I had a real good idea

It came and left me while I was half asleep in bed. This happens from time to time. Some writers deal with this issue by keeping a notebook next to the bed, or even taking one wherever they went. This has always seemed a bit prissy to me, so I'm not going to do that.

But it was a great idea, right up there with my best stuff. It was funny yet profound. It was one of my bullseye-prescient observations of the delusions and hypocrises of Midwestern society. It was great satire, it was masterful satire. Nay, it was beyond satire. It would have changed your life. It would have been the first step to a new enlightenment. All of the old Gods and myths would have been finally and totally defeated by my atomic wit.

But I don't keep a notebook by my bed, because I pee standing up

Connor Oberst probably keeps a notebook next to his bed. He might have an idea similar to mine and right it down. But the "man" has no idea how to express himself.
I do.

I don't keep a notebook next to my bed because I never got dragged to the shrink for giving myself paper cuts on the wrists

so I can only give you a little scrap of my idea. Or maybe it's a scrap of another idea I had at some other time.

"How are we supposed to judge what makes a great man? There are so many walks of life, some so different from each other that they might as well be performed by seperate species. Few people know enough about other people's walks to have the slightest idea about whether they're doing a good job or not. So what then, is greatness? What is the objective standard that applies to us all? I tell you there is none."

Now, I know that was good, probably good enough to put in a book of quotes next to Oscar Wilde and Cicero, but I can see how some hard-to-please people might find it a little trite.

Oh, but if I could only show you the context, you would see that this quote is part of something far from trite, something, perfect. Your tears would flow for days. You would learn to vomit at the sight of all of your old status symbols.

But I don't keep a notebook next to my bed, because I only pretend to like Ani DeFranco.

Friday night fun and games

The Nebraska Unicam is considering cutting off Medicaid payments to non-citizens. That's non-citizens mind you, not illegal immigrants, the terms are not interchangeable. Maybe you've heard of a little thing called a green card, or maybe yu've heard of a little thing called an exchange student. (You should see what he's doing to your daughter.)

Of course, I'm sure you know that most people, citizen or otherwise, who receive Medicaid or some other government assistance. do work. Oh yes they do. They work shit jobs for minimum wage with no benefits, so they need the state to help them out. You may call it socialism. O.k. got ahead and call it socialism. I'm not a socialist myself, but the sound of the word doesn't scare me out of thinking.

Having said that, I am an American, and I get a boner at the thought of being a better American than people different than me just like every other red-blooded American male does. And maybe there is too much welfare money going to those damned non-citizens.

So let's play a little game. Three of these pictures represent non-citizens who have receive more than 200 million dollars in government handouts from the state of Nebraska every year, and untold billions nationwide. One of these pictures represents a naturalized citizen who has found steady employment and doesn't require any government help at all. First one to guess which is which wins a free jar of Peter Pan Peanut butter.

Proposal

I have an idea, it's called anti-Lent. I realize that this is the basic idea behind Mardi Gras, but fuck Mardi Gras. What good has Mardi Gras done for New Orleans? None at all. It has only given the public the impression that New Orleans is a disposible cauldren of sin, so that we felt justified in letting the source for a good deal of what is interesting about American culture drown. (A bigger disgrace than 9/11, in my opinion.)

So this is what we do. It starts tonight, do homework, watch network television, go out to Applebees, do whatever you like, as long as you can't possibly get any pleasure out of it.

Tomorrow, and for the next six Fridays, we drink, we smoke, we fornicate. We eat steak for breakfast, pork for lunch, and double rabbitfat burgers for supper.

On the Afternoon of Good Friday itself, cocaine, mountains of cocaine, served to us by illeagal immigrants (Dressed as Mother Mary left abandoned in her old age) forced into prostitution after their husbands were deported.

I realize that even some friends of mine may be shocked by this idea, good. This shows that, no matter what religion you were raised in, you still feel some latant affection for the Catholic Church, or at least the modern Western Civilization that it spawned.

