The Jesus of Failure

So people still read this...

2007-05-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

So my band, Rapid Adapter just put our first record

We've been compaired to: The Zymotics, The Reds, The Catholic Boys, The ADICTS(for some reason), The Minutemen, Redd Kross and host of others.

Order our our debut 7 inch at: www.myspace.com/rapidadapter and see if you can figure out what the fuck we sound like

It features such hits as:

"Hate Montage"
"Grow A Soul"
"Modern Neurotic"
"Proximity Mine"
plus many more

8 songs in total....

ACT NOW.....

BUT WAIT, there's even more!!!! For the first 500 orders, you will ALSO get a bonus 7 song CDR with your order!!!!

That's a total of 15 songs for a meesly 5.50 postage paid...

And it's super easy to order with Pay Pal

HOW CAN YOU RESIST AN OFFER LIKE THAT?????

Explanations & Apologies Part 2:"Dude, your blog sucks"

2005-08-24T22:23:00.000-07:00

Okey-dokey, so there's been a lot of negative responce to the JoF. Some people don't like the writing, some people don't like my vastly overdone promotional style. I said in an earlier post that I really just don't have the time to respond to individual complaints anymore. I said that I unless someone put together a coherent argument agin me that lasted at least three paragraphs(for example) that it just wasn't worth my time.

Needless to say, but people were too lazy to ever actually do that. They were content with reading my blogs and responding with two sentences every week or so, but it was just beyond them to put together something more substantial. I thought to myself, "Why do they put so much effort in in such small increments? Instead of writing half a dozen three sentence posts, why not just shoot your wad with one big one?"

I realized that if you stuck all those posts together, they actually WOULD equal a post of some substance. SOOOOOO, I did just that. What follows is an edited compilation of two dozen plus insults that have been hurled my way since this blog has started. I will present this all as one big chunk, and then afterwards I will respond to the claims made.

Enjoy:

.................................................................................................
Dude, your blog sucks...

I tell ya, I love nothing more than reading puerile, bitter rants about the state of modern relationships. It must be nice not to have a job so that you can spend your time writing this inane, pointless drivel. Does your fat ass have anything else to do besides complain? I'm so glad you can be such a loser and still find something to do.

Post some more crap on how you can't get laid and how you can't contain your rage towards those who are getting some action. Come on, complain some more about you reach some super emotional friend level with girls (aka, they would never want to fuck you)...it's really original. Hopefuly, once you get laid you will find more interesting things to write about.

I bet you think your record collection is supposed to get you laid, too and it's only dumb bitches who don't fuck you because if it. Do something yourself and shut up. If it was your best friend or wife or something that is a dilemma, but wanting to be fucking Greil Marcus all the time because you figure you were anointed as such because of your "superior" musical taste, is retarded.

Is it nice to feel so self satisfied and accomplished, writing your boring shit and then spamming your hip blog links on so many message boards? I don't mind reading this shit occasionally, and I'm all for people who delve into bad fiction/non-fiction rants and want people to see it, BUT....we realized you had a blog the first time you posted about it. Constantly updating on message boards about how "controversial" the thing is is mearly bothering people with shameless self-promotion. God damn, can't you figure it out yet? It's not controversy when nobody gives a shit!

What a sad post from a sad, sad man it. It should be retitled "Please think I'm controversial." You clearly have a serious, serious martyr complex. You may trick a lot of people into clicking your links but there's a big difference between an "avid reader" and some well intented chap that attempts to read your pointless assdrip and then gives up five sentences in out of sheer boredom.

...........................................................................................

Yay, so there's the argument against me, and here's my responce:

"Dude, your blog sucks"

Seriously, over a thousand people a week read this blog. Whenever a new update gets put up, page views go through the fucking roof. Just the other day I got 650 some page views in 24 hours time. There are hundreds and hundreds of people reading this shit. This is a pretty surprising fact considering how new this blog is.

There are hundreds and hundreds of people reading it and there are under two dozen complaining about it. Do the math there. It's pretty clear that not EVERYone hates the blog, it's clear that not even MOST people dislike it. In fact, you're identifying yourself as part of a very small minority, less than 5%, by openly decrying my bullshit.

"I tell ya, I love nothing more than reading puerile, bitter rants about the state of modern relationships."

Yeah, my shit is really puerile. Especially when I talk about how unhealthy and immature so many of those "modern relationships" are. If this stuff was really that elementary and ill-formed, I'd be more whining about stuff like, "Oh god, why are things so crazy? I just don't understand why these things are happening to me? I can't figure out all these crazy, complex relationships." I am not saying that though, I am providing analysis and context and I'm doing a pretty damn good job of "figuring it all out". Paul Westerburg's lyrics to "Bastards of Young" THOSE were immature, but not my stuff. Or well, actually, YEAH, I AM immature, but in a relative sense, in the community, I actually AM prolly a little more mature than average. That's not saying much, though.

"It must be nice not to have a job so that you can spend your time writing this inane, pointless drivel."

I spend at least two dozen hours a week on this blog. That might not seem like a lot of "work" to people, but for someone disabled, a person who has been declared "Unable to maintain long term, meaningful employment", it's pretty damn good. And yeah, it's so sad that you would think it's "NICE" to have a metabolic disorder that is likely to kill you by your mid thirties.

"Does your fat ass have anything else to do besides complain?"

Ahhh, here we start to see the first of the "fat guy" comments. Get this through your heads, idiots, just because I'm fat, it doesn't automatically mean my every effort in life is meaningless. In fact, quite the opposite, since so many people are so prejudiced against my kind, it forces us to be BETTER if we want to get any attention(I refer you to the fat chicks thread).

"I'm so glad you can be such a loser and still find something to do. Post some more crap on how you can't get laid and how you can't contain your rage towards those who are getting some action."

Not being able to get laid is one of the main, basic themes that every creative, artistic type talks about. I mean, come on, every single power-pop song is about not being able to get laid. This is just one of those type of things that people talk about. And look at it in the slightly broader sense; who DOESN'T talk about their disfunction in romantic area's? Expecting people to not talk getting laid, or the lack there of is just stupid.

"Come on, complain some more about you reach some super emotional friend level with girls (aka, they would never want to fuck you)...it's really original."

Yeah, it's BAD for me talk about things that are true. It is so horrible that I'm much more likely to acheive emotional intimacy than physical intimacy with a woman. And as for being original, it IS more rare for a guy to be like that. Usually it's the other way around.

"Hopefuly, once you get laid you will find more interesting things to write about."

Well, again, this relates to what I said above. I AM fat guy who can't get laid, BUT that doesn't mean my every thought and opinion is wholly without merit. Just because I'm not perfect, just because I'm not wholly free of bias, it doesn't invalidate the opinions I expouse. Learn a little about logical fallacy and you'll find out pretty quickly that NO ONE is without bias.

"I bet you think your record collection is supposed to get you laid, too and it's only dumb bitches who don't fuck you because if it."

Yeah, I don't get this one at all. I mean, I realized eons ago that my record collection is not a social asset. It will never, ever get me laid. Quite the opposite, in fact. A lot of girls will just see me as weird and obsessive for such things. Of course, they'll fall head over heels for dudes with serious drug problems, THAT type of weird & obsessive behavior is much more acceptable.

"Do something yourself and shut up. If it was your best friend or wife or something that is a dilemma, but wanting to be fucking Greil Marcus all the time because you figure you were anointed as such because of your "superior" musical taste, is retarded."

Huh? Of all the rock critc (archi-)types you could choose from, you went with Greil "The Most Boring Man In Rock" Marcus? Furthermore, when the hell do I even WRITE ABOUT music to begin with? This blog is more "cult of personality" type stuff mixed with poorly researched sociological observations. As I said in Part 1 of "Explanations & Apologies", my shit comes from more of a pro-wrestling/stand up comedy type angle.

"Is it nice to feel so self satisfied and accomplished; writing your boring shit and then spamming your 'hip' blog links on so many message boards?"

Ahhh, now here we're getting to the crux of the other half of the negative JoF blowback. A decent amount of people don't like the fact that I ever so annoyingly bombard all the usual(and some of the unusual) boards with posts every time I update this fucker. I might stop doing this, but honestly, I think it's funny that people get annoyed by it. I reconize that it's kinda ridiculous, but really all it speaks to is my enthusiam for the stuff I write on here. I really believe in this stuff and I want as many people as possible to read it. Also, AGAIN, the pro-wrestling influence: I find promotional overkill FUNNY. You prolly would to if you'd watched wrestling your whole life and had to hear the announcers talk about the upcoming PPV every five minutes(for example). I know there aren't too many people out there that seriously study pro-wrestling interviews, but it's extremely interesting. Knowing how to manipulate the emotions of a crowd is fascinating. Look into it.

Also, in reguards to the spam-blitz, the simple fact of the matter is that it's WORKING. Every time I put up promo's people come here in droves and read this shit. The posts on the Goner Board alone are worth about a hundred referrals in a day's time. People's attention spans are changing, developing and with all the options out there nowadays, you kinda DO have to be constantly shouting in people's faces so they don't forget.

Ya know, this is a fucking BLOG, people barely, barely read these things. They read Agony Shorthand and a couple others, but for the most part they don't regularly keep up with a lot of blogs, maybe a dozen at most. Someone pointed out some where that "Yeah, everyone has a blog now, what's the big deal with yours?" The big deal is that mine is actually getting READ in large numbers and it's annoying people. That's great and it's way more than your stupid blog ever did. It's kind of even a joke that I keep on refering to it as a "blog" because it's definetly something different/more than that.

"I don't mind reading this shit occasionally,"

Yeah, that's another facit of the JoF that annoys people, somehow I've managed to build up this aura, pretty quickly, that EVERYone EVERYwhere has to read every single, little thing I post on here. They resent the fact that the blog is being pushed on them so hardcore. It's like they don't even have a choice as to whether they read it or not.

I also should note that it's pretty funny that most of the people I am annoying ever so much are the exact same people that take pride in their OWN ability to be dipshits on message boards. Why don't they reconize and greet their fellow traveler with open arms? If all I am is "just another message board asshole(MBA)", why are my efforts so poorly received by that crowd?

I think its because even though I came from that whole milleiu, I've actually OUTGROWN it. I still kinda do that type of stuff, but now it's really much more of a complicated thing. I've found some weird, small niche where I can piss off both the "normal" people AND the asshole crowd. A lot of people's knee jerk reaction is to just label me a straight MBA, but there's layers to the whole thing. First of all, there IS the initial, annoying MBA type character, but THEN, there's the whole sub-level of me BREAKING CHARACTER and going into painstaking detail explaining my actions and motivations. That's what this whole entry is, it's just another part of "the character", a character that's much more complex and way more successful at drawling attention than your average MBA is.

Ultimately, other message board assholes don't like me because I'm just fucking BETTER at this then they are. I'm so good at it, it's like I'm off in my own little world. YEAH, I've said it before, I know it's all pompous and arrogant and pretentious... That's PART OF THE CHARACTER, part of joke. I take a certain degree of my own genuine thoughts and opinions and then I cover them in bullshit.

"and I'm all for people who delve into bad fiction/non-fiction rants and want people to see it, BUT....we realized you had a blog the first time you posted about it. Constantly updating on message boards about how "controversial" the thing is is mearly bothering people with shameless self-promotion."

Yeah, that's obviously what it is, shameless self-promotion. And I was the FIRST person to make joke about it. I KNOW ABOUT IT, and it's developed into a nice little add-on to drawl attention to things. Fuck, you should've never let on that I was annoying you, because now that I've sensed a weakness, I'm going after it full force. Like I said, I'm way better than you at this.

"God damn, can't you figure it out yet? It's not controversy when nobody gives a shit!"

Oh please, that controversy entry very clearly outlined over ten posts that really fucking irked people. People were calling for blood over that shit. I nearly got beat up more than once. You yourself might not care about it, but that doesn't mean there weren't a good couple dozen some people that all worked up about it at the time it happened.

And ya know, I have more than successfully argued my point with all of this. Learn a little about the rules of debate, that one sentence of yours is not a proper responce to three pages worth of commentary.

Furthermore, another talent of mine is creating a ruckass, creating "controversy" over absolutely fucking NOTHING. My whole life I've had this odd ability to bring out the worst in people, get them all worked up over the most pointless cockscum EVER. It's funny...

"Get over your Andy Kaufman fixation."

Again, Kaufman used to be a big influencing factor, but I've long since moved on. The most notable difference is that he was renound for NEVER, EVER breaking character, while I, on the other hand, break character as much as possible.

"What a sad post from a sad, sad man it. It should be retitled "Please think I'm controversial."

Again, I could point you to at least two dozen some people that will testify to my own former/present controversiality(whether it be ironic or genuine).

It should also be noted that my constant invoking of "controversy" can be seen as just another fascit(sp?) of the mad, over-blown self-promotional bullshit. Clearly, there's a good amount of exaggeration in the stuff I write. I'm aware of that. So many people point to so many things in my writing and claim that, "OHHHH, this is the reason why he sucks, because of this part." But the cold, hard turth of it all is that I'm usually more than aware of those annoying parts and I consciously put them in there because I think they're funny.

"You clearly have a serious, serious martyr complex."

Wow, what a stunning, brilliant insight into my character. I have "JESUS" in my name and you call me a martyr. How did you EVER connect the dots with that one?

"You may trick a lot of people into clicking your links but there's a big difference between an 'avid reader' and some well intented chap that attempts to read your inane drivel and gives up after three sentences because of pure boredom."

Yeah, but those same people keep on coming back, again and again. Why? Because they're stupid and I keep on tricking them into reading this stuff.... HA HA..... fuck you

"The Jesus of Failure"? More like "The King of All Assholes".

2005-08-23T00:03:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago, some one on The Goner Board made a comment about how my shit just isn't controversial. This is just a dumb statement; of course there's controversy. Sometimes that's ALL there is. I mean, back home, I was hated for YEARS for saying some of this shit.

At this point in time I prolly qualify as a "post-asshole", but I still offend people right & left. Sure, it's not on some simplistic, knee-jerk level anymore, but that whole slant is still quite pressent in almost everything I lay down. Much like the nihilistic Wonder Showzen , I pride myself on being to alienate EVERYone EVERYwhere. Take no prisoners, win no allies. I just simply REFUSE to tow anyone's personal line of bullshit, including my own.

With that in mind, here is a guide to some of the most controversial pieces I've written. With each of these, I've both gained and lost friends. I've created enemies that I've then won over just to alienate again(and so on)...

THE ASSHOLE CLINT GUIDE:

This one alienated people, SPECIFIC people, on a couple different levels. First of all, a few girls thought I was talking directly about them in the part where I say, "It's annoying though, just recently I've realized that all my best writing spurts have really just been spurred on by whatever girl I was having melodrama with at that very moment." They got even more angry when I explained that I was just using that as a device to lend a dramatic undercurrent to things. I've admitted plenty of times that there's a certain amount of lies and bullshit in the stuff I write. Everybody does it, it's never 100% true. Also, that specific "Frankie" girl I mention read all of that stuff and well, I can understand why she hates me.

