Quelle Barbe: Maximum Beards, Maximum Opinions, Maximum Trash

The Beards are Back in Town

2009-12-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Quelle Barbe has returned.

I was considering calling this the BEARDERRECTION, but that just made me picture a beard made of dicks, and let's be real: that's stupid.

Praise Jesus.

Anyways, not that anyone reallllllly noticed, but I was gone, for like a year and a half. It was crazy. In that period of time, my life mirrored the narrative of the Iliad, complete with ships, Minotaurs, Trojans, Cyclops, a bunch of beer, and weirdly - a dude that had sex with his mom and killed his dad.

During that personal journey I had much time to reflect, run, yell and shout, and work - all of the things I do when I'm not doing this I guess. Usually I only come back to the blogosphere when I'm a sniveling, turgid, impotent manchild on the verge of total inner collapse. I somehow managed to stave off the high anxiety life for a little bit and just live the high life, you know - the Champagne of Lives.

So, uh dude - what the fuck are you doing back here?

Exactly. I'm not sure. I was lured back in like a moth to a flame. More aptly, like a supple young child to a minivan that a fat balding man with stains on his shirt has assured me is "filled with candy". It's ok, my mom told him to pick me up from school.
What I mean is - I've been a little angsty in recent days/weeks, but not so much that I've had to go and deface the product of a Google Image search with poorly drawn facial hair. Or so I thought.

I've got some shit going on though, and maybe I need a vent, or even a whole HVAC system. I'm looking for a different job, I'm trying to move, I'm going to school, and I'm sort of maybe a little bit kinda finding it challenging to not rip apart at the seams like all the time and slaughter everyone in the Post Office with a chainsaw.

So, I guess bring on the beards. I'm ready. I hope you are too.*

*Just kidding, I don't care if you are.

rainbows, kittens, pine cones, blue jays, and fireworks.

2008-08-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything in a minute. Since there are like 4 of you out there on the internets that read this stuff, I thought that I might elaborate on the reason for my brief absence:

I'm happy.

I'll just leave it at that, because it doesn't require much more of an explanation except to say that it's really difficult for me to write about anything when I'm not totally pissed, kind of miserable, or really bored. That's why the blog isn't called Puppy Dog Lovers in the Sunshine Kingdom or Flower Children Hug Jesus or some other such nonsense.

In case you didn't know, Quelle Barbe is a french phrase that usually means "how boring"(despite the fact that the rough translation is actually "what (a) beard"), which I saw as a fitting title because most of the things I post about here have their root in the insane pointlessness that I find manifest in everyday life. Plus I love beards (duh). So, despite the fact that I realize that this is totally half-assed and probably lame as fuck, I'm throwing it out there anyway. Something has come along and snuffed out the little flame of anger inside me for a second, so it might be a few days before I realize how ridiculous everything is again and get back to my old self. For the moment though, I'm alright with it.

Feel free to pray for my speedy recovery.

Author's Note: While reading this entry it may be considered appropriate to listen to that song Afternoon Delight in order to get the full experience.

brutally morbid axe of satan

2008-08-20T18:18:00.001-07:00

So today I discovered that the amount of professionalism that I possess is actually much less than I had originally suspected. It was enlightening.

This realization began to creep into my life late last week when I had just proposed to the people in my office that we celebrate the one year anniversary of the Former Office Manager being fired. This, of course, was an awesome idea and was immediately embraced by the rest of the employees, mainly due to the fact that this person had been a completely insufferable cunt for about four years too long.
Plans were made.
Preparations were undergone.
The results were fantastic.

Unfortunately, we were unable to procure the kegs and strippers that I had originally included in the plans, but we did manage to amass a large quantity of junk food, including Hershey's pie, mini-cupcakes (which are delicious as hell), cheese and crackers, a variety of twizzlers, two large pizzas, and several photocopies of my hand giving the finger, which were hung about with gusto. Although that last part isn't junk food, it was certainly awesome.

At lunch time, we all gathered around our pile of unhealthy treats, dug in, and shared some of the stories about the Former Office Manager that were near and dear to our hearts. This included a detailed description of the sound made by her sizeable thighs rubbing together when she walked, her neurotic propensity to unbend paperclips when stressed, and her endearing penchant for stealing other people's food from the kitchen.
At one point though, some lame-o from Management had to bring up the inevitable:

"Don't you think it's a little mean to be celebrating the fact that it's been a year since someone was let go?"

We all thought about it for a while in a sort of weird moment of silence, during which I'm sure several of us felt a twinge of something nearly approaching guilt before heartily laughing our asses off.

MY answer to the question is: "No fucking way I don't think it's weird, unless if by weird you mean completely awesome." That I was able to organize a party to celebrate the event in the first place without even a single person offering a word of protest is a testament to the fact that we are all glad to be rid of the stress and endless snarls of bullshit caused by this person. It might be kind of mean, but life is cruel, and it's not like she was there. Although, if she is reading this, I hope she has a little tiny heart attack. Not enough to kill, just enough to make her contemplate her mortality in a way that causes her to consider not making the lives of other people nightmarishly shitty all the time.

So anyway, except for the lack of strippers and beer (which, in retrospect, are totally inappropriate in an office setting) I think the event went off without a hitch. We even managed to eat almost all of the mountain of junk food. Spectacular.

