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Saturday, October 31st, 2009
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9:33 pm - world's tallest midget
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Krikey. It's like Willy Wonka meets Lord of the Flies out there. Next year, I'm dressing as a guy who got a vasectomy.
Just read the headline, 'The best writing John Grisham has ever done'--Pat Conroy. Which is sort of like saying, 'The best social program ever enacted by Adolph Hitler'--Joseph Stalin, or 'The most cutting edge album Hanson has ever released,' or 'The best time my penis ever fell-off in the shower.' Thanks, Pat Conroy. Thanks a lot.
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| Sunday, August 30th, 2009
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6:15 pm - all purpose, really basic, hinges-of-hades hot sauce
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- 10 habanero peppers
- 10 jalapeno chiles (preferably red)
- 1 large onion, minced
- 1 6-ounce can of tomato paste
- 1 1/4 cups white vinegar
- pinch of garlic powder
Roughly chop peppers, avoiding stems but keeping seeds. Pulse everything in a blender or food processor, until all ingredients are pulped. Scrape into a pan and bring to a boil. When cool, cover and refrigerate. Stuff has a half-life of plutonium--bacteria know better than to mess with it.
This stuff is like a Swiss Army knife of rectum wreckers: I'll put it in stir fry, or mix a little with mayo for a dip or sandwich spread. Adding V-8 juice gives you an approximation of a standard bottled hot sauce. Adding it to diced pineapple (or mango), with diced red onion and minced cilantro makes for a nice fruit salsa. Stirring it into jellies or fruit preserves and adding a little rum or Gran Marnier makes an awesome glaze for pork tenderloin. Play around. Have fun.
current mood:  hot
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, July 16th, 2009
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10:30 am - mr. bubble
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This is a great article. I don't buy Taibbi's thesis that Goldman/Sachs is the tendentious architect of repeated economic collapse. They're a predatory corporate monolith helmed by lying, opportunistic vultures. Their tentacles in government and the Federal Reserve are worthy of an anti-trust suit. But the Dan Brownish conspiracy hook is a stretch. All we're missing is a jpeg. of Hank Paulson, dressed as an albino monk. Still, a comprehensive argument on a complex subject.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
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5:38 pm - the usual benediction
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| Friday, October 3rd, 2008
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3:37 pm - the best band in the universe
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Just twigged on this, a memory from long ago: I'm sitting in my mother's house, watching TV. Clicking through channels, I find a killer live version of Stevie Wonder's song, 'Superstition.'
I shimmy into my chair, commence to enjoy the funk.
Just then, two friends walk through the door, hefting cases of beer on their shoulders. As the last strains of Stevie's electric piano fade, Ernie and Burt fill the screen. My buddies gawk at the Muppets, give me a look of total disgust, spin on their heels and leave. For several days in school, I am ostracized. Even now, I don't think the fuckers entirely believe me, (and I never did find out what happened to Ernie's ice cube collection).
Through band practices and pub debates I voice my conviction that Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem are among the world's best bands. There is scoffing, and there is ridicule. Yet the evidence remains:
Buddy Rich
Alice Cooper
Johnny Cash w/The Electric Mayhem
The Muppets do Rammstein
The Electric Mayhem: Behind The Music
behind the music
current mood:  nostalgic
current music: blue 7-sonny rollins
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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10:54 am - for fans of david foster wallace
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7:58 am - george washington had five dicks and his pants fit him like a glove
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As part of my ongoing campaign to never again craft a coherent paragraph, I bring you the following historical narrative:
current mood:  amused
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, September 15th, 2008
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10:42 am - D.F.W.
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He was the only contemporary writer with the stylistic chops to pull-off an Axl Rose bandanna.
I was kidding when I made fun of it. I was jealous, we all were. I'll miss him.
current mood:  aggravated
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, June 23rd, 2008
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7:05 am - pissing on the angels
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| Monday, June 2nd, 2008
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10:04 am - this is so much easier than writing!
