The Lou's Tools Rant Machine

for the same reason you can't poke fun at retards

2011-11-22T22:17:00.002-06:00

it's important to remain cool, polite, and tolerant with others. until they become friends or, God help you, family. then you can be one rude motherfucker. and they will get the joke. it doesn't matter whether you are making fun of their innate idiocy, their flaming gayness, the colour of their skin or whatever. prior to that point, however, there just IS no joke.

enter wow. like almost everything else in my world, online gaming is a part thereof. if you are rolling with someone for the first time in any situation, you should try to be hospitable and try NOT to act stoopid. if you are running with someone for the first time and there is the chance that you may run with this person regularly in the future, you need to try to come off as particularly civil. no this isn't a new job, it isn't even real life. but starting out as an abrasive twit is very unlikely to get you asked back. enter my 'mage tank' healer. NEXT!!!

why i am not a raid achieve whore

2011-09-09T23:44:00.002-05:00

for some reason known only to the likes of God and michael morhaime, there is an achievement for getting 9000 achievement points. the largest section of the achievement landscape is that occupied by dungeon/raid achieves with 539. that's more than pvp, professions, and quests put together. ergo, many players seeking this elusive 9000 achievement point achievement plant themselves inside old raids aimed at players leveled 60 or 70 or 80. at level 85, you'd think these would be easy. most of the people going in to accrue shithills of points think the very same thing. sorry, no.

don't get me wrong, i think the flying mounts that players can obtain by completing an entire portion of the dungeon/raid achieves vary from kinda cool to really hip. most of the people who ride these mounts run the entire gambit from obnoxious pricks (the vast majority) to noble game masters (the select few.) but see, i don't need these mounts, myself. and i sure don't need the multi-faceted aggravation that comes with arranging a group and performing some basic game task in some very queer way in order to get points and a special bird. those who find this pursuit imperative can go their way and i shall go mine, just don't piss and moan when i decline your offer to go kill something in a bass-ackwards fashion to get a few points.

the great wow names of the day

2011-09-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

The WoW name of the day belongs to a PVP team on the Exodar realm. The mage in this particular PVP team is a member of a tiny Level 1 guild based around auctioneer, Ibuycheaper. Enough could be written about this person's infamous exploits and regular contact with Chinese gold farmers. But let's stick to the topic!

Today's name is Blakk People PVP IRL. Not exactly politically incorrect in a Bill Maher way, but still...

the ass fonzies

2011-08-20T23:28:00.004-05:00

too many people have too many podcasts that seemed like a good idea at the time. then they let them lapse and now they are unavailable. but their titles are still listed on itunes. enter the ass fonzies: the podcasts that remain within stacks of active casts but have drifted into nether nowhere. let this never be my fate...

dad's weeshes

2011-07-19T12:12:00.002-05:00

see, i thought since he was like me and her daughter was like her that they'd go great together. but see, she used to be a bitch. that was before i met her and that is how her daughter IS right now. ergo, despite the fact that my son is like i was and her daughter truly is like she was, the younger versions of us don't blend. but the older versions of us do. is that clear?

nuclear iguana cathouse

2011-06-30T14:24:00.002-05:00

should people look to strangers or to friends? and for what? and why? the answers to these questions and more on tonight's episode of "the crawl."

mom had her chance

2011-06-28T15:43:00.002-05:00

she got the option to kill you for a few months whilst you were on the inside. isn't it just as logical that dad should get the same chance now that you're on the outside?

Asleep at the wheel

2011-06-26T10:22:00.002-05:00

Ecstasy > Satiety > Compromise

Internal rumblings cannot mask self-doubt. It takes time for the mold to grow and completely cover reality at the center. How many licks does it take?

butthole ninja sugarbaker

2011-06-16T08:09:00.003-05:00

noise blows goats. and not the attractive, mellow goats who resemble cameron diaz from the posterior. no sir. i refer to stanky, self-indulging rich-bitch goats. and that's more cameron from the front. with her mouth open.

el día del farty nickel

2011-06-10T21:05:00.003-05:00

coulda been worse. like last year. or the year before that. but not the year before that.

rolling in the burbs. getting the fcp7 and the memory.

the stabby pain. the thoughts of the ex.

the bitch tits trifecta

2011-06-10T07:47:00.003-05:00

in the land of cletus doobrow, there lived a little man who experienced trouble getting from here to there and back again. he wandered at the base of the mountain for forty years. then he turned red and made an original hat. from that point forward he rejected all clothing besides that hat.

fudge porpoise

2011-06-07T18:56:00.003-05:00

on this day, in this hour, i dub thee teshlek. some people call you the spayed cowboy. and they are right.

thought what why

2011-06-06T09:28:00.002-05:00

tuesday i am mush udder thin thine. ang i woody, wung what thing in? what i let the memo of prentice bright? thin not the daze. the daze eno. eno benny.

...but the greatest of these is 'geek'

2011-06-04T11:14:00.001-05:00

tom morello may be many things and wear many shirts. none are more true to his being than 'geek' and this here shirt.

BITCH BE COOL

2011-05-28T22:15:00.002-05:00

were clearer words ever spoken? by samuel l. jackson, perhaps. but by most men, not really.

you know who you are. that is all.

retrospecticus 6.0

2011-05-18T12:25:00.002-05:00

i still have the cassette tape from thanksgiving 1979. i recorded my mom and her sister discussing the 25th reunion of amboy high school's class of 1954. my mom seemed to enjoy going to see people with whom she attended school. she liked talking and reminiscing. polyester all the way!

flash forward 32 years. it is now my turn to touch base with classmates. only in 1979, my mom had no internet to look up the goings-on of people in her driver's ed class. it's only been during the past five years, since the arrival of facebook, that people have been able to keep track of the goings-on in the lives of old friends. perhaps that is how people need to re-think and re-shape class reunions: much like blizzcon, allow people who can't (or simply don't wish to) be physically present an opportunity to observe online. they could watch the dancing and ranting and drinking. maybe they could even interact with classmates via the internet. just a thought. i think i might even try that, myself.

Fuck PC One More Time

2011-05-11T15:07:00.000-05:00

it's been 3.5 years since yahoo ganked me for using the non-pc term "whitey" in y! answers. the site sucks. the email sucks. and the news that they report are the rejects from trailer trash quarterly.

lucid defecation 2.0

2011-05-02T21:52:00.003-05:00

As Kurt Vonnegut said, so it goes. The second attempt for me. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." So endeth the foolin'. Although I still love much of the Pyromania album.

The day has rolled with three sharp corners. Okay, two and a half. First, my roomie pecked at my mental fabric until I broke down. Truly, if I knew you were comin' I'd'a locked the door, broke ass, run away...

Next came the photo debacle. I showed Lassie (as she shall now be known, for she is NO feline) an old picture of my son. It was a decent picture, no nudity. Nothing inappropriate. Mr. Newself freaked, then Lassie responded like a trip-hammer.

Final thoughts? Fuck them. Lassie has never said one nice thing to me. Not ever. And I keep emails. Newself can reinvent his ass ad nauseum. Fuck 'em, Bucky.

lucid defecation

2011-03-25T22:36:00.002-05:00

the new album from the manboy love experiment

overcompensation eats conehead ass

2011-03-13T20:01:00.002-05:00

but then, so does diane sawyer

less about suck, more about truth

2011-02-26T16:49:00.002-06:00

Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.

John Owen

more about the suck

2011-02-24T11:19:00.002-06:00

for me at least, it all started in the summer of 1982. that was when i learned that the human league had pumped out their top 40 hit 'don't you want me' by playing nothing but electronic keyboards. between then and now, popular sound has gone to shite.

see: button-pushing shlock.