People told me to fuck off for this one as well when I first wrote it. About four people thought I was specifically talking about them, but really it was more about a pretty broad social trend that I'd witnessed a lot of at the time.

The Kinda Boyfriend spiel chessed off a decent number of people as well; people that were IN those exact type of interactions. "Essentially, the 'kinda' relationship is basically just a FORMALIZED unhealthy relationship. A 'kinda girlfriend' is just a BAD girlfriend."

That same group of people were equally angered by the Semi-Ex post as well, because it dealt with the same type of stuff. " It's like they tell themselves, 'Oh, I put so much effort into getting close with this person, and it's so hard for me to connect to someone else, so now even though things have gone sour, I need to maintain this relationship.' Now, this is ALMOST a good idea, but the thing IS, when you BREAK UP...you actually have to BREAK UP. You can't go from being a couple and being in love to being 'just friends' within the course of a few days."

The first time I ever got drunk rant inspired over a 100 posts of Clint hate. I deserved it...

More recently, I'm sure I lost more than a few my space buddys when I put up the Top 10 Sins of Rip Off thing. It might seem harsh to some, but it's the truth. I love Greg, it's just sad that he's not a major, influencing part of the community anymore. Don't give up on the rock'n'roll.

Even though I explain my reasons for talking about TV in this post there were still a number of people who gave me shit for writing about such "mainstream" stuff. "comedy is a different beast than music. There are hundreds upon thousands of bands and it's just natural to narrow things down into a specific sub-group and concentrate on that. With comedy though, maybe one 20th the amount of people are involved in creating this stuff. The fraternity of gifted comedy writers is a small, small group."

Here's one of the few instances on this blog of me directly replying to someone that I'd pissed off: click here

Almost all of the Rip Off columns stirred up a lot of shit, but this one was definetly the worst. It's pretty much the clearest example of me being a total douchebag. I definetly lost some friends over this one, but I think I won 'em all back later, hard to say...

People also had trouble with THE NEW HATE . See if you can find the part that made them mad. Heh heh, I know FOR CERTAIN that I permanently fucked up some friendships over that one. Oh well....

The line about "heat seeking missiles locked on on the path of pure mediocrity" really got under people's skin in this post . But hey, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke...

God damn, there really are a lot of these. I'm starting to understand why people can't stand my guts, heh heh. Anyway, one of the biggest shit storms I ever stirred up was over my rejected Blank Gen column . It's prolly one of the mainer reasons that I was not asked to be a part of Terminal Boredom(that's a joke there, in case any one missed it).

Well over 200 people on various different message board chimed in with how much they hated the telling friends their band sucks thing. I actually even got confronted about it a lot in real life as well. I think I was forced to tell like half a dozen friends what I ACTUALLY thought of their shitty bands... Fuck 'em if they can't take some simple, mean spirited criticism.

ANYWAY, I think that's enough for now..... See ya later, douchebags

Sam Seder:Too Good For TV...

2005-08-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

Yay, look at me, ma, I'm actually posting pictures on here. Anyway, today we've got another entry about undeservingly obscure TV writers. Sam Seder is a duder that definetly deserves to be on the master list there of. He takes a back seat only to the aforementioned Judd Apatow in said category. Seder has been responsible for great show after great show; numerous promising pilots that never got picked up.

The foremost of these is of course the Pilot Season mini-series which aired on the Trio network. Pilot Season was a sequel to Who's the Caboose, an independant film about a pair of romantically intertwined actor/comedians who move out to LA from NYC to try and make it in TV.

The parallels between the project and Seder's own life are numerous. Much like the characters in his film, he sputtered a bit trying to find some solid footing in Hollywood. His 2001 police comedy Beat Cops went no where, even after Conan O'Brien stepped in and helped get the pilot get reshot and aired on Fox. In 2003 he directed the mostly forgotten I'm With Busey for Comedy Central. The show lasted a season and was decent to good. It perhaps deserves a place in the pantheon for exposing the fact that Busey's a nutball(something which VH1 is trying to capitalize on with their current season of Celebrity Fit-Club). Also, I think most casual fans of I'm With Busey never quite realized that the show was scripted.

In 2002, Seder did a voice in Saddle Rash, a flash animated show that once again was very good, but went NO WHERE. He also does some voice work on the Adult Swim show Home Movies, which also features the talents of H. Jon Benjamin who played a major role in both Caboose & Pilot Season.

Finally, in 2004, Seder found some more solid footing when he joined Janeane Garofalo as the co-host of The Majority Report on Air America radio. Some would see radio as a definite step down from TV work, but whatever, a paycheck is a paycheck. Also, very recently, he did the voice of the bug on the Patience episode of Wonder Showzen(fuck that bug). Some might also remember him as the New Yorker Comedy Writer boyfriend from the episodes of Sex & The City where they were in LA.

Seder is yet another talented, overlooked creative force in Hollywood, let's just all hope he can keep a steady job.....

.......................

ANYWAY, for those of you that like these TV posts and don't wanna sift through the bullshit, here are links all the comedy writing stuff on here:

Justification & Wonder Showzen

Mike Reiss

Bill Odenkirk

Judd Apatow

Drawn Together

Trio

Fuse

Real World

MORE Real World

Security, Colorado

Putting it all into proper context....

2005-08-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, so now that all of my old Blank Gen and Rip Off columns are on here, I thought I'd put them all into chronological order, so's they can be read in the proper context.

Okay, here we go:

Part 1.Hustler Chic

Part 2.The Zero's

Part 3.The 90's

Part 4.Comic Book Dorks

Part 5.The Can't Get Laid Manifesto

Part 6.Roanoke Crusty Riot

Part 7.MANIFESTO Manifesto

Part 8.Chicks in Bands

Part 9.History of Stupidty

Part 10.Engagement

Part 11.First Rip Off Column

Part 12.Best Foot Forward Theory

Part13.Mission Statement

Part 14.Slanging The Tude

Part 15.Don't Have Kids

Part 16.Mediocrity is the Enemy

Part 17.Time Makes Fools of Us All

Part 18.Nerd Genocide

Part 19.The End of the End

Nerd Genocide

2005-08-11T23:07:00.000-07:00

Another old Rip Off column, this one is from June of 2002. And hey, it has pictures... Yay

"Now is the Age of the Nerd"

-by Clint R. Parson(the "R" stands for "completely misundeRstood")

Wow, I actually have records to review this month. Sure, I only have six things to review and SURE, four of those are reissues, but whatever, it's better then nothing.. As for next month, I think I might just phase out the reviews altogether. Anyway, let's get into the criticing-ful-ness:

Heart Attack-"The Last War 1980-84"

Okay, now remember the linear notes of that one Killed By Death where the dude says that Heart Attack only ever had one good song? Well, yeah, he was right. Not that most of this disc is horrible or anything, but they definetly were not a "GREAT" band. For those of you unfamiliar, this is the band that D-Generation's Jesse Malin started up in the early eighties. Soundwise, it's early eighties, pre-hardcore punk rock, like a lesser Undead, that turns into early 80's hardcore, as the disc progresses. The first five tracks are from their first demo, which was recorded when Malin was a tender twelve years old. Definetly the best punk rock songs ever recorded by pre=teens. At the end of the day, the whole disc is a little better then mediocre, but not by much. There's a song or two about nazi's and Hilter, so that's always a plus. Get it if you really love "God is Dead".(Broken Rekids: POB 460402, San Francisco, CA 94145=0402, www.brokenrekids.com)

Speedealer-"Second Sight"

Remember when Speedealer was "REO Speedealer" and they sounded like Zeke? Remember when you still liked Zeke? Do you remember 1998? Boy, those were the days. Er well, no they weren't. But anyway, on Speedealer's lastest offering, their fourth full length, we find the lads drinking even more deeply from the metal fountain. Even worse, this record was produced by ex-Metallica bass player, Jason Newsted, and sounds, not unlike frickin' Metallica. Why did I even buy this? The perfect companion piece to the new Nashville Pussy record. Also, this was released by "Palm Pictures", which I suspect to be a front for some major label.(Palm:601 W. 26th Street,11th Floor, New York, NY 10001, www.palmpictures.com)

Rocket From the Tombs-"the Day the Earth Met..."

Aaaaaah, finally a record I can fully stand behind. Yes, boys and girls, this is the reason I hate Rocket From the CRYPT. I shouldn't even really need to write anything here about this record, just go fucking BUY it already. The Tombs were a proto-punk band from Cleveland in the mid-70's, and they contained members of both the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. There's about five Dead Boys songs on here, three Ubu diddies, and TWO, count 'em, two Stooges' covers. Some people wonder how members of bands as different as Ubu and the Dead Boys could've co-existed in the same group. Buy this disc and you won't be wondering anymore. As denoted by their choice of cover material, there is a heavy, heavy Stooges influence throughout this whole disc. Just fucking BUT IT, douche-flower. I give this disc the highest possible recommendation I can(Smog Veil:774 Mays #10-454, Incline Village, NV 89451, www.smogveil.com )

Various Artists-"Cleveland Confidential"

Whelp, from one Cleveland record to another. This CD is a reissue of both the "Cleveland Confidential" LP from the early 80's and the EP of the same title from a year or two earlier. Stand out tracks include of COURSE, the Pagans, Keith Matic, John Lovesin, the Offbeats, The Clocks and many others. The Severe song on here "Her Name Was Jane", is killer and later was covered by the Pagans. The Menthol Wars, "Even Lower Manhattan" contribution is a totally rockin' new wave-y number sounding not unlike Devo or the Cars. There are a few real clunkers on this disc, but at least a good two thirds of the stuff is totally top notch stuff ranging from punk rock to power pop. There's also an "okay" Defnics' song on here, a band which I believe Smog Veil up there recently reissued. Linear notes are supplied by the legendary Mike Hudson of the aforementioned Pagans. (Overground Records: PO Box 1NW, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE99 INW, www.voiceprint.co.uk/overground/

The Makers-"Strangest Parade"

Hmmmm, decent soulful mid-70's Bowie rip, coupled with some odd "musicial interludes" between songs. Decent for what it is and...... Wait.... the MAKERS?...... No....it couldn't.....COULD it?.....Is this the same(dot dot dot)is this the same band that were peers with Teengenerate? Is this the same band that put out that middle finger record? Fuck, is this the same band that had a god damn RIP OFF single? Holy fuck....I think it IS, this is the god damn MAKERS. How can this be? When did they turn into THIS? My god, last time I looked they were all mods, but now they look like, well, fucking BOWIE from the mid seventies. What in the fuck? Why trade obscure greatness for slightly less obscure medioctrity? I guess time really DOES make fools of us all. Compromise must be fun.(Sub Pop: PO Box 20645, Seattle, WA 96102, www.subpop.com )

Various Artists-"Guillotined at the Hanger:Shielded By Death Volume 2"

Okay, what we got here is a comp of eastern Connecticut and western Massachusetts punk bands from '79 to '83. A lot of good stuff on here, from the likes semi-60's styled M-80's, to the more hardcore Outpatients and Chronic Disorder. The October Days provide a competent Wipers rip off. The Not Quite give us the hilarious(albeit, muddy) "Satan's Elves". Other good tracks are provided by the Vandelz, The Sterics. Dennis Most of the Instigators and the October Days.(Dionysus: PO Box 1975, Burbank, CA 91507, www.dionysusrecords.com )

Okay, now having said THAT, let's get into the meat of this fucker.

As I'm sure everyone's noticed lately, people just can't seem to fucking shut up about the new god damned Star Wars movie. The second pre-quel to a trilogy of movie's that contained characters as complex as yer average animated Disney flick. People are quick to point out that both Episodes One and Two SUCK, but what they have a little more trouble admitting that even the originals were bullshit to begin with. Do you remember all those years there that the Star Wars movie's were UNCOOL, all those years where the only Star Wars fans were socially maladjusted, potential serial killer nerd types? Yeah, for a good long time there, Star Wars was seriously uncool, or even forgotten about. Just like Alf and Mr. T, up until recent like, people just didn't give a FUCK about the force.

Star Wars though isn't the only "nerd fodder" lately though that has received MAJOR attention from the mainstream. Need I even point out the 114 MILLION bucks "Spiderman" made in it's first weekend of release? "Spiderman" was a movie that just recycled 35 year old comic book storylines, and passed them off as something new. I laughed when people were surprised that Uncle Ben got shot by the robber. It was ridiculous. The "nu nerd" trend doesn't end there either. Even older then the Spiderman storylines is the hundred some year old "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the all time nerd holy grail, which was also recently adapted into a film(like I need to tell you that).

All three movies, "Spiderman", Episode Two and "Lord of the Rings", made considerable amounts of cash. They were all MAINSTREAM hits, they were accepted by MAINSTREAM, "normal" audiences. These three separate francishes that used to be the EPITOMY of nerdhood are now "what's in", what's COOL. I remember a time when a person could get beaten UP for admitting they liked ANY of those three, especially so "Lord of the Rings". Yeah, I remember all of that, but times have changed.

Yes, we are now truly living in THE AGE OF THE NERD.

Cower in fear, mother fuckers, because the geek jihad has come to kill us all. We must do all we can to resist them, we can NOT give in to the evil dork militia. We must STOP reading books, we must turn OFF the History Channel, we HAVE TO stop paying attention to the things going on around us. Yeah, because now that nerds have gained mainstream acceptance, they are no longer cool. We have to do everything we can to distance ourselves from them. The only power that Poindexter's ever HAD came comPLETELY from mainstream society's rejection of them. Why did they get higher grades on the tests? Why did they do their homework? Was it because they were SMARTER then everyone else? Was it because they LIKED "knowledge", because they LIKED to learn? No, it was because they were social retards, and they had no friends. Plain and simple, they had no friends and they were bored, they had ample amounts of free time, and WITH all that time, well, they DID their homework, they STUDIED for the tests. They didn't study because they liked to, they just did it because they were so fucking BORED, they were so fucking LONELY and they wanted/NEEDED anything they could find to take their minds off their own loserhood. So yeah, of course they picked up books, of COURSE they answered the extra credit questions.

That's what they derived their self worth from, they weren't good people, they sucked at social interaction, so instead, they placed value on good grades and pleasing the teacher and stuff like that. Nerds resented the normal, well adjusted kids, they hated their ability to easily make friends, so, slowly, over the years, they built up a cruel system of lies and distortions that made THEM the superior ones. THEY were the ones better then the emotional healthy, sane people. And that arrogance, that very basic desire to be BETTER then everyone else, that drove them, that MADE think harder, work longer, do whatever was necessary to prove to EVERYone just how much better they were then everyone else.

As I said, all the power nerds ever had came from the fact that they were social REJECTS. Now though, that nerd-dom is popular, all true nerds are going to wither on the vine and DIE. Now that nerds are thrust into the mainstream, they can no longer stick to their old tricks, they can't talk about science and nature and that type of shit. Now that "cool" people are talking to them, they actually have to talk BACK them, they have to enguage in meaningful social discourse with people. THIS is what will prove to be the undoing of nerdkind. Remember, the main thing that made them nerds in the first place was their poor social skills. In the past, geeks were segregated, they only interacted with other nerds. Together with their brothers, they formed their own new societies that DIDN'T require them to have stellar social skills. They formed these new societies and were somewhat comfortable in them.

