I want to ... uh ... suck ... uh, I want some bloodI want to ... uh ... suck ... uh, I want some bloodI want to ... uh ... suck ... uh, I want some bloodI want to ... uh ... suck ... uh, I want some bloodI want to ... uh ... suck ... uh, I want some blood
They say that success is the best revenge,
but my vote is still for shooting a guy in the face.
Oh no, it's DEVO!
Just recently got ahold of the complete DEVO discography. You know, way too many people dismiss DEVO as a one-hit wonder from the 80s or a stange collection of dudes who maybe had a few appearances on Solid Gold before disapearring into the underbrush of American pop culture never to be seen again. Nothing could be further from the truth. First off, the band itself had about nine albums not including live LPs and Eps. They were never going to be U2 but they did have something of a message for us and that message is "Subversion is just another T-shirt." Think about it won't you?
Jimmy John's now has a location in Omaha at 300 South 72nd Street. I don't know when it opened but I know it wasn't here in 2001 when I looked. Now, I don't get too happy about many sandwich joints. Subway sucks hard and Little King and Blimpie's don't do much for me either. But Jimmy John's doesn't eff around. They start with a good foundation: decent bread. I've said it before and God damn it I'll say it again. Good bread is essential for anything that is bread based. If the bread or "crust" sucks, you can pile on the toppings and they won't be worth eating ... not with the bread any way. They also use the only really good commercially available mayo: Hellman's. Don't EVEN give me that Miracle Whip shit.
So if you read this and live anywhere near a Jimmy John's check 'em out. I recommend the Gargantuan, the Beach Club or even a turkey slim Jim if you're broke or just looking for a snack.
Other sandwich places to try:
Aztlan Restaurant & Billar 2102 Q St
Dundee Dell 5007 Underwood Avenue
Ethnic Sandwich Shop 1438 South 13th Street
Landshire Sandwiches 13430 Giles Road
Lorri's Lunch Box 8410 K Street
Quizno's Classic Subs 4006 North 144th Street
Subia Inc 13362 Chandler Road
"Bush's approval rating just dropped to 32% -- a number
at which both water and political clout freeze."
--Arianna Huffington
I remember the sense of despair I felt when that son of a bitch W stole the 2000 election while the media, the Democrats, Congress and every one of us sat by and watched as if we had no choice but to lay there and take it. Once again, the country had taken a massive swing to the right. Conservatives were pumped up on their own bullshit rhetoric thinking they had some kind of mandate or right to rule. Personally, I blame those fucking Naderites who said "things can't get any worse." Well it did ... and how.
I remember telling myself that this too would pass. I just had to be patient. So when the same God damn thing happened in 2004 -- after four years of idiocy, incompetence and pointless wars -- I almost went apoplectic. But still, I said, things will come around. People will figure this fuckin' guy out.
I think it's safe to say that when your approval rating hits 32%, people have figured you out. It amazes me that the remaining 32% will even admit that they support W let alone that they are still fanatically devoted to him and his "world view." I think it's a case of things have gotten so bad that they are really hoping that we are just in the midst of some kind of revolution that will result in a much better world. They think we are just living in the hard times that precede a golden age, but that's largely bullshit. For one thing, I haven't even heard a rough plan for how this bright new future is supposed to come about. We are really working TOWARD anything, we're just fighting a pointless war in a country full of people who hate us and will always hate us so Haliburton can make some extra cash now while the gettin' is good. It's pretty obvious.
Greed has never been a good foundation for lasting, positive change. We might get over it eventually, but by then ants or monkeys will have taken our place.
My tolerance for fucking retards has gotten pretty low as of late. I don't mind if someone is a bit slow or technically challenged. What I mind are these hostile, ignorant savages who can't put two and two together so call me up and abuse me because they're simple mother fuckers. Hey, guess what? If you sat on your fucking TV remote and can't see "The Sopranos," your cable isn't broken, your brain is.