1000 and still sucking real hard

2011-02-17T19:57:00.003-06:00

this week, lady gaga topped the billboard hot 100. the song with which she so did will likely cause queer america to forget that the village people ever existed. the tune 'born this way' defends 'alternative' lifestyles whilst pounding out a campy beat. of course, in my opinion, this song blows. but it's not alone.

it's been two and a half years since a song that i can actually stomach topped billboard. that was 'viva la vida' in june 2008. it spent one week at the top, then got kicked to the kerb gangsta-style by some repulsive rap shlock.

after digging a bit further, i learned that it was not until 2000 that i found another one-week chart-topper that i could endure. that one was from creed. going back a couple more years i found a tolerable song that spent more than one week at number one. aerosmith's post-'pump' crooning stayed on top for the entire month of june 1998. during the preceding eight years, there were but three more number ones that i liked.

finally in april and may of 1990 (twenty-one years ago!!) i found a solid, well-written, well-performed song. that was sinead o connor's 'nothing compares to you.' so it is, in that direction that i may cast my index finger and declare that the shit hit the fan and knocked it out the window and onto the street, whereupon several eighteen-wheelers with wide loads turned said fan into rubble. and that is precisely what music has become: rubble and excrement.

hotdog, featuring peppers and onions and other junk

2011-02-15T17:46:00.004-06:00

PUH-LEEEEEEZE!!!!!!

when billy preston played with the beatles, it was not "the beatles featuring billy preston." they had the balls, logic, knowledge, sense (pick one) to just say "the beatles and (or with) billy preston." just like people use "and" or "with" when they describe what they want on their hotdogs.

ironically, the "feature-ati" are taken in just like hotdogs, processed and and turned into crap. best wishes, featured bieber.

aight, that's epic!

2011-02-14T16:14:00.002-06:00

no, this particular gentleman did not (to my knowledge at least) sexually molest the mother tongue. nevertheless, terms such as "epic" and "aight" and "hater" could only have evolved from the brain of one at his level.

next time you're at a justin bieber, blink-182, or lung-dung park show, look around. for mr. aight will be there. and he will have friends. shoulda stuck to bowling with the president.

post script... for all lung-dung park fans, here's a message in your native tongue. much like your "aight," it has no place for the letters "l" or "r."

justin biebe will aways be bette than ung-dung pak. why? you ask. simpe. justin biebe is who he is: a aging pussy tease with vey itte taent. you boys ty to be a eal band. they ty to be in the same eague as (ente non-sucky band name hee.) sucking and subsequenty ying is SO much wose than simpy sucking...

ashes to ashes...

2011-02-13T21:38:00.002-06:00

so this where it all began, back in the days when i was banging a seminary student. i had packed on 60 lbs in less than a year and felt pretty dark. then one day, i decided to return to the gym and kick the cheese.

i wish i could say it was that easy and spontaneous this time. (of course i DID still have kidney stones then, so it wasn't absolutely ideal.) anyway, gone shall be that which i believe gives me pain. no, i can't swear that it is milk, cheese, &c. but i do suspect.

and i don't sing like chris cornell, either

2011-02-12T21:27:00.003-06:00

so today i headed outside. the snow was still there. the ass-head neighbours were still there. but i went to check out yarn, &c. it was not particularly traumatic. perhaps that is due to the fact that i wanted to get away from the ass-heads. maybe it was because i am in an up flavour.

so i sit by the fireplace and listen to fdr tell me that everything is going to be okay.

it don't get no better than this

2011-02-10T16:42:00.003-06:00

the proper fate for drunken veterans: feed em to po po. okay, well screw the 'drunken' part. just let cops and gunnerboys eat themselves.

rust in peace

2011-02-09T19:29:00.002-06:00

and with that comes the death of this chapter in the saga of technology raping art. what's next? learn how to click a bic pen so you can 'write' a stephen king novel?

saul, mother would not approve!

don & that 'choke on my daughter' song

2011-02-08T01:21:00.002-06:00

when i was 19yo, i delivered pizzas for pizza hut. on occasion, i had the privilege to yoko-ize the deep purple classic 'smoke on the water.' except we didn't call it that. no no! we sang 'choke on my daughter, she's got tremendous thighs!'

that was years before i actually had a daughter or a guitar. the one song i ever really REALLY played, up to speed and in its entirety, was... you got it, 'smoke on the water.' sad, i know. i learned a variety of solos and rhythms and clips, notes, strums, chords. but nothing that i could actually play. and that disturbs me.

i've taken lessons from at least four people. and, except for that brief wisp through the land of richie blackmore, i've learned to play nada. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

lucid x

2011-02-04T03:26:00.002-06:00

i have few memories of pure xtc. not the drug, mind you, but the state of mind. the first of these that i recall came in the mid 1980s when i met a girl whom i'd traveled half-way around the world to meet. next was a sort of romantic encounter in front of the chicago art institute. finally, a few years ago, an intimate exchange beside the dance floor at an underground night club in madison.

since then? sorry, no. have i given up? most of me would say 'yes.' but periodically, under the effects of happy chemicals, i dream about the xtc that i have yet to see.

95 II

2011-01-26T22:37:00.002-06:00

shake down 1995

2011-01-26T13:14:00.002-06:00

i remember a few years back, realising that the distance between 1979 and 1995 would soon be the same as that between 1995 and the present year. and so we are there. how the hell life changes...

pure solution to pure problem

2011-01-24T01:59:00.002-06:00

it shocks me that a society of lemmings labels the voluntary ending of one's own life as the permanent solution to a temporary problem. that is simply a lie. ending the life one has on this earth simply opens the door to eternity. spoken first-hand, many problems will never end until death. and they are unbearable. temporary? not at all.

FOAMY... TOGETHER FOAMY

2008-03-05T14:21:00.002-06:00

FJORD... TOGETHER FJORD

2008-03-02T11:57:00.003-06:00

FRAYED... TOGETHER FRAYED

2008-03-01T20:22:00.001-06:00

FORD... TOGETHER FORD

2008-02-29T08:55:00.000-06:00

FARTY... TOGETHER FARTY

2008-02-27T11:59:00.001-06:00

total totalitarian moronitude

2008-02-25T21:21:00.003-06:00

the lion's share of the businesses within my cherished community are now displaying the dilbot mantra about going together into the forward. seed i nay more?

how to stretch a hairy dog

2008-02-24T11:12:00.002-06:00

tomorrow niu re-opens and i shall be there. i'm curious to see what the mood shall be. let's ask ourselves, how many people get killed daily by suicide bombers or by being part of the military industrial complex? i suspect these figures will lighten the mood for some. much like shit happens, death happens. i still feel a resonating aftertaste of survivor guilt. sorry, susan, but i do. the thousands of amerikans who joined the millatree and came down with deth knew what they were getting into. i doubt that the victims of cole hall knew that they were rolling the dice when they came to dekalb.

who was the dipshit who got paid to create THIS?

2008-02-23T17:13:00.002-06:00

the mantra for niu recovery is just daft in extremis. forward together? yeah right? good luck selling that one. death or no death, people are going to hang with the same folk that they did prior to february 14.

does it get any cleaner than this?

2008-02-22T15:15:00.002-06:00

today was a kind of impromptu cleaning day about my abode. i vacuumed, switched on the dishwasher, and went out to do laundry. all went well until i came home and walked around my car to unload my laundry basket.

KABOOM! i fell face-first into the ice. for a few moments i could not tell whether i still had all my already crooked teeth in the front of my face. i could taste the blood on my lips as i struggled to get up on solid ice. i took a quick hit of an rx analgesic, washed up and vegged with an iced tea. now there is just swelling and redness. so it goes...

welcome to the late 20th c.

2008-02-21T12:13:00.003-06:00

thanks go out to my son for giving me the stuff that i traded in to procure much of the value of a new keyboard and mouse--with speakers thrown in to boot!!

yes, komrades, i now have a wireless keyboard and mouse. i've arrived at the latter days of the clinton administration. ironic part? the last time i clearly recall using a wireless mouse i was subbing in a high school computer class. one student became a hellacious prick and never never ever let me forget that he disliked me. people, if you deal drugs, don't have kids. i am not joking about this AT ALL.

i'm sorry that people had to die for this, but...

2008-02-20T15:35:00.003-06:00

it has been a slow, painfully dragging week thus far. i realise that j peters could not swing the doors open wide at niu without a grieving period. and the weather sucks. AND i keep getting stronger post-surg. but hell's bells! if this had happened in june or even april life would have been so much less drab.

"Communists Are Ruining This Country...

2008-02-12T16:37:00.000-06:00

...and other lines of crap I never believed." after a bit of a dry spell, i've begun to listen to music again of late. i've even addressed the issue of songs that held bother for me. atop this list were robert plant's "in the mood" and smashing pumpkins' "luna". after a teary return, i realised that i may be ready to once more return to the dating game. were it not for online entities such as match and y! personals, older folk such as myself would be far out of the loop.

i did have a light bulb revelation recently regarding sticking the right person in the archetypal frame. that is, music should follow la persona perfecta--not vice versa! i recall burning a cd in summer '04 and wondering who it would ever be for. now, i have decided to let person and personality come first and influence the contents of the next album.

one more pc issue... there may be more

2008-01-11T19:11:00.000-06:00

issues that are no-no's in today's society: breathing heavy on blacks, questioning women's rights, talking smack about any ethnic minority, suggesting that members of the military are not demi-gods [which confuses me with whole mcveigh 'lack-of-respect' issue.]

now, shit that people can still attack and hold they chins up HIGH: white men, fat people, adopted children/adults [eg, 'dodgeball'.] holy shit, will robinson! i fit into all of those categories! so now, not only is there not a special organisation at my university for straight wasps like myself, it's also cool to poke fun at my weight and my birth mother's decision to let me live with others.

should i whine? no! as a classmate recently reminded, NO ONE should whine. life gets shitty for everybody in one way or another.

does this chick look lynchable??