Later in the afternoon, I discovered a completely unrelated piece of evidence attesting to my former lack of professionalism in an office environment, which evidently has continued nearly unabated for like 8 years now. It was a floppy disk (remember those?) and it had a bunch of files on it that I had made when I was a summer intern at a consulting firm while in college. Mostly they were Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and the like, lists of supplies, purchase order requisitions, and other boring crap. Apparently no one else had needed these documents except me, as I had developed my own unique system for naming the files on the disk. This system consisted of naming the file whatever name seemed both most ridiculous/offensive AND most unrelated to the actual contents of the document. As a result, I found files on the disk named the following, which I thought were hilarious:

Brutally Morbid Axe of Satan

You got your property assessed (you're gay)

The entire retard population of Rochester

What-Wha-What-What

A bid for bread, a bit of bread, a little bit of fucking bread

As you may suspect, I was amazed. Apparently some things never change, which is satisfying. By the way, a note to any potential employers who may be reading this as a result of having received my resume and have done some basic google research - I WILL MAKE YOUR FUCKING OFFICE ROCK. I might even start a company softball team.

Let's get to work.

One mortgage to rule them all...

2008-08-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you have no idea what the day has in store for you. So, you wake up, get ready for the gym, go outside, get in your car and then...BAM!

That "BAM" is the very audible sound of your frontal lobe cracking in half as you turn on the radio and hear a discussion about how a Lord of the Rings - based housing development called "the Shire" in Bend, Oregon has just gone into foreclosure. That's right folks, the housing crisis has officially hit Middle Earth.

You have got to be shitting me. Oregon is lucky that they have that assisted suicide law or I'd be holding this against them...hard.

Ever since the internet bubble of the 90's, nerds have been in some pretty sweet financial situations. Bill Gates is seriously the richest person in the world, give or take, and I love him for all of the things he's done, but the dude is a completely freakish nerd on some kind of superhuman scale. So are the guys from Mythbusters. Honestly, I'm happy for them for the most part, because it's about time they reaped the rewards of patiently enduring all of those swirlies in middle school. Plus, it's sort of entertaining when some high powered geeks put some of their delightfully quaint eccentricities on display for people to marvel at:

Oh, you're 47 and you collect really expensive toys from the original Star Wars movies that will remain in sealed packages and will be buried with you in a time capsule attached to your coffin - how cute!

Oh, you own an exact replica of KIT from Knight Rider that you programmed to compliment your physique in front of girls at Starbucks - sweet.

No way, Tron is your dad!?

The Shire however, is a different story altogether.

Mark my words, this is where shit gets crazy for America.
Ever think to yourself "I wonder why all of those Muslim extremists hate our freedom so much?" This is the answer. They hate that certain people among us can spend like $900,000 trying to live in a primitive fantasy hole in the ground while also (not surprisingly) being so divorced from reality, that they have no idea that their government is wantonly destroying other regions of the real world with impunity. They also hate that none of the female Hobbits are forced to wear burqas or burned alive for speaking with men other than their husbands. The Shire is just another traveling carnival of sin to them. Might as well have a big target painted on it.

Seriously though, if anyone who lives in The Shire (if any of you are left there after the foreclosure) happens to read this, do me a favor and send me a lengthy explanation of how come you don't think that you're an idiot. I absolutely will respond, and if our differences seem irreconcilable, we can battle it out on top of Mount Doom. Just remember though, I'm a level 14 Paladin and I wield the Sword of Shannara with great ferocity.

Fucking Hobbits.

Beard-Inducing Playlist # 1.

2008-08-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

I listen to a lot of music all the time. At work, at the gym, in the shower, while I sleep...it never really stops.

I have noticed that, like most people, I listen to the same things over and over for short periods of time, usually a week or two, but sometimes months. My listening habits, many and varied as they are, make for some interesting little mixed up playlists on my ipod. These are the top ten songs from the one I've been listening to the last week or so, which seems to accurately reflect the fact that I've been in a really mellow and contemplative kind of mood for the most part. This may seem like a kind of retarded idea for a blog post, but don't worry, it's not. Because I said it isn't, that's why.

If there are bands on here that you have never heard of, it's probably due to the fact that my tastes are incredibly refined and I'm way into obscure stuff, most of which I don't actually even like myself. I am really just trying to drop a list of fancy names so that you get the mistaken impression that I am incredibly hip, rad, gnarly, awesome, and dope - even though I am totally not.

So, without further ado:

1. Telefon Tel Aviv - Sound in a Dark Room

This "group" or whatever they are (its actually like two dudes with macbooks) do the kind of music that is sometimes referred to as Intelligent Dance Music, even though that's a kind of lame genre label. This song actually has some vocal elements unlike a lot of their other songs, and it's really light and airy sounding. It also has a lot of interesting clicking, whirring, beeping, and squiggling noises, which is sort of what defines this stuff. It's the kind of music that androids have sex to. At about 8 minutes long though, it's really awesome to put on repeat and just fall asleep to if you're a human.

2. Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy

I don't think they were around at the time, but Mew should have done the soundtrack to The Neverending Story. They sound like a band from a fantasy movie, but not a shitty one like Coheed and Cambria. Plus, they're eurotrash. Added bonus.

3. Tricky - Bad Dreams

Tricky is a really ugly dude. No wonder he has bad dreams. However, I liked him in The Fifth Element, and I like at least three of his records, so it's not all lost. This song is awesome because of the lyrics, which are like the narration of a crazy dream that he had...or some kind of acid trip.

4. Beirut - Scenic World

This song makes me feel like I'm in France. Weirdly enough, it does not make me feel like I'm suddenly into dudes though. It's great, and a lot of the stuff that this guy does is awesome. To me, it kind of sounds like music that the characters from The Great Gatsby would have listened to. It might be the only song I like that sounds like it has an accordian in it.

5. The Smashing Pumpkins - Beginning is the End is the Beginning

They are using this song as the background music on the trailer for the Watchmen movie. It works, and now I can't stop listening to it. It's actually a remix or reworking of a song they put out a long time ago for the Batman movie with George Clooney in it, only this version is a lot better, and that movie sucked hard.

