What Sustains me in Tough Times Pt. 2

I definitely inhaled shaving cream immediately after the filming of this clip. It was worth it.

What Sustains Me In Tough Times

The Glass is Half Empty

When most people look at my city's beautiful landmark,
the Golden Gate Bridge, they feel good.

When I look at it, I think of the eleven workers who
plunged to their deaths while building the thing.

Kermit Moore; O.A. Anderson; Chris Anderson;
William Bass; O. Desper; Fred Dümmatzen;
Terence Hallinan; Eldridge Hillen; Charles Lindros;
Jack Norman; and Louis Russell.

Remember them, you goddamn happy people.

Famous 19th Century Baseball Players

Kid Mann
Redfaced O'Rourke
Frankie the Papist
Saloon Houlihan
Dutchy the Kraut
The Maynooth Moron
The Splendid Dandy
Tuberculosis Thompson
Fats McIlvane
Frenchy the Cuban
Adolph "The Jew" Hammerstein
Liquor Lemmon
Ed "Ginger Fists" Connors
Gangrene Legs Grayson
Giancarlo The Anarchist Shortstop
Rory "Lady" McMurson
Sober Sibley
Teddy "Nigger" Swedenborg

Crying a lot

Now that's life!

Famous Serial Killers

Dapper Dan
The Mormon Mangler
The Freeway Faggot
Bloody Claws Hanrahan
The Burlington Boy Eater
Rape Johnson
Fingernails Furman
Neil, the Creepy Piece of Shit
Harvey the Hobbit
Basement O'Sullivan
The Brain-Damaged Ice Cream Man
Bubbles!
The Cheesecake Factory
The Penis Chewer
The Vagina Carpenter
Wet Sheets Wilson
Vietnam Vernon
Officer Nailgun
The Man With The Van
Soundproofed Selznick
Carl "Jennifer" Burnside
Jimmy the Worm
The Most Evil Hippie
George "Skinner" Skinner
The Dallas Decorator
Quiet Boy
Woodshed Waverley
Donnie the Critter
The Pied Piper of New Jersey

What have you done that most people haven't?

1. Shot heroin
2. Gay sex
3. Seen the Melvins
4. Been arrested while wearing Rollerblades
5. Flipped off the moon

What have you never done in life?

Post your own list.

1. I've never seen "Ghostbusters."
2. I've never done acid.

Bar Romance

Girl: Hi there.

Boy: What the fuck is your deal?

Girl: I saw the glowering masturbator
with his ass crack showing and I thought,
"I want to be a part of that."

Boy: Are you listening to these people?
They're talking about the copper sculptures
they're making for their senior theses.

Girl: You hate art too?

Boy: You seem lonely and damaged. I can
tell because you're talking to me.

Girl: I'm a grad student.

Boy: You're a fucking academic. You're part of
the problem. You take everything that's interesting
and cool about the world and beat it to death.

Girl: So what do you do to earn your oxygen on
this rock?

Boy: I'm a forklift driver.

Girl: Really?

Boy: No. I work in a warehouse but the forklift
drivers hate me. They have their own enclosure
with a TV and Marilyn Monroe posters.

Girl: I'm bored.

Boy: Let's go to your place.

Girl: Alright. I'm parked around the corner.

Boy: Jesus, you have a driver's license? Bring the
Aston Martin at once, double-oh-seven.

Girl: You don't have a driver's license?

Boy: Shut up and load me into the backseat,
Roger Moore.

Change

Have you ever felt an urge to throw all your books
out the fucking window?

No, that's a bit extreme. You can return to a book and
discover new things. Books have replay value.

What about video games? Isn't it time to part with that
Super Nintendo? It was magical when you were seven.
Now you're 23.

Leave it. Put it in a box in your Nana's closet, if you must.

If you don't change, then what's the point of you?

It's a sad thing.

Am I just being an asshole?

My job

I work for a shipping company in a big warehouse in
Hayward, California.

The rear wall of the warehouse is lined with large metal
gates, which were formerly used for loading and unloading train
cars which pulled up right next to the building. At some point
this mode of transport was abandoned, and the train tracks
outside the warehouse are now rusty and forlorn. I've examined
the rotting railroad ties and rusty spikes and thought of the
Chinese workers who bridged the continent with these things,
thus allowing the further westward migration of pale Germanic
tribes.

My job can be grueling, but it beats school. Jesus Christ, I'd
rather eat glass for minimum wage than do homework again.

10 Things That Happen When School Begins.....

1. Six or more hours a day are spent horizontal on the couch watching any and all Halloween or Friday the 13th films.

2. Going outside and getting a bit of exercise, by which I mean walking to the corner store for some smokes.

3. Endless cups of coffee and/or black tea.

4. Thoughts of things that I'd like to do someday, all of which could be accomplished at that very moment (IE blogging/writing more, teaching myself to play guitar, exercising, or reading whatever book is sitting on the table beside me.)

