I’d like to address two comments which which were posted on this article I wrote a while back.
Billy, Ericka would always make fun of you behind your back and often describe to you me as ‘pathetic’ and ‘stupid.’ Not in the joking way. I’m not doing this to sow discord but rather to point out to you the irony in you coming to her aid like a knight in shining armor when she apparently holds no respect for you. Ericka lies, and she uses people to get what she wants. I doubt she’s even aware she’s doing it at this point. Ironically this is what she also accuses her mother of. I suppose the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Consider this, I was around her a lot during the course of two years. I have no interest in speaking to her or you so therefore I have nothing to gain by telling you this, not even to make her life harder. She already makes it hard enough without my help. I like how you made your e-mail address fuck@you.com. That’s pretty clever and obviously proves that what Ericka told me about your intellect to be utterly false. In case you can’t tell I’m being sarcastic. I was told you were kinda slow by you-know-who so I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss that.
As for, who I assume to be her current boyfriend being an INTERNET TOUGH GUY going on about how I’m some sort of emo; you’re an idiot. Though now that I think about it you’re right, I guess I do have something in common with emo people. Self-inflicted wounds. When they want to harm themselves, they cut. Whereas I actually dated Ericka. The only difference one leaves physical scars and the other just leaves mental ones. First of all, to be acting tough with the word ‘gundam’ in your e-mail address? Really? You know nothing about me and you only know Ericka’s side of the story which has distorted your perception of the facts and will probably make you completely oblivious to reality much like her. I consider myself a pretty objective and fair person and I try to give everyone a chance to improve themselves or make their lives better and as long as they are trying or don’t offend me in some grievous way. I try to do right by them and reserve judgement. This courtesy only extends so far and once someone has exhausted my limits of patience or bullshit then my courtesy reserves become exhausted and I can, admittedly, be a real prick. Now I’m going to go easy on you personally because I don’t know you that well and if someone was saying things like I was about my girlfriend I might be willing to get myself into a battle of mean words on the internet to try and defend the honor of my lady.
A couple of weeks ago, my grandfather died. Which has brought not a fullsade of sorrow, tears, and grief as one would expect given the apocalyptic overtones of mortality manifesting itself in one’s life. What it has done to me, is make me think about the ramifications of his life and how it’s been like a specter lingering always over the lives of the family long before his demise. Meaning that, he’s almost always been in the background silently overseeing and moving events in the lives of my family for years. With him gone, nothing feels the same in those households, and they never will again given the unique position of the family hierarchy which was extremely dependent on him to handle everything.
He had to deal with a wife who was becoming increasingly aloof and difficult as she grew older, two adult children who’s marriages ended and forced a semi financial co-dependance on him, and four grand children. One dangerously close to an alcoholic, one with some serious anger and stress issues, one who gave him a great great grandchild, and one who did nothing but fight him tooth and nail for years over everything and anything. Guess which one I was.
All of us, at some point, needed him to get through some tough times, and in spite of the fact that it cost him his retirement to take in our family when my father ran out, he did what he could do to ensure we made it. It may not have been a perfect relationship, and we may not have agreed at times, but I never hated him. The man was selfless, and was the closest thing to a father I’ve had in my adult life. My mother would not have been able to survive taking care of four kids on her own after my father ran out on us when I was twelve, opening old wounds for me because of my adoption and the obvious subtext that implies. She was incapable of normal work due to severe arthritis, so my grandfather helped her get a place for me and my brothers.
Frankly the past two years have been extremely trying on my self-esteem and my feeling of self-worth, but I powered through. I have peace and a place to work and I’ve been feeling really good about writing lately. For the first time in five years I’ve really had time and the mental strength to pour out words. It’s been so long since I felt good about myself.
I dumped Kiki.
I moved out for the 3rd and last time.
Feeling pretty good.