6. Iron and Wine - Boy with a Coin

The Iron and Wine guy is awesome, and this song is a perfect example of why he's awesome. I find that it's emotional without being over the top, pretentious, and juvenile like a lot of the garbage that is produced by the indie/folk/emo/retard genres that this gets lumped into most of the time.

7. Isis and Areogramme - Delial

I never really stop listening to Isis, even when I'm listening to other things more. This song happens to be from a joint recording session they did with the dudes in Areogramme, which is another cool band. Plus, the title seems to be an obvious reference to House of Leaves, which I love even more. It's a perfect match.

8. Overcast - Root Bound Apollo

This is a "new" Overcast song from the record they are about to release, which is mainly a bunch of their older songs re-recorded. This song still sounds like the Overcast of yore, with some slow trudgy parts, some faster noodly parts, and some overall awesome heaviness, only updated a little like it should be. I'm so excited for this record to come out that I almost peed my pants a little just writing this. More metal than your Ma's kettle son.

9. Broken Social Scene - Lover's Spit
This band is so weird and eclectic, but seems to pump out pretty rad songs consistently. There are two versions of this one kicking around, but I like the "regular" album version with the male vocals. The lyrics are what really make the whole thing for me, because they are atypical for a song that sounds like this. If you don't pay attention to the words, it just sounds like a lame U2 song or James Blunt, or some other cringe-inducing garbage.

10. Gadget - The Anchor
This is pretty much just straightforward grind, mining a vein similar to that of mid-career Napalm Death. It blasts and bludgeons the whole time, and just pounds on you until it erases your mind completely and turns your thoughts to dust. I recommend it if you feel like getting really loud really fast.

That's pretty much all I've got. Fuck it if I forgot something.

Go forth and listen.

Oregon: my new favorite state.

2008-08-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe you missed this little news item that came out last week, regarding some letters that administrators of Oregon's state run health program wrote to some terminally ill patients.
It goes a little something like this:

"We regret to inform you that we do not cover the cost of _________, used to treat your terminal ________. However, we do cover the cost of assisted suicide."

Ok, so I don't think they used those exact words, but I'm sure you get the point. Apparently, Oregon only covers the cost of treatments for terminal conditions if there is more than a 5% chance that it will allow the patient to live for five years. Overall, that seems totally reasonable to me. I mean, you don't pay for a car that doesn't work ten minutes after you bought it.
The dirty little part of the whole thing though, is how they plant the seed in your head to get you thinking about killing yourself. It's like they designed the state so I would want to live there. I wonder what the Burger King drive-thru lanes are like..."Yes sir thank you for your order, would you like some Assisted Suicide with your Double Whopper and large fries today?"
God I hope so.

Of course a bunch of pantywaist turdhuffers from places like the Oregon Health and Science University (whatever that is) are all up in arms over this, calling it "callous", "cruel", and "awesome" - wait, no...I called it awesome. Sorry.
Anyway, a bunch of uppity doctors obsessed with prolonging the lives of their patients are pretty pissed. I absolutely cannot understand why.

It seems to me like Doctors are relatively busy people, and everybody needs a break sometimes, so why not just, with like every third patient, just kind of mention - "Hey, I know its a bum-out being on antibiotics, and the state totally doesn't pay for it either, so I just figured I'd let you know that assisted suicide is an option. Yeah, I understand that you only have Strep Throat, but you know - unemployment is up, and the war in Iraq doesn't look like it's getting over with anytime soon, so you know, this might be a good time to uh...make your exit while you've still got some dignity"
That could potentially really cut down on the workload.

On a slightly more serious note though, I really don't understand why some people are so angry about this. Death is a part of life, and if you're a 300 pound lump of disease-infested goo that can't move or think on your own or bang hot chicks anymore, then what good are you to anybody really? I for one, would not want to stick around for too long with the kind of future that that implies.
Even more seriously, part of the looming health care disaster in the United States exists by virtue of the fact that terminally sick people now can linger on forever in hospice care and nursing homes that are really nothing more than graves-in-waiting until someone runs out of money. And they do. Don't fool yourselves by thinking that these people are surrounded by their loved ones either, because usually they're in a place like that so someone can get them out of their hair. It's sad, it's terrible, but it's also real.

I'm not old, but I know that I'm going to die someday, and while I hope that it happens in a glorious hail of gunfire, I feel certain that something shitty like cancer is more likely. No thank you to that, I'll take the red pill and enter the part of the Matrix that is reserved for dead people instead. I would find it comforting to know that at least I didn't have to pay for it.

Don't worry, I'll leave a note.

Someone has never seen Total Recall...

2008-07-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

So today, lunatic multibillionaire Sir Richard Branson unveiled the weird looking plane that will carry his Virgin Galactic Spaceship into outer space once it is ready for the first commercial interstellar flight.
Oh yeah, BTW, he hopes to be on that goddamn thing and enjoying an extra dry martini with a view of the Sea of Tranquility within 18 months. After that, I'm pretty sure he will come back to earth and invent flying cars similar to the ones that everybody used in The Jetsons.
Upon hearing this news, I had the urge to call up Mr. Branson, sit down with him for about a week, and show him all the science fiction movies and TV shows in which humanity unsuccessfully colonizes Mars/the Moon/some Forbidden Planet in the Romulan Quadrant - because let's be honest, that's where this is heading.