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When I was just a wee lad, my mother taught me the importance of saying "excuse me" after certain unfortunate but inevitable biological events. Farting, coughing, hiccupping, burping, shitting your pants, yawning and sneezing. Now for some odd reason I've never been able to fathom, sneezing has been granted some sort of sacred place among the otherwise notably disgusting bodily functions to which we human are prone. Sneeze at work or in public and some dogmatic fool is just bound say "God Bless You" as though it were their solemn obligation. Frankly, I hate these people. First off, it's a meaningless, misdirected act of politeness based on a centuries old misbelief that we lose a piece of our soul every time we sneeze. We should abolish the practice on that basis alone. Secondly, it creates this undesirable sense of social obligation in the sneezer. Are you supposed to say thank you to the blesser? Personally, I like the occasional sneeze. It's like a little orgasm in the middle of my face. Breaks the day up nicely. I don't do it for attention and I don't want anyone to notice let alone acknowledge and give me their unqualified blessing.
So just keep it to yourselves.
Since when did we become China's bitches? A heckler was arrested on federal charges of intimidating a foreign official yesterday durng a speech by Chinese President Hu Jintao ... a communist. Now, I'd be the first person to say that the Chinese form of communism is pretty weak as far as communism goes. It's really much more like government sponsored capitalism with an assload of human rights violations thrown in to the mix for good luck. That's why the United States digs China so much an completely overlooks their complete disregard for civil liberties while continuing to harass the powerhouse that is Cuba.
But what really chaps my hide isn't that we do business with them. It's shitty, but it's not THE shittiest thing we've done. What galls me is that we don't stand up for human rights and we do their bidding. It's the one last vestige of my dying American jingoism that I believe we shouldn't take shit from anyone. We should do what's right because it's right, but we ain't anybody's bitches and we shouldn't start now with the fucking Chinese.
This woman, Wen Yi Wang, 47, who got loud about Falun Dafa (a persecuted relgious group in China) is a naturalized American citizen from China. She got into the event because she is a reporter and while I personally feel that she should have kept quiet on the grounds that it isn't professional for a journalist to act that way regardless of who is on the stage. As an American, she certainly isn't guilty of a damn thing. It isn't harassment to protest. No one should do time because they outsmarted security and got themselves heard. So while she might be a shit journalist, she's a good American.
According to CNN, crude (oil that is) is over $70 a barrel right now, which means that sometime this summer, gas at the pumps could reach $4 a gallon for the first time in American gas-guzzling history. As a driver, I am appalled and hope that it doesn't happen, but as someone who actuallyn gives a shit about the planet, I'm secretly thrilled. Europeans have been paying exhorbitant rates for gas for decades while we Americans have gotten off cheap. Sure, gas prices have steadily gone up for years, but no one has ever done anything to create a truly more fuel efficent car. Why did it take decades to invent the hybrid? That just sounds like the kind of technology we could have had in the 70s when we first started worrying about fuel economy.
Well the answer is simple economics really. No one on the planet is going to be motivated to develop better and more efficent means of getting from A to B until their pocket books are hurting. There is a reason why it's mostly poor people who take the bus in the United States, you know. In Europe, it is not so uncommon to see everyone but the very rich on public transport. In the U.S., a car is mandatory even if you are just mostly poor. Just look at our cities. They are made for cars, not people. I saw a guy walking on the street the other day and I was shocked. I thought, there goes a guy who lost his license. I was probably right, too, but for all the wrong reasons.
So as much as I'm about to hate this summer's gas prices, it's long overdue. I'll try not to bitch.
Last week, the Nebraska Legislature voted to split up the Omaha School District into three separate school districts: North Omaha, South Omaha and West Omaha. This is not much of a surprise in and of itself but anyone from round these parts knows North Omaha is largely black, South Omaha is largelly hispanic and West Omaha is a whiter shade of pale. The move to split the school districts comes in response to the City of Omaha's attempts to expand ever westward into new territories. Most recently, Omaha tried to annex Elkhorn and the Millard School District against the will of the residents of those areas. Hitler had more compassion going after the Sudetenland. It was brutal.
This city is so insecure about being a third rate city that it is trying to grow at ridiculous rate. When I was a kid, Boystown was out in the country around 132nd and Dogdge. Today, Dodge goes out to 300 and something. Boystown is practically a strip mall.