There are some gloomy, pretentious types who claim that Western Civilization is decaying. There are none, however, more pretentious than me. I say that Western Civilization has been dead for at least a hundred years. It is only the corpse we are watching decay. The decay is being accelerated by power elites who, inspired by the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie's, have stolen the corpse from it's deep freeze and now prop it up in front of the masses (who, out of either courtesy or ignorance, claim to see nothing amiss) in order to gain power and influence for themselves.

They claim to be the corpse's best friends. They say they love Bernie. They say they can nurse him back to health and bring the corpse back to it's glory days. "Just give us your loyalty" they say "and we can bring him back to the glory days." "Just submit to the old myths and traditions, and we can return the days when we raped and pillaged the earth with impunity."

So what now then? Shall we acquiecse? Shall we all be Catherine Parks, and necrophilize the corpse in a well played but insignificant bit role? Or shall we look into Andrew McCarthey in the eye and say "Come now, did you think we wouldn't notice the smell?"

I seek not to create depravity but to expose it, not to destroy morality but to show that there is not now, and perhaps never has been, anything to destroy. We cannot invent a new truth untill we are able to start from scratch. Those who still cling to the bloated carcass must have their foolishness shown to them in the clearest possible way.

We have no choice. We cannot allow the corpse of Western Civilization to return peacefully to the earth. In order to remove it's corrupting influence once and for all, we are forced to subject it to furthur outrage. We must shoot in the head with the arrow of hedonism, drag it through the bouys of licentiousness, use it as a float to escape the waters of slave morality.

And it starts tommarow. We're all gathering at my place for a breafast of De'Leon's and Sailor Jerry's. After this, black market Burmise Porn. This is the sanctifying moment, this is when anti-Lent officially begins. You can do whatever you like after that, so long as you regret it immediatly afterwords.

And some more on Nantkes

The other day I was listening to Drive-Time Lincoln, the local news show on KILN, the area source for Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, and other such clowns. Drive-time is hosted by one Coby Mach, I can't trust a name like that, sounds Texan, fucking short-dicked psychopaths.

In fairness, Mach isn't as much of a jackass as the nationally syndicated assholes we all know and love. This is probably a matter of necessity. It's one thing to excoriate faceless baby-eating liberals from some far away Sodom that good heartlanders will never go to, but it's quite another thing to demonize the next-door neighbor with a Nebraskans for Peace bumper sticker whose kid plays on the same soccer team as yours.

But though he's a second rate thug, Mach is, after all, the host of an AM talk radio show, so the bullshit, delivered with a smirk instead of a growl, is still reliably delivered.

And so it was on Thursday, when Mock tried to put a populist spin on my belladonna Danielle Nantkes's recent drunk-driving incident. Nantkes, you see, wasn't technically arrested, as state senators are immune from being arrested for misdemeanors when the Unicam is in session. She was taken to a detox center and walked out the next morning to her well-earned De'leon's breakfast without having to pay bail or face a judge.

Mach, in his own congenially outraged way, wanted to know why Nantkes didn't face the same righteous punishment that common drunkards do.

Well, it's because of the English revolution, Coby. It's because Charles the 1st tried to use his soldiers to get Oliver Cromwell and his partisans out of his hair. It didn't work, and Cromwell eventually succeeded in beheading Charles and installing his own highly amusing Puritan theocracy.

After the English unrest settled down, Parliament saw this incident of how the executive could use the legal authorities (who are his employees) after all, to remove political opponents in the legislature for any number of crimes real or imagined. So they forbade the King from having MP's arrested while the house was in session. This prohibition was passed on to the American constitution, and the constitutions for all fifty states.

A local lawyer explained this to Mach on the air, in slightly less detail, killing any further rant he had to make on the matter. But local news shorts on KILN still question the fairness of Nantkes's non-arrest at any opportunity. this is bound to mislead the typical AM radio listener, whose knowledge of history is restricted to vague remembrances of American supermen kicking foreign ass and dirty hippies complaining about it.

Of course, there is also the small fact that my neighborhood would have no voice in state government if it's state senator is in jail, but then we don't represent the real common sense people who listen to KILN and our outraged that Lincoln refuses to turn itself into an extension of West Omaha. With Mayor Seng on her way out, expect Nantkes to become the new local Streisand.