That nerd culture that they built, that geek society which was the only thing keeping them alive, it's been sold out to the mainstream. It was freezing outside and all dorks moved into "Geek Manor". But now though, Geek Manor has been sold, and they no longer have anywhere to live. They're in the cold, they're freezing, they're dying, what are they gonna do now? Well, I'll TELL you what they're gonna do now, their serial killer-ish tendancies, tendancies that have been there since day one, those behaviors are gonna emerge FULL FORCE. Now that nerds don't have a home any more, they're gonna get even crazier, they're gonna turn on the rest of the human race, they're gonna turn on the people that rejected them and KILL US ALL.

Faced with this certainly, what are sane people, "the norms", supposed to do? Do we just casually sit back and let them slaughter us all? No, this is an age of proactivity, not REactivity, we must beat them to the punch. If they are gonna come kill us, the only choice we have is to go out and kill THEM before they kill us. Yeah, we have to organize ourselves into groups, a kind of a 21st century posse. We must join together and hunt down the nerds, we've got to round them all up and slaughter them in one single, mass blood bath. It's the only choice, it's either us or them. Ultimately, the nerds will be better off dead anyway, we all know how sad and pathetic and unhappy their lives our. By killing them, we will be doing both ourselves AND them a favor. Fuck, most of them would probably just kill themselves anyways, if they weren't such pussy's.

Long story short:Nerd Genocide NOW, ask me how(exlcamation point)

PS.One thing though, does this mean I'M gonna be killed to? Because if all nerds are killed, then.......Hmmmmmmm......

Slanging the Tude

2005-08-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm, I forget if this was ever posted on here or not, but heres my THIRD Rip Off.org column. It's a pretty huge load of bullshit. But hey, that was the persona at the time. The Rip Off ones were supposed to be "evil" while the Blank Gen ones were more noble minded. The conflict between these two writing personas was solved when I just merged 'em both together into the "awesome but sucky" JoF dealie...

From March 2002:

Slangin' the 'Tude'

by Clint R. Parson(the "R" stands for "rock'n'roll")

Okay, so apparently you douche-tards weren't paying attention to my column two weeks ago when I told you to send me free records to review. Come on, people, send me crap. Big Neck, send me stuff, it'll probably get a good review, R'N'R Blitzkreig, you to, In the Red, Dirtnap, Repent, Goner, Alien Snatch, ALL you need to send in stuff, I'll probably say nice things. Other labels, such as yer Estrus's and Empty's and Sympathy's, I dunno, I ain't makin' any promises to you folk. If you send me the couple good records you put out, obviously THOSE'll get a good review, but if ya send me the fucking over long, over wanked PABLUM that is your bread and butter, then I ain't gonna be kind. As for individual bands, whoever you are, feel free to send stuff in. Be warned though that I'll take ya out at the knees if you send in some crappy CD demo that sounds exactly like every other poorly performed, poorly recorded demo that ALL of us have heard a million times before.

The address is still:
Clint Parson
524A XXXXXXXX XXXX
Blacksburg, VA 24060-5116

Having said that, let's get into the meat of this fucker. Now, in that whole big, long, pointless "generation mindfuck" rant the other week, I did some basic outline-age of things that one needs to well, manipulate people. Ya know, how to present an image and blah, blah and all that crap. One thing that I didn't really talk about in depth though was that in order to sell anyone on ANYthing, you have to be able to talk the talk. If you cannae "walk the walk" so good, it doesn't matter, as long as you can TALK a good game, people will buy your bullshit. In order to be an effective manipulator/motivator/con man you HAVE TO be able to slang the tude. The attitude, you have to be knowledgable about it, you have to wield it like some kind of sword or something that you could potentially use to kill people and stuff.

As with everything, to become a 'tude slangin' expert, you have to PRACTICE. That's where the internet comes in. Ne'er before has there existed meduim better suited to 'tude slangin'. On the internet you can say whatever you want to whoever you want and the chances of ANY kind of real reprisal are exTREMELY low. I know I myself have said SEVERAL things over the internet that would've resulted in a fight or perhaps even a riot if I had said them in real life. It's a training ground, a practice space that is completely necessary and integral to one fully mastering 'tude slang-age.

How does one get started with the tude slang-age, you might ask? Whelp, find yourself a message board somewhere, preferrably for a band or some label or something. It's best if it's for a local band or some kind of scene message board. Next, target a local band, say they suck, whatever, it doesn't really matter WHAT you say, as long as you get a reaction from them. Most bands, especially small, local bands are VERY insecure about their own musical ability/merit and it's just so easy to get a good emotional reaction out of them by saying they suck. Fer instance, I just recently dissed a local band who seems to think it's okay to play sets of only six songs. My critisizm of them went as such; "Ya know, REAL bands have sets longer then six songs." When dissing a local band, one should ALways be sure to say that they aren't a "real" band. By far and large, most "local" bands AREN'T real bands and will probably only last nine months anyways and put out one crappy CD demo. By SAYING that a band isn't a "real" band, you are showing that you are aware of that general local band trend and that SAID band is a PART of that trend.

It's all about generalizations and stereotypes. You have to learn all of these and then just APPLY them to whoever you're insulting. People will REACT emotionally to these stereotypes because, OBVIOUSLY most people ARE just cliches and stereotypes. That why they're CALLED "general"-izations, because that's what people GENERALLY do, that's how they GENERALly react in situations. And in the case of local bands, most of them don't last long, most of them only record one crappy CD demo before passing quickly into the night and most of them will have stopped playing music and have turned into their parents within the next five to ten years. While you and I are busy rockin' out to whoEVER in 2011, they'll be busy trying to sell us insurance.

Most "punks" don't last very long. Generally, they're punk from about 15 to 18, then a lot of them turn emo and by the time they're 24 or so, they don't really listen to all that much music anymore. Hardcore kids, they REALLY don't last very long, they almost instantly go either emo or metal. In some towns, the pop punk kids go rock'n'roll instead of emo, but that's a rarity. Most of the time, it's pop punk to emo to indie rock to NOTHING by their mid-twenties. They'll generally stop coming to shows somewhere around 22 or 23 or so(sometimes even earlier) and the "punk-ness", the "fire" within them will slowly fade away.

Anyway, when insulting idiots, bring all of this up. Make comments about how you'll be buying insurance from them within a few years or how they'll all have given up on rock'n'roll and 'll be busy with their computer/marketing/accounting jobs. I've said all of this to countless people and it ALWAYS invokes a great reaction.

You need to make a point of identifying cliches and trends and stereotypes. At shows, watch people, observe them, generally, the show isn't all that good anyway, so you NEED some kind of entertainment for the night. See what they do, see how they interact with each other. Soak it all in, you need to know as much about people as possible if you want to really effectively insult them.
Also, as I said before, most people are insecure about their intellegence level, it's always a safe bet to insult them on that level. The more "idiots" and "morons" and "retardo-fucks" you use, the better. Despite the fact that it's so easy, so simple, people really DO still react to that type of crap. And I mean, by far and large, most people ARE fairly stupid/ignorant. If you take a little time, and put a little effort in reVEALING how stupid a person is, you can really get a react from them.

Example:recently, a local emo band(they sound like early Discount minus talent plus metal) said they were a power pop band. This statement was obviously ridiculus so I wrote out a short piece revealing their stupidity. I named thirty some power pop bands, from all time periods and sub-sub-genre's, all the way from the ultra obvious Kinks and Cheap Tricks down to the more obscure Manual Scans and Diplomats. I then asked the aforementioned emo band if they were fans of ANY of the bands listed there. From their responces it was more then clear that none of them had the slightest clue about any of those bands, and was really just using the term "power pop" because it isn't cool for emo bands to call themselves "emo". They did not know what power pop was and were using that label because they heard it once somewhere and thought it sounded good. Just to drive the nail in further, I also noted that none of them had EVER attended ANY of the area power pop shows. Their responce was "How can we go see bands that we've never heard of?" Exactly, they had never heard about those bands because they didn't know the SLIGHTEST thing about power pop and had no interest in finding OUT about it.

Next, no matter what situation you're in, or who you're talking to, you should always try and make things as personal as possible. Once, when I was applying to be a radio DJ, the stations manager would not return my emails, so I then insulted her at great length and critisized her abilities and said that it was no WONDER that college radio never got anywhere when the managerial staff was so incompetent. Or well, I wasn't that extreme, but still, that's more or less what I said. Anyway, I got a responce from her right away when I said all that crap. Of course she was pissed and of course I nearly got fired, but I was ready to quit anyways because she hadn't been reutrning my emails(and other reasons). Sure, I then apologized, and I'm certain I am now forever labeled as an "attitude problem" there, BUT I got what I wanted and really, there was no other way to do it.

Slangin' the 'tude is all about working the negative end, you can also work the positive end to, but it's not nearly as fun and you feel a whole lot more scummy that way. To work the positive end, you take that same knowledge of people and their cliched stupidity and you use to well.......talk to them in a manor which they will NOT find threatening. When you're talking to an idiot and you know JUST how stupid he is, when you KNOW how his brain works, you can avoid scaring him off. Fer instance, I know a guy who is in a hardcore band and has a radio show, he likes Gorilla Biscuits, he ALSO likes Wu Tang Clan and Ludicris. Now, if I want to con him into doing my biding, how do I approach him, how do I talk to him? Well, by keeping things simple and stupid. I don't talk to him about how since ALL people have weaknesses, the only truly "strong" people are those who can adMIT to their weaknesses. No, that would confuse him, he'd be threatened by it. Instead, I just more talk to him about the weather or uhhhhh, NBC's "Friends" or something like that. Something nice and dumb, that's all he can really handle. Then, once I have that rapport built up, I can talk about "the scene" and "untiy" and crap like that and fool him into doing what I want him to do.

As I said though, working the positive end just isn't very fun. Slangin' the 'tude and pissing people off SERIOUSLY is always much more fun. Anyway, once you've been slangin' the 'tude for long enough, you'll start to really understand people, and once you've mastered that, the skies the limit. Recently, I conned my way into being a wrestling promotor even though I had absolutly no experience or CLUE even as to how to BE a wrestling promotor. How did I do it? By applying the skills I'd learned slangin' the 'tude.

Moral of the story:I promise my next column will be less evil and won't be SUCH total bullshit......

"To Be Alive is to Be in Pain"

2005-08-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

Okey-dokey, so here's another old Blank Gen column. It's dates from April of 2002.

.....................................

"Youth is choas and self distruction. Becoming an adult is all about getting tired of all the bullshit and realizing what an idiot you were."
-Joseph Lowerbackpain

Before we get really started here, lemme once again thank everybody for his or her responses to my last column. For those of you wondering, NO, XX(name withheld out of modern day embarrassment)XXX DIDn't turn out to be asshole, but that's a whole 'nother story all together, one I ain't gonna get into right now. Actually, a couple years from now, I'm sure I'll write up the whole incident, or work it into a screenplay or something, but whatever. Right now though, we need to get into this column, so lemme just say "strap yerselves in, 'cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride" and we'll be off.

Now MRR sucks for many, many reasons, we all know that. SOME time in the near future I'm sure I'll write something more in-depth about it, but today I have come here to express my gripes with a particular "feature" of the zine. Yep, that fucking "punk parenting" column. Jesus H. FUCK (exclamation point) what is up with that column? Ne'er before have I e'er been assaulted with such liberal, hippie, ineffectual, Mother Earth BULLshit in a "punk zine." Column after column, it's always this "Every day the bond between my baby and me grows stronger. My love for her is like a river flowing long and deep through the mountains of my flaky, do-gooder moronicy."

How in the HELL does that bullshit qualify as PUNK parenting? That's all just hippie shit, yo. It's the same idiocy that they've been spouting for DECADES now. And have you ever SEEN how kids raised by hippies turned out? Kids raised by hardcore, commune livin', backyard gardening hippies? The kids that actually got to EXPERIENCE all that new age shit? That had those cruel philosophies inflicted upon them as children? Have you ever SEEN how they turn out? They are some of the most fucked up kids EVER. There's not a scar free wrist amongst them (you know what I mean). Hippies can spout all the peace lovin', flower smokin' bullshit parenting theory they WANT, but the TRUTH speaks a WHOLE lot louder then any of their drivel.

Why are hippies bad parents, by in large? Because they're fucking SELF-CENTERED, they put themSELVES and their own wants ahead of their children’s NEEDS. They're all about "me" and "what I (emphasis on ‘I’) want". Following the beat of the hippie drum is SUCH a fundamental mistake; a mistake which I thought most punk rockers DIDN'T make. But no, that fucking "punk parenting" column just keeps on spewing it's touchy, feely, idiotic jive and it's disgusting. Recently, someone wrote in and complained about how there wasn't enough childcare at some anarchist festival she went to. Ya know, and how it was SOOOO inconvenient for her to have to lug her baby to all the workshops. That's a PERFECT example of what I'm talking about, they were putting themSELVES and their WANTS ahead of their children.

When ya have kids, and this should go without saying, but THEY come first, EVERYthing else in your life goes on the back burner. When you have kids, your life, as you KNOW IT, changes, it becomes about providing and protecting and blah, blah, all that shit. A baby is not a HOBBY, it's not something you "do" on the weekends, and it’s a full time, completely life altering event. After having a kid, you are NO LONGER the same person you were beforehand. It all changes, it's all different and just fucking forGET about who you were "before" because it doesn't matter any more.

Having a child is what MAKES you grow up. It's what turns you INTO an adult. No longer a child yourself, now you are "grown up." Of course, 95% of people, when they have kids, they don't grow up at all. They don't cut out any of their old self-destructive bullshit, they don't assume responsibility for their lives, they don't do ANY of the things that makes one a TRUE parent. Most people, they just fucking HAVE kids, and they just happily bring them along into their own little world of dysfunction. There's no thought as to whether they're emotionally ready, or if they've really dealt with themselves and their problems. There's none of that. They just do it, and don't really think about it.

Of course though, if people actually DID do all of that, if they DID actually wait to have children until they were really READY, then the human race would probably die out within a hundred years. Damn old survival instinct and the need to propagate the species. Fuck you Mother Nature! Nature doesn't care if you're happy or not, evolution don’ give a FUCK if yer "satisfied", all they care about is that you just pass your god damned genes onto the next generation, just keep the whole thing going. Human beings and all life in general aren’t meant to THRIVE, it's just built to SURVIVE. You're not MEANT to be completely fulfilled in life, if you WERE, then you'd never DO anything. There'd be no motivation, no forward momentum, nothing would ever HAPPEN. Pain and fear is what gets things done in this world. You work/hunt to find food because of that ache in your stomach. You piss because it feels like you are going to burst, because it HURTS. To be ALIVE is to be IN PAIN. To be alive is to be unfulfilled, to be yerning, striving, just trying to keep your head above WATER. Being happy is the antithesis of nature. So yeah, that's why so many people are having so many kids when they are SOOOO emotionally unready to be parents, because that's just how life works. Your parents fuck you up, and you spend your life trying "fix" it all, and in that uhhhhh "quest", you get a lot of shit done. Things advance, everything moves forward. Pain caused by poor parenting is the steam in the steam engine of life.