On the other side, you've got the state of Nebraska which really is jut one huge collection of hicks at odds with Omaha and it's struggle for urbanity. This bit of segregationist legislation is a direct response that will make Omaha and the state of Nebraska a laughing stock for weeks and months to come. The Colbert Report has already satirically congratulated the state for having the guts to take on Brown vs. the Board of Education.
I for one couldn't be happier. Any time these hayseeds prove what a backward ass bunch of crackers they are by poo-pooing gambling, attacking Iowa for being smarter, richer and cooler, or by extolling the virtues of separate but equal 50 years after the Supreme Court established it as unconstitutional, I'm thrilled. I really am.
Nebraska is the Red State that even Red Staters can be ashamed of because their gungho shitstomperism isn't even smart conservatism. It's just xenophobic future shock masquerading as "the people's best interest."
The more I work with old people, the more I realize that Soylent Green is a good idea. I understand that someone who once attended a one-room school house on the prairie might not be able to understand how to use email or a computer or a George Foreman Grill, but how about a fuckin' button? How about the God damn on switch on their freakin' TV? I remember how way back in the old days (the 70s) we used to turn lamps on and off with switches and buttons. Now that I recall, this technology was invented back when electricity was invented so even the oldest of people alive today should have some passing familiarity with the concept of a power switch.
Now move that switch to you remote control (or clicker if you first saw one in the 50s) and it does the same freakin' thing ... just remotely. But day in and day out, I talk to old people who act like not only is a button a thing they've never seen before but that it is my duty as someone younger than them to explain how it works. I try to be patient because I understand how complicated these things can be, but I'm still pretty much disgusted.
Soylent Green. It's a good idea.
There I was standing on the corner of 28th and Broadway in the dead of night with a pounding headache and a gun in my hand. Not again, I thought quietly to myself. Then much louder to myself, I thought SHIT FUCK GODDAMNIT!
This wasn't the first time I had gone out at night and found myself in an awkward situation. There was the time I found myself in the apartment of two half naked strippers (not hot night strippers, but your average daytime strippers) with a bong in one hand and a gyro in the other watching "Highlander." Then there was the time I was at the lake in my underwear soaking wet, my clothes on the far shore. More often than not, I'd wake up in the house. Once I was in the kitchen eating flour straight from the bag. Other times I'd be sitting ina cold bathtub or standing in front of the thermostat wondering how I got there.
The gun was also a not infrequent prop. I never shot it off. I kept the bullets in the box on the opposite nightstand. For some reason, I had never loaded the gun. Still, you don't want to get caught walking down a busy main drag at 3 a.m. with even a toy gun. Cops have a way of frowning on that sort of thing in the harshest possible way and they do load their guns.
Darla sent me an email about a man who killed his wife and claimed to be asleep through the whole thing. She thought that kind of thing funny. I suppose it is until you kill someone in your sleep. Who knows? Maybe it was all bullshit. That's what my shrink calls most of my problems. Bullshit. I like him. He doesn't even pretend to coddle me and my issues. That's not what I need, he says. "You need someone who will kick your ass." Darla thinks that's her job. Her job is more complicated than that.
I like frankness in a medical professional. Not in people in general you understand, just people whose job is honesty. Everyone else should practive an abbreviated form of honesty. Tell me what I need to know and leave it at that. If I've got a boog hanging out or my flies down, let me know. If you think I'm ugly or stupid, keep it to yourself.
Darla's not honest with herself and is therefore in no position to tell me the hard truths she thinks I need to hear from her. If she were truly honest, she'd tell me that under no circumstances will she ever have sex with me. She would tell me that she keeps me around as a security blanket. She'd tell me that if she ever got a boyfriend who didn't want her to be friends with me, she'd not only drop me in an instant, but try to make it look like my fault. She doesn't tell me these things because she isn't consciously aware of them. Darla's not atypical. It amazes me the sort of mental gymnastics people perform so they don't have to acknowledge that they're shitheels.