Danielle Nantkes is better than anyone who doesn't drive drunk.

Nantkes is the state senator from my district. I voted for her, she lives five blocks down the street from me, just on the other side of 27th here in Lincoln. Two night ago she went to detox after driving into a snowplow at Nineteenth and P,presumably on her way home from getting down at the Haymarket or the O street strip. So now a state senator, my senator, is charged with DUI. It's caused a bit of a stir.

Full disclosure, I myself have been to jail for DUI (and, ummm, fleeing to avoid arrest, youthful indiscretion you know.) This makes me one of millions of people in rural America whose criminal record consists solely of drinking and/or driving related matters.

I'm not trying to excuse it. It's a terrible thing to do, it kills people. It's just that, you know, it gets too cold to walk here in the winter, and sometimes you got to go to another town to party, and this is a drinking culture, and a driving culture at that. Giving a ride or receiving a ride from someone else is seen as shameful charity. I'm not trying to excuse it, but, you know.

And let's be clear; what Nantkes did was wrong. She's a bad girl. A very, very, bad and wicked girl and I have half a mind to grab my bullwhip and show her some discipline myself. But her crime wasn't a "political crime." She didn't cheat the campaign finance laws, she didn't take any bribes, and she presumably got drunk on her own money. It wasn't the sort of crime where one abuses or takes advantage of one's authority. Anyone can get drunk and crash their car. It's a crime of the people.

Still, there will be some who will see the incident as reason enough to boot her out of the state penis. The Nebraska Unicameral is officially nonpartisan, but of course partisan and philosophical tensions have always been there. Now the term limits have forced out professional politicians (Such as Dave Landis, Nantkes' predecessor and a fine voice for my neighborhood who was stolen from us by the fucking T.L's)the nonpartisan label is almost total fiction.

The Unicameral is home to the true believers now, young vigorous, and proud to be uncompromising in a parliamentary system designed to force compromise.

People like Mark Christensen, holy warrior from Imperial, or Norfolk's Mike Flood, speaker of the Unicam and leather-slave of Governor Heineman.

Nantkes, an unabashedly liberal Democrat, has been a minor irritation for the state's power elite. Nowhere near as effective as Ernie motherfucking Chambers, but nobody likes getting nipped by a poodle.

And they may be looking to avenge the impeachment and removal of university regent Dave Hergert. (who was very friendly with the GOP elite in Lincoln and Omaha, pathetic pleas to Panhandle pride notwithstanding)

We'll see where it goes. In the meantime, Sen. Nantkes, I'd like to ask you out on a date. Meet me at O'Rourke's tomorrow night, I'll be wearing the red rose and Juventes scarf, and don't worry, I'll drive us home. Your place or mine?

Reminder

This current Nebraska winter does not disprove global warming, far from it. This is a historically normal winter, the only reason it's "below average" is because the average has been gradually creeping up over the past 25-30 years.

What is unusual is the lack of a "false spring" that usually hits the Great Plains sometime between mid-January and mid-February, where temperatures briefly rise to the 40's, 50's or even 60's for a few days. This gives everyone a break from artificial lighting and week-old cigarette smoke, a nice chance to stretch one's legs, take a walk through the park, get the cabin fever out of one's system before the second half of winter hits.

No such luck this year. Lincoln hasn't been above 40 since the solstice. It seems that the Jet stream (wholly unaffected by Global warming, btw.) which usually separates the Arctic from the American Midwest, is further south than usual this year.

This is important, because the plains continue unbroken to the north of here almost to the Arctic circle. Without the Jet Stream between here and there, there is nothing to prevent an "Alberta Clipper" or "Arctic Front" from blowing south from Hudson Bay, through the Dakotas, and on to here.

In a modern "normal" winter, we get one or two of these Arctic fronts a year, brining, snow, wind, and freakishly cold temps (single digits) that last for half a week. But with the jet stream to the south of us, these fronts are moving over Nebraska on a weekly basis. Just when temperatures are starting to get back to something reasonable; say, high 20's, low 30's Fahrenheit, here comes the next front.