Still though, there’s the question of, "If that MRR column is HIPPIE parenting, then what IS 'punk parenting'?" Whelp, lemme tell you, true punk parenting is just basically, "Don't have kids, ya re-re. You’ll just fuck 'em up too bad." Or if not that, then it SHOULD be about being AWARE of a lot of the factors of parenthood that most people aren't. It should be about thinking about how you feel about your parents, being aware of how they fucked you up. It should be about being aware of how your parents feel about their OWN parents, and how their parents fuck THEM up. 'Cause ya know if you hate your parents, and your parents hated THEIR parents, then it's pretty safe to say that your kids will hate you as well. Life is all pretty much just cycles and bullshit cliches and stereotypes that keep on repeating over and over again. A "punk parent" needs to be AWARE of ALL this vicious circles and should to do their best to keep their kids from falling into them.

Punk parenting shouldn't be about touchy, feely, new age rigmarole; it should be about acknowledging the fact that YEAH, I'm GONNA fuck up my kids no matter WHAT I do, even if I'm the best parent EVER, EVER (double emphasis on the second "EVER") I'm still gonna fuck up my kid somehow. It should be about being AFRAID of how you are gonna fuck up your kids. It should be about TALKING about that fear, TALKING to other people and ANALYZING whether you yourself are even REMOTELY ready to have kids. That's what is SHOULD be about, but no, it isn't, and every month when I read that fucking column in MRR, I get REALLY pissed because I don't see them talking about ANYthing like that. All I see is empty rhetoric, and bullshit theory and kids, which are most likely gonna grow up to be just SOOOOO extremely fucked up, far more then average, percentage-wise. Like that same person who complained about childcare, she made some comments about how there WAS child care at one festival or whatever and how it was nice for her daughter to get to be around other kids as "weird" as her. Now this child was THREE fucking years old and she alREADY felt "weird", like she didn't fit in in the world? She was alREADY feeling alienated at fucking THREE YEARS OLD........ Oh my holy fucking GOD (excla-FUCKING-mation point)... Most serial killers even didn't even feel like outcasts at THREE. I myself didn't even notice I was an outcast 'til like 11 or so. But at THREE YEARS OLD though, to feel like an outcast, holy SHIT is that kid ever gonna be SCREWED. Facial tattoos, surgically implanted devil horns and an amputee fetish are most likely what await that kid.

Punk parenting should be about LESS bullshit, not MORE. As I've said before, punk rock isn't some golden, ideological wonderland full of the GREATest people EVER with the BEST, HEALTIEST ideas, ever to have been espoused by man. It's mainly just fucked kids trying desperately to distract themselves from their own deep set emotional problems. And of course, when fucked up kids with deep set emotional problems have their OWN kids, you can sure as FUCK believe that THEIR kids are gonna reINVENT the meaning of "deep set emotional problems." You can see it happening more and more lately, people evolving into even BIGGER fuck-ups, even BIGGER emotional cripples. Shit, most punks nowadays are probably borderline agoraphobics, imagine where THAT's gonna go in a few generations if people don't get help. Punk rockers aren't the elite, and our ideals aren't somehow magically the answer to all problems in the world. Sadly though, a lot of us DO actually think that, and that's where the problems start to come in... When you think your ideals are the end all, be all, you stop thinking, you stop developing, and you just set about to shove your ideas down the throats of others. That's what religious fucks have been doing for centuries. They think they're right, they think they have all the answers, so they just try and cram it down the collective cake hole of humanity. The problem IS, they DON'T have all the answers, they aren't "better" then ANYone. They think they're great, they AREN'T. PUNKS think they're great, they think they have all the answers, BUT THEY DON'T, they're all just another schmuck who thinks they're better than everyone else.

A punk rock approach to parenting, an ANARCHIST approach to parenting should be about raising children that DO fit in, kids that can relate to EVERYONE, kids that understand and are friends with ALL PEOPLE, not just some ultra-narrow, marginalized 0.0001% of the population. Fucking hell, anarchism is supposed to be about people all GETTING ALONG with one another and working together in PERFECT harmony, but NO, anarchist types are mainly just the most outcast-y, fringy, anti-social, can't relate ANYone, fuck-tards you've ever met. Ever wonder why there are so many crossovers between anarchists and murders? These are unhealthy people. The more extreme their views, the more fucked up they are. They need to wall themselves off from reality and forge this little narrow world of lies and distortions because OTHERwise, they'd have to deal with THEMSELVES. They make the WORLD the problem, and not themselves. Not that the world ISN'T fucked up, mind you, but these people are far more fucked up, percentage-wise, than the rest of the world, and because of that, they are responsible for making the world a SHITTIER place to live. Which is of course, the exact OPPOSITE of their "aims."

The most unsettling part ABOUT that whole MRR punk parenting column is just the ignorance displayed by it. It's not questioning or challenging ANYthing, it's just following in line, doing what its told. I haven't heard any new ideas from its direction, it's not even remotely interesting, and it’s just fucking AWFUL. THESE are the people that raising the next generation? Oh my god, I hope not. Thankfully though, most punks don't HAVE kids. There really isn't such a thing as a "second generation punk", and that's lucky. If there was, the kid would just get too disconnected from reality. He'd be like a home schooled kid, all insular and weird, and wouldn't ever get any of the jokes comedians made, it'd be sad. Most people aren't meant/ready to have kids, INCLUDING punks.

And I mean, it's not like we still can't be influential on people, on the next generation or whatever. I mean, the punk rock community has been one of the major influencing factors in my life. Just because you're not someone's PARENT, just because they were not born of your loins, it doesn't mean you can't have any effect on them. Shit, just look at those aforementioned kids of hippies. At shows all the time I see like high school girls who were just SOOOO fucked up by their hippie parents and they just SOOOOOOOOOO WANT someone to BE a parent to them. You just look in their face and you see the pain, and the need for love and attention and how they want SOMEBODY to be their fucking DADDY because they sure ain't getting any fathering at home. It's sad, really fucking sad… Anyway, if being influential on the next generation is so important to you, if guiding young peoples lives, so they don't make the same mistakes you did, is something you wanna DO, then well, focus your attention on THOSE kids. Ya know, the ones that are fucked up now and NEED help, the ones the NEED guidance and parenting and well, LOVE. But don't have sex with them, because that's all creepy and sleazy and illegal and stuff.

And of course, having kids IS one of the most fulfilling things you can do in life, it WILL make you generally happier and you WILL be filled with some kind of unending hippie love river, BUT, BUT, BUT (double emphasis on the second "BUT" and triple emphasis on the third one), that is about YOU, and how YOU feel, it's about YOUR feelings. Sure YOU'll be happier and more fulfilled, but it's not ABOUT you, it's about the FUCKING KID. Who GIVES a shit if YOU'RE more fulfilled, it's about THE KID and how happy and healthy THEY ARE. It is not about YOU; it is about THE CHILD. It doesn't MATTER if YOU feel better about yourSELF because you've brought a child into the world that you ultimately are just gonna turn into one of the biggest fuck-ups ever to set foot on the face of the earth. It's not about you; it's about THEM.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't have kids, fucko.

OFFICIAL MOVIE OF THE WEEK: "Amelie." Thank you Shaun Anagram for recommending it to me. I HAD seen reviews and I thought it'd be too stupid and sickly sweet. I watched it, and YEAH, while it WAS really sweet, it didn't come across as saccharine, ya know, like one of the Jim Carrey movies were he wants to be "taken seriously as an actor." Jim Carrey wanting to be taken seriously as an actor is akin to Arnold Swartzenegger wanting to be taken seriously as an actor. Get it through your thick skulls, boys, you SUCK.........

OFFICIAL BAND OF THE WEEK: Ummmmmm, The Hole Adaptors.

OFFICIAL ALL NIGHT SAMMICH SHOP OF THE WEEK: Sheetz....... When I want a sub at 4AM, I know where to go.

OFFICIAL PERSON WHO SUCKS OF THE WEEK: XXXX "pretty baby" XXXXX.......you know why you suck........

OFFICIAL DVD OF THE WEEK: "Bully"........Larry Clark is a pervert..............

OFFICIAL REAL LIFE INCARNATION OF TV's "The Critic" OF THE WEEK: The guy from "Haiku Tunnel."

OFFICIAL PERSON THAT THREATENED TO BEAT ME UP ON A LOCAL PUNK MESSAGE BOARD BUT THEN NEVER FOLLOWED THROUGH OF THE WEEK: I don't remember who it was, but it was SOMEbody, I think maybe it was X XXXXXX XXXXX's bass player, maybe not…

OFFICIAL PLEA TO READ MY RIP OFF COLUMN OF THE WEEK: Read my bi-weekly column at the Rip Off Records website (www.ripoffrecords.org), it's a shorter, eviler, more bullshit laden version of these Blank Gen columns.............

Some Positive Rip Off stuff & interesting crap at the very end about Riot Grrrls

2005-08-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

My Blank Gen column from December 2001. This is the one that got me a "gig" at Rip Off.

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"I'm really starting to hate these beginning of column quotes."
- Clint Parson, December 5th, 2001

Okay, biatches, new column time. Ya ready to party? And by the way, thanks to all who responded positively to my last column. Yeah, believe it or not, I actually have some female "fans" now. I never knew girls actually read this column, oh well, go figure, people'll always surprise you (no they won't). I suppose now though I'll have to cut out all those sexist under-currents. Damn, I always enjoyed those so much. Yeah, I think I'll just switch to homoPHOBIC undercurrents from now on. I doubt there are any fags out there that read my column(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:Was this really written in the days before everyone said "fag" all the time?) . Blank Gen doesn't exactly have a huge following amongst the "light in the loafer" crowd. Wait, I thought I said homophobic UNDERcurrents? That last comment was anything BUT "under". I have to go all subtle with homophobia, otherwise I won't be able to get away with it. Anyway, this first paragraph is getting real long, I need to throw in a "strap yourselves in, cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride", before too soon. Yup, every month that goes by, this damn column becomes more and more heavily gimmicked. Or is the proper term "gimmick laden". All I know is that I need to get to my topic for this column or otherwise....... Well, I could probably go on for a whole column with this type of crap, but god DAMN IT, I ain't some Johnny-Stream (of consciousness) Lately, Rev. Norb, Nate Disgusting(EDITOR AGAIN:these old columns spook me out sometimes) wannabe, I am a god damned WRITER. I write about things, topics and subjects, and theories. I tell ALL you fuckers how to live your lives and what to think and god DAMNIT, I'm right, and you're all fucking WRONG. I am your king, bow at my feet. You wallow in your own mediocrity and grow duller and slow-witted as each day goes by. While I, I grow stronger with each passing moment. My powers increase on a bi-weekly basis and will continue do so until I've reached a nigh-god like status (and I'm tailing nigh THE god, not just A go)(whoa, that typo's a remnant of the days when I had a keyboard with a "d" button that didn't work very well). Fear me, because I am all that you never will and never could be. I am the end. I am the now.... I am pain. I am it ALLLLLLLLLL. Yeah motherfuckers, strap yourselves in, 'cause this is gonna be one fucking bumpy ride (oh shit, I still haven't gotten to the topic of this column)......

God damn, not only haven't I gotten to the TOPIC of this column, but I haven't even included the second POINT I wanted to make in the first paragraph. Ya know, the first point was that; yeah, the people that dug my last column are cool. My SECOND point though was gonna be that; even though a lot of people DUG that last column, there were OTHER people, OLD "fans" of mine that DIDN'T like my last offering. A few of them even said my last column was fucking EMO. To these people I say: "Fuck you douche-tard, I'll no sooner go emo then YOU'll pull your thumb out of your dog's ass." FUCK-NUGGETS, I'm really on a role tonight. I COULD write this whole column without getting to the actual topic. Sorry, Joey boy, but I got the feeling this column is gonna be a long one.

Okay, but getting to the SUBJECT of this wild, off kilter, ego-maniacal rant (hey, I got a talent [a talent that few possess] for this kind of thing, what I can I say?) It, like many other in things in my life, all started with Rip Off Records. Here was a label putting out great band after GREAT band. Each more amazing then the last and yet, most people, most "punks" didn't have the slightest CLUE about Rip Off (and still don't). They would just listen to shit and praise it as uhhhh, I don know, chocolate ice cream.

Out of all of this, I slowly started to form an opinion, the opinion that I really knew way more about music then ANYbody else in this fucking town. The stuff they called "great" sounded horrible to me, the Rip Off bands were clearly superior, these people just didn't know what they were talking about. They have no taste. No ability to discern what was good from what wasn't. Myself though? I more then had this ability, I had it in spades. I had SOOO much of this ability that I actually EVENED THINGS OUT for the poor taste of everyone else around. Needless to say, I grew confident in my own personal tastes.........

This attitude, this confidence, then spread from area of life/entertainment to another. It went from music to TV to movies. I've watched thousands of hours of movies and TV in my life, in local video stores I've seen a good 90% of all the films they have there, the rest I don't CARE to see. I can more then easily tell the good from the bad. Been there, seen that, thought it sucked. All the experts in all the various fields always seemed to agree with my opinions, opinions I had way before I ever read THEIR views on such and such. When Mike Nelson (of Mystery Science Theater) came out with his "Movie Megacheese" book, he pretty much had exact same opinion of every movie that I did. And obviously, he knows his shit....(I mean, in all honesty, I've always been a very good critic. that's just my personality)

All this while, while my confidence in my own critical uhhh "perceptiveness" grew, there lurked a new BS social theory just behind it waiting to break free. Ya see, as I went throughout my day to day, I noticed that often times, there were things that I THOUGHT were SUPPOSED to be good, things that SEEMED OUTwardly to be interesting but I don know, I just couldn't get into some of it. I tried to read Chomsky, but I don know, something about it, it didn't quite seem to be the revolution it SHOULD be, something was off. The raw information was there MAYBE, and it SEEMED like it should be something that should get me fired up or whatever, but I don know, it just seemed to be LACKING in some kind of fundiMENTAL SOMEthing.

Eventually though, I figured it out, I realized what was missing. And THAT is what my column today is about (it's about fucking time I got to the point of this), it's about "THE GRAND THEORY OF EN-FUCKING-GAGE-MENT". And I ain't talking about getting married, fuck-twad. WHY didn't Chomsky appeal to me? Because it's fucking BORING. Old Noam is HORRIBLE writer who couldn't write his out of or INto a wet paper bag. He’s terrible.

Now some would say, "Dude, it's not him that's wrong, you're the one that's wrong, if you really cared about this type of crap you'd be interested." Bull fucking shit, that crap is just terrible and there's not a sane person in the world that'd pay attention to it. Why? Because it's BORING......