Needless to say, I'm not that pumped about it. Don't get me wrong, I really like my bluetooth headset that eerily reminds me of the communicators on Star Trek. I have also used a GPS navigation system successfully on more than one occasion, despite some creepy European sounding woman's voice telling me to turn right every 200 yards to get back on route. I even take advantage of the self-checkout isle at the grocery store on a regular basis.
There are some things that I will not tolerate though. One of them is human colonization of other planets. Another is interactive porn that is so realistic that you can no longer tell if you have been real life fucked or just had your mind blown, like in Demolition Man. The third is raisins in my rice pudding, because that shit is for the French.

I just think it's a bad idea. We are probably destined to shit up the Earth with all of our trash, fossil fuel waste, and bodily fluids, but really we should be left in our own mess to clean it up, or at least to have some of us evolve into super-beings that can communicate telepathically and only need to consume garbage to survive. What we don't need to do though, is flee the pit of despair that the world becomes in the wake of our insane orgy of self-indulgent excess only to get to another planet and start the process all over again.
The only possible upshot of colonizing other planets would be chicks with three boobs (I mean seriously three boobs would represent a whole other level, I have to believe that it would be like an amusement park for your hands), but I sort of feel like plastic surgery could get us there now anyway, so why go to all that extra trouble?

In the end though, it doesn't really matter how pissed I am about the Virgin Galactic venture, because Richard Fucking Branson will go right ahead and do what he wants, and if I try to hold back the tides of progress, I might as well get a carriage and join the Amish.

However, I feel strongly that right now, in an alternate time string, a reprogrammed cyborg killing machine from the future teleports into my room at this very moment and says, in a thick German accent: "This is the exact second where Richard Branson altered the course of humanity with his dick-shaped spacecraft, resulting in the entire Milky Way galaxy being sucked into a black hole in the year 2256, and you're the only blogger tough enough and heterosexual enough to stop it!"

That also could be the opening scene from my Sweded version of Terminator 2 though.

Only time will tell.

Chapter 12, in which a colony of bats nests in my bedroom and I feel like murdering the entire universe

2008-07-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you come home from a hard day of work and sit on your bed for a few minutes to read news via the internet.
Sometimes, while doing this, you hear a sound similar to a car alarm, a voicemail tone, a cicada, and a herd of pigs all rolled into one amazing sonic texture.
Slowly you turn toward the blocked off fireplace that serves as your headboard.
Suddenly, you come to the realization that there are FUCKING BATS INSIDE YOUR WALL.
Then they try to sell you weed.
Ok, well everything except the last part about weed (how funny would that be though?).
There are goddamn bats right next to my head and although I can't see them or smell them or touch them, I can hear the shit out of them and they sound terrifying. Seriously, here is a short list of probable similar noises:

1. The souls of three freshly killed housecats being anally fingered by Satan.

2. The vocal track from every single Smashing Pumpkins song being played at once on three hundred different record players...backwards.

3. A crying baby trapped inside a metal garbage can that's being crushed by a rusty garbage truck.

4. Dwarf Hell.

5. A glacier made of four million tons of compacted human fingernails sliding down the surface of a planet made of chalkboard.

Kill me.
There are fucking baby bats in there too - I can hear their baby bat whining, and for some reason all I can think of is smaller regular bats in tiny bat diapers.
No one can come to my house anymore: "Hey baby, want to go up to my room and make out? BTW, did I mention that I live in a bat nursery? Oh I agree, it IS quite charming when they make those little ear piercing shrieking noises while I'm trying to unhook your bra..."

I absolutely and unequivocally do not believe in fate or karma or any of that bullshit, but if i didn't know better, I would swear to fucking god that I was Ghengis Khan in my past life and am now being punished for decapitating people and lighting their severed heads on fire or something.

I have bats, and it completely blows.

Crazypedia

2008-07-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

So, I really like Wikipedia. I use it like 10 times a day, and despite the fact that I don't take it as 100% accurate all the time, I find that it stands up pretty well after subsequent research of the given topic using other sources.
However, a short time ago some bible-slapping moral majority types became frighteningly concerned about the liberal, secular leanings of Wikipedia, and how it's definitions were channeling the youth of the world into lives of atheism, drug-use, and sexual ambiguity. This is a common theme for them (by them, I mean self-righteous right wing Christian idiots of every stripe). So, in order to narrow the scope of the "truth" in order to fit their worldview, they developed the awesomely hilarious Conservapedia.
This could easily be a joke, but unfortunately it's not. I thought that the Creation Museum was a joke too when I first heard about it, but then it turned out that somebody really did think that an animatronic display of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden surrounded by fruit-eating Tyranosaurs would be a pretty valid presentation of actual events. I often stand corrected when assuming that people aren't completely retarded.
So, upon finding out about Conservapedia, I decided that I could at least derive some serious entertainment from browsing the topics a little bit, and I was totally right. This thing is rife with controversy. In fact, almost no entry is afforded respite from at least a sentence or two that takes a swipe at some opposing assertion. This fact in and of itself led me to wonder how exactly an encyclopedia that tags itself as "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia" had gotten into such a position that the editors felt that each definition needed just a little extra justification in the form of denigrating another viewpoint. Actually (call me naive), I thought that the goal of an encyclopedia was to present general information about each topic in as objective a way as possible in order to avoid supporting or bolstering any technical arguments about the thing itself. Now, I understand that this is difficult to accomplish with a user-edited format such as Conservapedia or Wikipedia, but seriously, at least Wikipedia makes an attempt.
For example, I used Conservapedia to look up the entry for Bird, as it appeared to be an innocuous enough topic. Wrong. There is a one sentence definition of what a bird is, and then the entry breaks down into two sub-entries, one presenting the Creationist view of birds and their development, and one purporting to offer an Evolutionary view of the relationships between birds and dinosaurs. The presentation of these two viewpoints is so absurdly oversimplified and disingenuous that it makes me feel like vomiting. This amusing little tidbit is actually in the text of the entry:

Creationists contend that birds being descendants of dinosaurs is unreasonable and is not scientifically supported with any evidence.^[1]^[2] They also point out that God could have created some dinosaurs with feathers, and therefore that finding feathered dinosaurs does not prove that dinosaurs evolved into birds.^[3]^{Color me informed.
Digressions aside though, I am amazed by this kind of thing. Apparently, nothing requires evidence to be true anymore, since God puts thoughts into your head, and that means that if you are thinking it, God wants you to know it, so it has to be true...unless Satan has overtaken your mind.
I thought that I had existential angst.
I found other entries to be similar. Fire, for instance, contains a short description of fire, then another short description on its significance as the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, as well as the main component of the Christian Hell. I'm also pretty sure that the entries for God and Awesomest Person Alive both redirect to the entry for Rush Limbaugh.
Another point of interest is the section they have detailing their editing Commandments, the first of which is:} Everything you post must be true and verifiable. Do not copy from Wikipedia^[1] or elsewhere unless it was your original work.^[2]^{That one is funny, since it seems to be violated in nearly every single entry in one way or another. I guess it would be tough to be a true conservative though without violating a commandment here and there and not acknowledging it while you admonish others against doing the same.
The last odd thing that really caught my eye was the fact that they will not allow dates to be annotated in CE or BCE, preferring instead the BC/AD notation, because this denotes the Christian basis of the calendar currently in widest usage around the world.
Firstly, I was unaware that you apparently are required to be a Christian in order to be considered a Conservative. Secondly, this stance openly shows enough of a bias as to completely invalidate any possible usefulness the Conservapedia could have had to begin with. What a gaggle of fucking douchebags these people must be.
Anyway, go check it out - you will be entertained, appalled, and probably ultimately disappointed in humanity, but it's still a good way to kill a few hours.

For the record, I am converting to the Discordian Calendar, because it's true and verifiable. That would make today:}
Setting Orange, Confusion 54, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3174.

See you next Pungenday.

my thoughts upon reaching Nirvana.

2008-07-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

If you thought this was going to be about Kurt Cobain, stop reading...forever.

This is about the concept of Nirvana, defined by Merriam-Webster as:

Main Entry:
nir·va·na
1: the final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara and is sought especially in Buddhism through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness

2 a: a place or state of oblivion to care, pain, or external reality; also : bliss, heaven

Today I got there. Figuratively, I walked right up the four hundred thousand steps to the top of Buddah's temple and strode through the fucking door like a greasy Cowboy walking into a saloon. There weren't even guards at the gate.

There was however, one caveat.

My Nirvana sucks.

That's right, I said it. Maybe, if you yourself are currently in pursuit of Nirvana, it won't suck for you, but this isn't really about you, it's about me. Besides, I wasn't actually trying to acheive the Glorious State of Nothingness and Non-being, it just sort of happened to me.

As retardedly over the top as this whole thing may sound, it really contains a super frustrating little kernel of truth. This morning I woke up and realized that I no longer wanted...anything. At all. It was tough to accept. I thought "shit, this is worse than the time I woke up and both of my arms were asleep and I thought I was paralyzed". Total suckfest.
In any event, I laid there this morning for 15 or 20 minutes, just flipping through a mental catalogue of former desireables that seemed to have completely lost the ability to make me feel even a fleeting twitch of want. It was so stupid. I thought of literally thousands of awesome things: time machines, hookers, pet dinosaurs, long winding rivers of cash, fame, beauty, love, sex, chocolate, expensive cars, expensive chocolate cars, a Star Wars prequel that didn't suck, magic carpets, burning Rosie O'Donnell at the stake, a free lifetime supply of whiskey, absolute power...the list could go on for ten pages. I felt nothing, not even the slightest temptation. Even all of the simple everyday things that you can readily have with little effort seemed to have no effect on me. In short, I didn't even want breakfast.

Let me tell you now, if you are looking to get into this - don't. It blows a lot. Most people can't have everything that they want, and that's their big wellspring of angst. I used to be one of them. Now though, I can't even want what I have. Worse, I can't even want to want anything. I feel like I might grow roach wings and hang out on the ceiling with Gregor Samsa. How does something like this happen?

Maybe I was just reeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyy tired all day long, maybe I'm not feeling well...who knows, maybe I am in heaven and it's just not up to my standards (which would be really counterintuitive). Seriously though, I doubt it. Even as great as it would be to believe that I have finally become so fucking cool that nothing on earth is awesome enough for me anymore, I have a hard time swallowing that too. I guess I don't really know what it is, and so I will have to wait around for a while to see if I turn into a billion particles of energy that just dissipate when the wind blows too hard, or become a being of pure light, or grow a unicorn horn with a third eye on the end of it, or whatever the fuck Buddhists think happens when you reach the Ultimate Cool. Barring that, I wouldn't mind if the whole thing just stopped tomorrow morning as suddenly as it began today. At this point, it really hasn't been that long since I can remember wanting things. It was kind of nice. Even just a few days or a week ago, there were a whole bunch of things I wanted, a couple of things I even wanted really badly. I suppose I should have just appreciated having something to try for. Tough shit, huh?

Anyway, since this is real life, there's no goddamn closure or resolution to this one. It's a warning though, and one that everyone should take note of. Don't lose hope, don't lose desire - it's sort of what makes everything worthwhile.
In conclusion, here's a little jewel that you'll never learn from Buddah:

Much like Grey Poupon, Perfection is overrated.

Author's Note: Despite the fact that this appears to be a time of intense existential angst for me, the fact that I don't want anything doesn't mean that people shouldn't try really hard to get me to want things, especially by giving them to me. Thanks again!

the hairy web of anxiety.

