Dé Céadaoin, Nollaig 24, 2008

My Sleep Schedule's Fucked Up

Thank you Cinemax, for reminding me that people who make millions before the age of thirty as photographers/models/nude photographers have nothing better to do when vacationing in Latin resorts then have mechanical by-the-numbers sex with old high school aquantinces they happen to run into.

I would also like to remind the History Channel that the architecture and military technology of 1500 BC has been well documented by historians and archeologists, and the fact that the bible mentions these things in passing does not make them "biblical." And what was up with the stage lightning during the reenactment of the Garfield assassination?

Dé Máirt, Nollaig 23, 2008

More Notes From The Den

Ham and stuffing were being served out of a crockpot by the bathrooms. I don't know if it was for anybody who wanted some or if it was just for the children of the barmaid (barmatron rather) that were hanging out at a corner table. She had a slightly overweight boy dressed in camo overalls watching Youtube on what appeared to be a 98 model Pentium. There was something about the boy that made him more repellent then he should have been, a fat face. The face made him look fatter then he was.

Also in attendence was a man dressed in a Dallas Cowboys Starter Jacket accentuated by a Starter ball cap covered in spider webbing and flames. He was hanging out with Ricki Mercia. Ricki has a teardrop tatoo under his right eye, but it's just for style. One would do well to avoid coming to blows with Ricki, but he hadn't killed anybody at the time I last spoke to him three years ago.

Saliva has a new album called "Five Devil" coming out which was being heavily advertised on the jukebox.

Dé Luain, Nollaig 22, 2008

Tales From North Platte

I went to the Den tonight, . Imagine what The Watering Hole would be like without the drink specials and with the smell of urinal cake permiating the entire bar instead of half of it, and there you go. There was a woman's pool league on. Fiftysomething broads with flatops, pancake blush, Husker pulleys, and a taste for Old Gold 100 lights. The woman who nearly got in a physical fight with her daughter when I was home for the Fourth was there and seemed to be in good spirits. I made eyes with her daughter and she seemed to appreciate my attention. But then I have observed her enough to know that her attention would not be at all enjoyible, and certainly not important enough to go through any trouble persuing. Still it was fun.

My own mother could be accurately described as a broad but it wouldn't tell half the story of the woman. She is the indisputible leader of a family of lunatics, a center of stability for several dozen friends and family members whose pride won't allow them to accept that they are as bad off as they are. She is able to perceive people as they are without allowing presupposition to distort what is there before her, and act accordingly, while all around her the men of the ostentatiously masculine west deal with each other according to the nearest availible cartoon type instead of what is truly there. I try to seek my mother's advice when my father isn't around to add his earnest and confused word salad. My own intelligence comes from my her, without question. It was left up to me to sink into my own brain until it did me no good.

I ran into a dear old friend of mine at The Den, Aaron "Boz" Bozfield. He was sporting two black eyes from the forty ounce that his wife smashed in his face. He was with this fellow I remembered only as "guy who used to be in jail all of the time." His biggest adventure involved getting caught burglerizing a Pizza Hut in broad daylight some Sunday morning. He called me "Josh Buchowski" which I appreciated. It's a terribly inacurate label, but not completely so, the truth is that I had a way with marginilized women while I was here. Women who had given up on life at twenty and needed someone just as I did. But oh never mind, I've already said too much.

My mother said she found movers who can take my possesions to Chicago for eight hundred dollars. I'm currently in the slow process of talking her into simply loaning me the money in a lump sum. I will drive there in my Pontiac with my coffee potmy microwave and my wardrobe organized into trash bags. That's where my mature life awaits me. That's where the Beran family name will be raised out of the corn fields and the auto shops Ma. I know it just sounds like another delusion from your Bohemian son. It goes completely against your own practical way but you must trust me. This is what is right. My desk, my TV, my dresser, my couch, my card table, the hell with it all. The truth is that I've never felt any particular affinity with any of my physical possesions, never associated with some memory or common experience with someone else for which they were part of the scene. That's what Craigslist is for these days Ma. Firewood for hobos Ma, firewood for hobos.

Find three roomates and I can live a good life for a time in some nice corner of a flat for a few months. The truth is that I've found a new courage and clarity of purpose that wasn't there before. I do not believe or wishfully think that this is the right thing to do, I logically know it and believe it and wishfully think it.

The truth is that another cycle of Winter and Spring spent entirely in Lincoln, with no job, no Dan, no Becky, would leave me with too much weight on my back to advance in life. How long have I coasted along in the company of people impressed with my cleverness on its own terms. How strange it is to have true peers, to have my own ambitions tied into my loyalty to them and the trust they have put into me, this sense that our important thoughts and intimate thoughts were one and the same.