So for you Huskers wondering what an Alaska winter is like, it's a lot like this. Anchorage is actually having an easier winter than we are since it lies on the air-moderating ocean. For all practical purposes, we are living in an interior Arctic climate right now, made somewhat better by the fact we receive ten or eleven hours of sunlight a day instead of none.

And like I said, historically, this is more or less normal, perhaps a little worse because the worst part of winter simply refuses to go away. Pioneers lived through Januaries that were even worse than this, while temperatures would usually be somewhere in the 20's by now and around 45 by the spring equinox.

So what does that tell us? That our ancestors were even more insane than we thought they were. We already knew that they settled a wasteland for no logical reason, but now that you are living through a real Nebraska winter, just consider the fact that they suffered for this, died for this, killed for this It's really too depressing to believe, isn't it?

Business idea

I've decided to record videos of myself masturbating for the purpose of masturbating to the videos of myself masturbating in the future. Traditional porn bores me, and even Hentai doesn't amuse me anymore. There's just not enough me involved.

The videos should be ready in a couple weeks. If you would like a copy, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't, leave me your e-mail address over this blog. Of course, you do understand that, due to the high quality of these videos, they will cost at least twice as much as your typical Hustler Real College Girls DVD.

In a few months, I hope to hav videos of myself masturbating to videos of myself masturbating. You know you want it.

A rememberance of sorts

Her house sits at the end of the block, accross Front street from the tracks. The inside is covered by paintings of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe. She came here some years after being married at fifteen.

Her current house is the newer one, she's had it for over fifty years. She had eight kids, two died on another side of town. I was there to see her husband dying, he died slow and hard. He had been a strong man right into old age. Her grandaughter too, thirty years old, didn't smoke, didn't drink, stomach cancer, and left herself to the care of the North Platte doctors. I was there on her last night, with her grandmother, she begged me to let go of her arm so whe could tear her oxygen tube out. She stayed seven hours longer than she wanted to because of me. I was fifteeen and only knew what the church told me. I wore tie-dyes, smoked pot, listened to loud music, still I was fundamentally a child accepting what I was told about right and wrong. I'm sorry Julie.

The old woman has a basic understanding of the world around her. She knows that Mexicans are moving into Lexington. To her this means Goya, Valintina, all the brands of home. Nothing but Univision at the house, her accent forever as thick as boiling chocolate, her exclamations (never curses) forever in Spanish. She can understand you perfectly well, better than she lets on.

She knows what corruption is. She knows you don't get married young here, you go to school instead. That's what her kids did, went to school, than got married, than to work at the railroad, construction, plumbing. Her grandchildren, as often as not, didn't see the need to finish school. Pregnant at sixteen, just like home, only with know idea of what to do about it.

Adapt to our ways. She did that as well as a mayfly to October, no one dared say a word against her.

Her house is a block from my mother's and I don't know if she's still alive. I see her grandchildren around and exchange a few words, it doesn't seem right to ask. She would be over ninety now.

I'm a man now Elisa. How's that great-grandchild I used to cavort with?

You taught your family those things that are true forever it's a shame. You wern't meant to see this.

Age of terror ends with a giggle?

Never forget indeed, the Boston "terror hoax" may well be the funniest thing that has ever happened, period. It is certainly more culturally significant than the Dems taking Congress. People were afraid that an "electronic device" might be a bomb, and we didn't praise them for their caution, didn't sign them up to be comforted by Oprah, we laughed.

Political figures reminded us that we live in "a post 9-11 world" and we weren't cowed into silence and submission, we laughed even harder.

For once, if just for this one amusing incident, we treated the idea that terrorism should be our sole national obsession like the fucking joke it is. John Kerry was skewered for saying he wanted to make terrorism a nuisance again, how dare he suggest that one thing shouldn't be our everything, that building a national identity out of our greatest fear was something less than a fantastic idea?

Yet how absurd would it be to say that cancer, or Aids, or heart disease should be the absolute national focus until nobody dies of disease anymore? Such a suggestion would be rightfully laughed at, but for the wrong reasons. When someone dies "naturally" it's God's will. When someone dies at the hand of another human being it's an outrage, maybe even a cause for war.