A word about Kiki, which I find funny. When I was dating her, near the end I was hoping that she’d find affection from someone else, some other guy would take her away from me because of her condition (being wheel-chair bound and with a crippling and infuriating desire to act like she was still a child) I actually found myself holding back my real feelings about her to spare her feelings. That was a mistake. Frankly, I get sick of being treated like a crutch, and more so, get sick of someone who insists on acting immature because they are too childish or weak willed to grow the fuck up and actually do something with their life other than sit in a chair and get fatter with the passing of each day.
Also, her hygiene went out the window halfway though the relationship, at the beginning she was cute, by the end she was at least 50 pounds overweight (which puts her in a serious health risk due to her condition) her teeth were coated in a delicious yellow slime at all times, and her nether regions smelled like a pile of dead hobos. Not even exaggerating, and when I’d confront her about this she would say “I don’t care.” Obviously. Well guess what? I did. I didn’t want to be embarrassed every time I carted a fat fucking blob in a wheelchair that smelled like shit around in public. People noticed that, everyone thought she smelled awful but that didn’t stop her. Childish, stupid, selfish, disgusting… and I was frankly a year past due dumping her on her ass. Pity only goes so far, when I cease to find the person I’m ‘dating’ attractive or enjoy not being around them at all a really pleasant reality then it’s time to bring down the hammer.
I tried to be nice about it too, but Mrs. Childish did the stereotypical ‘you’re dead to me we’ll never speak again!’ bullshit that all immature people do when a relationship is utterly dysfunctional. She even knew that we weren’t working out and actually asked me near the end ‘why are we even together?’ and my reply was ‘good question.’ Anyway, none of this is the funny part, just the tragic one. The funny part is that she WAS seeing someone on the side! She could have just told me so I could have dumped her guilt-free but no, she had to make me feel like a jerk for dumping a cripple with terrible self-esteem while she was out going on dates with another dude when I wasn’t around! So Kiki, if you’re reading this, you’re a child and I feel sorry for the poor dumb bastard dating you now. Get a fucking therapist you crazy bitch.
But yeah, I moved out again from the family. This is the last time I ever ask them for help in my life, what was supposed to be a three month stay (while I saved money) turned into an almost three year tenure due to them constantly knocking me up for money. I could have been gone in months and they did everything to convince me and nickle and dime me into never getting out of that house. Ridiculous.
So basically, after a long silent stint I’m feeling pretty good, motivated and ready to get back to the world of words, I’ve missed it a lot.
You know, if someone had told me, long long ago, that there were quite so many shitty video games in the world, I might not have bothered collecitng them. Nonetheless, I still have a small hoard of 8 and 16 bit cartridges lying around from when I was younger, taking up space and, from a purely entertainment viewpoint, not aging all that well. Case in point, the fresher generation of angsty consumers has to wonder what the fuck we were thinking to spend money on garbage that can now be reproduced and improved upon by a teenager armed with a copy of Flash and a case of Red Bull and no life to speak of. As I play more NES roms, I realize how stupidly simple his task is. Most of these game developers had no clue how to create an enjoyable product. Oh, but you know the drill by this point. Now comes the part where I shed light on the evidence to support my previous claim. Yay! All aboard the 80′s Fail Train. Fasten your cartoon headgear.
(And Sir or madam, if you grew up with some of these games, I have little trouble believing that you now wear a crash helmet)
If any of you were into the anime craze of the late 80′s/early 90′s, you may have sought out some ‘classics’ of the genre, including some of the more “serious” films like Akira, Ninja Scroll and Fist of the North Star. Not to say that these films were intellectual fair or anything; people just swore a whole lot and half the cast or more ended up dying violently, and death is pretty serious, or so I’ve heard. Fist of the North Star, or FotNS, upped the ante by making the deaths ridiculously gory and sometimes just plain stupid. Ken Shiro, the protagonist, was a post-apocalyptic hybrid of Bruce Lee and Mad Max (no joke, that’s precisely what the original graphic novel creator was going for), who had somehow mastered a deadly form of martial art that caused the human body’s physiology to alter itself radically and well, long story short, his victims contorted, swelled, and exploded in torrents of blood and guts. Sometimes all he had to do was touch them just right to begin a typical sequence of nigh-comical hyper violence. Obviously, this was a good idea for a Nintendo game, because if we’ve been taught anything, it’s that 8 bit graphics realistically convey splatterhouse carnage and other organic special effects without looking like pixelated horse crap.