Now take dogs for example, they have a sense of hearing far more acute-er then human beings. They can hear shit happening way far away. HOW THEN do dogs ever focus on one thing? How can they pull the sound of YOUR voice telling them to lick the peanut butter off your balls OUT of the cacophony of sound that's bouncing around inside their head? Well, it's easy, because their brain autoMATICALLY filters out all the bullshit they don't NEED to hear. If it ain't important, then they ain't paying attention to it. This is what was happening with me and Noam. I was reading it and my brain was going, "Dude, this is horrible, it's like reading a science text book, this OBVIOUSLY has nothing to do with your life, this'll never EVER help you figure out how to be successful, this ain't ever gonna help you get laid." While I said, "But this is SUPPOSED to be something good, maybe I'm the one that's wrong." But no, my brain was right, that shit was boring and tedious and pointless, I SHOULDn't 've been trying to pay attention to it, I WAS just wasting my time.

So yeah, THAT is what "THE GRAND THEORY OF ENGAGEMENT" is, i.e. If you are like me, and have a finely honed critical uhhh pallet, and you find such and such shit BORING, then it doesn't DESERVE your attention. YOU aren't the one that's wrong; it's the boring thing that's wrong. If it's boring don't spend any time on it. Despite the hype, despite the rhetoric, despite the propaganda of a million people telling you OTHERWISE, old fucking Noam Chomsky ain't nothing but a bad sit-com, a made for TV movie that they shouldn' 'a made. It's a boring book and no matter what clothes they prop it up in, it still SUCKS and it’s still POINTLESS...

Things that are GOOD; things that can affect and CHANGE lives; things that are POSITIVE and MOVE THINGS FORWARD are ALWAYS by their very NATURE, FUCKING INTERESTING. THEY ARE ENGAGING. You can't ignore them, they draw you in and you can't escape from them, there's NO possible way you CAN'T pay attention to them. They hit you over the HEAD with how good they are. There's no slow conversion process; it's fucking INSTANT, INSTANT, motherfucker. GOOD, ENGAGING, POSITIVE things that move us all forward as people are like the fucking first Zodiac Killers record, five seconds in you already KNOW it's the greatest thing ever and you can't ever imagine how you lived and experienced and FELT your life before that. It changes IT ALL in AN INSTANT........ INTERESTING THINGS are the ONLY way to go, BORING crap, by it's very DEFINITION, no gives a fuck about it. You SHOULDN'T pay attention to it.......

Ya know, in school, ya study and try and learn all that crap from science books, from math books, you cram it all in there and turn it all over, MASTER it. But guess WHAT? Since it's BORING, since the books ARE POORLY WRITTEN, since they teach ALL OF IT to you IN THE WRONG WAY, you fucking forget ALL of in a few weeks time, or as soon as semester is over, or whenever. The point is that you don't remember ANY of it, and that's because your brain automatically KNOWS that all that shit is pointless and just dumps it out the back door. Ya ain't ever gonna need it, you ain't ever gonna use it. Your brain knows better then you do........

Of course though, like I was saying earlier, this theory really only applies to those with that "finely honed critical sense". People that can tell the good from the bad, the boring from the engaging… Ya know, for people like us, if it's boring, well, it doesn't deSERVE to be paid attention to. If it doesn't draw you in and MAKE you a part of it, if it doesn't INSTANTLY teach all you've never known but NEEDED to know, well then, DON'T PAY ATTENTION........

(I should point out somewhere here that I was fairly bored with politics at the time and my attitude in this column reflects that. I've gotten re-politisized again within the last two years or so, but who hasn't? These are politically charged times)

Not everyone though can tell what's truly boring and what isn't. Most people are just WRONG in the things they find boring. Most people, if they can't understand something, if it's over their head, they do all they can to discredit it, to devalue it. That's why person after person called Andy fucking Kaufman "crazy". They didn't/couldn't comprehend what he was doing. To them he was going from "A" to "C" and they just couldnae get a handle on it (here's a hint, he went through "B"). They felt threatened by him, challenged by him. So they did what they could to destroy him. They CALLED him crazy, I'm sure some even said he was boring, but that wasn't the TRUTH. The truth was that he was inCREDIBLY interesting, the one of the MOST interesting artists in the last thirty years. He truly opened the world (the comedy world, at least) to modes of expression that they didn't knew EXISTED before him. He was many things, but he certainly was not boring.......

Of course though, there are still indeed SEVERAL boring things that people devote their time and attention to, WHY do they do it? Well, most boring things, SINCE they're so boring, they have to GIVE PEOPLE MONEY to pay attention to them, they have to PAY them. That's why people spend time on boring stuff, MONEY. If you give people money, you can get them too do anything, no matter how boring or un-tasteful or EVIL or whatEVER. Hell, most people nowadays, a good 99% are involved with SOME kind of evil through their job. The kid working at McDonalds for 2.45 an hour is involved with the temperature of the earth going up. But I mean, that's life, the way things are set up nowadays, you can't escape that, you can't not be evil.....

But anyway, back more to the topic. Things like science and math, they ARE essential, and DO need to be paid attention to, but the way those topics are taught in school, it totally drains any fun and enjoyment out of things. In their true, natural essence, science and math are extremely engaging, but in this culture, the way it's presented to us, it's just WAY fucking boring. To the point where most of us can't even IMAGINE how these things could EVER be interesting. Still though, they should be, since they are essential to survival, we SHOULD find it interesting. Just like basic nature and survival dictates that if we NEED it to survive, we will find it REALLY interesting. We like to fuck so much because we NEED that to survive. If people didn't like to fuck so much, all animal life would die off pretty quickly. But no, ya know, it's deep, it's ingrained, it's there and it's not ever going away. We need food, we're interested in that, need air, warmth, we're extremely interested in all these things........

I don know, maybe part of the reason why there are SOOO many SEEMINGly important things out there that are SOOOO boring, is because things have become so compartmentalized, everything is so isolated. We know assloads about such and such topic, but we don't know how it relates to other topics. We can see one tiny little piece of the picture, we have a clear view of that, but we are completely unable to step back in order to view the whole picture. We KNOW that one fucking pixel on the TV scene is WAY purple, but until we actually STEP BACK, until we put ALL those fucking "pixels" together, we'll never know that we're actually looking at Barney the god damned dinosaur.

One little tiny, isolated bit of knowledge, no matter HOW familiar you are with it, no matter how well you've STUDIED it, it's USELESS unless you are able to fit it into the larger context, unless you are able to understand how it fits into that bigger picture, how it works, what role it plays.

THAT is what's wrong with the current way math and science and whatEVER are taught, it's too small, too compartmentalized, too isolated. You are given no context as to how it fits in with the rest of the world, it's just that one small fucking pixel and who in the FUCK knows what it has to do with ANYTHING? Education, as it is now, in the United States, it sucks, it gives you a bunch of fucking puzzle pieces, they pick out a couple pieces for you, and you have to memorize all you can about them, take a test about it a week later and then move on to some new pieces. Yer never supposed to put any of it together, it's just cold, no-context having data and there's no fucking WAY it registers emotionally with ANYone.........

In their proper context, there wouldn't BE things such as "science" or "math" or whatever; it all would just be the same thing. We would understand how things are SOOOO interconnected, how everything relates to EVERYthing else and how just plain WRONG it would be ever try and separate these things, how big of an error we'd be making by compartmentalizing this crap. The pixel on the TV sceen, in and of itself, it's meaningless, pointless, BORING. It only has significance when it's placed into the LARGER context, only THEN can we truly perceive it, only then can really understand what's going on. Only then can we see fucking Barney................

Stop isolating things, stop taking shit even further apart. Start working towards putting it all together..............

Aaaaaaaah, this is fun. Anyway, I think I had some other point there too, lemme think.....Oh yeah, some people, sooOOOMe people, they will dedicate time and energy to boring crap even if they AREN'T paid to do. Why do they do this? Well, because there are insane. Or not so much "insane" as they have deep-set emotional/mental problems that they are desperately trying to distract themselves from. SOOOO, some people, they'll latch onto a bore-monger like Chomsky and they'll actually READ a LOT of that crap. 'Cause it takes SOOOO much effort and SOOOO energy to get through one of his books, it's SUCH a HERCULAN effort that they just CAN'T think about anything else while reading him. It LITERALLY takes ALL their brainpower to just input that crap. There’s no left over processing power to uhhhhh "process" how they're all fucked up inside. All their effort, all their energy, all their BEING is focused into just getting THROUGH that fucking BORING book. THAT's why people spend so much time on boring crap, because it's SOOOOOO bad that it takes the whole of the entire BEING just to FORCE THEMSELVES to read each and every new sentence. Every few seconds their bullshit detector rings anew "BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, DON'T TAKE THIS CRAP SERIOUSLY, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, NO NEED TO PAY ATTENTION, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, YOU'RE HARMING YOUSELF BY READING THIS, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT......................."

Moral of the Story: Boring stuff sucks......

OFFICIAL MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Uhhhhh, have I seen anything good lately? Naw, I don think so. "Not Another Teen Movie" is coming out soon, that should good (I'm being sarcastic). Anybody seen the special sneak peek trailers for the new star wars? Anakin is wearing those jedi robes, but his robes are BLACK, thus foreshadowing his eventually darkside turn. I rented "The Big Chill" recently on DVD, mainly because it's one of those "classic" type movies I had never seen before. It was terrible. I'll take "Drinking Games" over it any day of the week. Also rented "American Grafeat-o-tag", it sucked to. Although, it served as the inspiration for "Happy Days" so, well, everyone involved with that movie deserves to burn in hell (George Lucas included [although not before he's done with the third Star Wars prequel]).

OFFICIAL COOL PERSON I'VE MET RECENTLY OF THE WEEK: xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx, she's cool..... (why was I always putting people's names in these things? P.S.She didn't turn out to be cool in the long run, but don't worry she wasn't a girl I was trying to fuck)

OFFICIAL PRONOUNCMENT THAT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx? xxxxxxxxx! xx(yeah, I'm not even gonna tell ya what that one was about)

OFFICIAL PLEA TO BANDS AND LABELS TO SEND US RECORDS HERE IN BLACKSBURG OF THE WEEK: I just got appointed as the new "guy who tries to solicit records from cool labels and bands" for the college radio station here (WUVT 90.7FM) So, if you are a cool label or band, send me crap at:

Clint Parson
524A XXXXXXXX XXXX
Blacksburg, VA 24060-5116

Anything you send WILL be played on the air, unless it sucks.......

OFFICIAL SHOW THAT BLEW MY SOCKS OFF OF THE WEEK: The fucking Lazy Cowgirls in Chapel Hill this last Friday. They've been around for twenty fucking years and they're STILL amazing. One of the BEST shows I've ever been to........

OFFICIAL PERSON THAT SUCKS THAT I SHALL MENTION BY NAME OF THE WEEK: Uhhhhh, I guess I still think XXXXX XXXXXXXX is a prick........(I don't think he's a prick any more. He's on my My Space!)

OFFICIAL TOPIC FOR MY NEXT COLUMN OF THE WEEK: My next column will probably be about "THE GRAND 'BEST FOOT FORWARD' THEORY".......and yes, ALL my theories are QUITE grand........

OFFICIAL PRONOUNCMENT THAT I THINK THE CHEESE ON THE CHEESEBURGER I JUST GOT FROM WENDY'S MIGHT'VE BEEN SPOILED OF THE WEEK: I think the cheese on the cheeseburger I just got from Wendy's might've been spoiled. I've been feeling kinda queasy since I ate it......

OFFICIAL OTHER ZINE I'M GONNA START WRITING FOR OF THE WEEK: I'm gonna write for my friend Chloe's zine that she's just starting up. She's from Ottawa and kinda knew Tom Green before he was famous. The first thing I'm gonna write about is how all zines suck. I'll give info on how obtain a copy in a later column. Also to, what the name of the zine'll be..............

OFFICIAL POINT AT WHICH I WONDER ALOUD "WHAT ABOUT THOSE HOMOPHOBIC UNDERCURRENTS I WAS GONNA WEAVE INTO THIS COLUMN?" OF THE WEEK: Remember, like the first paragraph up there, I said something about working in some homophobic undercurrents, cause I couldn't do the sexist ones anymore since I have a bunch of chick fans now? Ya know, so I said I was just gonna switch to homoPHOBIC ones in order to uhhh sublimate my uhhhh general hatred of all peoples who I don't understand. "Peoples" which include women and gays... Anyway so then, okay, homophobic undercurrents, lemme think, uhhh, uhhhhh. Okay, I got it: "I would like Tribe 8, but the only problem is their music sucks." No wait, that's just my actual opinion..... Uhhhhh, can someone please tell me why I like Queer-core more then Riot Grrrl? I don't even really get that one myself. Maybe it's 'cause queer-core's a positive PRO-gay thing and Riot Grrrl, well, it's anti-man, a NEGATIVE THING...... Wait, now I'm back on the SEXIST undercurrents. God damnit..... Although just because I have a negative view of Riot Grrrl doesn't automatically mean I'm sexist. Because obviously, Riot Grrrl was/is sexist, and most of it's figurehead/leader types seem to be victims of sexual abuse and therefore, by DEFINITION have serious unresolved issues with men that'll need years upon years of therapy in order to be worked out. Ya know, and until then, these people will never have a positive, even handed, rational, CLEAR view of men in general. Until those abuse and molestation issues are dealt with, these women will always essentially HATE men...... Oh fuck, I got serious again. Must be funny some more... But shit, that's the fact, for the most part, Riot Grrrl doesn't seem to really BE about emotionally healthy women working in accordance with men to make the world an equal place for both males and females. Riot Grrl instead seems to be about fucked up, victimized girls lashing out, INVENTING new problems for themselves, and just desperately trying to distract themselves from their problems......Oh fuck, when did I wonder back into my "Chicks and rock'n'roll" column? I need to move onto a new "OFFICIAL.....BLAH, BLAH...OF THE WEEK".......

OFFICIAL "I DON'T THINK I'M DONE WITH THIS TOPIC" OF THE WEEK: Yeah, what brought all of this back up is that I just bought that Re: Search book about zines the other day, and most of all it is like Riot Grrrl type stuff, and I don know, it just pisses off to read that stuff because it's SOOOO NOT about reality, it's so about NOT dealing with your problems. It's so about taking one problem, inflating it, and pretending that THAT's the source of all your problems. I mean, sure, the world's fucked up, but on AVERAGE, you yourself are far more fucked up in general then most of the world is. Ya know, the world may be 80% fucked up, but YOU, you're 90% fucked up and are actually partially responsible for making the world an even MORE unhealthy, unhappy place.

OFFICIAL THING THAT COULD BE A TOPIC FOR ANOTHER COLUMN BUT FUCK IT I'M JUST GONNA TALK ABOUT IT NOW OF THE WEEK: Okay, they say one person CAN make difference. YEAH, BUUUUUT that one person has to be a total fucking GENUIS, they have to be brilliant and charisMATIC, they have to be a fucking LEADER. They have to be SIGNIFICANTLY LESS fucked up then everyone else in the world. SO then, if YOU, if YOU wanna change the world, the BEST way you can WORK ON THAT is to WORK ON YOURSELF. Work on making you yourself LESS FUCKED UP. Because you CAN'T change the world being MORE fucked up then most people............... But well, fuck, that would've been much longer if it was a column, but oh well....