I don't mean to sound like a misanthrope. I only hate people about half the time. The other half the time I'm watching TV. TV is great. At least it's the great equalizer. The people on TV treat everyone in the audience the same. And when you're afraid to go to sleep, agoraphobic and broke, TV is always there. People on TV seem like they'd be really nice if you ever met them. They seem like they'd be friends with a guy like me if only grudgingly. I'd be the wacky neighbor or the weird guy upstairs or something. More likely, I'd be the guy everyone hates because he got pissed off that they kept playing hackysack in front of his living room window so they come up with a clever plan to get back at him. Everybody on "Friends" would probably make fun of me behind my back and not even apologize for it at the end of the episode after having learned a valuable lesson about treating people fairly. I have no delusions about how cool I am.
I also have no delusions about how nice I am. I don't aspire to nice and I don't like nice people. I don't trust nice people. Nice people will let you use their toilet with a forced smile and then clean the hell out of it the second you leave. Nice people will treat you like a member of the family when you come to pick up their daughter for a date, then threaten to cut her out of the will if she doesn't dump your monkey ass pronto. Nice people can go fuck themselves.
Sometimes at night or whenever I pass out, I dream about all the nice people I've known. Good religious people. Teachers. Friends. I'll dream that I am seeing them for the first time in years and we talk. Sometimes it goes well. Mostly I just relive old injustices. Then I wake up some place I know I didn't fall asleep at.
One night I was dreaming about my old English teacher. He used to encourage me to write any time I was emotional. He liked reading my stuffn and was a real good guy. It didn't bother me that everyone said he was a fag or anything. In my dream he tries to blow me. He never did that before and I had no reason to suspect him except for this dream. I woke up with some new friends one night at the bowling alley. It was Cosmic Bowling night. They turn off all the lights except for a few blacklights that reflect off glittering shit on the ceilings. I bowled three and a half games with a 110 average. Not bad for a somnambulist. I think there must have been some connection between blowing and bowling that my sleeping brain made. Best not to dwell on it, I suppose. The really odd thing was that I seemed to be getting along pretty well with the community college kids I was playing with until I woke up. So I left. No point overstaying your welcome by more than a few minutes.
That used to be my greatest personality flaw ... besides being a dick. I never had any clue when it was a good idea to leave. I'd be having a good time at a friend's house and then I'd linger waiting for the good times to just keep on rolling. They never do and the smart house guest knows it is best to leave BEFORE things start to slow down so people always want more of you. It's a fine line for some people between life of the party and "the weird guy." No one should ever have to tell you "sorry to have to kick you out" because once they say that, it's too late to leave with dignity. Always leave before things die out or you'll look like a desperate freak.
The other side of the coin is to live like a shut-in. When you just can't figure people out, it's tempting to stop trying. Why leave the house on a Saturday night when you've got a fridge full of food and a TV with friendly faces? The bars, malls, restaurants and movie theaters are full of hostile REAL people who look at you with distrust and disgust.
If you look, really look into people's faces, it's a wonder they can keep going. There is so much sadness in everyone's eyes I think I can feel it myself. The funny thing is that a lot of people don't even know it themselves. Maybe I'm wrong.
I had sushi this weekend. I don't want to sound like one of those hipster fucks who says he likes something just because it's cool, but sushi is good. I like pretty much all varieties, too, except for the one with the salmon eggs on top. Those things pop in your mouth and this salty, gooey dna syrup gushes around in your mouth ... I'm pretty open about what I'll consume, but I'll trade these little orange eggs for a nice piece of squid any day.
Some people think eating raw fish is disgusting, but we do it in the Midwest all the time. Pickled herring is not made with cooked fish. Though in all honesty, that's not eaten as commonly as potato chips either.
I'd really like to try sashimi (the actual raw fish part of this feast, sushi refers to the rice) that is prepared just moments after the fish is killed. I'll like to pick out a nice fat tuna an have it killed and plated right in front of me. Yum.