There was a time in my life, when I had a near-death experience. Though there was no tunnel of light, and the ghosts of my loved ones to greet me or anything quite as dramatic as that. Since I did not actually achieve cardiac arrest, thankfully due to the fact that fortune smiled upon me. For once.
Several years ago, I used to work for a small-time computer wholesaler, and one of my co-workers was this Russian guy named Dmitri. Dmitri’s family was originally from Moscow, they fled the soviet bloc in the 90s due to the political changes taking place and the sudden dramatic rise in the crime rate and corruption, as well as the higher cost of living. That’s all I really knew of his family’s situation. Dmitri himself seemed to wax nostalgic about the good-ole days growing up in Russia. He said ‘it wasn’t that bad.’ He was semi-built, but shorter than me by about seven or eight inches, had brown hair center-part and almost shoulder-length, to give you an idea what he looked like.
Dmitri and I actually had no reason to get along, he was my opposite in terms of what he did for fun and what his hobbies were. He tended to like really heavy rock and metal, either screaming lyrics or dumb shit like Saliva. You know, the guys responsible for that obnoxious ‘click-click boom’ song. He was also a car enthusiast, and would often tell me about his car, which was a Mazda RX-7. One time giving me a ride in his, he managed to achieve a speed of about ninety five miles per hour on the highway adjacent to our building. A ballsy move considering the speed limit was only forty five. Often these fairly one-sided conversations were about the supposed superiority of rotary engines to the standard, and he would often download engine sounds and play them at me, explaining the differences in great detail. To me all I heard was a bunch of obnoxious and loud noise, but his eyes seemed to light up with excitement every time, which I never understood why. In addition he had a tendency to really like clubs, and drinking. Especially drinking.
What we had in common was twofold. First we hated the working conditions we had to put up with at our place of employment. The wages were low for the technicians, even though not everyone could do what we did, but the sales people made about a thousand a week. We were barely making three hundred. We were working for Chinese Jews though, so perhaps some stereotypes can be true on occasion? To give you an idea, the owner was this old Chinese lady, who sat in an office filled with gold and jade statues and wall-hangings, behind a massive mahogany desk that had to at least have cost a small fortune because the top was surfaced with a jade slab. She would pull us in this office and tell us how they could not give us raises whenever we asked for better pay. I myself, worked there for almost four years without even a slight pay increase. They probably still wonder why I stopped showing up on time.
This is the new hit single from Nonpersons record’s latest album by Dj McLicious. Be sure to look for the album titled ‘Gurt Lava Beach Party’ at no record store… ever.
Inspired from listening to the magic of the Wiggles – Point Your Finger.
Newsflash: In an interesting turn of events, humanity discovered on April 17th of this year that we shouldn’t stab people because it can kill them! While perusing the headlines this morning, this story caught my eye.
A man has appeared in court to deny the manslaughter of his teenage friend who was knifed while trying on a stab-proof vest.
As befits my generous nature, I would like to offer a minor correction to the British news journal. The man’s teenage friend was trying on what he thought to be a stab-proof vest. As evidence shows that the blade passed through the vest, it was not, in fact, stab-proof. Secondly, it was not idiot-proof. Case in point, I have my doubts about the intelligence of anyone over the age of 30 who believes the idea presented to them by a teenager, and involving sharp objects no less, to be a good one.
I have to imagine that the guilt in a case like this is only made more unbearable by the aforementioned age difference. Think about it. You’re 31 years old. An 18 year old kid asks you to stab them to try out their new vest. You do it. Then you take your medication and go back to the corner to solve the intricacies of letter blocks while eating paste and rocking back and forth repeating the mantra “Hope I dun get in twubble, derp”, because you’re obviously a grade A fucking moron.
I’m going to assume that since Christopher is not currently available to accept his Darwin award, that his friend will find a place for it on his mantle until they meet again following the latter’s eventual, deadly encounter with a knife-proof toaster.