5. Masturbation (Friday night specials every day of the week! It's no longer confined to just Fridays or nights.)

6. Anxiety over what will occur in the future, while contributing absolutely nothing to the moment at hand.

7. Changing into my jammies and hoody before lunchtime. (I hate when it's time to wash them and I need to remain in jeans and a t-shirt during horizontal couch time.)

8. Taking 2 hour baths while the sun is shining outside.

9. Lethargy. Blurred vision. Excessive internet.

10. Interest in Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Kanye songs, all of which are listened to with my eyes closed, horizontal. That's how they're meant to be heard, right?

Fuck The Moon.

I've been making these Industrial songs
on my new digital four-track recorder. Most of them have
gone well, until my roommate took back the earbuds I borrowed
from his girlfriend. This night, under the light of what seems
like a full-ish moon, I tried to record this song onto my
four-track, but it didn't work because of the earbuds issue. So I'll just
reprint the lyrics:

Tonight
I flipped off the moon

I gave the finger
to the moon

Go fuck yourself,
moon

The Dennis Duffy Alibi

In one episode of the brilliant sitcom 30 Rock, Tina Fey's character comes home to her apartment in the middle of the day to find her loser ex-boyfriend sitting on her couch. She yells, "What are you doing here?" and he responds, "Look, I told my mom I got a job, so I've been coming here during the day."

Harry Sterling would like to admit to a certain loved one that for a period of time when he was supposed to be attending community college, he was actually going to the mall and watching movies. That is why I know the plot details of "Hannibal Rising" and that movie where Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe are CIA agents. I'm sorry.

I hate sleep.

It's 2:12 am. Last night I stayed up and took an 8:00am train to the Oakland
Coliseum. I was bored, and I wanted to see a baseball game. I bought a ticket
and lied down in the Coliseum parking lot and dozed off for a while. Eventually I came to,
and the stadium gates opened. I bought a seven-dollar hot dog and as I sat down
to watch batting practice, I realized that I hate the Oakland A's. Those yellow and
green idiots. I left.

I still don't want to sleep. Sleep is surrender. I want to continue
thinking and existing. I don't want to spend half my life unconscious,

Insanity: bring it on.

Breaking Down on a Bulgarian Street Corner

More to come.....

Honoring Michael Jackson

Earlier tonight I tried to pay tribute to the great deceased pop
singer by torrrenting some of his best songs onto my ipod, which
I then connected to an expensive boom box my dad bought me. I stepped
out onto the streets of San Francisco and clicked on the song
"Rock With You." Then I accidentally dropped the stereo, and then
I accidentally dropped the 40 oz St Ides I was holding in my other hand.
It shattered everywhere. I ran home.

Macho!

Write What You Know

1. Fearing that one's Dad will cancel one's credit card
2. Diagnosing oneself with mental illnesses on Wikipedia
3. Fearing that one's food looks junky and unimaginative alongside
roommates' exotic and nutritious groceries
4. The names of San Francisco Giants past and present
5. Arrested Development (TV series and early 90s rap collective)
6. RBI Baseball '94 for Sega Genesis (Bonds is the best hitter)
7. Feeling one's organs for signs of failure
8. Pretending to know what existentialism is
9. After five years and thousands of dollars, I still have no idea
how to smoke a cigarette
10. Dreams of armed black men with vengeance on their minds

The Grand Experiment

Our potential is infinite yet we insist on being simply human.
We live out our lives without ever testing the boundaries of what that means.
We spend our lives searching for those things which can never be truly attained.
We hurt, hurt, hurt.
Ourselves and all of those around us.
It's only conscious some of the time.
How can we learn how to love?
Or should love as we know it be forgotten, stricken from the language of our lives?

Advice Notebook

Last night, in a fit of something (bipolar disorder?) I bought a
notebook and a pen from a small bodega with the intent of writing
down people's advice. I asked the two clerks in the bodega what I
should do with my life. The younger Mexican guy was clearly
uncomfortable and had nothing, and in retrospect I don't blame
him. The older Chinese guy thought it over and said, basically,
I could continue down my current path (he's seen me before) or
do like him and get a fucking job. I then rushed over to the
Scottish-themed pub across the street because my real mission
was to ask for the advice of the Glaswegian who tends bar there.
I thought bitterly to myself, "Fuck you, Chinese guy, I don't
want to be a liquor store clerk, I want to be Scottish!"

Now two nights ago I had spent several hours shouting at this
bloke about the Associates, Aztec Camera, Celtic F.C., and Irvine
Welsh. In my imagination,I was the son he never had. This is a
pattern here, basing my entire self-esteem on the approval of a
single person. This is what is scrawled across the pages of my
notebook from last night:

"Fuck. My hero just left. I bought this notebok because I
wanted him to tell me something wise. He just shook my hand
and disappeared. He's Scottish. He probably doesn't want to be
bothered. He grew up on the streets of Glasgow. He's a writer.
I gave him some of my shit. I gave him some prose and poetry.
He said I had talent. But he also implied I was a drunken loser
who couldn't pick him out of a lineup. He asked me what I wanted
to do with said talent. He said I should probably write a
novel if I want to get my point across. What's my point? That life
in the U.S.A. sucks? He suggested that it might fly in the U.K."