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| Thursday, May 15th, 2008
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6:30 pm - silly but fun
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| Saturday, March 8th, 2008
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12:28 am - I'm living the dream
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The one where I'm boning Nigella Lawson in a vat of fudge and prawns and she turns into 100 squirrels. Then, a freak with a machete chases me in the halogen starkness of a neon moon to my eventual, violent end.
Treacly optimism, per usual. Would've made a good music video.
current mood:  nervous
current music: "twenty-fuckin' five-to-one, me gambling days're done..."
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
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6:59 pm - i'm luggage
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I'm sitting here, hunched-over, at the keyboard. Little involuntary squeaks and moans escape my mouth between Tourettes-like bursts of profanity. My spine feels like someone has injected it with a solution of napalm and Frank's Louisiana hot sauce.
"Rate the pain," the doctor asked, pushing his fingers into the spongey tissue around my left knee. "One being none, ten being the worst thing you've ever felt."
"Six," I said at the time. "Maybe seven."
Now, two months of physical therapy later, the knee is only a three. The back pain, which started nearly a week ago, is a solid nine. Big pain, pain that laughs at Naproxen, Vicodin and muscle relaxers, "Ha!" takes their lunch money and tells them to fuck-off. Doubling the dose and having a few beers puts only the slightest dent in it. It also gives a disorientation that, in its own way, is as bad as the pain.
My one consolation: J.D. and Vicodin provides the optimum environment for watching 'Apocalypse Now'.
Still, I'm hoping it won't last too much longer.
current mood:  frustrated
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, December 21st, 2007
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3:58 pm - this still cracks me-up
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| Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
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4:39 pm - dinner in the apocalypse
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Yesterday snow fell. Big, plump, popcorn-like flakes that dropped for twenty minutes and faded to a drizzling rain. Today, the expected high is about sixty degrees. The turkey is in the oven, the spuds are mashed, the execrable Stove Top stuffing my family insists on eating is glowering at me from its cardboard box. Later, in a two buck chuck and tryptophan-induced stupor, I will silently wish all of you a happy holiday. Under the hat, a flatliner’s benediction, our little secret. Chances are, you won’t even notice.
Some Jehovah’s Witnesses showed-up at my door a couple weeks ago, two spinsters and an MLK black man in a bow-tie. "I was sort of sleeping," I said. "Dear," said an old woman, "We’ve woken this poor man-up."
"Some folks NEED to be WOKE UP," the man shouted. He continued a tirade that incorporated 9/11, the Book of Revelations, Zionism and various Christian conspiracy theories, delivered in a Baptist/African Inner Light vibrato that both impressed and had me teetering on the precipice of uncontrollable laughter.
"What about the war in Eye-Rack?" he finished, as if this settled everything. The women seemed embarrassed, all floral-print dresses and upholstered smiles.
A few years ago, pre-9/11, I would have said that I’d studied with them as a child. I would have said that I thought their church was a mean-spirited cult of the Apocalypse. "You’ve been saying this since 1914 and the world hasn’t ended yet," was my stock reply. "Or how about Y2K, or the Millerite nonsense a hundred years before, when the universe also failed to explode? You people are so keen on destruction that you say human existence ended in 1975."
Here, my snark was confined to a mumbled, "How ironic," at the ‘Awake!’ magazine they shoved through the screen door. Maybe it was the sleep-deprivation, maybe something more. I’m not really sure.
But I do know this: the end-times shit is wearing me-down. Oswald Spengler announced the end of Western Civ back in the thirties. We should chuck all art and culture, he said. Focus on science, engineering. My leftist friends and conspiracy-prone, pot-smoking brothers drone likewise. From here, the eco-death crowd is just as annoying as the 'Left Behind' religionist one. It’s like everyone I know is sitting in a bare field like some vapid apocalyptic cultist, waiting gleefully for the end of the world. I’ll maintain the middle ground, thanks--somewhere between The Rapture and World War III.
In Kafka’s notebooks (and in mine, where I’ve quoted him) he writes: "The Messiah will only come when he is no longer necessary, he will only come after his arrival, he will come not on the last day, but on the very last day." And I don’t know about you-all, but I can wait. In fact I’m writing my reply as soon as I post this crap. To the Messiah:
"Come quietly, come in peace, or don’t fucking come at all."