Becky, take care of yourself darling, and be brave. Live for yourself for awhile and accept love when it is offered to you. I will do the same, I promise you that. This time, this place, these words, these looks, these understandings and aceptances shall not be betrayed. They will be made into something, and the world will know.

Dé Sathairn, Nollaig 20, 2008

The Week In Sports



It's bowl season. The time of year when denizens of America's heartland turn to football to distract ourselves from slashing our wrists with shards of ice; warm blood melting the snow symbolizing our sweet release from this Arctic Hellscape.
The New Mexico Bowl is on now; Colorado State and Fresno State. I watch because oxygen is frozen and I am unemployed; what's your excuse?

I've long been in favor of an eight-team playoff for the national championship. This would have the practical effect of limiting contestants to major-conference champions and mid-major undefeateds, thus preserving the primacy of the regular season. But as I watch the television camera scan the exotic vistas of Albuquerque, I realize that a sixteen-team tournament wouldn't be so bad. The New Mexico Bowl, the Independence Bowl, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, the Motor City Bowl,(Yes, that's right. The Mid-American champion is rewarded with a free ticket to Detroit.) the Humanitarian Bowl, (Welfare Bowl would have been too obvious) would all go bankrupt overnight, and this would be a very good thing.

Yet many people who coach or are otherwise intimately involved with college football, such as Graham Harell's dad, strenuously defend the traditional clusterfuck of bowls.
The argument basically states that in a playoff, every team save for one is doomed to lose their final game, leaving teams that had outstanding seasons traumatized at the end; while in the bowl system, thirty four teams win their final games and feel at peace with themselves and the universe.

This is a very strange argument; coming as it does from the same sort of people who go ballistic if they hear about a children's soccer league somewhere that isn't keeping score. And at any rate it's wrong. The sting that comes from losing the national championship game may carry somewhat of an extra sting than a loss in the middle of the season; but surely Florida, the eventual loser of this game, can eventually take solace in the fact that they are indisputably better than the winner between Northern Illinois and Louisiana Tech. Which middle-aged college football veteran will feel better about his playing days as he berates his teenage sons; the winner of the Boise Bowl, or the loser of the Rose Bowl? Does the Nebraska volleyball team feel worse about themselves right now than the Texas A&M Lady Aggies, who upended Missouri in its final match to improve to 16-14?

In other gridiron business; Tecmo Bo Jackson is widely considered to be the greatest video football drone of all time, but I personally would take Tecmo Jerry Rice over Jackson any day of the week. While Tecmo Jackson's ability to run at fifty eight miles an hour is most impressive, Tecmo Rice clocks in at a not-too-shaby forty five, and what really sets him apart is his ability to teleport the football through the body of any cornerback that does manage to cover him. Tecmo Jackson is utterly helpless against the magical superblitz that comes when an opponent correctly guesses
the play on defense, while Tecmo Rice is a reliable hot receiver in the same situation. When it's fourth and thirty eight, and my lead is in danger of falling to six touchdowns, I know what pixelated ubermensch I want on my side.

If you are playing "NFL Blitz" on arcade, do whatever you possibly can to get touchdowns instead of field goals. The computer offense will always score on its last possession of the game, no matter what you do. This is designed to frustrate you with a close loss and induce you to choke up another four dollars in quarters. So you need to make sure that you're ahead by at least two scores going into the fourth.
You've probably noticed this long ago, and I don't mean to insult your intelligence. Mostly I wrote this note so I can recite what to say to my own son when his day to blitz comes upon him. The Bitch Goddess shall not deceive two generations of Beran.

Arabian Gay Porn




It's out there, just so you know. All I'm trying to do is bridge the cultural divide.

Dé Domhnaigh, Nollaig 14, 2008

Human Wrecking Balls, a Review.

I just discovered this show yesterday, but it's quickly building a cult following, and it's easy to see why. Two big ol cracker thugs, the Pumphrey brothers, find some iconic piece of modern human construction and, like, completely tear the fuck out of it with their own bodies. (Examples include a prefabricated house, a small commuter plane, and, after cockteasing us by introducing the show outside of a large hotel, the destruction of only a single suite.)

It's doubtful that the Pumphrey's understand just how or why their show is so brilliant. "Human Wrecking Balls" is decadent, depraved, and irresistible in the same way that a teenaged babysitter is to a successful middle-aged businessman. Any reasonably intelligent viewer of this program knows they are doing something terribly wrong. The comparison to "Ow My Balls" is obvious and unavoidable. But watch it we do, and unless we are sociopaths we must find some rationalization for doing so. The middle aged businessman will probably remind himself of his contributions to charity or generous gifts to his employees before moving his hands down to those Rainbow-Brite panties. What is it that you and I tell ourselves, fellow viewer? What exemplary thing have we done to deserve this? What is it that makes me too good for the basic laws of decency, just this once?

