when Kurt Vonnegut died they plastered "eveything was beautiful and nothing hurt" across his tombstone at his request ala slaughterhouse five.
i'm kind of a bastard so when i kick the bucket [list] i want mine to say the opposite.
or the neutral purgatory version:
"everything was okay and nothing was really mentionable"
live a moderate amount of time, die at a reasonable age of natural causes, and leave an average looking corpse.
not a good looking corpse, but a decent one. if a necropheliac dug it up he would just sort of fuck it the way a middle aged man in a loveless marriage of convenience fucks his aging wife who wears those sweatpants all the time.
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i opened my eyes once and i was in a car full of people who used to be strangers. i was driving in a city that i didn't live in. the back of my brain knotted up and my palms got sweaty and i tried to remember where i had left my self. i've reinvented myself and left the old shell behind too many times. every time i go back to an old neighborhood that i used to live in theres always a lifeless shell of me still hung over a fence like an old scarecrow the day after halloween.
I opened my eyes again and i was in graveyard by the sea. i was in Galveston harolding. that means hanging out in a graveyard for no reason. it was coined after Harold and Maude, my lesbian art teacher's favorite movie. i was a few years younger.
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Q and I are sitting at a bar in a dive strip mall in Houston. I'm sunburned so bad i look like the devil and i'm basically sweating skin at this point, so Q is buying me drinks. we were going to play the lethal weapon 3 pinball machine at some point. we had lived around this bar for years and never actually been inside of it. it had lethal weapon 3 pinball!
Q: this guy with a leather jacket claims to have "more money than god," he comes in to bars like this all the time and tries to hustle people at pool and quarters and stuff. only he never wins, he just gets drunk and flips the coin and then calls tails, and then he doesn't show it to you, he just says it was tails and demands money.
KLL: hey i know a guy like that! he's from spain. he plants trees and then he yells at you when you knock them down. then he yells at the trees.
Q: leather jacket guy, he's been banned from every bar in the neighborhood. the other night Matt tried to call him out on his quarter thing and he tried to jam a quarter in Matt's eye. he was like "I'm gonna jam this in yo eye!"
just then the barmaid walks up. feathered hair, pink sweater, been working there a hundred years.
BM: leather jacket huh?
Q: have you seen him? he's crazy!
BM: well once a guy walked in here about 7 o clock wearing a full on down to the floor leather coat in the middle of summer and he was carrying a breifcase with him. and he's wearing these black shades so he looks real strange. we were all scared 'cause, who wears a full leather coat in the middle of summer around here? something aint right you know? i couldn't get a look at him because of those black shades so i started wondering what he was up to.
BM: he asks me where everything is and he asks me for a glass of water, then all of a sudden he goes off to the bathroom. now we're all scared 'cause we don't know if he's gonna come out with a sawed off shotgun and blow us all away or what. Scooter's asking about a hamburger i was supposed to be cooking him and i told him that damn burger's gonna have to wait. I'm standing over by the panic button getting ready to call the cops but i don't really wanna have to because it's bad for business to have the cops coming around here all the time. if you press that thing once they come around and cause everyone a bunch of trouble.
KLL: oh word, so what happened?
BM: well Bill goes and knocks on the door because he's been in there for an hour and a half or somethin'. we just thought he was watching videos or something in there. only before Bill gets to the door the guy comes walking out and man oh man this is strange.
Q: yeah leather jacket guy is weird.
BM: weird? he was carrying a big tall inflatable woman when he came out of that thing!we're all standing here not knowing what the hell to say and you know what he does? he just sits down at that table over there and he sits his girl in the chair next to him. and now i can see his eyes you know, because he put them shades on the dang inflatable woman. and then he orders a glass of water...
BM: ...for his lady.
KLL: damn! he ordered her a drink?
BM: yup. so after a while i told Bill he had to get this guy out of here, he was giving everyone the creeps you know? Bill went up and talked to him, and the guy just gathered his things and left. in 35 years of working here thats the strangest thing i've ever seen happen in here.
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they called sylvia plath's body of work the longest suicide note in history. maybe this is just the longest snuff film in history. technically you can only star in a snuff film once. but hey, you only live once right?
if you starred in more than one snuff film that would mean that you weren't good at dying. dying is like golf. you want a hole in one. a low score.
dying is like golf, which is something i've been saying for years anyway. rather, golf is like dying. if you need to get out of the house and hit a ball around in khakis with a bottle of water your life is pretty much over.
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all these old scarecrows of me everywhere.
I met a girl named after a bird once and i certainly scared her away.