If he/she comes today, I'll save them some turkey.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
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12:59 pm - The Womanizer
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http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=B8AF08873AACE38C
I recently bought a toy for my guitar, a gizmo with the unfortunate name, 'The Womanizer.' I'm having second thoughts. First-off, I have a thing against definite articles. Also, it looked like a sci fi movie prop: boxy, brass-toned, with sinister glowing orbs to either side. This was at a party. There may have been some drinking.
The guy I bought it from plugged into an ancient cassette deck and stuck an earbud in my squash. I played for a minute, then cratered all good judgement.
"Sometimes," he said, "you just gotta say what the fuck."
To think, duped by a Buellerism.
I've been griping a little since then. I can't afford it, and couldn't really hear any tone through the miniscule earbud.
Yesterday, dude called to say the contraption was in the mail. Today, I get an mp3 rip (link, page north) from the cassette tape. Taking my rusty, drunken, meedly-meedly playing into account, it don't sound bad. Keep in mind, this is digital. No amps involved.
Guess I'll tighten the belt another notch and switch to domestic beer.
(To those expecting a filthy-ass, depraved, Hubert Selbyesque account of my sexual exploits, I apologize. Even gauche takes a day-off).
current mood:  creative
current music: some feist song on mp3
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| Sunday, November 11th, 2007
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4:13 pm - notes toward a gauche manifesto
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I've always loved complex books, convoluted syntax and filthy humor. Maybe it's because they signify that life is not simple, that short, on-topic sentences, orderly little paragraphs and pleasant social amenities don't begin to explain the complexities of life, this flashing eyeblink of pleasures and sorrows.
I have never really felt comfortable. There's the occasional meditative lull, of course. The postcoital satori, the hangover calm. But then it's back to being on-edge. Sometimes, it's physical: feeling out of place, wanting to go somewhere, anywhere but where I am. Often, it's an itch that scratches itself through intellectualism; I hate having a settled opinion on anything. There's a constant compulsion to test, to contradict.
I say wildly inappropriate things. People are put-off by this. You try to fit in, try to be normal. But Jesus, the tedium of small talk, the usual patterns, the seventy-percent that no one listens to anyway.
The little voice starts-in at such times, telling me I'll soon be dead. It says that we should squeeze all we can from our brief jig in the light. It shouts that we should melt into the eyes of every stranger we see on the street, dance like morons, celebrate the breath in our lungs, roll in the breaking surf like sleek gray seals.
When I see a man I want to be his brother, his friend, his father confessor. When a woman frowns, I want to make her laugh, to sing to her, to interlock fingers while we fuck. Since this is rarely possible, I try to stay quiet. Each moment is a gift, each touch a miracle, each breath a sacrament.
"A joke," Nietzsche observed. "Is an epitaph on an emotion."
Now, Friedrich talked a lot of smack, but here I think he was onto something. Normality is what's left when you squelch all the extremes. Dark humor represents our noblest impulses, speaking to us from beyond the grave.
That's the excuse I'm using, anyway.
current music: mahavishnu orchestra, live, from wolfgang's vault
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(14 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 27th, 2007
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1:20 am - the prodigal scum
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So, who still reads this thing?
current mood:  curious
current music: low spark of high-heeled boys-traffic
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(31 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
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1:38 am - the travelling option
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Sometimes, I want to fold and try for a better hand. Do they have a witness protection program for people with nothing to testify? If they do, typing silly crap at two in the morning should earn me a place on the list.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
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12:50 pm - cake or death
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1.) I read a while back that Lee Hazlewood had cancer. Now he's dead. His tripped-out pop and psychedelic country gems often reminded me of tunes by Nilsson and Serge Gainsbourg. They were records that derived meaning as much from the idiosyncratic will of their composers as from any musical expertise. It was weirdness as an art form, a pass at being both popular and original while giving a shit about neither. His gruff Okie persona hid a self-deprecating intelligence capable of welding kitsch to complexity. The Chivas-swilling, antinomian cowboy will be missed.
current mood:  pensive
current music: lee hazlewood-it's nothing to me
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rambert's journal
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