OFFICIAL ANYWAY, BACK TO THE HOMOPHOBIC UNDERTONES OF THE WEEK: I avoided saying "underTONES" this whole time, but there it is now, feel free to make all the "male model" jokes you want......... Wait a minute, I think that THERE was just a homophobic undercurrent (exclamation point), YAY. I've achieved my goal, now I can END this fucking column...............

OFFICIAL "OR NOT" OF THE WEEK: Or not...Glad to see Ric Flair's back in wrestling. Speaking of which, I've been talking to some people about maybe trying to set up a rock'n'wrestling show. Ya know, bands and wrestlers, TOGETHER on one bill..... It'll be cool if we can make it happen........

ANYway,

later.......................

Why I'm Still Sometimes An Asshole

2005-08-11T01:01:00.000-07:00

So this ran on Blank Gen the month after the Manifesto/Chicks column. It's from November 2001:

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"I am what I am."
-Popeye, 1953

So, after the earth-reconfiguring manifesto that was last month's column, a lot of people have been wondering something. They've been wondering: "Who in the FUCK is this Clint and where in HELL is coming from with this shit?" Whelp, true believers, that is a question I intend on answering with THIS column. I'll tell you who in the fuck I am, who I THINK am, why I am good for this country and why you should vote for me on this upcoming election day. Jerry Kilgore says he's tough on crime, but then why has he voted against abolishing parole time after time? The Richmond Times Dispatch has called Kilgore's methods: "misleading" and "manipulative". Is that the kind of man you want for a governor? Vote the honest, hard working choice, vote Clint Parson. Yay, tangents are fun. Anyway, strap yourselves in, because we are about to go on a bumpy ride to "Clint-town".........

Whelp, to start off with, am 22 years old(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:I was so much older then, I'm younger now by far. "Younger" in this case meaning 26.) and I am currently living (and dying) in Blacksburg, Virginia, a shitty college town that is uhhhhh, shitty. We have no real culture here, no real valid, viable forms of entertainment. Sure, there are shows here, but the bands are awful, there's a bit of a regional wrestling "scene", but they're just as awful. There's a wee bit of standup comedy, but well, you guessed it, it sucks to. Ya see, this town, this whole AREA for two hundred miles in any direction is a complete and total cultural dead zone. Bands don't come here, all the way from P.O.D. down to fucking Richmond bands; no one comes to Blacksburg. Blacksburg is a town that strives for mediocrity, but fails at even that. SURE, there've been times when we've had three record stores downtown, all within a few blocks of each other, but none of them ever had anything worth buying. Several months ago I tried to order the respective full lengths of the Briefs and Lost Sounds, and none of the stores had the capability to order either. ‘Tis indeed a vast expanse of suck..............

Why then do I stay here? If Blacksburg is so bad, why haven't I left? Well, that's because I am STUCK here. Ya see, even though this is a college town, I don't go to college, I grew up here, I went to elementary school here, middle school, HIGH school, even… Yes, I am a townie. But not just your average townie, I am also......(wait for it)......disabled! That's why I'm stuck here, that's why I can't LEAVE, because I can't afford my fucking HEALTH INSURANCE. Ya know, and I NEED health insurance, fucking GOOD health insurance (Medicare just ain't gonna cut it) because I have SERIOUS HEALTH PROBLEMS. SOOOOOO, to RECEIVE that EXPENSIVE health insurance that I REALLY need, I have to stay on my fucking MOTHER'S health insurance.

So, I am stuck here, and yer damn right I'm pissed about it. Like I said, I am disabled. Ya see, I have this rare (one out of 500,000) metabolic disorder called "porphyria", and it fucks with my health in any number of directions. I've had chronic stomach problem for years on end, severally disturbed sleeping patterns, seizures, chronic diarrhea, I've broken out in huge blisters all over my body, and that's just the shit I can remember off the top of my head. Anyway, all this shit is "manageable." I can "get by" if I just take things easy, don't do too much, don't have any set schedule that I have to conform to, day in, day out. Basically, if I just live like a total slacker bum, I am "okay", or, as okay as I (emphasis on "I") can be.

Basically, all throughout school, the pattern was, I'd start the year, I'd last about a month until I'd get an acute attack and then I'd be out for three to six months. An "acute attack" being of course when one of the above-mentioned maladies would rear it's head in an ugly fashion. In the last few years even, there've been a few times, a few weeks when like I'd have to get up at a certain specific time (early) each and every day, and by the end of that week or two, I'd ALWAYS be nearly fucking dead. I really have no clue how I was able to last through a MONTH of that crap back when I was in school. When I don't get enough sleep the night before, I always feel quite nauseous all throughout the next day.

Of course though, when I was back IN high school, I thought that was just the way it was for EVERYone. My problem wasn't diagnosed until mid-way through my senior year, I knew I had heath problems, but nothing that serious. Ya know, I thought that EVERYone else felt as tired as I did, that everyone else always walked around with that same vague, puke-y feeling that I always had. I thought that everyone just dealt with it a whole lot better then I did.

But obviously, that was not the case, other people, they wouldn't lie in bed for hours each night, not being able to go to sleep(EDITOR AGAIN:those are the hours now when I write). Ya know, and once they DID fall asleep, they didn't wake back up again several times throughout the night. But that's the way it's ALWAYS been for me, ALWAYS. I need a block of eleven some hours to strangle a good six/seven hours worth of sleep from. I need a fucking CLOCK RIGHT beside the bed or else I have no fucking CLUE what time it is, I have no natural, internal body clock to tell what time it is. When I've been without a clock I've woken up anywhere from seven AM to 5PM (emphasis on "PM") and my body doesn’t know the difference. I'm ALWAYS tired, no matter HOW long I'm in bed, I don't get enough sleep and really, I don't think I've EVER gotten a good night's sleep. Literally, NEVER EVER EVER (double emphasis on that second "EVER" there)...........

Can't sleep, can't work, can't go to school, OBVIOUSLY boredom is a major factor in my life, but like I said, I LIVE IN A CULTURAL DEAD ZONE. There's nothing to do here, there's nothing to do at four in the afternoon and there's even LESS to do at 4AM, and lemme tell ya, I am ALWAYS UP AT FOUR AM. Ya know, maybe if I lived in a bigger city, a bigger town, a place where there was SOMEthing going on, then it wouldn't be so "trying." If there WAS a movie to go to at fucking 2AM(good luck, they only have that in NYC), then you know I'd be there, but there isn't, there's nothing, and I am stuck here IN this nothing-ness............(side note: god damn, this is really fun, just bitching about stuff, I've gotta do more columns like these. Actually, I guess I HAVE to write columns like these, I HAVE to bitch about stuff, about my situation, because otherwise, I'd just fucking go CRAZY living here. I HAVE to bitch this much about stuff, I HAVE to hate this town as much as I do.).

Anyway, but that's not even the worst of it. Sure, there's nothing to do, high school was hell, but NOW, these last four/five years that I've been OUT of school, they've been FAR, FAR worse then high school ever was. Sure, in high school I was in crippling "I almost died" type pain 3/4's of the time, but now it’s worse. Ya know, since I've gotten out of high school, I've LIVED that slacker bum lifestyle to a TEE, and it's only resulted in ONE acute attack (one in four years where as before it was more like two a year), but now it's worse. WHY? Because of the people here...........

I live in a college town, but I do not go to college, I am a townie. For years I thought the whole college kids vs. townies thing was ridiculous. I don't think that anymore, now I know EXACTLY why townies hate the college kids. I know now why punk rockers hate emo kids so much to. Ya see, all we HAVE in Blacksburg are fucking college kid emo retards, them and hardcore (i.e. metal-core) kids… What can I say? I hate all of them with a passion. Pretentious little, elitist, snobby, flaky, don't know shit about music, FUCKS who wouldn't return my calls even if my life depended on it.

Yeah, I've made the cardinal mistake, I've actually tired to be friends with the fucking emo kids, and now I know why we're supposed to hate them. And I do...... What can I say? I DO........ I've tried to school them about cool stuff, I've mentioned Killed By Death and Rip Off Records and a host of other cool bands/labels and they don't care, they don't wanna learn anything about it. I've offered to trade mix tapes/CDRs with most of them, you teach ME about bands YOU like and I'll do the same. But they don't care; their ears and minds remain firmly closed. Ya know, I'm funny, I crack jokes, I make humorous observations and Smurf's references with the best of them. I'm fucking hilarious, but they don't care, the second something genuinely witty or clever comes out of my mouth, they get this glazed over look in their eyes and just wonder off.

Sadly, EVERY single townie punk rocker here (all five that there's been in the last four years) tells pretty much the exact same story, albeit, they at least had work to distract themselves. Also, ALL of them just eventually left town and never looked back. Fuck, I wish I could do that....... I could literally just set my room ablaze, destroy all my possessions, LEAVE TOWN, never EVER look back and wouldn't matter to me. But I CAN'T DO THAT.......... I'm fucking stuck here...

But that's not even best part of all of this. So like two years ago, I called a girl I knew out of the blue and asked her on a date, she said she was busy on such and such day, but next week we could do something. And this was a girl that I had known for over a year and a half. I had had several long conversations with her, hung out with her a couple of times… What can I say, she was a FRIEND. Anyway, next time I see her, she doesn't acknowledge my existence. Same thing at the next show we're at. At one point she was standing all of two feet away from me and she STILL didn't even say hi.

Whoop de fricking DO, right? Who cares? That type of hipster melodrama happens all the time, boy likes girl, girl doesn't like boy, girl awkwardly ignores him at show. Who gives a fuck in the long run? Anyway, I call maybe a time or two more, wondering why she's acting so weird, but she just starts to act odder. She continues the same behavior at shows, treating me like a total ass the few times I tried to go up and talk to her, but I didn't really care, we WERE friends, but as far as "romance" went, there were literally five other girls I was in pursuit of at that same general time. I didn't really give a fuck about it, maybe half a fuck or three quarters of a fuck, but not a whole fuck.

Anyway, months pass, she's still all weird, and eventually I just write her a letter (not email, just a plain, normal LETTER) and ask what the deal was. I never hear back from that letter. I didn't really put it together at the time, but a lot of people stopped talking to me at that point. About a year later, I find out that she totally flipped out when I sent her that letter and she essentially told her friends that I was some psycho or something, re-diculous......

That whole incident was the catalyst for me really falling out with the scene. It was my craziness bouncing off her craziness ricocheting off three or four other people's wonky-tude. It was just a bad, uncomfortable situation all around. And of course, I did my part to make it worse by just mercilessly insulting all the people that decided they were now too good to be my friends(Hey, I STILL do that).

I was very disliked, but what did it matter? They were emo kids. I got into a lot of verbal altercations. One of duder even launched into this deranged diatribe about how I CHOOSE to be disabled and how I was just lazy and that I didn't want to go to work/school because I was afraid of "meaningfully interacting" with people (like anyone EVER meaningfully interacted with people at their job).

I obviously told ALL of these people to fuck off, I expertly stood up for myself and eventually most of them apologized for shits. Of course though, nobody actually started ACTING any differently towards me, none of them EVER showed me even the SLIGHTEST bit of respect, they didn't ACT like they were truly "sorry," none of them even REMOTELY treated me like a human being(They never really warmed up to me until I started drinking. But that was still a ways off when I wrote this.)

But it gets even better, I have no other options, I have no other place to go, the only place I have to MEET people is at shows (did I say that I can't drink either because of my health problems. So bars are out, no drugs either, not even most prescription ones)(yeah, eventially I just threw caution to the wind with all that type-a stuff). Ya know, and these are people that have absolutely no respect for me, people that I've told to fuck off, BUT SINCE I HAVE NO OTHER PLACE TO GO, I've actually APOLOGIZED to some of them, even though I don't even REMOTELY mean it. I've had to fucking APOLOGIZE to some of these ass-sacks, just so I could fucking get my foot in the door again. Talk about being fucking defeated...........(Yay, pity is fun.....I wonder if anyone's still even READING this at this point? Probably not, I know I usually get turned off when someone's whining THIS badly. But of course, aren't ALL my columns just me whining?).

At this point, there's nothing to aim for, nothing to hope or dream for. I live off of hate basically, and I keep on KEEPING on for absolutely no reason. I just go on "because." Just pure survival(somebody call the whaaaambulance)… I keep on GOING on just as a "fuck you" to all the assholes in this town, as proof that I'm better and stronger than every single one of them. And I mean, I am, I just fucking AM. Best fucking record collection in town, funniest guy, coolest guy, smartest guy. At one point I was even the nicest guy, although now I'm probably more in the running for biggest asshole(ouuuuu, that's a very telling statement). I mean, I am what I am and it's extremely hard to deny or disprove that.......

I've BEEN in therapy, and they're all said decisively that my situation is not my fault, that it has had very little to do with any actions I've taken(I wouldn't say that). They've said clearly that I was right and that "they" ("they" being primarily the emo fucks in this town) were wrong. Ya know, from the very beginning I took complete and total responsibility for ALL of it. I thought it was all my fault, that it was things that I (emphasis on "I") had done wrong. So I entered therapy(I was in therapy for other reasons, mainly because I was just having a hard time accepting the fact that THIS was gonna be my life. "This is my life? This is the person I have to be? fuck..." I still have trouble with that sometimes, heh heh), I WORKED on my issues, my problems, and guess WHAT? I BEAT them, I identified and confronted and I BEAT my own emotional issues, bested my "problems"(again, I wouldn't really say that, but I did do very well in therapy. I dealt with a lot of shit) and it STILL DIDN'T CHANGE THINGS. It just made them worse with these FUCKS. 'Cause ya see, it wasn't MY fucking FAULT to begin with, it was fucking THEM. I had been IN therapy, and after a little more then a year (towards the end I only went once a month) they said I didn't NEED it any more, they let me OUT, said I didn't need to come BACK(eeeeh, I could still definetly be in therapy, but I think that everyone should be in therapy, at least for a little while. People need to be forced into self-reflection if they aren't doing it already.)........but it didn't change anything with these FUCKERS...

And all of them know ALL about it, all about ALL of this, from the beginning to the end. I told them about my problems when they WEREN'T such a big deal, I told them I how I was starting to feel depressed because of the way they treated me, their lack of respect. I told them it was getting WORSE and NONE of it mattered(yeah, my problem isn't that I avoid conflict, I'm quite good at confrontation. The problem is more that I'm super-confrontational with people that are super passive aggressive. Just don' work).........

I hate them, what can I say? I've been at rock bottom for nearly the last five years in this town, I haven't gotten any respect, and no one's even REMOTELY treated me like a human being. It's fucking bullshit....... And make no mistake, these are people that are at "punk" shows, people that are pretending to be punk rock, THESE are the people that have been treating me so poorly. They pretend to BE me, but they actually fucking HATE me because I genuinely AM what they pretend to be.......(Yeah, reading all of this again for the first time in years, it really makes sense now how the darker side of my personality developed. It's just all hate & anger and pain. I mean I was pissed off enough after high school, after being rejected by "normal" people or whatever, "cool people". I was already bitchy to begin with, but then came my further, even more painful rejection in "the scene" and that just served to really turn me into a world class douche-bag. I dunno; as I've said before, nowadays, I've dismantled a lot of that negative apparatus in my head. I've just simply let a lot of that hate go. The only real place that my asshole side lives on is in my writing. I don't do it in'real life" anymore. I still have so many negative tendancies to overcome.)