2008-07-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

If you know me in real life, you may know that I have a tendency to worry about lots of trivial things all of the time, and that my concern is especially attracted to things that I have absolutely no control over. However, what you may not know about me until right now is that I also completely freak out about conspicuously un-trivial things, again especially the ones I have no control over. I once made myself sick doing this. It was gross.

As a result of this little personality flaw, I have recently come to understand that idiotic cliche about the emotional rollercoaster ride. More importantly, I have found it extremely difficult to sleep at night for more than an hour or two at a time. Needless to say, this is really fucking up my game plan. In an attempt to regain control of my nights, I have recently employed the services of several tiny specialists in the field of anxiety mitigation - Guatamalen Worry Dolls.

I know how this must sound, but really it's not what you think - it's way dumber. About two years ago my friend Ryan took a trip to Mexico and brought me back some nice cigars and a little basket filled with what appeared to be four tiny zombie Aunt Jemimahs. These, as I would later come to find out, are Worry Dolls, and they are fairly common throughout Mexico and South America as a toy or maybe a semi-serious remedy for some personal troubles. I kept them because they looked kind of cool and I thought maybe they would add a little flourish of culture to my room. For a long time now they have been quietly sleeping away in their little basket/coffin on my nightstand without me giving them very much though at all.

Since I know that drinking heavily is the best solution for every problem, I naturally tried that first. Though I did have a lot of fun, it didn't seem to take the edge off for more than a couple of hours here and there, and since I can neither afford to lose my job nor buy all of the Bourbon in the county, I decided that that just wasn't going to work. I don't like drugs, so I just axed them right off the bat because I don't want to become that kind of person (ie: strung out street turd ). However, I did try some Tylenol PM, then found out that it made me feel like I was crawling out of a goddamn grave in the morning, and deep-sixed that idea as well.

Enter Worry Dolls.

I'm not a religious or superstitious person. At all. I don't believe in ghosts, spirits, werewoles, the tooth fairy, jesus, or any of that kind of thing. Consequently, I figured that a cloth covered bundle of twigs in the form of an undead washer woman would not really be of any help whatsoever. I did manage to suspend my disbelief for a little while though, and I read the little piece of paper with instructions on how to employ the Worry Dolls' services. After this, I took out the one with the biggest head (because it looked like it could handle some serious shit) and I told it my problem, then put it inside my pillowcase and under my pillow.

I finally fell asleep a little while later, and did manage to sleep through basically the entire night. Even better, I did feel a lot less stressed out when I woke up. I then proceeded to move on with my day, and found that things actually weren't as bad as I had thought, and that other forces might even be conspiring to make things halfway decent in the near future. Honestly, I can't say whether or not the bulbous head of the Worry Doll was able to suck unwanted thoughts out of my brain during the night, but I can say that I felt measurably better.

Probably what happened is that I had just become so tired of stressing out, feeling like trash, and overthinking things, that I just kind of stopped on my own or sweat out the bad thoughts like getting rid of a fever in the middle of the night after it has peaked. Either way, I think it really did help to have an object (regardless of how small or creepy) to figuratively transfer my negative feelings to. So maybe that's the solution - people in general just need to talk about how they feel, or vent from time to time - even if it is just to the rocks or the trees or little stick figure vampires. Then you can just sit back and let the worries fall away.

Author's Note: At this point, you could theoretically get away with playing that Jimmy Buffet song "Cheeseburger in Paradise", but I'm going to let the temptation pass. Good luck!

A somewhat lengthy cautionary tale regarding an encounter with the condition commonly known as "Death Metal Beard"

2008-07-04T00:12:00.001-07:00

It all started at a place that myself, my roommates, and several of my friends colloquially refer to as "the Pirate Bar". This is not one of those clever or ironic nicknames normally employed by hipsters to describe something shitty that they think is cool. Unfortunately, this is an actual pirate bar, in the sense that if there were any real pirates left in the world, they would be at this particular bar. There are statues of pirates in the bar, including one of a scantily clad she-pirate with a hook for a hand, a skeleton pirate, a pirate locked in what appears to be a prison cell of some type, and a mural of a person who eerily resembles a cross between Captain Morgan and Allan Rickman. There is cargo netting hanging from the ceiling and studs at the actual bar area, complete with fake horseshoe crabs, plastic fish, bobbers, and assorted other ersatz flotsam. You get the picture, it's a fucking PIRATE BAR and there is really no other way to describe it.
As for the patrons of this establishment, they consist mainly of the following: Vietnam veterans who never really came home from the war even though they are thousands of miles away from Vietnam itself, Albanian hookers who speak chop suey English AND their black pimp who seems to have purchased and decided to wear every single ring that he has ever laid his eyes on, black women whose torso to ass ratio is approximately 1:30, and the entire contents of a landfill that processes only white trash. Needless to say, this makes for an intriguing milieu.
On this particular night, I happened upon a shiny diamond in the rough of humanity, who I have chosen to call "Kevin" for the purposes of this piece, mainly because that was what he told me his real name was. Kevin was the victim of of several sad circumstances, mostly self-inflicted, but including a condition that I like to call "death metal beard". Death metal beard is what happens when a goatee goes horribly wrong, resulting in a sort of facial hair car wreck that is both impossible to not look at, yet simultaneously repulsive.
Imagine that you had been growing a thin little beard for a few weeks, but then allowed only the chin part of it to flourish unbridled and untrimmed for a good half decade. Imagine that you put some, but not all of it, in a braid. Imagine a proliferation of visible 2-8 day old food particles dotting it here and there. Now, you have a halfway decent understanding of death metal beard. Kevin sported an excellent example of the DMB. It's name is derived from the fact that it is often worn with fabulous success by purveyors of extreme brutal heavy metal as defined here.
In any event, as I went up to the bar for a fresh pint of the Champagne of Beers, I encountered Kevin in a talkative mood. His opening salvo went something like this:

Kevin: "Sweet ink bro!"