Probably the best thing about the Internet (besides the ability to download porn 24 hours a day on a whim) is the ability to do you taxes in a half hour for nine bucks. I do feel sorry for tax preparers who won't be able to charge me 80 0r 90 dollars to fuck me anymore. I have only myself to blame. Filling out a 1040EZ isn't rocket science. One simple gets all wiggy when it comes to the IRS. God knows when they will descend upon even the poorest of us just to go over our returns for the last 10 years. I'm sure I've got two in a drawer, one in the trunk of my car, one in my bag and two stored electronically. There's probably a couple under the bed for all I know.
Frankly, I wish the governement would just take their freakin' blood money out of my check and keep whatever percentage they think is appropriate to maintain society. True, it's not very Libertarian of me, but it is honest on all fronts. They're gonna do what they're gonna do and I'd rather not fuck with it. Let the people who are trying to get out of paying their fair share file and the rest of us who are willing to just let it go can relax. No audits, no fuss, just take it. Who are we kidding anyway? They can take what they want. Making an entire nation file a form is just a good way to generate fear and to move a few dollars from me to an accountant out into the economy.
People are always trying to define love. That doesn't surprise me since love comes in a lot of varieties, some of which of kind of powerful. I get annoyed with people who moon over love, but I reserve my true contempt for anybody who has the testicular fortitude to tell someone else that what they've experienced in the past wasn't really love because it doesn't match up to their bullshit definition. Debate what love is or isn't. Fine. That's abstract. But if I'm talking about some time I was in love then take my word for it. For while defining love might be an occasionally interesting pastime for some wordsmith lovehounds, we pretty much have to take everybody's word for it when they say they have been in love. It's an abstraction. You know when you are in love or if it's just lust even if you try to change your mind later on. So fuck off with that.
This actually happened to me once in about 1998, by the by. I was sitting around my grad dorm drinking coffee that was too good for the dickhead I was drinking it with and talking about this woman I had been all fucked up over just a couple years prior. I'm 29 at this point and I know what the hell love is even if my own particular variety is an immature and unwanted thing. It was an unrequited situation with me and this woman. I had pretty strong feelings I couldn't ditch for one reason or another (mid-20s schizophrenia most likely) When I finally figured out that my feelings were misplaced, love turned to hate. That's not unusual in the annals of love. As anyone with a modicum of wisdom knows, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is apathy. If you truly don't love someone, you don't care. If a love apple goes overripe, it's still a fuckin' apple.
Well this asshole tells me that if I don't still love her in some measure then I must not have really been in love.
How dare you, I thought. How DARE you, I said. How dare you sit in judgment of my emotions and judge them somehow less than your own. That's what you're doing. Who are you to measure these things. I know what I felt. I know what I feel. Then I blew the prick away with my little homily about love and hate being two sides of the same coin because they are both passionate emotions and he caved like the little bitch he was and probably still is.
What's really funny to me is that this guy left his old school in Arizona because his ex-girlfriend who was stalking him accused him of raping her. He denies it and he probably didn't rape her. I doubt he would tell me the story if had actually done it and he was such a ball-less pussy boy that I honestly don't think he'd be into that kind of thing. He once poo-pooed a porno of mine because the actress in it didn't look like she was having enough fun. Like Dirty Debutantes 27 was some kind of underground skank pic smuggled over the border by Mexican skin flick producers. This was over the counter crap, c'mon. You have to pay big money for movies that show people being abused for God's sake.
Anyway, my big question to him was: Are you still in love with the girlfriend you dumped who accused you of raping her ... falsely?
Well, of course that was different, wasn't it? She did him wrong. Cry me a river, Susie, love always ends badly. Even if it lasts forever, it cools. Love is not always a hot torrent of want and longing and need. Love can be like a comfortable pair of tennis shoes you only wear on the weekends around the house. Just because you never wear them in public doesn't mean you don't appreciate them and rely on them for years. You can love someone and take them for granted. Look at my parents. If my Dad loved my mother, he never acted like it while they were married. In fact, I was pretty surprised that he gave a shit when the divorce came down. He was emotionally absent at the best of times and emotionally abusive the other 95%. But when my mother actually kicked his ass to the curb, he fought like hell to stay in the saddle. He went wiggy. You'd've thought he was madly in love with all of us. Had he put a fraction of that effort into his marriage and maybe toned down his junk collecting, I do not doubt that my mother might have waited until my sister and I were in high school before she dumped him.