Do we even try to think of anything specific, or do we just assure ourselves that it must be something, or do we even do as much as that anymore? Has American society itself become sociopathic?

The death of all of the old justifications for social stratification; God, race, and sex, should have paved the way for a new enlightenment and true meritocracy. Instead it has left in its wake an aristocracy of dullards, a universal sense of entitlement within American society that is too stupid to even know that it should be trying to justify itself.

People of all political persuasions generally agree that the biggest current threat to civilization comes from fanatical believers of some stripe or another. But perhaps the more serious threat comes from the Pumphrey's of the world; barbaric nihilists who don't know what barbarians are or what nihilism means.

For all of its many faults, Palahniuk's "Fight Club" does a good job of portraying what happens to men who embrace a masculine ethos that is wholly inapplicable to modern civilization. They are filled with an undifferentiated, semi-conscious rage, towards everything and nothing. Some deal with this rage by directing it at those they blame for taking away the superman's world they were promised; feminists, lawyers, vegetarians, professors, anyone they feel is responsible for creating a world built on anything more than force and will. Others face this rage more honestly, and realize that the conflict between the old masculine ideal and modern society can be settled only by destroying either the ideal or the society. How then will you choose brother? How will I?

Again, it is highly doubtful that the Pumphrey boys grasp any of this. Still it is highly evocative to see them tear away at the mundane superstructures of modern life.
Their chosen targets; the prefab house, the nice but not quite glamorous plane, and the upper-middle brow hotel, are all ingrained symbols of bourgeois banality. One quickly realizes that either of the Pumphrey's could kill a respectable middle-aged businessman in five seconds flat. A Navy SEAL would last maybe twenty.

I am a college graduate; physically unassuming, cultured, well-read, and wholly scornful of all the old entitlements granted to me for being a white male. I've already bought my ticket to ride along with modern society; a society which, notable exceptions aside, I generally like. Why then do I watch? Because I deserve it. I'm a college graduate; cultured, well-read, and wholly scornful of all the old entitlements granted to me for being a white male. So now that the kids are in bed why don't you stay up and have your first glass of wine with me, sweetheart?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAS3w5ypTz4&feature=related

Dé Céadaoin, Nollaig 10, 2008

Incidentaly




I don't feel remotely sorry for the man, but am I the only one getting Cambodian torture chamber vibes from this sketch?

Blagojevich vs. Al Swearingen vs. Blake









"I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I’m saying. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself." Blagojevich described the Senate seat as "a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing."

"That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here - close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don't like it, leave."

"Tell me who you want in the election.
Dolly: Star for Mayor and Harry Manning for Sheriff.
Star for Mayor and Bullock for fucking Sheriff.
Dolly: Bullock yells at you.
Get out. Shut up and get out."

"I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

"A-I-D-A. Get out there - you got the prospects coming in. You think the came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?"

"We're *illegal*. Our whole goal is to get annexed to the United fucking States. We start holding trials, what's to keep the United States fucking Congress from saying, "Oh, excuse us! We didn't realize you were a fucking sovereign community and nation out there! Where's your cocksucker's flag? Where's your fucking navy, or the like? Maybe when we make our treaty with the Sioux, we should treat you people like renegade fucking Indians - deny your fucking gold and property claims, and hand everything over instead to our ne'er-do-well cousins and brothers-in-law."

Blagojevich said advisers are telling him he has to "suck it up" for two years and give this motherfucker (Obama) his senator. "Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him."

"We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?
Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

"Lie the fuck back, and listen. I need your truthful reply - lie, I will know it... and death will be no respite.
E.B. Farnum: I told Hearst nothing of Bullock and the widow.
I will profane your fucking remains, E.B.!
Not my remains, Al...
Gabriel's trumpet will produce you from the ass of a pig."

"Our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ’em the fuck out of there and get us some editorial support."

"And to answer you question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and fire your fucking ass because a loser is a loser."

Seth Bullock: You and I know how it is, Mr. Swearingen.
"How what is?"
Seth Bullock: She gets a square shake... or I come for you.
"What if I come for you? You ready for that?"
Seth Bullock: I guess I'd better be.
"Then close your fuckin' store, 'cause being ready for me'll take care of your wakin' hours, and you'd better have someone to hand the task off to when you close your fuckin' eyes."

Déardaoin, Nollaig 04, 2008

Five Greatest Songs Ever Written

1. Marvin Gaye, "Gotta Give it Up."

2. Beatles(Harrison,) "Something in the Way"

3. Wilco "Jesus etc."

4. Bob Dylan, "It's All Right Ma I'm Only Bleeding."

5. James Brown, "Sex Machine"


That is, just my opinion, for now.