Me: Huh? Oh, yeah..thanks man. (it should be noted that I have several tattoos, which he was referring to here)

Kevin: (gesturing at a tattoo of what looked like The Predator on his calf, drawn by a 9 year old girl) "My cousin drew this one up for me and I got it the next day, I said "Fuck it".

Me: Wow... cool, that's really cool...

Kevin: (gesturing at the aforementioned 9 year old girl's rendition of Gandalf immortalized in ink on his forearm) My cousin did this one too...it's a wizard.

Me: Awesome.

Kevin: "I'm a lot more into piercings now, I got my eyebrows pierced, my lip, and...feel this scar" (at this point he grabbed my hand and made me feel an inch long gash on his arm, where there once had evidently been a surface piercing) "I had a barbell in there with a skull on each end, but it got ripped out a little one day when i caught it on the edge of the couch fighting with my old lady. Then a couple months later it fell out in the lazy river at Six Flags."

Me: Oh..shit, that sucks.

Kevin: "Yeah, and this is where I branded myself with my bowl" (he indicated a perfectly circular small scar on the other side of his forearm) "Yeah me and my pops were smokin' a bowl one day and I was like "Pop, let's heat up this bowl and I'll put the Audi symbol on my arm", but I only got through one, cause the circle came out uneven. I guess I shoulda pressed harder on it..."

Me: Totally

Kevin: "I'm gonna get suspended soon, once I lose more weight" (meaning suspended from hooks, normally by the skin of the back) "I wrote to Howard [Stern] to see if he could hook me up, cause he loves that shit, and cause I lost 120 pounds already in a year, I used to be 395 pounds"

Me: (surprised) Good for you, how did you lose it?

Kevin: "Really, to be honest, blowin' coke and depression. My old lady left me after 24 years and I just started rippin' lines..."

Me: ahhh...(not shocked, but disgusted, as my beer arrived) Well, good luck reaching your goal, I gotta get going...

With that, Kevin and a little piece of his beard vigorously shook my hand as I departed in complete awe. People think that Britney Spears is a trainwreck, but Kevin makes her look super duper stable.
I have often found that the Kevin-type personality is typical of people with death metal beard. Despite the fact that it's often hard to gain very much knowledge of a person through facial hair analysis, DMB is a different scenario altogether. In order to successfully cultivate and maintain such a radiant display of hair on your face, you have to literally stop caring about everything and just let it go. Kevin has just let it go. His 4 eyebrow rings, his matching Urban Camouflage t-shirt and capri pants, his terrible body art; all of this culminates in the perfect attitude required to grow death metal beard, and he wears it proudly even though he probably shouldn't.
Every time I come home from the pirate bar, I think to myself "I will never go back there", but it's like a Siren, and every few months it's song returns to fill your mind with seductive visions of wooden buccaneers with fake parrots on their shoulders, $2.00 beers, the jukebox that only plays 85% of the song that you choose, and the world's smallest bathroom. It's a heady brew, and one that is hard for me to resist. In the end I guess I don't really regret meeting Kevin anyway, because I feel like I learned a lot from him. I learned that you should never go on the Lazy River at Six Flags, never wear a camo shirt and pants unless it is a legitimate uniform, never let your own cousin draw your tattoos, and - last but not least...don't braid your beard. Ever.
This concludes today's lesson.

Everything is extreme.

2008-07-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

How come since about mid-2005, everything has been kicked up ten notches? It seems like all the shows on television are now some kind of extreme. Deadliest Catch, Axemen, Monster Garage or Chopper or whatever, Extreme makeover (face AND home editions), Extreme weight loss, Extreme Ballroom dancing, Extreme Police Chase, Extreme Pet Care, Dangerous Minds...etc, ad nauseum. Extreme is the new regular, which means that "Pointlessly Insane" is the new Extreme, and "Boring" is now deadly...which makes it Extreme because it's potentially lethal. It's just a big circle.
Axemen is about dudes chopping down trees. They don't even really use axes either, they use specially designed saws with handguards and tree hugging death machines the size of my house that are operated by remote control or satellite or something. They actually don't even have to be anywhere near the trees to cut them down because their tech-saws interface with Google Earth through their extreme lumberjack blackberries. Needless to say, it's stupid, and all the danger is scripted.
Deadliest Catch might actually be dangerous, but all I can think when I see it is: "why are these people risking their lives to catch crabs". I for one, have spent a lot of my time trying to NOT catch crabs. Let's not be foolish here, they're just in it for the money and sometimes you have to die for money. No big deal.
It appears that the overall point is that every occupation/hobby/industry has some element of danger or potential for injury, or just an interesting aspect to it if you look closely enough. Even file clerks get the odd paper cut here and there, and sometimes school librarians catch measles or hepatitis or something. That doesn't make what they do extreme, but I bet you could sell a reality show about it if you pitched it to the right executive producer. Cutting down trees, drilling for oil, catching fish, adding extra garlic to an entree, or getting plastic surgery are really not that interesting to me, even when it seems like every time one of these things happens, a person is on the verge of death or is about to lose their wife/child/pet. In addition to this, if we all weren't sitting around watching these shows, some of us could actually try out a couple of these things and see how un-extreme milking a goat or towing an illegally parked car really is.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be getting off the couch any time soon, which i find EXTREMELY disappointing.

Coming up next...Extreme Haircut, followed by Deadliest Wal-Mart cashier, and a season recap of Hell's Landscaping Crew.