2008-01-09T23:19:00.001-06:00

this is tiger woods' mother. she gave him half of his dna. what's that?!? he's half NOT-black? wtf? but i thought he was an african trailblazer!

sorry, folks. much like barack obama, tiger's african blood is tainted. and let's not forget that tiger's wife is white, making for a funky blend in their wee one. people, give it up! white people [or part white, like barack] don't need to walk on fucking eggshells. no announcer said "we gotta lynch that darky and shave his nappy head." the very essence of pc is warped.

does it matter that tiger wrote off the aforementioned comment? not to the cya world that could lose capital if they offend ANYONE. finally, remember that blacks call each other "nigga" and "boy" with alarming frequency, then subsequently act offended [understatement] when anyone else uses "their" words.

FUCK PC & PUSH IT REAL GOOD

2007-12-17T11:57:00.000-06:00

i just got reamed up the buttocks by y! for using the term 'whitey'. i had roughly 2800 points earned over the course of 18 months on y! answers. using the aforementioned term, i asked if white folks were permitted to celebrate kwanzaa. they slapped me upside the head like a red-headed step-child and forbade my future activity on y! answers. hence, here i am today. google me, baby!

I'd Be Friends With the Sparrows...

2007-02-04T19:16:00.000-06:00

And the sluts who drive Camaros, if I only had a heart!

An Army Of...?

2007-02-02T18:44:00.000-06:00

People have criticized various wars from throughout recent history as just daft fucking killing machines. Nevertheless, people don't get the clue. Keep on fighting; maybe one day all the bad guys will go night-night.

I sometimes see stickers in the backs of vehicles that assert "Army Of ONE". That might just be where Dubya needs to lead his herd. One at a time, send them forth and when one is used up, send the next one. It'll be just like a bumper sticker--army of one. But it will be a whole lot cheaper for the nation as a whole.

Everly Bros Say What?

2007-01-28T07:52:00.000-06:00

Dreams of late have not been kind to me. What would Dr. Freud say? No, I'm not at the avoid-Freddy-Krueger stage... yet. But I haven't had such memorable, striking, borderline-traumatic dreams in years.

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

2006-09-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

I quite enjoy fall. Summer has its moments, but it's pretty warm and sticky in the midwest. As I drove home from running this evening I noticed that a real live football game was happening at the local high school. Yesterday I contacted someone with whom I haven't spoken in more than two decades. Yes, life is good; not easy--but very blessed.

Better Days... Better Ways

2006-06-11T07:51:00.000-05:00

How sweet! That rhymes! Last night I dreamed that I went to visit my uncle in the burbs and for some reason his grown children were flopping at his abode. I searched his house, but he was not to be found. Even the contents of his den and his groovy kitchen art were missing. Seems that he had relocated some of his stuff to an alternative locale. This makes sense, as my uncle should be far far away by now, doing time at his cabin on the lake. It's an older, more rustic domicile than those around it. Said neighbors are richies and their cabins' respective appearances leave no question.

Yesterday, Tonto... Tomorrow America

2006-05-05T15:14:00.000-05:00

"Get Fucked By A Parked Car"

2006-04-19T18:33:00.000-05:00

Words I haven't heard since I attended high school. Then, she was a friend of a high school girl friend. I inadvertantly bumped into her in the hallway. At the time, I didn't even hear the aforementioned response. Rather, my former girlfriend later filled me in. Ah, the joys of pissing off one's mate's friends. And, yes, it gets better once you're married.

Zup With This Dynamite Concept??????

2006-02-20T16:38:00.000-06:00

Obviously the person who originally penned the grating quote "dynamite cometh in small packages" was a small bastard who had been passed up for one date too many or had his ass kicked one too many times.

Nuff said.

Daddy! The Top Came Off!!

2006-02-12T20:47:00.000-06:00

What the hell is up with all these jerkwater gherkin burpers who drive the official "we build excitement"-mobile? Of course I'm referring to Pontiacs. First Michiganites nicked the name from Native Americans, then GM slapped it on some giddy-up-goers. Next time you're out n about, watch the Pontiacs (the cars, not the people) and I think you'll see what I'm about to describe.

Owners of said cars drive like they're on their ultimate sugar/coke rush and are dying to get somewhere to get fixed again before they come down. Pontiac drivers are consistently the wildest bastards with the heaviest lead feet on God's green earth. And the speed doesn't end when they abruptly park their Burt Reynolds wet dreams. Typically, these are aggressive people with attitude.

Remember, I warned you. You see that flippin Pontiac comin, look tha hell out...

A Bridge and Tons Of Ignorance

2005-11-22T12:16:00.000-06:00

Today the Veterans Memorial Bridge is opening in Smalltown, USA. As I've ranted before, there is no bridge or other large display in Smalltown dedicated to truly integral members of day-to-day life (health care workers, teachers, truck drivers.)

Actually, during the 40th president's reign in office in the 1980s, the bridge took on a new name. You guessed it, Ronald Reagan Bridge. But that was pretty short-lived. The gun-fighters with high-n-tights got their bridge back when Ron began to forget what a bridge was.

What really burns my proverbial cookies is that so few people seem to be aware of why currently surviving veterans went to war in the first place. To save our country??? WTF???

WW1, WW2, Korea, Viet Nam, El Salvador, Iraq (versions 1 & 2). These wars were about money, oil, and political philosophy. But rarely to keep Americans safe or "democracy" safe. Is it any wonder that the King in the present game is having an increasingly difficult time scraping up automatonic pawns. Maybe if the present generations put today and yesterday together, they will figure out that this mindless practice is not a new idea.

Armistice Day

2005-11-11T19:40:00.000-06:00

Can we give up this Veteran's Day schlock? Really!!! The holiday is called Armistice Day and the date reflects the formal end of mortar fire in World War One. The 11th hour, the 11th day, the 11th month, 1918. No more, no less.

I grew up with a World War One vet, my paternal grandfather. Yes, the generations were quite spread out. But he never mentioned a word about his time in the army. About eight years ago, I interviewed two World War One vets in the same day at a nursing facility. I would have gotten three, but the third gentleman was comatose. A couple years later I went back and one of the men was still around, aged 103. Still full of memories of his life, which he let me record.

Obviously it's inevitable, but it pains me that the veterans of the Great War are disappearing. It's not only my favourite time in US History, it's also the first war whose final survivors I'm actually noticing as they leave this earth. Nevertheless, they receive(d) little attention because big bad World War II overshadowed their fight.

By the way, when pronouncing "veteran", please use all the letters. It's not "vet'ran". I'd think that people who wish to celebrate a holiday for war and death could pronounce the "V" word. Why no holiday for farmers who feed us or teachers who educate us or doctors who heal us, etc?

Fantasy Sports--What's Up With That???

2005-11-04T22:05:00.000-06:00

As Homer Simpson said, perhaps I've been misguided. But I suspect not. I find the entire genre of fantasy sports truly bizarre. Having never really engaged in fantasy sports, I understand that players have the option of putting together teams that would otherwise never assemble. They subsequently play big, pretend games. More games to live and die with, like the real professional sports weren't enough.

This knocks on virtual/surreal history. Writers take the time to suggest what would have happened if some major event in history had gone a different way. The point??? There is art. There is creation. But for me, this falls far short of either.

The Imploding Gut

2005-11-02T20:02:00.000-06:00

Two women who were once close friends of my ex and my mother, respectively, went under the knife for gastric bypass in the past couple years. And they have both become very different creatures--externally. Internally I have no idea. I never speak with them. I just view them in passing or on Yahoo! Personals.

Today I sat outside the local McDonald's, as it was inundated with ravaging hoards. As I ate a snack of mushrooms, celery, and an apple, I wondered how much artery sludge comes out of one McDonald's in one day. There is an unbelievable variety of folk who do the McD's routine. From the mentally disabled to the hardworking joe to the state's attorney. They were all there today.

