smart.  Your ability to do that shit is purely genetic, and it’s the same gene that makes you smell like cheese and talk like that pedophile’s RealDoll from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Hearing that little pussy talk makes me think we need more bullying in schools.  There is no talented computer programmer on the face of this earth who can buy a six pack at the liquor store and make small talk with the clerk normally.  There certainly isn’t one who can speak to a woman.   Continue reading →

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Protected: Reader Mailbag: Fights and Jail

21 Feb

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Hipsters Part 2

20 Feb

hipster cardigan

Previously

I am in a coffee shop slash independent book store drinking a 3 dollar cup of tea called “White Orchard.”  In ancient China, only kings and queens were allowed to drink white tea, the foil packet tells me.  I am wearing a cardigan.  Avant garde jazz featuring baritone sax is playing.  I am surrounded by people looking at Tumblrs on brushed titanium Mac laptops that were not purchased with their own money.  The coffee shop  is owned by Dave Eggers.  I want to walk in and beat my own ass.

I am an unemployed white man with skinny jeans on and three days’ growth of beard hunting and pecking into a laptop in a coffee house at noon on a Wednesday.  This is like the moment where a promising young black guy on his way to college makes one small mistake and finds himself on the prison bus.  I am looking down at my shackles contemplating how I threw everything away.  I would bristle when they called me a hipster.  Nothing hip about me, I would say.  I work in an office.  No one can be hip when they use Microsoft Excel regularly.  Not now. Continue reading →

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Protected: Birthday State of the Union

19 Feb

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Protected: Television Review: Girls

18 Feb

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Protected: Valentine’s Day Journal: A Sucker for Romance

15 Feb

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Guest Post at Nikol Hasler Dot Motherfucking Com

14 Feb

I guest posted for my beloved Nikol over at her web site.  It’s called “Take Valentine’s Day and Shove It Right Up Your Stupid Ass.”  Have a look.

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The Girls Cried When They Got Dillinger

12 Feb

dorner hope

Monica Quan was a human being who didn’t deserve to die.  Keith Lawrence was a human being who didn’t deserve to die.  Michael Crain  was a human being who didn’t deserve to die.  The San Bernardino deputy who died today didn’t deserve to die, although at least he saw it coming.  In any case, these people were murdered in cold blood.  Their mothers and fathers, their kids, their friends, are mourning.

Still, when I heard they got Dorner, I thought: fuck.

His fucking axle broke.  Ain’t it always some shit like that.  You have a perfect plan, and some random bullshit comes out of nowhere.  It was like he slipped on a banana peel.  They had Feds in Las Vegas, cops in Tijuana raiding hotels for him; they said he stole a boat, that he was stocking up on SCUBA gear.  He may have accomplices and caches of food and weapons; he’s using burner cell phones; he could have a whole network across the country and they may never catch him.  He could come out of nowhere at any time and kill any cop to get vengeance for everyone the cops ever fucked. And the cops became chickens without heads, falling over themselves to shoot up any pickup truck within 500 miles.  We saw what really moved them.  You call the cops and nothing happens.   When they were afraid for themselves, that’s when they kicked into high gear.
Continue reading →

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Work Diaries: Work Shit

11 Feb

December 2012

It’s too fucking cold.  It’s too cold and I may have to take the dreaded work shit.  Breaking a covenant I made with myself long ago, that after every shit would come a shower.  They scoff at me for this, society.  What’s the matter, can’t you wipe?  Yes, I can, but this is not an FDA-permitted 3 rat hairs in your can of chili situation.  Any amount of shit on your body ever is unacceptable.  I wipe till the paper comes up clean or bloody, but that is not enough.  If I shat on your hand, would you give it a couple dry passes with a napkin and call it a day?  No, knave, you’d wash your fucking hand.

I live in mortal fear of any pair of underwear I own getting skidmarks on them. The white bits turning brown from my musky taint sweat is not an issue; holes are not an issue– there are boxers where my distended left nut hangs fully outside the garment and grinds into my car keys. I still keep them around.  But once I see a skid mark, those underwear will be immolated.  No exceptions. Continue reading →

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