As a parting thought, I will add this: How come every show has at least one commercial for Sonic, even though there is no Sonic in like a 200 mile radius? Build a Sonic or shut the fuck up. srsly.

i hope disney makes me take this down.

2008-06-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see the movie Wall E, which was totally not gay of me. Normally, I'm just not a Pixar movie kind of man, mainly because there are tufts of hair on my balls and I don't belong to any church groups. That's right, as with most "real men" I waited until The Incredibles came out on DVD before checking it out.
However, someone told me that Wall E was the best science fiction movie that they had seen all year, which obviously sort of surprised me, because it didn't look very science-fictiony to me when I eventually found my way to IMDB to watch the trailer. Well, since it happened to be the one night of the year where I didn't have a swarm of nubile young girlmeat swirling around me like flies around the carcass of a dead antelope, I decided to go check it out and see what the fuss was.
It actually turned out to be pretty good. I would refrain from saying "great", but surprisingly good. What struck me about it most was the social commentary. The movie takes the cutest head on charge on consumerism, corporate america, and the excess of western culture that has ever been put down on digital film.
In the future as envisioned in the movie, the earth has become a giant landfill, and people have deserted the planet via an enormous spaceship, where they now happily float around on hovering chaise lounges with instant messengers blaring in their faces, meals that all come in cups, and robot slaves. Wall E is some sort of small garbage collecting robot, a race of which was left on earth in order to clean up the planet and prepare for the return of humanity at some undetermined point in the future.
All other plot points and story arcs aside, they present a future that, although seemingly far off, isn't unbelievable. This actually IS one of the hallmarks of good science fiction. The "humans" living on the spaceship earth are self-obsessed, morbidly obese, and blissfully unaware of anything that could resemble reality. Basically it's like America in 2008, only with a variety of robot servants.
Since I really don't like anyone except for about twelve people worldwide, I find it really easy to imagine a world of intellectually bankrupt human dead weight with an overwhelming sense of entitlement. I also find it pretty easy to imagine a wasteland earth where there is no dirt or sidewalks under your feet, but just an endless spongy bed of compacted Wal-Mart shopping bags and McDonald's soda cups. I did find myself somewhat surprised to see corporate giant Disney sticking a subtle finger in the eye of their greedy, bloated brethren though. It just seems like that kind of subject matter is taboo in anything but shitty independent films made by college students for future college students as a handbook on how to be super pretentious. Regardless, there it was in a children's movie, and so I stand corrected. Rad.
The bottom line on Wall E for me is that even though most people will probably just think it was cute in a depressing way and focus way more on the robot love story that is at the center of the plot, I will always prefer to think of it as a somewhat understated cautionary tale about what happens to the world when all you do is eat fast food and watch the ABC weeknight television lineup in order to escape your own thoughts. I guess I'm hoping that maybe some of the ideas will poke through the fleshy foreheads of a bunch of young kids and make them realize that life isn't really about robot love, but instead is about keeping humanity's fat little sausage fingers from wrapping around their own throats and choking themselves to death. If that happens, maybe we can take baby steps toward recovery.
SAVE THE WHALES!

YEAH RIGHT!

2008-06-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

So, according to CNN, world famous gender bending powerdouche Boy George has been denied a visa to enter the US. Allegedly, he was charged in London some time ago with "unlawful imprisonment", most likely for having locked his weiner in some dude's butt for an extended period.
There are at least a couple of things wrong with the US's stance here, in my opinion.
Firstly, this dude's name is Boy George, not Osama bin George, and he is the purveyor of such extraordinary 80's and 90's hits as "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", "Karma Chameleon", and the inimitable "The Crying Game". Honestly, I would love to see the dude that managed to get "imprisoned" by Boy George. Was this poor fella just overwhelmed by Mr. or Mrs. George's masculine/feminine wiles, and lured into an S&M sex lair in some service corridor in a London Tube station? How on earth would you ever imagine, regardless of your sexual orientation, that if you went somewhere alone with Boy George, you wouldn't wind up in some type of weird and probably sexual nightmare or fantasy?
No one in America would be foolish enough to fall for that. They'd be like "Shut the Fuck up Boy George and go back to Wales or Spain or whatever", and then he would promptly depart in shame.
The only way I could see them not letting him in the country is if they thought he had a bomb belt when he told airport security that there was a strap-on in his bag.
Regardless, to the utter disappointment of mealy mouthed little girly men from coast to coast, Boy George will not be entering the US (through any port) anytime soon. Soooooo sad.
Anyway, here he is with the beard that he most likely can't grow, and I will leave you with this delightful quote from the movie Anchorman:
"The Human Torch was denied a bank loan"
"Boy George was denied a Visa"

you stay classy...world.

Bye Hil!

2008-06-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

It looks like Hillary lost the Democratic nomination AND her razor. Well beotch, you can always get Bill to Nair that shit. See you in hell girlfriend, you had a good run...wait, no you didn't, you were wicked mean.

pure genius takes physical shape

2008-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you wake up in the dead of night with an idea that makes every other thought that has ever entered your mind seem childish and possibly even borderline retarded. Such is the idea to un-skillfully digi-paint a sweet looking sketchy drug dealer beard onto nature's most well-oiled of predatory killing machines. Adding the phrase "hey where the weed is at yo" is pretty much just the delicious icing on the delicate and moist idea cake. Maybe there is a heaven after all.
Let's get drunk.

dogs can grow beards all over

2008-03-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

blogger handlez

2008-03-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

this is a blog about beards. beards on famous people, beards on the sky, beards on food. sometimes you might even see pubes on the pope. sometimes there will be social commentary, sometimes there will be kung pao chicken lo mein and nothing else at all. fuck it.