Anywho, love is one of the few things I find hard to define without using the word itself in the definition or getting too technical, but here goes. Love is a perceived emotional state brought on by various chemical reactions in the body associated with physical and mental attraction.
It's simple but deceptively so. I know what chocolate tastes like and so do you, but I don't know what chocolate tastes like to you even though when we talk about it, we reference similar sensations. It is also no coincidence that chocolate produces a similar chemical reaction as love. It raises endorfin levels. So does jogging.
So my advice is eat chocolate, go jogging and tell love to go fuck itself.
Everybody hates fat people. It's only natural. Human beings ain't nothing but mammals. Stupid-ass mammals. Mammals can spot a genetic defect in their own from a mile away. It's our our genetic obligation to subjugate the weak so those gimpy motherfuckers don't get a chance to breed and destroy the gene pool. Rats, rabbits, even horses will set upon the weak of their own species and kill them if the occasion arises. I've seen a stallion kill a colt because it couldn't keep up with the herd. Litter runts always weaken and die.
But you know who REALLY hates fat people? Other fat people. It makes sense when you think about it. I've never met a fatty that wants to be a fatty. So you take some 300 pound woman and present her with some 400 pound dude. Seems like a perfect match, does it not? But she doesn't want to be saddled with that. She wants to find the thinnest, most attractive mate she can get, just like every other mammal in existence.
But human beings are not just the sum of their parts. Look at Stephen Hawkings. The man can't survive on his own, but he is immensely valuable to the human race's completely unnatural quest to uderstand (not just to be controlled by) the universe. Humans are social creatures of intelligence capable of overcoming nature's restrictions and obligations.
When I see people giving in to nature's bid for instanteous, harsh judgments in this supposed age of enlightenment, it does my head in because there is no way in hell you can sum up anyoone in this world based on what you see. So my advice to all you enlightened people out there is to do the opposite once in a while just to see what happens. Talk to the person you suspect is the LEAST interesting one in the room based on appearances. You might be surprised.
Nothing like taking a few moments to myself to say whatever the fuck I want to from the pleasant confines of my cooshy (yeah, I know how it's spelled) desk job. I get a few minutes off between calls now and again. I've got TVs all around me broadcasting the hurly burly of pop cultural waste flowing over me at all times. As a post post modern man, I am inundated with idears that coalesce and shit from all over the mutha fucka ... you know what I'm sayin'?
Probably not and that's OK.
I have a persecution complex. Mostly, it's because for as long as I can remember, people have been fuckin' with me for reasons beyond my immediate ability to recognize. For example, when I was in kindergarten, my bitch-ass teacher, Ms. Petranicco used to threaten to beat me with a yard stick and made me wash my hands over and over again (I had severely chapped hands, not dirty hands). Now, if I had been a rotten little shit who was asking for it, I'd say so. But the truth is, I was a pretty mellow kid. I think I was one of those kids you almost just want to abuse because I was quiet and shy and a bit on the innocent side. I was probably a pedo's wet dream because not only would I hve been easy to scare, my parents probably would have blamed me if I told them I'd been molested by someone.
Which leads me to the time I was indeed physically abused by my 5th grade school gym teacher, Mr. Bell. he liked to pinch your cheeks hard as fuck right in front of other staff members who would just watch in awe as you started crying for no apparently good reason. He threated to give our whole class a charlie horse during the Christmas pageant because we were being too loud. He damaged some kid's knee by shoving him down too. I told my mom but she didn't want to do anything about it. Hence the sense that I deserved whatever I got.
In junior high, my football coach, Mr. Zimmerman, caught me alone after the season ended, told me I was a greaser who should go to the greaser school with all the other greasers. That hurt.
In high school, my newspaper teacher, Mrs. Smoley, was pretty much convinced that I wasnt the kind of person who would make a good journalist. Having never been one or met one, she was clueless. I happened to be THE ONLY person in my class who went on to become an award winning journalist, so fuck you bitch.
