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.

WE DID IT!!!

We've secured Iraq!!!! Let freedom fucking ring!

After six-plus years and who cares anymore how many deaths, we've achieved the success in Iraq that Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Feith and Kristol promised us. And you people doubted these brilliant men. Well, I'll be the first to pitch in for the Mt. Rushmore-style monument that is sure to come.

This New York Times article documents all the signs of a free and happy nation: gambling, booze, hookers and cockfights. Why do you think the most joyous places on Earth are Indian casinos and Civil War-era cockfight reenactments? (Those goddamn roosters are sticklers for costume detail.)

Here's Bill Kristol laying out the plan to win the peace in Iraq before the war:

OLD PEOPLE and how to deal with them

I've said it a million times: Do NOT empower the elderly.

Because when you do, THIS is what happens.

Now them old motherfuckers gonna be shooting kids off their lawns. Next thing you know, they're going to demand respect. And fuck if I'll be the one to give it to them.

In another age-related opinion, since it seems like that's what I'll be doing in this goddamn post, let me just say this: Women: wait, let me start over. Two colons in a row look weird. Let me just say this: Women, don't fuck with the aging process. It's going to be OK. Aging is what people do. Let nature slowly decompose us until our loose skin catches on a corner and pulls off us like the sheet on a ghost in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

I mean, is this how you wanna go out? It's sooo not as cool as a heroin overdose. But hey, what is? Shit, I guess dying from injecting anything is cooler than most ways of dying.

I'm beginning to love Glenn Beck's show

Something awesome happens every day!

Me? A CWB?

Somehow earned the nickname CuntWhoreBitch from this shit-talkin' chick at the bar last night. Well, if a CWB has feelings, all of them are hurting right now.

For real though, there's something sexy about foul-mouthed women (see Sarah Silverman).
















What are you doing? I said, see Sarah Silverman, goddammit. Do I have to hold your fucking hand and lead you around like a show pony? AAARRRRRGGHHHH!!!! Ponies don't have hands. See what you've done? Just leave me alone.

Things I done did and will accomplish today

DONE DID ACCOMPLISH

1. Wash car
2. Grocery store
3. Laundry
4. Eat something delicious
5. Pay bills
6. Finish reading book; start new one
7. Watch a movie
8. Catch up on Friday Night Lights
9. Shower
10. Have first beer

WILL ACCOMPLISH

1. Drink 8-10 more beers
2. Five or so shots of whiskey
3. Punch someone for looking at me funny
4. Hide my car in an alley until the cops drive by
5. High-tail it home on the backstreets
6. Run over the shrubs near the garage
7. Vomit in the crushed shrubs
8. Go inside and wipe the splashback off my shoes
9. Drunk text everyone in my cell
10. Pass out with a frozen pizza in the oven


Best Saturday ever.

Where did we go wrong?

This country is falling apart. The government's freaking out over bonuses they knew were being paid to the fuck-ups at AIG. Geithner doesn't know how to fix the banks. Rush Limbaugh gets press coverage for his cocksuckery. People are trying to scalp tickets they got for free to the Jay Leno show in (or rather, near) Detroit even though the tickets were overpriced in the first place. The North Koreans are holding two of our least-known (and least-careful) journalists. Nobody watches Friday Night Lights but me, two of my friends and the critics. Gary Sinise writes columns for CNN.com. YouTube apparently took down my favorite Van Morrison performance. The Special Olympics are waging a war on the word "retard."

And if any new countries were formed or dissolved in the last seven years, I need to update my motherfucking globe.

That's it. I'm drinking all day.

Oh wait. Here's something right with the country: the great Alejandro Escovedo.

Tip o' the tweed cap to a nice save

It was actually recommended to me in my annual performance evaluation at work that I be more social. I explained that I go to the bar every night as evidenced by all the dry heaving I do in the men's room each morning.

No dice. Turns out, I need to be more social at work so people will recognize me if they need to ask a copy editing question. Great. Meet people to let them know I'm the resident socially maladroit editor. Like there's anyone who can't spot copy editor types a mile away. With our pocket protectors, orthopedic shoes, inappropriate comments, awkward silences, Simpsons minutae and so forth.

But that still seemed like something I could at least think about working up the nerve to consider. And then a miracle happened: St. Patrick's Day. The happiest day of the year. Our office is apparently on notice from the parent corp. to watch unnecessary spending. So we didn't get the beer we thought was coming to us at the afternoon "party." Instead we all got a swift Irish kick to the nuts.

THEN... a hero emerged, took up a collection and made a beer run. We were drunk and dancing on our desks before the 5 o'clock whistle blew at 6.

Everybody's happy. We had a good start to the St. Patrick's Day evening. Alcohol was absorbed into the bloodstream. Stories were exchanged. Asses were photocopied. Typical unofficial office party shit. Plus, I accomplished a mother fucking career goal. Ya heard, bitches?







Excuse me while I type up my two weeks notice.

Lost my phone

I lost my phone last week and bought a new one for hundreds of hard-to-come-by dollars. In the same week, I had other unexpected payments, including to the IRS, who think because I consider myself a liberal that I want to pay more tax instead of getting a return.

But I will have the last laugh. Someone found my phone. And I'm either faking my death or founding a church. I can you tell which I prefer.

Where've I been?

Well, I'll tell you.

Right here.

I sign in to this blog several times a week.

But I get distracted.

By movies.

By beer.

By other projects.

By work.

By Twitter.

By news stories about Twitter.

By news stories about douchebag public officials who use Twitter.

By music.

By bars.

By healthy eating.

By unhealthy eating.

By dogs.

And whatever else there is in life.

For this blog exercise, I am a French bulldog

Because I have no discernible musical talent, any time I step foot into a recording studio I pass the fuck out. And in this case, I had company: some dude asleep in a chair.