Imagine if everybody boycotted biological hell-holes like McDonald's for one day (or better yet, forever.) The trouble is, this would violate kapitalism. And kapitalism doesn't care whom it kills, just so the money gets divided a little more finely amidst a smaller head count.

Alan Parsons Was Right About That

2005-11-01T09:01:00.000-06:00

Time stands still for no one. And the Parsons Band said it best with their song "Time". The Guinness Book once asserted that it is theoretically possible to have more generations of great grandchildren than anyone in recorded modern history has ever cranked out. My family tree hasn't approached that level, but there have been some interesting waves. Not atypical.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about a pretty pretty bridal shower for my cousin's daughter. This sparked thought in my head, and not good thought at that. While many of us have committed dark acts that Senate sub-committees would jump on like crows on raw meat (my cousin included) I believe my dark sordid past is having its turn.

No, I'm not paranoid. I don't believe that people living lives, watching TV, ordering carry-out, planning a wedding, and holding down jobs have nothing better to do than talk about me. But they are hip to elements of what I did, just as I could say this about them.

This is where judgment comes in. Are they judgmental? Do they forgive? Do they forget? Or do they just pretend like they never knew? I guess if I ever see them, I may learn the answer. I will lose no sleep wondering.

No More Altoids For Me

2005-10-31T17:34:00.000-06:00

I've officially made the switch. I've gone from vegetarian to full-blown vegan. Two years ago when I gave up meat, I wondered whether this day would ever come. I liked the cheese on the pizza and I loved the ice cream. But I've slowly weaned myself off dairy (is there a pun in there?)

I remember when I was a 21yo carnivore and saw a friend eating essentially the same things that I do now. I was very turned off and could never imagine myself eating garbanzos or black-eyed peas or any of the other things that I just had for dinner. But people usually get better with age. Provided they leave their minds open--that's essential!

I Looove You, Doggy! Now SIT!!!!!

2005-10-30T08:29:00.000-06:00

Back to pets. My friend, Joanne, recently had a guest over who had a stare-down prompted by the cat of the house. The cat subsequently slapped her, giving her a slight scratch. She subsequently went to an emergency health care facility to confirm whether she had cat scratch fever (now known as "cat scratch disease".)

While the physicians could see no scratch, they could feel a light marking. She called Joanne and asked that the cat be sealed up, put away on subsequent visits. But Joanne told me all that she could hear going off in her mind was the infamous Nugent song.

Have I mentioned that Ted Nugent is just an ass? Not part ass, but whole ass. Poor guy. He's a right wing extremist of the lowest sort. Hitler helped pull Deutschland out of the Great Depression. All the Nuge has ever done is put out a few quality tunes. He believes in the death penalty for a variety of non-mortal offenses. He loves his gun, his bow (whatever kills) beyond description. This is what happens when power goes to one's head. You are not omnipotent, Mr Dream Scream. But I do think some possessed cat scratched the compassion from your mind.

Time To Party Like It's 1917!!!!!!

2005-10-26T23:08:00.000-05:00

Yee-Ha!!!!!! It's Over!!!!!!! A Chicago team has won the World Series for the first time since World War I. Now there will be those (losers) who insist, "Yeah, at least it wasn't the Cubs who won..." Forget them and enjoy the party! Remember, there was still legal booze in a few parts of America back in 1917.

No Goat Here. No Sir!

2005-10-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

Whether the Chicago White Sox sweep the Houston Astros in tonight's fourth game of the World Series or they do not, history tells us that, barring divine intervention, the Sox will be the 2005 champs. Note, I said "history", not "statistics". It's no coincidence that I have an MA in history but never, ever sat through a statistics class.

Okay, I'm looking at this from a sports point of view. Do you notice that when anything happens on a sports broadcast the announcer is quick with a statistic? "Oh he's scratching himself, Johnny. And he's third in the batting order. So far this season, every time the third man in the order has scratched himself when the wind was coming out of the north, it spelled victory."

Just excessive junk that needs to be shipped to the world of Alex Trebek. That said, I'm sure there are a myriad of ways to show that Houston should win, despite the 0-3 deficit.

No 'Z' In Illinois

2005-10-24T19:08:00.000-05:00

I'm told that there was a time when drivers regarded truckers as knights of the road. Then they started popping uppers like they were M&M's and an alternative reputation grew. During the old days, there were trucking movies like "Smokey & The Bandit". There were many songs, but perhaps the best known told the tale of an ever-growing behemoth of truckers going coast-to-coast (never fueling up) and flipping John Q the bird for thousands of miles.

Of course I'm referring to CW McCall's "Convoy", which is a combination of a lead vocalist with a serious sinus condition and back-up singers who sound like they prance with miniature poodles. The one line in the song that always burned my cookies was when McCall referred to the National Guard members as being from "Ill-uh-noize". Entschuldigung!! There is no said place. There is no Illinoize. Despite what the unknowing may tell you, it's "Ill-uh-noy".

God bless technology. Tonight I took McCall's faux pas and I stuck it into an audio program, cleaved the "z" sound off Illinois, and the song never sounded better. Though it's still pretty schmaltzy. Rank McCall up there with guys like Huey Lewis who were afraid to use the word "ass", despite the fact that it fit well in their lyrical content.

Too Rolling Stoned?

2005-10-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I'm only slightly hip to the likes of hardworking guitar genuises like Robin Trower and Pat Travers. These are guys who put out very high quality material but are recognized by a relatively select group of listeners, largely other guitar players.

One of Trower's memorable greats is a lengthy piece titled "Too Rolling Stoned". When I first heard that title as a kid, I thought somebody had just had just listened to a bit too much of the Glimmer Twins. But it's neither that simple nor that precise. Many aspects of our lives may be labeled "too rolling stoned".

Recently at the YMCA, I encountered an old friend from church who has done quite a bit in the way of leadership. He runs his own business and has sparked new programs in more than one church. Perhaps the "multiple church" element is due to the fact that while kind and benevolent, he can come off as overbearing. After a while, if people don't respond to his ideas, he bolts. New territory. This guy is just too rolling stoned.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to listen to his perspective--on occasion, for a few minutes. But I doubt that he has the Robin Trower music in his home that would slip him the 411.

Paul Harvey's "Jim"

2005-10-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

Paul Harvey IS a tantalizing bastard, isn't he? Some years ago, he told one of his woven mysteries in which an infamous person committed an infamous act while on a visit to Japan. He didn't let his audience know who he was talking about until the very end. Textbook Paul Harvey. Well, on that particular day, in between raving for arthritic pain reliever, he was describing "Jim" and his run-in with the po in Japan. Shucks, boys and girls, he was talking about a lad better known to the world as Paul McCartney--Sir James Paul McCartney.

Rather than being a tantalizing bastard, Paul (or Macca) is a seriously rich bastard. David Gilmour recently criticized Paul for not doing more with his hundreds of millions of quid besides sitting on it. This led me to reconsider my opinion of the left-handed Beatle.

He's a fabulous showman, writer, performer, etc. (I got that out of the way.) I remember being thrilled by his muzak as a wee lad. My brother and I referred to each other as "JP" (Paul) and "JL" (John). But I had other influences. And there were moments.

A close friend was a great John fan who often swayed me in that direction. Thus, I became "JO" and my brother did the proper thing and switched to "JM". We'd call out these monikers when we were in the dark, aboard amusement park rides. Great memories!

I also had a cousin who ultimately swayed me toward George Harrison. We sat in a jacuzzi once at a Holiday Inn and polled people to see who preferred McCartney and who preferred Harrison. Need I say who won?

These days I am learning the bass lines from "Silly Love Songs" which gives me another look at Paul. This song is, after all, Paul's response to criticism of his music, 1970-1975. I bet Paul Harvey could talk a big mystery about that story.

Hold Onto Your Lunch, You Never Saw THIS On Brady Bunch

2005-10-21T18:31:00.000-05:00

Does anyone make a sign that you can post over your toilet that politely requests that you make sure that anything that came out of you makes the trip into the septic system? They should. Too often people do their biz, flush once and race on to live life. That next person coming in to merely throw a whiz may have an earthly friend waiting. Now is that necessary? I ask you, who can't check and make bloody sure that all the fecal remains went bye-bye? (besides maybe the sight-impaired, and I excuse them)

Oh, you're still reading? Cool! When I was in college, there were two or three bathrooms that I used most frequently (outside the library--there I shared the wealth.) One of these men's rooms frequently had whole "deposits" sans toilet paper. Said user had either not used paper OR had used paper and thrown it elsewhere, leaving a "bit of himself" for others to view.