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Currently
listening
:
Rain Dogs
By
Tom Waits
Release date: 1990-06-15
through the roof, and underground on barefeet, and out of town left and returned without a sound dry bones in the cold cold ground
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if you're going to attempt to do something interesting that makes you happy you always run the risk of coming off as a pretentious asshole. better pretentious than boring. pretentious or boring, those are your only choices, and they both suck. its like the pro-life/pro-choice argument, both sides are pretty dicey.
kill a baby kill your dreams
fuck it all. kill yourself.
(this is a reference to a movie intended for like one person. relax)
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a jinx a minx too many drinks this stinks
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if you read this and you ever think i'm talking about you, i'm probably not. if you think i'm dead serious about something i write here, relax. it's just a blog.
back to pretentious versus boring.
a pretentious guy has maybe a handful of friends that genuinely enjoy him. everyone else gets their proverbial rocks off talking about how they are better than him. (see emo; goth; novelist; all the way back to spartans vs athenians)
a boring guy is accepted everywhere, but beloved nowhere. (see khaki shorts; sports bar)
boring guy has forgotten that life is fleeting and pretentious guy has forgotten that he looks like an asshole.
crick: i took money out of her purse on the way out the door.
kll: how much?
crick: 3 dollars, but there were only 6 dollars to begin with
kll: thats pretty sketchy. you should see what i've gotten myself into recently though.
crick: oh yeah?
kll: mistakes i've made a few.
kll: i'm involved in a pretty big mess.
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i like to consider myself a product of hard living and a sloppily dealt hand. nature, nurture, all that crap. a jagged line that runs down the middle of them. i think i'm aware of most of the worst parts of my personality. when i grow up a little i might be able to curb them a bit. as for now watching myself live is like watching a horror movie and i'm the monster. we live in a veritable zoo of vices and moral animals. i'm the one that gets loose at night and eats all the penguins.
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crick: theres chili everywhere
kll: i thought we were dying. it was just chili? i guess i'm relieved
--
there are stains on almost all of my clothes now. one moment of manic irresponsibility and you get blood red chili everywhere.
i'm on vacation in purgatory. i'll be back to hell on earth soon. smoking cigarettes and quoting marx out in front of wherever i'll be working this month. thats a scene that never gets old to me, which is good because odds are it won't stop soon.
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i told you i'd write a blog about you so here it is:
dear ___, i just ate one of your hot pockets while you were at work. it was dope. it had broccoli in it. shit i hope that wasn't gary's or something.
- jake
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i was once asked what i would wish for if i had a monkey's paw or a genie or something like that. the problem is, when i was a little kid i played video games all day long. sometimes i'd look up some cheat codes and beat a game in one day. after that the game is boring and cold and dead.
i've always been happy living in a tangled mess of semantics and existential problems with other people. problems are a source of activity. no more problems = nothing left to do but die. thats why my love affair with houston tx will never end. so much shit going on there. like being stuck in a nuclear fallout shelter for the rest of your life, but its full of books. enough to last you to death. but then your glasses break. no... no... but there was time now!
2 twilight zone references so far, for those counting.
purgatory aka san antonio, texas. i have a special relationship with this town. a lot of things began and ended here. its still exactly the same every time i come here. no spurs no!
hell on earth: screwston tx. downtown george r brown. what can i say, its where all my demons were born.
land of the living: austin. pretty simple. i am living there right now, trying to figure a lot of things out. probably can't stay there forever.
heaven: not in texas
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Currently
listening
:
SUPER TARANTA
By
GOGOL BORDELLO
Release date: 2007-07-24
my favorite thing about myspace is that when someone posts a bulletin myspace presents you with 2 options: "reply to poster" and "delete from friends." pretty cut and dry.
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we don't have any heroes anymore. all of our heroes are people with diseases. i get it, it's just not really the same as the heroes i grew up with. it's pretty passive. people my age have to co opt heroes from other generations. when i want to sleep with someone or buy drugs i have to pretend i want to have another conversation about john lennon. lennon, hendrix, hunter thompson, i get it. it's just that it's not rebelious or new any more. hendrix was a hero but it's not really the same when you hear him pumping out of the white noise speakers at mervyn's or jingling a commercial for a car dealership. it sounds so far off and distant. like you're standing outside of the concert but you can't get in because it's full. it sounds like someone telling one of those "you had to be there" stories.
so i say give him up. he's someone else's hero.