Friends, I tell you it's the same thing. Dying in bed "naturally" is no more and no less acceptable than murder or terrorist attack. We should allocate our resources accordingly, and stop deluding ourselves by vigilantly defending our herds from the next bogeyman as we march them off to the next artery clogging factory on a Friday night.

This shit isn't funny anymore

Never in my lifetime has it been consistently every day for the entire winter, I simply refuse to believe that this can be possible. Everything changes, atoms are deteriorating and reforming into new combinations at a constant rate, how the fuck can it possibly be this cold every fucking day for ninety days straight? How can the wind possibly not stop? I simply fucking refuse to believe that the reason isn't supernatural.

As humans, we are entitled to condemn God whenever he gives us weather that displeases us in the slightest way. This is fucking unacceptable, he knows what constant bad weather does to our psychology and he is fucking laughing at us, don't think he isn't. Anyone who still thinks God is worthy of respect, anyone who dresses their kids up all neat for church on Sundays is a fucking subhuman inferior and will be treated as such.

I am entitled to absolute climatic fucking perfection and fuck you if you think otherwise!

Nothing to see here.

A state rep in California is proposing banning spanking children under four. Some say this is good, that there is no conceivable reason to use physical force against such young children, others say that this is a shameful intrusion on parental authority it's got AM radio types all hot and bothered, nothing new here, bloggers on both sides debate like jilted lovers, nothing new here. Practically no one who has an opinion on the bill has read it of course, who has the time? Rather they formed their opinions after comparing and contrasting the soundbites of other people who haven't read the bill. This is the fair way to do it, this is how reasonable people reach their conclusions, by watching both sides do their 30-second bumper sticker raps on CNN and than judging which one sounded more passionate, outraged, and pro-children.

And me? I have no opinion. I haven't read the bill, and honestly, I have as much shit to do as anybody, so I have no intention of reading a theoretical law from somebody else's state. If you happen to think that there's something vacillating or unmanly about not having an opinion on everything one hears about, then I can only say, grow up.

What I do have is a strong suspicion that this controversy is just the latest in a long line of increasingly pathetic attempts to prove the existence of the imaginary politically correct bogeyman. Is this, then, the sort of news that the liberal media doesn't want us to hear about? Is this really the best you people can do?

BTW: News reports seem to think it's very important that the rep. proposing the law is a woman who, wait for it.... has no children! Well, now I can see reason for outrage; the woman is clearly a lesbian. It's a fucking abomination that she's allowed to vote for against laws in the first place, let alone propose bills regarding parenting. In the good old days we put these uppity maids at the back of the cannery where they belonged.

Goodbye

My grandmother is dying, my father's mother, 87 years old. My dad told me Friday night. Health problems over several years, slow decline, nothing unusual for a person her age. She was taken off of dialysis on Friday. Seven days, maybe less, maybe more.

I ordered myself to call her. You're her only grandson, she faithfully sent you a birthday card with a fifty dollar bill even until you were a man of twenty five? Or are you a man even yet Mr. Beran?

What are you afraid of? Arn't you so ironic? Don't you mock other people's fear of death? Don't you laugh at other people's attempts to dignify their mortality? Religion, marriage, poems on the tombstone?

I called yesterday. She was asleep, I got my aunt instead. She told me that she (my aunt) was fine. She asked me about my life. Of course she did, I'm not 87. That's worth quite a hell of a lot isn't it? Almost enough to make me stop prematurely age myself, still I drink wine from the bottle as I write this.

I'll try to get a hold of my grandmother again tommarow, but she's sleeping twenty hours a day, pills for both the pain and the dread. I have to try, but I'm not likely to speak to her again. And if I do, than what? Should I tell her I'm praying for her? Would lying be worse than not talking to her at all?

Goodbye, would that be appropriate? And what if that isn't the end of the conversation? What if she asks me about my future? My future.

Nothing to Say

I went to Wal-Mart today. I like to walk a couple hours a day, it's been too cold to do it outside, and the campus rec center gives me the creeps, so I went to the Wal-Mart at the north side of Lincoln. Perhaps I would find more evidence of social decay that I could pass on in my own hilarious way to my loyal readers.

