Get Motivated!

It's the one-week anniversary of my trip to San Antonio for the Get Motivated! Business Seminar featuring some of your favorite celebrities. Lady Gaga, Kate Plus 8, Tiger Woods, Rihanna, Robert Pattinson... none of these people were there.

However, Terry Bradshaw and George W. Bush were.

Drivers suck

I need everyone to use their turn signals when changing lanes. Thanking you in advance.

I realize you think you're the only driver who deserves to be on the road at any given moment, but try to do me a favor and recognize us asshole drivers who had the nerve to take jobs with normal business hours.

Oh, wait. There's one exception. If you are interested in causing a collision that will stop traffic and make the rest of us late to work or late to pick up our canine offspring at daycare after work, please continue to flout traffic laws and common courtesy.

Oh, wait. There's another exception. If you don't value your own life and want to take out as many people as possible with you, don't worry about signaling.

I can actually get behind that.

The Avett Brothers

Enjoy this musical interlude before I rant about something that pisses me off.

Audiences suck

This is where I start: I hate Dallas.
This is where I end: I hate young white people.

Here's how it goes down:
I go to a lot of live music and comedy shows (mostly music). That's what I like to do with my money and spare time. But I feel like I'm one of maybe 10 people in DFW who knows how to shut the hell up during a performance.

Dallas people like to be noticed, but they don't like to accomplish anything of value or contribute anything to society. They just like to disrupt performers and ruin everyone's good time. They seem to think that if a guy on stage addresses them for being dicks, they've made a positive impression on that person. Or they'll be taken on tour. Or someone in the audience will cream their jeans and want to fuck them.

I've seen shows in many venues in many cities, but I've never been so embarrassed and uncomfortable as I get in Dallas. And worse, the asshole revolution is apparently taking over Austin. My friend recently reported that "motherfuckers wouldn't shut their suckholes" at a Bon Iver show. Austin was the only oasis in this godforsaken cultural desert of a state, but if it's a lost cause too, I need to move. Or cave in and join a militia if only for the pleasure of shooting people in the face.

But it's not necessarily a Dallas or Texas thing. Could it be generational? I attended Leonard Cohen and Elvis Costello shows over the summer and was ultrapleasantly surprised at the respect given to those two gentlemen. Maybe it's just my generation and younger whose heads are skull-shaped bags of douche. Except I saw Chris Rock last year with a decidedly younger and certainly more mixed-race crowd than the average rock act attracts, and the "I love you, Chris" comments were kept to a minimum. What gives?

So do I have to conclude that it's young white twentysomethings that are the scourge of the performing arts? That hardly sounds fair or provable. But FUCK YES. Fuck those kids in their loud mouths.

With apologies to David Cross for the reprehensible audience he had to endure. Especially that whore Donna Jo.

Swallowed when I should have spat

Until I think of something worthwhile to write about (actually, I did think of something on the way home from work yesterday, but I promptly forgot it upon arriving home and finding a fresh 1970 episode of Hee Haw waiting on the DVR), I'm just going to list the things I accidentally ingested today.

A bug

Gasoline while siphoning fuel from the neighbor's car

A small piece of my own tongue flesh

Fruit

The remnants of my pride

Last night's leftovers (what am I, a hobo?)

Reasons I Haven't Been Writing This Blog Lately

I've been playing defense for the Texas Longhorns.

I visited the dog every day she was in canine rehab for dogsmack.

All the cool kids are using WordPress instead of Google Blogger.

I'm building a decoy dog from my dog's shed hair.

I'm building a bridge to a better tomorrow. Out of dog hair.

Laziness begets sleeptitude.

I spend a lot of my spare time wishing I had more spare time to make wishes for more spare time.

My bosses at In This Economy? are slave drivers/owners.

I went to culinary school to learn to cook meth.

The hookworms have made me... sooo... sloooooowww.

Portland: A Brief History

Portland, Oregon is a city full of unbearable hipsters and filthy hippies.

Comedian Brian Gaar

In the semi-finals of the Funniest Person in Austin competition:

How SurlyZ Got His Groove and Daughter Back

I may be speaking too soon. Things can change in three weeks. My plane to Portland could crash on Memorial Day. I could contract swine flu and die... by sneezing when I'm putting in my contacts, causing me to impale my brain on my finger, because that's the only way for a moderately healthy human to die from that overhyped shit.

But as of today, my plan for Saturday, May 30 is to drive most or all of the way to San Antonio and retrieve my little girl.



No, not that adorable human baby. I'm talking about the gorgeous brindle daddy's girl on the right.

It's been five+ years since I've had custody, and the stars have willed that I have her again. Long story. And none of your business.

Here she is again about to lick a cat to death.



You people are in for it now.

The Colonel Is (Was) Missing

(from the archives)

February 23, 1985
LOUISVILLE, Ky. —— Less than five years after his death, the chicken-fried corpse of Harland "(The) Colonel" Sanders was stolen last night from his heavily seasoned coffin in what police are calling an old-fashioned, finger-licking body-snatching.

The grave robbers released a photo (below) of The Colonel's body with a note demanding a ransom of a bucket of original $100 bills, a bucket of crispy $100 bills and a family-sized order of mashed potatoes.

More details to follow.





UPDATE: The body has been found in a Japanese river. See this story for a picture and info.