I could go on... and on, but I think you wanna keep that lunch.

Vegetarians Don't Just Eat Around the Meat

2005-10-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

I remember when Paul & Linda McCartney helped welcome Lisa Simpson into vegetarianism in the mid-1990s. That particular episode featured one of my favourite McCartney songs "Maybe I'm Amazed". I, too, rushed to enter into a world of no gristle or cholesterol.

As a young kid, I hated eating the meat that my mother prepared. And she was quite the proud cook, frying greasy pork chops, cheap cuts of beef, and a plethora of dead animal surprise. I received zero mercy. The old man's mantra was "Eat what we eat or you go hungry". And I did, several times. But they didn't just let me get up and walk away upon refusal. They forced me to sit at the table for INXS of an hour each time I refused to eat the greasy, knotted meat.

Ode to ignorance. The parents observed that I willingly consumed food produced by McDonald's and the like. They insisted that it was the very same meat that I refused when mother prepared it. People who prepare, buy and sell meat can tell you otherwise. Furthermore, as I grew older and my friends began to eat at my house periodically, they informed me how bad the meat was.

Back to my initial attempt to go veg. By the time I was in my 20s, I had been cooking with wife #1 for a few years and we'd come up with significantly more effective methods to prepare food. But I was really, really ignorant about assembling a veg diet. My absence of meat lasted less than a week. Then I walked into Long John Silver's and ended it all.

Seven years and a Paul McCartney concert later, I once again opted to go veg. This time I was significantly more successful. (And the stores had more meat substitutes!) I have been clean now for almost two years. But the road has its bumpy, borderline comedic moments.

More ignorance. (Hey, it's people i'm writing about here!) Meat eaters assume that they can provide group meals with no concern for the vegetarians. 'Those people can just pick, eat around the meat. Right?' I'm so open to comments on this...

Slam That Door, John Henry!!

2005-10-19T14:35:00.000-05:00

What does it mean when someone slams a door? Psychologists tell us that people can be pissed off and taking out frustration or aggression on the door. GRRR!!!!! I did that as a kid. I was about 8yo. I slammed my bedroom door three times inside of about twenty seconds. I broke a piece of the doorframe and sealed myself in said room.

I thought quickly. I hustled out the window (as my older brother had done in his room after dark) and scurried around to the kitchen door. I grabbed some Elmer's glue and, once I'd opened the door, smeared it all over the inside of the frame. Voila! The perfect crime!

Did you know that you need clamps when you glue two pieces of wood together? And furthermore, did you know that white glue sucks on wood? I confessed to my mom, who quickly grabbed the old man. He came to the rescue with a rag and a hammer. Being the slammin man he is, I'm amazed this hasn't happened to him more often.

Each time he leaves a room or the house he SLAMS! the door like he wants attention or he wants to kill the house/door. WTF? I keep thinking of that TV movie in which Jimmy Smits adopted the fetal alcohol syndrome kid who cranked the bathroom faucets to make sure they were shut off. Eventually, the plumbing burst. Makes ya wonder if grandma drank and grandpa ragged about the doors being shut.

Why Do the Media Tease Us?

2005-10-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

Why do they present samplings of good stuff, then dismiss it for fodder? Didn't said presentations make enough money? Not enough viewers? Listeners? Revenue! Screw quality! If more people will watch effeminate green berets light fires in toilets than talented actors present Hamlet, let's go for for the firey crapper!

I confess, I gave up TV years ago because the quality and the mentality is "duh! duh!" at best. Lest we forget commercial time, which is off the mental radar screen. I caught that bit of the toasty toilets while I was standing in a doorway, waiting for my lunch to cook. I just shook my head.

But this goes beyond TV. I would say bad TV, but isn't that pretty much redundant? The Guitar Center chain put out a groovy piece of comics in their May catalog. It started there. It ended there. Good characters, interesting plot. Do we see them again? Hell no! I say bring back Skunkbath!!!

Hardcore Fans

2005-10-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

During my lifetime I've noticed that there are people who live and die, and even kill, with the wins and losses of their favourite sports teams. They typically loathe said teams' rivals and would eat them bloody raw.

My uncle (not the intellectual uncle, different uncle) is a hardcore St. Louis Cardinals fan. And they've given him much to be happy about during his lifetime. But not only has he seen the Cardinals win the world Series, he's also seen their rivals, the Chicago Cubs choke on 3-1 leads in league finals and fail to get to the Series. This happened in 1984 and again in 2003.

This goes yet a step further. My uncle, the Cards/Packers fan and Cubs/Bears hater, has spread this disease to another generation. His son has grown up knowing that rape is evil, killing is evil, and the Cubs are evil. Had I been him, I would have held up a particularly long digit and donned a Ryne Sandberg jersey. Alas, my cousin now has kids and I'm sure the fever will continue to spread.

Finally, I always thought that my old man was kinda nuts (I still do, but that's a topic for a year's worth of rants) in that he doesn't even prefer any pro team. He loathes a few teams, like the New York Yankees and whoever has decided to pay Shaquille the most money that season, but he loves no teams. I feel for the NBA, the NFL, and MLB. Because he's seen me too, and demonstrated just about as much emotion.

Charlie Tuna Died In His Bathtub Today

2005-10-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

Today the first member of my mom's family's "next generation" is having her lovely (gasp) bridal shower. She's 21yo and her parents/grandparents suspect that she could do better. What's new?

I remember when I was a kid and heard the term "bridal shower". I pictured a bunch of chicks getting naked and scrubbing some woman who was about to get married. Okay, I was a little off base. It was just a bunch of chicks showering some bride-to-be (not "bride-elect") with pretty pretty gifts.

But things have changed since the late 20th century. This is no longer just a chick-fest. Sometimes, the guys come too. Not in this case, however. This shower led to a gathering of a peculiar triad: me, my old man, and my mom's brother-in-law.

The first two of us share essentially one thing in common, we live in bu-fu hinter country. The latter two are both INXS of age 65. But my uncle and I share much more. We discussed family history and his great collection of family pics that is now so great that he could not rescue them if a fire hit his home.

It occured to me that it has been commonplace in my family to hold these "oh-you're-so-nice" bridal showers. But the guys get squat. No bachelor parties in my family. Wouldn't be propa'! Ironically, the guys are starting to help write the gift list for the bridal showers. So, while avoiding the giggle crap and the cake, they are taking home some parting gifts.

Sac In the Battle

2005-10-15T11:49:00.000-05:00

I was talking with my friend, Joanne, yesterday about the new lawnmower that my dad purchased. It's a shiny green riding model with headlights and cruise control, and he got a great deal to boot! The old man's in hog heaven. Quickly, Joanne and I both realised that when I had been happy about the purchase of guitars or musical software, no one cared. These same 'who-gave-ragin-flaming-fecal-dander-about-your-guitars' people expected me to drop everything, run, and scope the pretty pretty lawnmower.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not playing sour grapes here. I would never have been interested in a lawn mower. It just doesn't float my proverbial boat. But I regularly get reminded of how, when I was about 12, I hit a tree with the last shiny green lawnmower my parents had. It left a scratch in the pretty pretty paint.

It comes down to this. You can earn money pretty readily with a lawnmower and a few connections. You've gotta bust ass and practice for a good while before you can earn penny one with a guitar. That's the old man's philosophy; at least the mower part. For him, guitars may as well not exist. They don't cut grass or pound nails or paint or even sweep. But they do play music whenever you want. They help your mind and body grow together. And there's no money worth more than that to me.

Dog People--Cat People

2005-10-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

For years I believed that society was divided by many intense black and white perspectives, sort of like the old Miller Lite commercials that culminated in the "Tastes Great!! Less Filling!!" mantra. People were either conservatives or liberals, smokers or non-smokers, pro-life or pro-choice. And, of course, people preferred either having dogs or cats as pets.

I was a cat person. This was largely due to the fact that the last time that my parents permitted me to have a dog, they made the poor little bastard sleep and reside outdoors where he was subsequently hit by a car a week after I got him. They made me go petless for about four years. Then they let me adopt a barnyard kitten. Well, of course I was going to prefer the kind of animal that I could actually lay hands on. And did I mention that an Alsatian bit my thigh when I was five-years-old?