But fuck, I go on, I've found out time and time again that I have NO breaking point. There's NO amount of pain I can't take, can't deal with, can't confront and work through. What keeps me alive? The fact that I stand up to these assholes time and time and again… I stand up to them and I fucking MERCLESSLY FUCK WITH THEIR HEADS. Thank you Andy Kaufman...............

Moral of the Story: There IS no fucking moral to this story, other than: "Stay alive and MAYBE, ONE day, you'll actually get a girlfriend, but don't count on it you poor fuck." That and "I hate this fucking town."

OFFICIAL MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Wow, that cathartic… When I first was writing it, I was pretty genuinely pissed off. But then going back over again, I’m not so mad nar more. Yeah, for SOME strange reason, I feel BETTER after I've honestly expressed my feelings, weird, huh?

Anyway, movie of the week? Fucking "Ghost World" of course. Adapted from the Daniel Clowes' comic book and directed by Tery Zwigooff who directed "Crumb", one of my all time top five movies… Anyway, "Ghost World" is real good too, it's got everything you could ever want; record collector nerds, mental hospitals, sex with underage girls, the Buzzcocks, short shorts, and a bunch of other shit. Just fucking go see it, or rent the video whenever it comes out.....

OFFICIAL FAVORITE NEW CHANNEL SINCE WE GOT A BUNCH OF NEW CHANNELS ON THE CABLE SYSTEM HERE OF THE WEEK: Fucking E! Entertainment Television! Thanks to E! I now know that that Aunt B from "The Andy Griffith Show" died a recluse at age 86 with about a dozen cats and no living relatives, and how she had spent time in a mental hospital. It's GREAT...... Also, I've learned about Lobster Boy, and Devine, and Larry Flint. It's the best(no it's not)...........

OFFICIAL BAND THAT ISN'T REALLY "UNDERRATED" PER SAY, BUT PEOPLE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THEM MORE THEN THEY ARE OF THE WEEK: The Intimate Fags full length that came out recent-ish on Rip Off is totally fucking GREAT, yet I've seen no discussion of it on the Rip Off Records message board.......

OFFICIAL BOOK OF THE WEEK: That new-ish fucking Onion book......... They make jokes about NEW cliches. Ya know, NEW stereotypes associated with MODERN living, they crack wise about such things… Something which hardly ANYone else does..............

OFFICIAL DVD PURCHASE OF THE WEEK: Hmmmm, what DVD's have I bought lately? Oh yeah, the first season Simpsons' set. It's okay, but the episodes would be intolerable without the commentary...............

OFFICIAL PERSON WHO SUCKS THAT I SHALL MENTION BY NAME OF THE WEEK: I don’ know, fucking xxxxxxx xxxxx.... I've kinda flip-flopped with my opinion of her a couple of times, but at the end of the day, YEAH, I think she really is an asshole. Just talked to her recently for the first time in a year, and it was a baffling ordeal. I don’ know..........

OFFICIAL ILLNESS OF THE WEEK: Well, at first they thought it was staph infection, but that wasn't it. Now my GP is sending me off to the dermatologist, so we'll see what's he thinks it is. Still though, I was on antibiotics for a good two and a half/three weeks and THAT didn't clear it up. And supposedly, from what the doctor said, even if it WASN'T staph, the antibiotics I was on SHOULD'VE cleared it all up(it totally wasn't staph, 'twas porphyria related)................

OFFICIAL PROOF THAT MY SLEEPING PATTERNS ARE TOTALLY FUCKED UP OF THE WEEK: I had a doctor’s appointment today at 9:45. I set my alarm for 8:30. I went to bed at 3AM. I didn't fall asleep at ALL. I go to my appointment, get back by 10:15, go back to bed and sleep 'til 6PM. What can I say? My sleep is REALLY, REALLY fucked up.....

OFFICIAL REPEATING OF A THING I SAID EARLIER IN THIS COLUMN OF THE WEEK: Fuck, I really do hate this town(get over it, asshole). The disgusting thing is, wherever ELSE I go, I'm generally pretty well liked by people and have an easy time talking to girls. If only I didn't hate long distance relationships so much................

All chicks in bands are hot?

2005-08-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

Alrightly, so here's another old Blank Gen column. It ran in October 2001 at the same time as the MANIFESTO Manifesto piece. By all accounts, this was an extremely popular column. People liked the attempted funny shit, what can I say? It was also one of the first signs of the whole "Rip Off Column Persona". Ya know, the darker, more bullshit stuff; the "of Failure" part....

....................................................

"Fucking crazy chicks."

-Wasted Potential

So now, I follow a column nicely progressive with something disgustingly REgressive. Yes, I present to you my "Chicks 'n Rock'n'Roll" column, relating to you my various chick related theories in reguards to rock’n’roll . Strap yourselves in, because this is gonna be a fun, fun ride(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR's NOTE:HEY, is that where the Rip Off column catch phrase orginated?). Actually, I guess it's good that the first column ran so long, because nobody’s actually gonna read this. Which is perfect because I've ALREADY gotten shit about a lot of these topics. Anyway, off we go:

# 1. Why aren't there as many chicks in bands as there are guys?

Well, because, ya see, the main reason guys start bands is to GET LAID. They also start bands to make money as well, but that just ties back into the getting laid thing, because money equals power and power equals sexy equals GETTING FUCKED BY TWO BLOND, SHAVE-ED STRIPPERS IN THE BATHROOM OF LOCAL 506. After food and shelter, getting FUCKED, i.e. procreation, is the MAIN thing on the mind of ALL animals. Like they said on the one "Duckman" episode, the creation of society and agriculture and art, ALL of it was just done in an effort to impress chicks. Guys start bands to GET LAID....(EDITOR AGAIN:Oh man, I just used this same material again in that "We All Knew It Would Come To This" piece...fuck)

Now, on the OTHER HAND, chicks, they can get laid a LOT easier then guys can. By being forced into a submissive position throughout history, women have actually GAINED the power of being IN CONTROL OF SEX. Any woman of even average looks and/or intelligence (although that doesn't have anything to do with getting laid) can go out ANY night she wants to and GET LAID, GUAREN-FUCKING-TEED. Chicks don't need to develop great talents or abilities at such and such in order to get laid, all they have to be is a fucking CHICK and SOMEONE SOMEWHERE will DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY FUCK THEM. This basic genetic need is satisfied and therefore they don't need to go to any great lengths in order to advertise themselves. There aren't as many chicks in bands as there are guys because the basic, overwhelming genetic imperative that FORCES guys to start bands just isn't THERE for women like it is for men. That's why.(I think it's called "peacocking" or something like that)

Guys in the punk/rock'n'roll scene aren't repressing women in the slightest. If anything, us GUYS are being repressed because THEY hold so much damn sexual power.(Yes, it is not often talked about, but female privilege DOES exist... So does gay privilege, but that mainly just involves getting to see naked people in locker rooms) I mean, when was the fucking last time a chick came up to YOU at a show and asked for your number? ONCE maybe? NEVER? Yeah, that sounds about right. Now how many WOMEN have YOU gone up to and asked for their numbers? Uhhhhh, uhhhhhh, ALL of them? No SHIT, there's an imbalance in power, and GUYS are the ones that are losing.

Furthermore, everyone is anti-macho nowadays, and that's fine because some ultra-testosteroney, aggressive, take no prisoners type persona is obviously bullshit. What a LOT of people don't seem to realize is that the INVERSE of that is also bullshit to. Ya know, your ultra-subMISSIVE, timid, little quiet, scared little weak, church mouse type shit (ya know, "emo"), what’s up with THAT? Riot Grrl types talk about the evils of the pit and how girls "aren't allowed" to stand up front at shows. Gimme a fucking break, if I (emphasis on "I") am standing up front at a show, it AIN'T because I fucking BULLIED my way up there. It's not because I'm some tough man who pushed and shoved to get my way up front. If I'm standing right AT the stage for a band, I'm THERE because I've been fucking standing there for HOURS and my fucking knees hurt and my neck hurts and I'm THIRSY but I'm fucking STANDING there because THAT is where I wanna BE for the headliners. And I ain't robbing any fucking one ELSE of the right to stand up front, if they wanna stand up front, let THEM go through what I had gone through.

As for the pit, I don't fucking push anyone around in the pit, I don't take PART in the pit, mainly because I'm uncoordinated and I have glasses. Ya know, but I don't take some ultra-submissive VIEW towards the pit, I don't let myself be fucking PUSHED AROUND. And I mean, if I WAS getting tossed around and it was REALLY to my disliking. If I was being physically intimidated by people stronger and bigger then me, ya KNOW what I'd DO? I'd fucking WORK OUT and GET stronger. I mean, if you are getting all shoved around at shows and you SERIOUSLY don't like it, go to the fucking gym already, lift some fucking weights. Male or female, it's just as disgusting to conform to some ultra femme stereotype as it is to conform to ultra-macho thing. If guys maybe SHOULDN'T weight train so much, then maybe WOMEN SHOULD weight train more, DUH. Don't be "weak", don't let yourself be pushed around, but don't be an over aggressive asshole either, BALANCE, MOTHERFUCKER, BAL-LANCE.............

# 2. In the early 80's, all the punk rock guys had new wave girlfriends. WHY?

Well, because first of all, there were barely any punk rock chicks to begin with, and the few that there WERE either didn't seem too interested in sex, or were just flat out crazy. A new wave girlfriend though, she was the softened up, girl-fied version of a punk. She liked the Germs (although she liked the Go Go's more), but she was also cute and WANTED to fuck you. It was the best of both worlds. Today though, there ARE no more new wavers, so how's a punk rocker guy supposed go ABOUT procuring a non-skanky, non-crazy HOT chick who still digs Minor Threat? The answer is of course......ooooooooooHHHhhhhhhhhh, wait for it.....
The EMO GIRLFRIEND (yay!)!

The emo girlfriend possesses all the qualities of the new wave girlfriend, albeit in a modern context. There IS though SOME clash between punk rocker and emo cultures, just like there was with Punks and New Wavers twenty years ago. With an emo girlfriend you'll probably have to sit through an episode of NBC's "Friends" and pretend to laugh at it's dumbed down "Seinfeld"-iness. Maybe you'll even have to go to a Get Up Kids show and wonder aloud WHY they even HAVE keyboards when they don't even turn them up loud to hear (where as the with new wave girlfriend, you'd wonder why Flock of Seagulls even had GUITARS if they weren't gonna be turned up loud enough to hear over the keyboards)? With the emo girlfriend you have to sit there and read overly long, overly boring emails, but it that really any worse then having to listen to your new wave girlfriend blather on for hours about Duran Duran?

But still, there are some points of divergence between emo girlfriends and new wave girlfriends, there are times when the emo girlfriend more resembles a modern version of a GOTH girlfriend (did anybody EVER have a Goth girlfriend?). You'll most likely have to deal with your emo girlfriend being all depressed at least fifty percent of the time, and you'll have to deal with all of her psycho, stalker, ultra-loser ex-boyfriends that've targeted her because she basically has the word "victim" tattooed on her forehead. You'll have to resist her efforts to make YOU into some kind of ultra-loser, psycho because REALLY, that's the only way she can deal with guys, that's the only kind of relationship she understands. You also have to deal with her BREAKING UP with you if the relationship is actually GOING well. Sure, she was fine with a long distancy thing for the last two years, but now that you're both in the same place at the same time and things are going WELL, FUCK THAT, she can't deal with a healthy relationship......

The new wave girlfriend might've been stupid, but it was okay, because it's was the 80's and you were a punker rocker, SO YOU WERE STUPID TOO. Emo girlfriends are smarter, but most of that intelligence is mainly focused on FUCKING UP ALL OF HER RELATIONSHIPS. At the end of the day, both emo and new wave girlfriend’s suck, but that's okay, because SO DO YOU, SO DO YOU!

# 3. All chicks in bands are hot.

Now, this sucker is related to # 1 up there. Ya see, 'cause GUYS in bands immediately become two or three times HOTTER then they were before. This holds true for WOMEN in bands to. The thing IS though, since they are already women, they are already extremely damn fuckable, and being in a BAND just raises their powers to unGODly levels (exclamation point). Debbie fucking Harry circa 1978? I would literally fucking KILL someone if I could just fuck her. I would give up forever just to be with her one time. That’s how bad I wanna fuck her, so bad that I'm making both Goo Goo Dolls and Nicholas Cage references. Now that’s fucking de-sire(Why Debby Harry? Weird)......

Anyway, I had believed for a long time that yes, truly, indeed, ALL women in bands were SOOOO totally fuckable, but then, then something happened. I saw a band, an all FEmale band. And I ain't gonna mention names(They were called "The Stimulants", people said they sounded like the Buzzcocks... They didn't... The bass player played bass chords... LAME)...........but........they WEREN'T hot. And I know what yer thinking, NO, they weren't dykes, either(yay, sexism & homophobia!) I didn't know WHAT to make of the whole situation, it TOTALLY shattered my whole "chicks in bands" theory in to little, tiny, tiny pieces. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go. I was truly lost. I had no home. The days and nights I spent in that age of uncertainty are a time I hope I'll never have to face again. Then was TRULY the third week in November where it's NEARLY winter but not quite YET of my discontent (Yeah, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for that last sentence). Eventually, I regained enough composure to go again, to PICK UP those tiny, tiny little shattered pieces and go on, once more..........Today, all I'm really left with is "Being in a band makes a chick approx. two to three times hotter then she was before, although, if she's REALLY, REALLY ugly, then being in a band isn't gonna help her"; that and a knowing smile. Oh, those days spent upon Emerson's pound, it's a time I won't soon forget(Wow, bad joke and I ran with it for way too long)

# 4. The cutest girls in THEE whole world, always work at the record store.

It helps if you imagine this one as the lyric to a Queers' song (latter era "Don't Back Down" Queers, not the early, good, '84, KBD, Wimpy years). Now, for a LONG, LONG while, I ALWAYS noticed how record store girls are ALWAYS SOOOOOO damn cute. Not even really "hot" or "slutty" even, just REALLY fucking cute. I think to myself, "Why in the FUCK is that?" I mean, they aren't actually IN a band, like the # 3 girls, so what exactly is their power? What’s the deal?

THEN one day, it dawned on me. Record store girls are so cute for the same reason that DJ girls on college radio (who play stuff like the Promise Ring and Belle and Sebastian) sound so cute, BECAUSE OF THEIR PROXIMITY to music. I like GIRLS, I like MUSIC, slap the two together and you've got a combo that I just can't resist. They are just a watered down version of the "chick in a band." The record store girl only seems CUTE, not hot. The record store thing like only makes a chick like 1.5 times hotter then she was before.

ANYway.........