But what can I say that hasn't been said by people who are smarter than me? People who actually get paid for social criticism while I engage in pointless, wheel-spinning, childish Fruedian rebellion?

I saw a woman in a cowboy hat and a Dale Ernhardt Jr. racing jacket. She had a cell-phone headset on even though she was talking to no one at the time. Her boyfriend wore an identical Nascar jacket but sported a black nylon do-rag instead of a cowboy hat. I have nothing clever to say about this, (maybe she wanted to leave her hands free to browse Guns'N'Ammo) I got nothin. I found it hilarious at the moment, maybe I had some brillient zinger pass through my consciousness at that moment, but the moment passed, and five minutes later it wasn't that funny anymore, so I have nothing for you.

I walked past a pair of Larry the Cable Guy boxer shorts, and I have nothing clever to say about that. Why should I? You know the score, you either know what's wrong with this or you don't. Larry the Cable guy, the Nebraska native embraced by his former state so that we can feel like we're part of the outside world. He who speaks in a blatantly fake cracker accent, he whose grammer is well below what one would learn in any substandard Nebraska high school, who makes racist comments without any attempt to attach a joke to them. He whose popularity lasted all of three weeks, even before his movie came out.

But he's our boy. We Nebraskans can blindly worship fame just like everyone else, so Larry will always have a place here. And he'll always have a place at Wal-Mart,

What do Larry the Cable and the rest of the blue-collar "comedians" represent anyways? The white-counter snob, the hick defiantly proud to be a hick (You might be a redneck if) embracing a phony "heartland" culture in rural America, denying the existance of a distinctive Southern, Midwestern, or Western culture while asserting that the generic fantasy of the "heartland" is somehow America incarnate despite the fact that it is based on nothing.

Wal-Mart is proud to help sell the idea of the Heartland, and considering how many local cultures they've destroyed, they had better be.

In the grocery section they sold packets of corn. Three ears in each box,grown in Florida, vacuum wrapped, boxed.

I'm a fifth-generation Nebraskan. My grandparents grow corn. I'm no flaming socialist. (not quite) I don't hate Wal-Mart. I don't shop there because it's three miles away from my apartment. I go to the downtown thrift shops if I need some cheap do-dad because my mama forgot to teach me to fear brown people. But I don't actively boycott Wal-Mart. I entertain no thoughts of throwing a Molotov cocktail through its windows or seizing Joyce Meyer paperbacks to redistribute to the peasents.

But this offended me deeply. I was witnessing a passive act of blasphamy. This is Nebraska, no, this is Lincoln Nebraska, Zion itself, and here was generic corn from Florida, pre-packaged in shrink-wrap, carrying some bullshit heartland company name like "Golden Acres" or something, and surely weeks from the field and as tasteless as raw hash browns.

This Wal-Mart was a fucking corn field fifteen years ago. I mean here it was; entropy, the death of local identity, people sacrificing the future of their small towns to shop in this Babylonian waste because it they have to go where stuff is cheap, and at any rate, this is where normal and decent people go, and people who complain about Wal-Mart think they're better than us, better than America, and how dare they?

There it was, the future of American civilisation, fuedalism without flavor, Rascal Flatts instead of the Latin Mass. Go to work straight out of high school, get a job doing grunt work at some local shop, shop gets run out of business by Wal-Mart, shop at Wal-Mart, they're cheap, buy some of the corn in plastic wrap, the wife says some corn on Sundays reminds her of home, and ain't that just the Nebraskan thing to do anyways? Eat some corn, watch the game? Might as well get an application while you're there. It's steady work, they don't pay much, you won't get health care, they won't let you form a union (But you're not communist, you're where you're at because that's how God planned it.) So you'll have to shop at Wal-Mart, you'll have enough money to send the kids to the doctor every couple of years, and you'll quit smoking someday, you'll be fine, you're the provider, the protector, and you're teaching the kids the value of hard work, this is how the world works, this is what they're meant to be.

There it was, but you knew this. Department stores tend to be rather banal, I should turn that idea into an essay and turn it in to Look magazine.