When I was 14, my English teacher told us to write essays about why we prefer dogs or cats. A whole new world came to light. There were actually cat haters!! Farm kids who could take the dozens of cats that popped out each year and execute them in maniacally clever ways. Dragging them behind tractors, tying their tails together and throwing them over clotheslines to watch them battle to the death.

To my knowledge, cat people don't do that to dogs. But when dogs do get neglected or abused, it often makes the paper. Cats can fend for themselves. They seem to get treated one step above rats, mice, and the flying squirrel. I'll stick with cats, three legs or four.

John 65

2005-10-09T15:17:00.000-05:00

From John's 1964 In His Own Write

Sad Michael

"There was no reason for Michael to be sad that morning, (the little wretch): everyone liked him, (the scab). He'd had a hard day's night that day, for Michael was a Cocky Watchtower. His wife Bernie, who was well controlled, had wrabbed his norman lunch but he was still sad. It was strange for a man who have everything and a wife to boot. At 4 o'clock whne his fire was burking bridelly a Poleaseman had clubbed in to parse the time around. 'Goddeven Michael,' the Poleaseman speeg, but Michael did not answer for he was debb and duff and could not speeg . . ."

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

The Jerking Of Holidays

2005-10-08T14:50:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! Mountain Dew! We are in midst of yet another holiday three-day weekend. Let's kill the fatted calf and hit the beach. If only we could move Christmas, New Year's and the Fourth of July to Monday! Then all the white collar bureaucrats would have it made! But I think office folk, school teachers, and the like fair pretty well with holidays like King's Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, "Veterans" Day, and, lest I forget, Columbus Day.

I'm not going to go into the "lesser" holidays, i.e., those not listed here, so don't go looking for Popcorn Ball Day or St. Patrick's Day. But before I attack the "problem" holidays, let me begin by excusing the passable ones. The Fourth of July is pretty straight. Same date every year, same significance since its inception, although celebratory patriotism has gone up a few notches in the past 125 years. And New Year's; that's pretty stable. It means the same thing that it did a hundred years ago when Dick Clark was watching his own balls drop.

The real funky holidays start when, according to some rule that I never followed, it's time to begin wearing white shoes. Of course I'm referring to Memorial Day. That's the day that we are to remember military people who died for the USA. Lovely. So, if you get killed in trying to kill someone else, there's a holiday for you. But if you died, say erecting a hospital that will one day be the home to brilliant medical services, no holiday for you.

But that's rather innocent versus the philosophy behind the holidays celebrated on November 11th and December 25th. Both of these dates were previously used to celebrate different holidays. But time wore on and mankind changed. In both cases, people were in the habit of celebrating, hence both dates were just subtly renamed. Armistice Day, that celebrated the end of the Great War on 11 November 1918, lost its gusto mid-century while many of that war's veterans were still around. The pagan holiday that is now called Christmas was relabeled when old school missionaries imported Christianity to pagan leaders who didn't want to upset the masses.

So what's the word with Columbus Day? Might it be time to give old Chris's day a reassignment? He hasn't been here in over 500 years. Wait! He never made it to North America. How about we switch to Henry Ford Day? We could celebrate one of the forefathers of assembly line mass production. But given the current scare in fossil fuel prices, maybe we missed the boat. Sorry, Henry.

Done With Mirrors

2005-10-07T16:22:00.000-05:00

Today I imported a mirror from an old dresser that my older brother used to use. The remainder of the dresser--the part with the drawers went to my ex. But enough about that!

Actually, I think my parents initially used the dresser back in the early 70s. Then they scored an oak bedroom set and handed the dresser down to my brother who had been getting by with a rather small piece of junk. As I mentioned earlier, I got one of the big mirrors today. In the early 80s, a different brother, who's now deceased, practiced airband with me in front of those mirrors.

Carrying on that tradition, in the late 80s I used a four-foot mirror to watch myself prance around, lip-syncing the words to heavy metal songs. Yes, I was a bit fruity. Not fruity gay, just fruity bizarre.

The biggest pain in the arse surrounding mirrors came when my parents opted to mount their bathroom mirror for "average" people. I'm a bit higher than average, so I had to crouch down to brush my hair, beginning around age 15. I vowed that if the house ever became mine, I would relocate said mirror. But my parents are trying to feed me with ideas to sell the house when they're dead to the guy who owns the two out-buildings next door. Given his stature, the mirror will be fine where it's at.

The Cross-Over

2005-10-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

High schools come in roughly three sizes, though there are exceptions. There's small, medium, and WHOA!! THAT'S HUGE!!! The first of these typically has an enrollment of about 100 students per class, the second 300-400 per level, and the last one often schools a total of between 2500 and 4000 students.

I started out in smallville. I did my first 2.5 years there. Then I crossed over. I finished in medium-size school. My son is doing just the opposite. He put in three years at mid-size and has shrunk down to the little level to finish things out. The contrast in transformation makes for an interesting comparison.

Despite the fact that I made my switch-over 20 years ago, little has changed in the differences between little school and medium school. Little school remains obsessed with sports and school pride. Students listen to country music, with a few rap fans on the side. No one has blue hair; no one forms a band.

According to my son, at medium school students are significantly more diverse. Not all of the good-looking girls are jocks first and poseurs second. Most people don't care about school spirit. People listen to all types of music and several actually form bands and try to play their own music. There are punks, goths, and people with pink and blue hair who support Hot Topic.

Final question. I asked him if he would have rather had my perspective on the two schools or his. Without a doubt, he assured me that he would have preferred my perspective. I agree. It compares with leaving the black and white of Pleasantville, rather than entering it.

The Ten Most Worst Best

2005-10-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

I remember when my bro, Matt, showed me some of his brief writings in high school. It opened
a whole new world to me. Until that point I thought that the only guy who thought the goofy junk that I did had been gunned down in late 1980. Of course that would be John Lennon. After I saw Matt's stuff, I went home and stuff just came rushing out of my penhand. Matt and I also loved to composed "what if" scenarios, as well as top ten lists. No, I was never a great fan of Letterman, nor was I ripping off his spiel. I loved making lists and reading the Book Of List series.

I tried to get my ex-wife to join in. But, like most folks, she thought that I was a guava-knocker headcase with issues. So, I plodded on. I began producing lists on a daily basis to entertain a supervisor at work. That went quite well. But listmaking is truly an art, designed for persons of a certain mental fabric. And listmakers (not the grocery store frivel, mind you) are a rare bird.

WOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHH!!!!!!!!!

2005-10-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

Are you one of those people who typically aches for the opportunity to pass relatively slow-moving vehicles? Or are you more often the one who gets followed up the vehicular buttocks by someone who simply must have someplace important to be? I try really hard to avoid speeding tickets, because my money leaves me fast enough as it is. I don't need to donate to the state.

I think there are a few pigeon-holed causes for why people exceed posted speed limits. (Other than speed traps that have 20mph limits!) Some people simply believe themselves to be above the law. It's all a game. They buy the latest anti-radar/anti-laser gadgets and play catch-me-if-you-can. It's all a big cat n' mouse game. But where do these people have to be? Do they have lives that are THAT important? Do they hate driving and want it to be as brief as possible? Are they emulating their favourite NASCAR drivers? WHAT?

Some people are late. Late for appointments, late for class, late for work. And hauling ass is going to save them. Under most circumstances, these chronic latesters could have just started earlier and given their cars a break.

Finally come the people who need to get to the facilities or the hospital or some other bodily-related need. I think of this sometimes when I'm followed up the butt by a swerving car. "Gee that guy must really have to go! Or he's late for class." But that's only if I check and see that he doesn't have a radar detector.

Freud Never Had MTV

2005-10-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

I earned my first degree at community college as a psych major. I loved social science. It wasn't as inflexible ( and monotonous) as mathematics. And you got to delve into what made people tick. What caused people to do what they do and the subsequent effects of that. It never ended. I spent a healthy amount of time probing the philosophies of psychology pioneer, Sigmund Freud, whom many people say focused on sex. It's unclear how Freud would have differentiated between personality types according to musical preferences. But as a great fan of music, I'm going to try just that.

I could sit here for the rest of my life and try unsuccessfully to name off all the genres and sub-genres of music in the 21st century. But this is my blog, so I'm going to narrow down the categories to six: rock, country, pop, (ugh) rap, classical, and no music.

First, the country folk. These people seem to come off with few pretenses, sometimes committing themselves so deeply that even they don't quite completely grasp where they're coming from. No, I'm not asserting that they're stupid hillbillies. They just seem to draw a real line in the sand between cacophony and peace. And that's not just music.