Other equally good titles for this article could have been:
Craig’s List Hot Tub (And Other Bad Ideas)
Build Your Own Home Mosquito Nest
Like Hammer Onto Big Toe
Creeping Mold in the Carpets and Other Tales of Horror
They were not chosen due to the fact that they only cover one aspect of this spiral of fail that could only have been achieved through a combination of gross incompetence, stupidity, testosterone, and stubborn defiance which has become increasingly obvious to be par for the course when dealing with my brothers.
So, this spiral staircase into Hell begins at a familiar destination, Craig’s List. Part online trading post and part hooker solicitation service Craigs List is home to (mostly) defective and useless junk that other people attempt to sell to suckers for a quick buck. With that in mind, in walks my brothers deciding to purchase a hot tub to go into my mother’s condo. Of course a discount hot tub that they haven’t even planned the logistics of how the fuck to even get it inside of the house could be nothing but an amazing idea. So the younger of the two brothers of mine shows up at the house one day with a hot tub in the bed of his hitch trailer (in true alcoholic conservative fashion he runs a lawn care business), several of his retarded ‘friends’ (people that hang out with him so they can smoke his weed), and absolutely no plan whatsoever.
There are many layers to this onion of failure, but I think it would be wise to reveal them in the same order I figured them out, for maximum comedy. I’d like to preface the following by saying that from the start I thought this hot tub thing was a terrible idea. A local radio guy I listen to recently had purchased a hot tub on, you guessed it, craig’s list and it was defective to say the least. I think I even told my brothers his tale of woe, but being young and with that ‘whatever I do what I want’ attitude they basically ignored me. Allow me to also state, and I say this with as little arrogance as possible, that usually when I think something is a bad idea (especially when it’s a plan or idea of my family’s) it usually turns out to be even worse than I imagine it to be.
In general I regard all attention whores in the media as little more than vacuous overflowing propaganda receptacles, leaving their refuse on the ground as more and more useless information piles on top of and slips off. These new media types, in my opinion, they all want attention, they want people big and small talking about them, spreading news of artificial and manufactured (IE: made-up) ‘controversy’ that really exists only because they know it’s a buzzword and gets people’s attention. People like Ann Coulter, or Mike Moore. They only want to capitalize and profit by hijacking people’s fears and pretenses and preaching to the already converted for book deals and a quick few bucks before dropping off the media radar like a shooting star, laughing their way to the bank. They claim to speak for us, they don’t. They speak for their corporate backers and their wallets and will say anything, no matter how stupid or crazy it is, to get that spotlight shined upon them for a few more precious seconds.
So, in general, my policy is to not waste effort saying my opinion of their opinions because in the grand scheme of things people like that do not matter, they come and go or persist only in the most slanted ideological soapboxes that will allow them to spill more of their garbage to a gradually diminishing audience. Essentially you’re arguing with a puppet, a loose configuration of rhetoric given corporal form. A shambling horrible media zombie, relentlessly craving ratings. They want to offend you, and grab your attention, so I think it’s a good idea to ignore them and I wish more people would realize this and do the same. Of course, there are exceptions for extra persistent and or insidious ones, and for that I offer these few choice words towards the individual that compelled me to write this article. Mr. Glenn Beck.
Now, Beck is known for saying racist, ignorant, and retarded political statements pretty much on a daily basis. He’s also known for holding huge corporate-sponsored and funded rallies to further establish himself as the center of a ‘movement’ that has been artificially constructed to feed Fox New’s narrative of widespread political dissent towards the evil Demoncrats and their obvious facio-socialist agenda to take over our lives. Hell, he even came close to offending me when he pretended to cry and be afraid for America, because it was such an obvious act and people still bought it. This is not what managed to actually offend me, as, like I said, I’m fairly numb and indifferent to obvious liars only out to make a quick buck. What got me was a simple statement, stated rather emphatically:
The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny. — Norman Cousins, Saturday Review (15 Apr 78)