Ode to Target

I left my old hat in my hometown of North Platte. I'll be sure to get it back when I go back there, but hopefully that won't be for many months. My hats really are signatures of mine. There's been a cold snap here, and I've been getting by with a woolen cap, but this isn't 1994, I needed an official Josh hat.

But there was a dilemma. Should I look for a hat at one of the charity shops in Malone? Maybe I would find a cool hat for cheap, or maybe there would be nothing but cowboy hats still carrying the sweaty stench of their previous owners. At any rate, I have a social conscience (If no other kind of conscience) and I didn't want to come across as some pseudo-hipster buying crap from the thrift shops in a phony show of solidarity with the working class that actually insults them. This isn't 2002, either. The same logic excluded me from going to the "hip" "boutiques" downtown. That and I'm not gay.

So today I went to Target. I needed something to drink tonight anyway, and why make two errands? In my old age, I've come to appreciate Target's trendy, hip, vibrant image that still respects the American family. It's the store of the ruling class,
understand. We appreciate the finer things in life, like Justin Timberlake, cute little kitty pictures on the internet and stacks of unread Newsweek's on the coffee table. wW're not the fucking proles you find at Wal-Mart. We're not Toby Keith people, we're Faith Hill people.

Take their wine section, for example; the Lincoln Target doesn't even sell beer, so I'm drinking wine tonight. The type of wines they have there, names like three lizards and yellow tale, are catered towards the sort of middle-class families that, while striving to be respectable, still like to show how they're "with it". Something that will give the old college chums a little giggle when they come over to watch the game. These are my people, this is our society. We're on the go. We keep track of the stock market, still flip it to VH1 every now and then.

I'd like to say that I bought the three lizards, but alas, I still have a bit of the country in me and have not yet adapted to hip Lincoln ways. so no, just a jug of Sutter's Mill for me.

I ended up purchasing the wine, a Digornio's pizza, and a nice brown fedora with a phony fluer-de-lies on the side, something like you would see Usher wear. I'm glad I made the trip. It's one-stop shopping, I'm a man on the go, the business class, neon collar baby.

On Metal

Everything that any heavy metal band has ever done has already been done on Black Sabbath's first album. Think about it, the album has death, Satan, some LOTR shit to keep the nerds happy, Satan, hedonism, sex, etc. etc.

As if that wasn't enough, Sabbath used it's next album to elaborate on these basic themes with war, drugs, and homocidal comic book characters.

Other bands can work with the same mix. They can change things up by emphesizing Satan over drugs or mingling sex with death, but really, what's the point?

Just listen to NIB, a brilliant inverson of the Christian "lust=satan" equation. Listen to how the music is perfectly matched to the lyrics, auralizing the sound of a dark lord aroused. Than realize that your favorite childhood band did the same thing, and when you were fourteen you thought it was brilliant. then, dispair, and realize that you have wasted your youth and subsidized the wasted youths of others. Dude, all we are, is dust in the wind.

ah, school.

School is back, the now familier rythms, four years now. Class times, (and also waking times) are scattered throughout the day, leaving my internal clock ruined. It is during the school year that I become truely, physicaly addicted to caffine, If I go half a day without coffee, I will pass out for a time in mid-day no matter how much sleep I had the night before. Caffine is the addiction that will follow me into middle-age. I am domesticated. I'll buy Foldgers if it's on sale, I'm not lying.

Speaking of domesticity, I'll need a day job, a real one, where one has to wake up at the same time every day.

The entire first class being wasted on the sylybis, pointless meet-and greets. Professors who are clearly packing it in and teaching the same class they taught when the Apple-2 first came out. Professors who care deeeply but are a little nuts. Hot braised pork, good shit.

And me, staying motivated as best I can and waiting for the next phase of my life to hurry up.

Happy birthday

He's getting laid more on his 60th birthday than we did/will on our 21st, and you know this.

Fun Fact

There is just as much rape in prison as you've heard there is. This may not sound surprising, but when people hear about a bad situation in a government institution, they usually assume that's it's even worse than what they're hearing. This is usually a smart assumption, but not in this case. Prison rape is as bad as you've heard, not worse.