I've got to be the only person ever denied a promotion at a Taco John's because my hair was too short. I was once canned from Bishop's Buffet for talking to girls my own age (they thought I was in college when I said I was still in [high] school). I'm probably the only kid to go into the emergency room to be made fun of for picking his nose by his doctor (even the nurse was disgusted by that one).
The list goes on. But I'm tired.
For my birthday last August, I went to a restaurant that I hate. I'd say I was taken to a restaurant that I hate, but I think I was just allowed to tag along with my dad, my sister and her family on their regular Friday night outing. This restaurant is called the Iowa Feed & Grain. It's a good name fort a shithole restaurant that serves watered downed canned soup, canned veggies and over sweetened mooshy spaghetti. The service sucks ass. They've made us wait for 45 minutes before while we watched our food get cold on the counter and then wondered why I didn't want to eat or pay for cold meatloaf and coagulated mashed potatoes and gravy.
The one thing they do OK is serve fresh bread with whipped honey butter. It's a good touch. So of course for my birthday, they saddled us with two dried up loaves that must have been a day old at least. It would be less offensive and hurtful to be forgotten on your birthday than to be taken to a restaurant you fucking hate, in my opinion. It's like saying, we'll take you with us on our regular outing just to shut you up but you're not important enough for us to change our routine. It's fucking thoughtless at best and mean-spirited for no good reason.
So for my dad's birthday, I think I'll get him "Brokeback Mountain." My dad likes westerns, but doesn't get around much and/or doesn't pay attention to things going on. I think if a man who didn't know what "Brokeback Mountain" was about before he saw it sat down to watch it, he'd be at a total loss to know what was going on when the two cowboys start going at it in the tent. The scene would be over before you realized you just watched two guys doing it.
"Are they fighting? Or what the ... Oh my sweet Lord!"
But hey, it's the thought that counts, right?
Here's an example of the kind of weird coincidence of events that I have notice on a fairly regular basis in my life. It may seem mundane at first but if it happens often enough, it makes you wonder why.
I just got a DVR with my cable service. This allows me to record and watch all sorts of movies on every cable channel on my system's lineup. I've got all the many HBO's and Cinemax's and God knows what else. Because my service is digital it comes with a guide that I can peruse endlessly and I do. About a week ago, "Rumblefish" was on Cinemax for Women at 3 a.m. This movie came out in 1983 and I never saw it in the theater or on cable. It wasn't a real high priority so I never sought it out in the Blockbuster, but I don't remember seeing it on the shelf. If I did, like I said, not a priority. But since it was free, I figured let's see if it was worth the 23 year wait.
Now this is not the coincidence, I mean, what the hell, it was bound to be on TNT or WGN sometime. But I kept the flick in m DVR list for about a week and then last night I started watching it before I went to bed. I got about half way through it, turned it off and fell asleep. Today, I heard "Don't Box Me In" by Stan Ridgeway and Stewart Copeland on the radio. Now I haven't heard this song since probably 1983 or 2198 and even then maybe just a few times.
"Don't Box Me In" is the theme song from "Rumblefish." I was just browsing the stations in my car, too, not listening to some 80s show for hours on end. There is no connection between the radio and Cinemax. I wasn't looking for either piece of media. I am probably about the only guy in five counties who would even remember "Rumblefish" and if ANYBODY remembers "Don't Box Me In" I'd be surprised.
Now, maybe this doesn't impress you and that's OK. It isn't like this is a miracle from the Lord or anything. But when it happens to you, it's a real Twilight Zone moment. Mathematically spekaing, it's pretty unlikely.
I just picked up my Cox DVR box today. It will record two programs while I watch a third recording or InDemand program. Now I'm fucked. I'll never get up from in front of this TV. Though I am hopeful really. I'm hopeful that if I record everything I want to watch for later viewing that I'll actually have no good reason to actually watch TV as it's broadcast at me. Then upon reflection, I'll see that I really don't need to watch that episode of "30-Minute Meals" where Rachel Ray makes little mini meatloafs instead of one great honking big one. On a side note, if you needed Rachel Ray to tell you you could do that, then you should just live off dog food because you are a god damned idiot.