same thing with the whole guitar rock music mess in general. people are attracted to musicians because they're unique and creative. everyone knows that. thats why everyone becomes one. but when everyone becomes a musician then it's not unique and usually not creative. the whole thing collapses on itself. guitars started off great. now i see girls lose their minds for guys who can play them. which is fine, everyone's superficial, i just wish they wouldn't give the guy the credit. they're standing there thinking "wow, he's playing a guitar, that's so creative, how did he think of that??"
theres a guitar on every t-shirt, cereal box, and luby's menu in this city. any idiot could have figured that out, and most idiots can play one. i'm not condemning it. if you enjoy something then you enjoy it, so enjoy it. lets just be honest about why you enjoy it. it's more fair to a guy who feels creatively driven to do things that will never get him laid or befriended or smiled at.
it's like being a nerd at a big highschool. one season 'nerdy' becomes a popular look. all of the sudden everyone who hates you is dressing like you and fucking eachother, and they still hate you. then not only are you left out in the cold, you're robbed of your unique quality. thats the part the real crime.
what i'm saying is the real problem is the smiling lies, the excuses. what i'm saying is that if alcoholism is a disease, and having a disease makes you a hero then i'm superman and we all know that's not true.
the important thing is to always be expecting the worst possible thing to happen.
every bus is ready to run you over. every person ready to lie. every circuit ready to short. the sky is ready to rain knives and the entire hobby lobby furniture aisle.
--
the american dream is different in every part of america. in some places it's making a lot of money from hard work and playing the game. other places it's making a lot of money for simply being better than someone. theres no way for everyone to be rich. wealth is a matter of relativity. in order to be rich someone needs to be poor. the american dream involves eating everyone else.
for some people it's having a family and raising some kids to carry on the legacy.
for some people it's the exact opposite.
what's a legacy? i don't need some sharkfaced kid to tell the world i was insignificant.
in hot springs arkansas it's having a job at the moving company, a wife who works at the local titty bar, and having almost all your teeth. i know that because i stayed at the "all seasons" hotel there recently.
--
prepare to be dissappointed, world. i have arrived.
"those are your shoes, these are my shoes, we've got issues"
years ago i walked into a highschool cafeteria with beezwax in my hair, chuck taylors, and some hip novel in my hand. i knew no one in the room. i sat down across from gretel (psdnym). we immediately began arguing about the ramones. in an art class she drew an entire sleeve of doodles on my arm while i sketched a dead bird with the other one. we had a very pretentious relationship. if you enjoy something then you enjoy it. so enjoy it.
years later we spent a lot of time laying in bed and watching movies. skateboarded to a strip mall. shoplifted books for fun. she read the final 3 chapters of the last harry potter book out loud to me while i layed with my head in her lap.
hanzel walked into a bar. the bouncer told him he'd have to pay 5 dollars to watch the band inside or he'd have to go to the patio. he went to the patio. he drank 3 beers, ordered one more, and closed his tab. he walked back inside with a full beer. a bouncer approached him and told him he'd need to pay 5 dollars to watch the band. he said he was on his way out. the bartender said "you have a full glass of beer." hanzel gulped the beer down in one swig with a blank look on his face and handed it to the bouncer on his way out the door.
we all lived together in a townhouse for a while. a bunch of us. hanzel gave gretel foot rubs while i was asleep upstairs. most guys will sell out their friends for a shot at getting into a warm moist hole 6 months from now.
weeks later we visited hanzel in the psych ward. he had a bad acid trip and wound himself up in the hospital. we brought him books and a guitar.
nothing makes a girl hornier than tragedy. the types of girls that date me anyway. theres always a guy more tragic than me. an orphan, a psychopath, whatever. a guy in wheelchair said hi to me once and i punched him in the nose. not really.
hanzel showed up at one of my shows. i didn't do well. we went downtown afterwards. we started talking. i like hanzel but i would be selling myself out if i didn't walk out of the bar right then. i told him to go to hell. instead, i went.
20 minutes later i was at mugshots. i like the fact that there is a bar i can just walk into and people i know are there. lucas asked me if i wanted a shot. i said yes and he handed me a tall brown shot of whiskey. i drank it and he told me he found it at the bar, someone had left it there an hour ago. i think the idea was that i was supposed to be grossed out. i wondered if there were any more. whiskey doesn't go bad and an accidental roofy will only help me forget that i am a 21 year old unemployed pizza driver who is not tragic enough, but is far too creepy, for most people.
i'm not bitter, just dissapointed.
i don't even remember who gave me a ride home last night. if it was you, thanks.
i asked someone once why you see those old guys and house-wives at open mic every week.