I know a few ex-cons, and they're actually more eager to tell prison rape jokes and otherwise keep prison rape in the public consciousness than other people. Why is this?

Because it distracts people from thinking about how much voluntary gay sex goes on in prison, which I assure you is quite a lot. There are lots of cons who are "only gay in prison" and claim the ability to magically turn their man-lust off when they're on the outside. This is utter nonsense of course, and by the way, the criminal element is no gayer than the general population, so we all need prison rape jokes to keep us from thinking about things we would rather not.

One bad situation in prison that is worse than what you hear is the guard beatings. They are not just isolated incidents. Any prison guard you've may have met has probably beaten a prisoner just for fun. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is not the imaginary beef of difficult criminals and their slick lawyers. Everyone in prison gets beat for no good reason except for the narcs. It is quite simply endemic among the guards. You can go to prison yourself and see that I write the truth. In fact I would even advise you to rob a liquor store just for the educational experience.

Quiz

Here's Richie Incognito, batshit offensive lineman for the St. Louis Rams and formerly of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The question for the day is weather Richie is going to

A. Have sex with all of the women in the background, or
B. Beat them to death.

Correct answer wins a free bottle of Crown Royal.

Everybody dies except you

While driving your car, or engaging in any of the basic activities of life for that matter, always remember this simple fact, everybody dies except you.

Yes, everyone is cursed with being a thinking creature aware of his or her own mortality, except you, you can't die, you're you.

So when driving on the interstate, you can take comfort in the fact that the forces of nature understand perfectly that you just have to get to that meeting, that dinner, or that shopping engagement on time. why should it be otherwise? The universe was created for you after all. The entire interstate highway system was created just so you could be driving on it as fast as you like right now. Your Ford Explorer was mass-produced on an assembly line just so you could be driving the one you're driving right now.

so it goes without saying that you were more than entitled to install the DVD player between the driver and front passenger seats last year, it's not that distracting, you don't even watch it, of course, it's for the kids. (Well, okay, maybe you sneak a peak every now and then,you know, just when traffic is light?) At any rate, so what if it is distracting? Remember, you're you, and these are your kids.

(Your kids probably can't die. They're only hal-you, after all, but that's why you hedged your bets and had six of them, isn't it? as for the wife, soon enough my friend, soon enough.)

The rain, of course, is here to provide you with water for your showers and half-caffinated coffee. The snow? It's there to give you something pretty to look at as you put the baby in cruise control and let your mind drift. Or maybe it's there to give you some story to tell the guys at work or at family gatherings when your military cousin shows up and you need something tough to say besides re-iterating your hatred for queers.

"I tell ya I gotta laugh when they get one or two inches of snow down south and they shut down everything. We can get eighteen inches and everybody still has to go to work, winters tough up here in Nebraska, but we're tough Germans arn't we cous?"

Everybody dies except you, so let your eyes drift to the video, go ahead and drive with half of your submissive hand while eating a burger or smoking a cigarette or drinking your half-caf coffee in the dominant hand

And above all, drive hard, drive hard, pound the gas pedal into it's slot until the engine screams like the orgasmic beast you, I mean your car, is.

Go ahead and drive 85 through the rain, but take it down to the speed limit if you hit snow or ice. Not that it matters to you, of course, but there are other people on the road who arn't you, and they're going to die of something or another someday.
So slide her in easy, nice and easy, easy.

What am I talking about?

Who are these people anyway? Obstructions, nothing more, forcing you to have to turn off and reset the cruise control, take your eyes off of the Blue Collar Comedy tour, put your coffee in the holder.

Who are these people except sticks crowding your interstate? Heading to appointments that arn't yours, jobs that arn't yours, families that arn't yours, movies that arn't yours, music that isn't yours. Taking up your road, your town, your taxes, your gasoline, your schools, your restaurants, your bars, your theatres your world.

So push the pedal down into it's slot. Your Explorer will hold, everyone knows they handle great on ice. everyone else is just going to have to get out of your way. They might slide off the road, but so what. Nobody exists except you, and your universe would be much better off without these obstructions.