The pop people are quite the opposite. You never know what to expect from a pop fan. Could be just about anything, barring the hardcore elements of my other categories. Just as pop music is ho-hum, so are its people. They are typically unwilling to commit to passions or obsessions. They just want to shuffle along with the crowd and not get bumped. The irony comes when mellow pop music gets out-sold by country and (ugh) rap.

OK, let's get this over. Rap. As Gregg Allman put it, it's missing the letter 'c'. And while I do appreciate some of the work done by Snoop Dogg and Limp Bizkit, in general I'll pass. Most of rap pertains to negative feelings. "Society screwed me"; "Society screwed my people"; "I'll screw anybody". Is that about it? Rap is what black people (and wiggas) get nowadays, instead of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. It's exactly the same as asserting that white music has taken a serious tumble in the past 25 years. Whether you're black or white or whatever, the music was better during the Carter Administration.

Classical people mystify me. I confess ignorance here. I enjoy classical music, but I'll never be able to identify who wrote what and who's playing it. The media portrays classical fans as well-to-do, and that too is outside my reach. I respect classical people. They admire music that has lasted for hundreds of years. Obviously it endured for a reason. I think many of the people who enjoy classical music appreciate the dedication it took to produce and subsequently perform said music. They are experts, themselves.

Because many people acquire musical tastes that endure for a lifetime around age 16, rock fans can be a very wide variety of folk. I don't know too many rockers who get turned on to such music around age 45. There are those who sway toward all the other modes as they grow older. Not rock. You are either a rocker by the time you can legally buy a beer, or you will never become a rocker. People of all political boundaries enjoy rock--figure that out! (I guess there is a starch-shorts hunter named Nugent.)

Finally, there are the people who know no music. These are the people I understand least of all. They own no recordings. They will readily endure any radio station without comment. Sound does not matter. What do they replace the music with? I guess Freud would say, lots of sex.

Victim Of John Hughes Films

2005-10-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

Are we all familiar with Kevin Costner's bittersweet romance flick Message In A Bottle? If not, it's the tale of a single mom who happens to be a journalist and learns of a lovelorn boat repairman. She seeks him out, and they fall for each other. But in the end, he dies. That's not the way love stories are supposed to end, right? Well, that's what anyone would say who watched a series of infamous John Hughes Brat Pack flicks from the 1980s.

With hand firmly in the air, I too confess that I got suckered into these boy-meets-girl screen-o-ramas. I believed it. I believed every last bit of it. I believed that an absolute geek (like myself, or the characters played by Anthony Michael Hall) could score with Wonder Woman (see Kelly LeBrock). What I actually should have realised was that pouty girls (like Molly Ringwald) ended up with rich boys (like Michael Schoeffling).

I think there's something of a pattern here. When I was a teen in the '80s, I completely dismissed the likes of The Brady Bunch or Leave It To Beaver. That was just made-up frivel. Today, my son can smell the lies in John Hughes better I ever hoped to. I don't watch TV and rarely see movies. I'm kinda curious as to where the pattern is taking us next.

Say Goodbye To the Ninth Month

2005-10-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

September is over. And with it are gone Labor Day, the anniversary of the fall of the World Trade Center, and summer proper. Comparable to discussing the JFK assassination 40 years ago, most people today can tell you where they where when they learned about the 2001 attack on New York City. The press has insisted that 11 September 2001 was a day that meant a change in the lives of anyone who wants to get on an airplane, haul haz-mat for a living, or get sent to fight in Iraq. But I don't watch the news. And this isn't what September means to me.

September brings the birthdays of three members of my generation. Let me clarify. History separates the Boomers and the Gen-Xers at '64/'65. And these 40-types aren't X'ers like myself. They are from the same intrafamilial generation as me. Okay? Two of these are the only twins anyone in my family has produced to date. That was back in 1962, before anyone remembered where they were on that day Kennedy was in Dallas. The third September family member is my brother.

My brother helped redefine the term "black sheep". When I was a wee lad, between daring people to knock batteries off his shoulder, Robert Conrad starred in a military series titled "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Ahh, Pappy... But that's not important right now. My brother opted to (gulp) smoke cigarettes as a teenager and hang out with the undesirables.

When he graduated high school, he joined the navy, toured the planet, and subsequently married his high school sweetheart. That marriage lasted all of about seven days. He started hanging out more and more with his birth mother who liked to drink and party. Eventually he cut the cord and moved away from us--all six miles--and took up with blood relatives.

Surprise! He was disowned. His mental health waned. He began to commit mucho crime and eventually landed himself in the big house, then a half-way house. These days his mind seems foggy and I see him about two or three times per decade. Memories can be a bitch.

Eh--uh--eh--scalation!!!!!

2005-09-30T14:55:00.000-05:00

As a young lad I often heard how my parents had childhoods more trying and difficult than my own. I was blessed. I had it easy. The world in general had become softer. When they were young, kids gave grown-ups respect beyond measure, or so they said. When I incorporated what my parents subsequently said about my grandparents and how each generation was getting a little more slack, I ultimately figured that my grandparents' grandparents must have been nutbusters whose children regarded them as demi-gods. By that same token, my own children were destined to raise hell like no one who came before them.

Have you figured out yet that kids quite often don't get the stories quite right? There were people doing the same things in all directions 50 years ago and 100 years ago as there are today. We just didn't have TVs to cram it down our necks in whatever capacity network news deemed appropriate. Kids said icky things to their parents. And parents made kids work in coal mines. Maybe we don't have the juvey coal mines these days, but parents still have the means of getting away with cruelty.

People are people. And they were the same animal 1000 years ago. They want food, shelter, sex, and a clue about what happens when the heart stops beating. Some people have real bad-ass parents, complete with attitude. Just because that is the case, it doesn't mean the children of such jerks have to carry on the family tradition or preach about it. If I got kicked into a pile of shit, I wouldn't be aching to share war stories with my son or give him the opportunity to do so with my grandchildren. Of course I don't have any grandchildren...

Why Myndsi Was So Different From Lou's Tools

2005-09-29T14:10:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago I spawned a would-be rock group labeled Myndsi. Now I know that in the 21st century there's actually a myndsi blog. Apparently I'm not the only one who likes to jerk with spelling. But during the Ray-gun administration, we were the only Myndsi that I'd ever heard of.

Despite our pouty demeanor, we were actually pretty tame, bookish sorts. The group was started by my high school chum, aka Lucky, and his brother, aka Jonesy. Soon thereafter, we integrated someone who was actually trying to learn music in a guitarist aka Arius Knight. Yes, you read that correctly. We were just an air band. But we took it very seriously.

I was called Xavier Q, and I was typically the lead vocalist. Because Lucky had also tried (also unsuccessfully) to learn guitar, he played guitar parts pretty effectively--as did Arius. We actually filmed a few "concerts", then faded into oblivion.

When I went to college for the first time, I met a hyper-leftwing punk fan who ached to be affiliated with someone else who could play role-playing fantasy games and rock. I came pretty close to that level, and I too was a social outcast. His name was Nick Fear. We formed Myndsi II, though we never called it that.

This time around, he was the singer and I was the guitarist. I picked up my dusty guitar and strummed a few notes. But I sounded as terrible as ever, so my attempts were short-lived. When he met a bass player who was WAY out there, he drifted away from Myndsi. Whilst that's not the whole story, the messy bits and pieces are long and drawn out.

Like, Diurnal To the Max

2005-09-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

Did you ever notice the difference between most (not all, but most) people who go to first shift jobs and the rest of the world? People who get up with the sun tend to be screwed just a bit tighter than the rest of us. Let me make a clarification immediately. When I say "first shift", I'm not referring to 9-5'ers, lest they have to get up at 5am to sit in rush hour traffic. No, I'm talking about 6-2'ers, 7-3'ers. or, God help 'em, 5-1'ers. Who the hell thought up that last one?!

People who are up with the proverbial chickens tend to believe that there are specific times on the clock that are appropriate for eating, sleeping, shitting, procreating, and, yes, working. In their opinion, there is just something not right with those guys who work (dum! dum! dum!) second or even third shift. Deep in their heart of hearts, don't they all one day want to move up to first shift and be big boys? Maybe not.

What about the people who just like being up at night? Or the people who like to sleep late? The people who couldn't wait until high school was over so that they could score a second or third shift job and take the rods out of their arses!

I'm generally pretty easy. But I do find that I get more accomplished by getting up earlier. By so doing, I inevitably have to face the scrunchy tight types. Socially, they have much to learn. Maybe that's why they go to bed early--to get their beauty rest and dream of no longer being society's bitches.

Walleye World And the Society It Rode In On

2005-09-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

Call it Wally World, Walleye World, or just plain King Sam's. It's Wal-Mart and if you don't have one along with your McDonald's, you will shortly. I'm not here to whine about greed and the wrongdoings of evil corporations. Plenty of other people are doing that even as I write. I'm also not going to praise such creaking monoliths because they provide jobs that otherwise wouldn't have been. That's just a joke. Rather, I'd like to look at the social side of Walleye World.

Unless you grew up under a rock, it's nearly impossible to spend in excess of five minutes inside your local Wal-Mart without seeing someone you know. In the past week, I saw the only girl who signed my freshman yearbook. She's a nurse now and still very friendly. I also happened upon a former supervisor who was canned and now acts significantly more friendly. That's another thing. Shopping at the Mart is something of a great equalizer. Everybody is welcome, because everyone can afford to unload their pockets in some form or fashion.

It's Not Called A "Christian" Name For No Reason

2005-09-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

Today I got the priviledge to return to the high school where I spent two-and-a-half years of my life. Apparently my son is not performing up to snuff, as the older generation says. I got to sit at the head of a long table, opposite a wizened-looking lady with short gray hair and a serious look on her face. On our left and right sides, besides the woman who directed the meeting, were faculty members who had taken the time to attend said meeting.

Director woman opened the meeting by asking all present to introduce themselves. Suddenly all these people became "Mr This" and "Mrs That". Crap!! I felt like I was back in the fourth grade where, if you learned a teacher's first name, you'd reached the end of a bizarre hierarchical rainbow. That shit was secret! Ultimately we came to the psychologist lady sitting opposite me. She confessed her Christian name. No "Miss", "Mrs", not even a "Ms" or "Dr". And then she smiled subtley, as the others ran through everything they had to say. I think we were on the same gentle vibe.

I remember when I was 15-years-old and, due to my crush on the yearbook advisor, I spent every possible hour working for the school's annual. I thought then, as I do now, that it's just daft to remember people by a title. I suggested using first names for faculty members in the yearbook. And it went over, for the first time. Stuffy just sucks. But it's ironic, you never can tell who's going to have the proverbial rod up the butt--the gray-haired psychologist or the lady wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, leading the whole she-bang. Look out.

Brady Bunch Logic

2005-09-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

Why did architect, Mike Brady, have just one john for his six little darlings? Hasn't someone in your immediate vicinity asked that question?

When my parents opted to construct their own abode, back in 1974 (sorry, the Bradys had been cancelled by then), they put in three bedrooms for four--occasionally five--people. But just one john. We didn't even get the den, the attic, the TV room, or a chick named Alice.

Neither of my parents grew up under such circumstances. My dad grew up in a house with three toilets. My mom grew up in the booneys, on a farm with a two-seater outhouse. But they did bring one tradition with them, they both refused to shut the bathroom door when they engaged in "organic" activity.

My older brother made frequent trips to the holy one-seater. Ergo, the old man labeled him "the king" and the crapper was dubbed "his throne." If he sat there for an unacceptable period of time, the old man announced that "the king needs to get off his throne!" Ah, memories.

Better To Be An Automaton Who Can't Define "Automaton"?

2005-09-24T10:24:00.000-05:00

Is it better to understand as little as possible? To be a diurnal workaholic, with little dreams and a healthy TV set? The type who respects the man, salutes the flag, goes to church every Sunday, and never NEVER asks questions? To set aside the so-called nest-egg for the later years, when you can look back on the good ole days and talk about how things used to be really swell?

Is it better to just turn off the mind, relax, and float downstream? Shit!! No relaxation, man! Gotta bust ass! This is a dipshit working man's paradise. Lest you be a rarity, a one in a million, you will get little in return for being anything else. In society, knowledge is jack.

No Thing Lasts Forever

2005-09-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

In 1991, I made my first trip to Lebanon, Indiana, to meet my former brother-in-law at a now-defunct McDonald's. When I returned in 1997, the USA Today in the newspaper rack indicated that Jimmy Stewart had just died. Just like nobody lasts forever, on earth, neither does anything.

During the past year, my folks have taken it upon themselves to clear up what they regard as clutter about their home. They have helped empty at least one friend's house following a death, and they insisted that they don't wish to put me through the same nightmare. The thing is, they just started tossing stuff with reckless abandon and asked me for no input. This, after having condemned the families of other people for having done the very same.

Logic schmogic!! What matters to them is what they are trying to maintain, and that really isn't a problem. The actual problem is that they fail to consider what I don't want thrown away. They have offed pictures and trophies--only God really knows what else.

Nevertheless, nothing--no tangible thing--will last forever. Our carnal lives do not last forever. And I'm not really stressing. I just scratch my head and watch them save things that bear no sentimental value to me. I hope that one day they will explain why they do that. So it goes.

Is It That Time Already?

2005-09-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

My closest friend wrote to me yesterday and said that she was excited because notices regarding Christmas just went up in the break room at the school where she teaches. It jarred loose memories of how my mom's boss--her niece--used to post a notice 365 days per, telling employees how many shopping days they had left.

I'm not going to rant about the worshiping Christ bit. If you wish to worship Jesus, like I do, you should be doing it 24/7, not just at Christmas and Easter. Rather, I'd like to discuss the differences between the secular X-mas I remember as a wee lad and the secular X-mas that I currently endure.

I was ignorant as a kid. And I've not completely overcome that ignorance--human thing. I watched the joy and the frills and never the struggles that went into executing the aforementioned high holly-day. Now that I'm a big boy and I see corporate America trying to sell me everything that my soul could potentially purchase, I see man-made X-mas as pretty blase.

At least when I was a kid, X-mas was a small family reunion. But given that I'm an only child, that doesn't happen. I still dig watching Jimmy Stewart do his thing and listening to Nat King Cole do his thing. But I'm ready for some new traditions. Is this wishful thinking?

21 September--A Date That Will Live In Infamy

2005-09-21T16:21:00.000-05:00

I am no longer married to my ex-wife. Having never been through divorce proceedings, it was a true education. I went into this with the best intention. Did that sound cheesy enough? When this legal mumbo-jumbo began 11 months ago, we were still speaking and pretty friendly. By the time we left court today, she had chewed on me, my attorney, her attorney, and the judge. I just tried to STFU so we could get out.

When I came home, I told our 17yo son that she verbally thrashed me because she could no longer speak with him. He replied that when he tried to talk with her, he got nothing but bitch-outs. Life goes on.

A Rant Is Not Always A Rant

2005-09-20T13:30:00.000-05:00

If you read my off-the-cuff lore, you'll notice that I sometimes point out imperfections in the actions of others. People sometimes do things that piss me off. I guess that means I'm a member of the human race. Nevertheless, there are people who jump on the aforementioned wagon and beat said drum until the sticks have broken and the drumskins are slashed.

Such people scope the activities of their neighbors and vomit forth the scripts to vicious Neil Simon movies. The neighbors don't install the right kinds of windows. There are too many cars parked in front of their house. They didn't build their house in the right spot on their property. That guy is too well-educated, subsequently he's a complete ass. That kid doesn't bring the newspaper on time; when I was his age...

This just transcends a good rant. It enters, dare I say, "bitch" territory. And I've already dealt with enough bitches for this life.

Will They Think That I Talk Funny?

2005-09-19T18:20:00.000-05:00

For decades, I have listened to the words that have come out of my parents' mouths. I began to sense that something was different between our two generations' choices of verbal expression when I was about six or seven years old. As I grew older and English teachers forced me to break down sentences and examine the meanings of words, I kept wondering whatever made the previous generation speak in such an odd capacity.

It's not just the poor verb conjugation. There are catch-phrases from a half-century ago that still fly like wild cannon fodder. I guess look out in twenty or thirty years. I'll be loaded with quotes from Beatles lyrics. But, much like Shakespeare, I trust that Lennon and McCartney will age well.

I Do NOT Worship the USA

2005-09-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

I walked out of last Sunday's worship service. It was the anniversary of the fall of the World Trade Center. The youth pastor's father gave a lengthy speech (so they tell me) while shots of congregation members who are currently engaged in the military flashed behind him. Does this mean that next week I can bring in pictures of musicians and rattle on about them, while everyone waits for the actual sermon?