# 5. I've really blown my whole load here with this ultra-lengthy double column, so I think I'll just end it off here and do my endnotes. Uhhhhh, if I come up with some more "chicks 'n' rock'n'roll" theories, I'll let ya know. For now though, in regards to ALL of my grand chick theories, I have to say:

Moral of the Story: Obviously, I STILL can't get laid(2005 AGAIN:I gotta get some new fucking material)

MOVIE OF THE WEEK: HARD CORE LOGO (exclamation point).... I bought this YESTERDAY on DVD and boy fucking HOWDY, is it EVER the best punk rock movie EVER, EVER (double emphasis on the second "EVER"). "Hard Core Logo" is the tale (the Canadian tale) of the fictional band Hard Core Logo and the reunion tour they went on back in '96. Everyone's old, and arguing, and the bass player is crazy and guitar guy's leaving to be a big rockerstar in this MTV band and the whole fucking thing is GREAT, GREAT, GREAT. "Hard Core Logo", just like everyone says, is a fucking PUNK ROCK SPINAL TAP............

HATE MAIL OF THE WEEK: Okay, a few columns back I blasted this one club The Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina because they cancelled a Templars' show on REAL short notice (i.e. NONE, the show was still listed on the website and on the club's answer machine), and I (emphasis on "I") drove fucking three and a half hours ONE WAY to get there, only to find out there was NO SHOW and that I had to turn right around and drive back home. Anyway, a week or so ago, I get THIS from a person named Dana:

"ok, i don't wanna hear shit about the fucking cat's cradel. if you had to drive 3 hours out here, then you must not have a place to go to hear good music around you. its cheap as hell and its a small place, so i'd say its doing damn well for itself. thats place pulls in some awesome bands for being in a small college town. and its not their fault the concert was canceled! so, if you can't find a better place for awesome music, then shut the hell up. otherwise... fuck YOU!"

To which I replied:

"Ouuuuuuu, fan mail. Anyway, don't take my dissing of them too seriously. I THINK in the same column I actually PRAISED the Cat's Cradle audience for booing an awful Korn-metal act off the stage at a Bad Brains show."

Then I moved into line by line commentary

She said:

"ok, i don't wanna hear shit about the fucking cat's cradel. if you had to drive 3 hours out here, then you must not have a place to go to hear good music around you."

I said:

"No, there's NO place around here with a good scene. Chapel Hill and DC are like the closest, both of which are 3 and half hours away."

She said:

"its cheap as hell"

I said:

"What are you talking about? I paid like maybe 18 bucks for the Bad Brains show, and I believe Guided By Voices was at least 14 dollars. And ya know, not that I'm complaining(I'd gladly go WAY higher to see GBV), but those kind of prices are a LONG way from being cheap."

Side note here, now MAYbe I loose some ground here by admitting my GBV like-age, but come fucking, have you HEARD them lately? They've morphed into full on Cheap Trick tribute, how could you NOT like that?

She said:

"and its a small place, so i'd say its doing damn well for itself."

I said:

"I wouldn't say it's that small. I mean, I just went to a basement show the other night, THAT was small.........."

She said:

"thats place pulls in some awesome bands for being in a small college town."

I said:

"I ain't arguing with you there. In face, I'm gonna be down again next month on the 21st to see White Stripes(this was still over a year before they were on TV). And NAAAAW, Chapel Hill isn't a small college town, Blacksburg, Virginia, where I(emphasis on "I") live, THAT's a small college town."

she said:

"and its not their fault the concert was canceled!"

I said:

"Eeeeeh, since none of the other bands showed up, they must've known for at least a day or two that the show was canceled. they should've been more on the ball with notifying people, and updating web sites saying that the show was cancelled. Ya know, because OTHERWISE, there might people like ME who drove a long distance, only to get there and have immediatly turn around and go home. It was a totally wasted DAY and it on account of their lackadasical attitude towards UPdating shit. Ya know, and after I got there and found out the show wasn't happening, I walked down to CD Alley, there were four other kids in there who were gonna go to the show, but didn't know it had been cancelled. Futhermore, that was like the third or fourth time the Templars were supposed to play Chapel Hill and cancelled."

She said:

"so, if you can't find a better place for awesome music, then shut the hell up. otherwise... fuck YOU!"

I said:

"Just because I don't have any other BETTER options(well, Local 506 is WAY better, but I don't even know if they're OPEN any more or not), doesn't mean I have to just sit back and blindly delude myself into believing that they're the perfect club. Ya know, I'll commend them when they do something good, but I'm not just gonna blindly support them when they're obviously pretty slack about certain shits."

BAND ORGINATING FROM SOUTH-WESTERN VIRGINIA OF THE WEEK: The National Trust, power pop that splits the difference between late 70's British Mod power pop mid 70's Cheap Trick power-pop.........

OFFICIAL PROCLAIMATION ABOUT WHITE STRIPES OF THE WEEK: Sadly, as I realized a few days after I wrote my last column, it is now OFFICIALLY (and I mean OFFICIALLY) TOTALLY cliche to talk about how overrated the White Stripes are(I think this was written when the second LP had been out for less than 6 months or so). SURE, they ARE way overrated, but that topic's just dead horse-edly beaten WAY too much. We can no longer talk about it...........

OFFICIAL THING I'LL PUT UP MORE INFO ABOUT NEXT COLUMN BECAUSE I'M TOO LAZY
TO GO AND GET THE INFO NOW OF THE WEEK: I'm gonna go to the Midwest By the Grace of God fest, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Three days, October 26^th through the 28th… (I never went to that)An assload of Midwest bands playing… Go to the Rock'n'Roll Highschool website for info on who's playing (yes, I am ALSO to lazy to put the URL of the RNRHS site)..............

OFFICIAL SINCE THIS COLUMN HAS BEEN SOOOO LONG NO ONE’S GONNA READ THIS FAR ESPECIALLY NOT THE PERSON THIS IS DIRECTED TO OF THE WEEK/OFFICIAL PLEA FOR A PIECE OF ASS OF THE WEEK: Ya know, after this whole long debacle of a column, and reading all of that shit over again, I don’ know, I don’ know… There's this one girl, the only girl in town right now that I'm even kinda interested in. Ya know, she's READ most all of that "second level"-er thing before, an earlier version, and yet, for OTHER reasons, she REALLY dislikes me, she either thinks I'm a total asshole. Ya know, but after writing and re-reading the whole thing and THINKING "Hey, she's read this to", I just find it hard to believe that she'd actually HAVE some seriously NEGATIVE opinion of me. Anyway, reading all that crap about being so ultra-honest, it really made think about how I wasn’t being honest in regards to her. Ya know, I've told her a couple of times before that I had no "romantic" interest in her, but fuck, that ain't true, I just said that at those specific times out of anger and also because I kinda wanted to make things less confusing. Ya know, my whole "second level" theory is much easier to handle if I ain't trying ta be yer boyfriend. Anyway, like I said, I DOUBT ANYone will actually READ this far and I DOUBT that (NAMED OMITTED OUT OF EMBARASSMENT) will EVER even read this AT ALL, SOOOOOOOOO, in bold defiance of my own personal philosophy, let me say HERE, now, in the dark, where no one's paying attention, YEAH, I DO dig xxxxx in a romantic/"I wanna be your boyfriend" type of way................Oh yeah, I'm a total coward.........

OFFICIAL SIGN OFF FOR A COLUMN THAT’S BEEN MORE OF A UHHHHH "JOURNEY" THEN A COLUMN OF THE WEEK: If you made it this far.....then you probably skipped a bunch of stuff(yeah, really... I think the whole thing, with both columns and the long endnotes was like 13 pages or so all together)

LAY-FUCKING-TER.................

Roanoke Crusty Riot 2001

2005-08-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

So this was the second half of a double column dealie that ran on Blank Gen September 5th, 2001. The first part of the column was the grand "can't get laid manifesto", which I still haven't lived down four years later. Of course, how am I supposed to live it down when I keep on reposting all that old shit? Oh well...

Have fun reading the column. It's definetly not the best thing I've ever penned. Even when it ran, I think it was just a lazy re-write of some old email that MIGHT've even been a couple years old at that point, I don't really remember. I'd try and do some editing, rewrite the fucker, but I don't think it'd really improve things that much. This fucker is beyond help. Still though, interesting stuff happened. Just think of it as a relic from the days when I REALLY couldn't write(did anybody get that "Aesthetics of Rock" reference?)

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"Fighting my way back"
-Thin Lizzy

So gather 'round young ins, cause I got a tale to tell. The month was June, the day was something, a Saturday I think… There was this show thing in some remote field way out in the middle of nowhere. There were like eight or nine bands from the Roanoke area playing (Roanoke, Virginia, 40 some miles from where I live). Roanoke is notorious for having one of the WORST punk scenes in…ahhhhh, probably the WORLD. The show was being headlined by the Strap Ons, from Norfolk. They have a single out on Jim UMed's Rapid Pulse label. Obviously, I went to see the Strap Ons and no one else.

So, I sit through the first three or so crap bands, really with my only entertainment being the random drunken idiots falling over stuff. And lemme tell ya, there was this one guy that was SOOOOOO fucking drunk (note that this was like at three o'clock in the afternoon)… He played guitar in one of the bands and he was so fucking wasted that he fell off the stage backwards and hit the ground HARD. Needless to say, it was funny. At another point, people had these small-ish fires going, and he decides he's gonna jump one, so he runs and jumps it, but he lands so this one long stick pops up, NEARLY hits him in the balls and ALMOST knocks him back into the fire. Seriously, he was like centimeters away from having gotten the serious ballshot and being knocked back into the fire. That was also quite funny as well.

Also, early on, there was some old guy (50+) there that kept talking to me, and for SOME reason, he didn't quite realize how truly horrendous these bands were. I mean, out of the eight bands I saw, six of them were amongst the worst crap I've ever seen, and that REALLY says something (side note that really IS saying something, because I have seen a LOT of bad shows. I live in Blacksburg, Virginia, a college town. A college town, emo, metal-core HELL… Few have had as much experience as I have with bad shows). Anyway, this old guy kept on talking about how the various bands needed to "take chances." Yeah, gimme a fucking break, the only chance those bands needed to take was to try and run across a four lane highway at rush hour (ya know, 'cause they'd most likely be killed). Actually, I'd tell you the names of some these craps bands, but I can't for the life of me actually remember what any of their names were (I THINK there was a band called "Fungus" though).

Anyway, ol' Geezer Joe topped his "taking chances" line by at one point wondering ALOUD if this other 50's looking guy was a "talent scout" or not. Fuck, he was just SOOOOO clueless it was hilarious. I mean, these bands were the worst crap EVER, every single one of them seemed like they had just formed the day before, that they'd only practiced once, and that each of them respectively had been playing their instruments for maybe six months (minutes?) prior to that point. I mean, I think the guitar player for the one band fucked up EVERY single song. What's REALLY sad though is that that band (the Jane Doz) has been around for over two years.

Shit, even the big "rock stars" of the Roanoke scene (Stations), their ALPHA band, they've been around for more then THREE years, and even THEY suck total shit and sounded COMPLETELY off. Their bass player was HORRIBLE, it was like he couldn't fucking play at ALL.(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:I'm pretty sure that band is still together and they still are the antithesis of all things good and just. The last time I saw them, sometime in 2003, I left the show with the thought that I maybe didn't even like music at all anymore. They just had this "special" ability to suck all life out of a room). At one point they covered a Dictators' song, and it sounded like any high school band in the world trying to cover a Little Richard song (i.e. the worst crap EVER). What was even sadder is it’s SOOOOO obvious that their one guitar player just thinks they're SOOOOOOOO cool, and that he's so cool. Like he's some hot shit or something, like his band is SOOOOOO awesome, he was even wearing a beret. Gimme a god damned fucking break, it was SUUUUUUCH horrible shit, "Hello junior, there's a reason why your band's been around for four years and you STILL can't get a deal with ANY label, no matter how small. Even a crap monger like Beer City won't touch you with a ten-foot pole. D.I.Y.? Why...BECAUSE YOU SUCK (yes, a Screeching Weasel reference, I apologize).

Anyway, despite all of this, this was not the most entertaining part of the show (note: the Strap Ons were cool, but I'll get to that later). Okay, so one of the bands that weren't total crap (Skelp) was playing. They weren't good, but they more or less were one of those kind of bands that would've gotten signed to a major in '95 (and later dropped). Kinda like China Drum (but without any Smiths-esque stuff), if you know them. Anyway, so the crowd totally disappears whilst they're playing. "No big deal", I think, because they're obviously not any good (still though, MULTITUDES better then the other stuff). Eventually people wander back round to the stage. Then, some fucked up (i.e. beaten up) guy wanders up; I notice a couple of people being all tense and took notice of where he was. Actually, I mainly just notice this because there's this one hot chick (who I was planning on hitting on) who was amongst the group that was being all notice-full of him.

So then, the band's set ends, and the tensions seem to be getting more intense. The group of people that was with the hot chick (also known as the "punks") was arguing with the fucked up guy and HIS friends (the "hippies"). I think you MIGHT just be able to guess what happened next.

The "punks" and the "hippies" start arguing with each other. And I gotta stress here how neither label is really accurate, because some of the "punks" had the biggest, baggiest pants I've ever seen, and one of the "hippies" had a leather jacket AND short hair (don't ask me). So the tensions mount and it seems like a fight really is gonna happen. Everyone not involved with it moves to a safe distance, me included. This arguing goes on for twenty minutes or so and finally people seem to calm down and everyone separates. I, of course, take note of hot chick's actions (of COURSE) during this time. She seems INCREDIBLY tense, like she's half a second away from crying. I mean, she was trying to put up a front, but it's clear what she was really feeling.

Also to, I didn't know at that time that whole thing was "punks" vs. "hippies", ya know, so while observing the argument, I was trying to figure out/eaves drop/over hear what the back-story was. And as it turned out, there was some of a back-story to it...(side note: as the arguing was going on, things got QUITE tense, and I made the joke, "See, this is why emotional arguments are best left to the Internet." Unfortunately, I said that to some redneck and he didn't get it at all.).

Also, in regards to hot chick, she seemed to have really weird reactions to stuff, like the aforementioned drunken moron was her friend (he seemed unaware that it was no longer 1987), and when he did all that stupid shit, she'd like go/run over to him to see if he was okay and be all concerned and stuff. To the extent of like maybe like taking him over to a chair and getting him to sit down and calm down and stuff, like some kind of bizarro mothering instinct gone CREEPY. Of course, that didn't make her any less attractive to me (of course not)...

So then, after the argument had calmed down, the next band plays and all is fine. This band ALSO sucks and my mind starts to wander once more, I start to question whether hot chick has a boyfriend or not, she seemed to be hanging off of all the guys. I ponder further talking to her/hitting on her and decide that I most certainly WILL go up to her and hit on her. So THEN, the next band is up...dun dun DUN...

All the sudden, in the middle of the song, within two seconds, the WHOLE crowd is a 100 yards away and in the midst of one FUCK of a FIGHT. Ya know, there was some small skirmish, and BAM!, like that, everyone was like LITERALLY a hundred yards away and in this fight. And it was AT LEAST like thirty people on each side, and it was TOTAL fucking violence, total chaos ("punk you no die"). Just random violence… And it just kept GOING ON, from start to finish there was probably like thirty minutes of total fighting. It wasn't as "full throttle" with as many PEOPLE the entire time, but overall, there was a solid half-hour of fighting. Like there was this one guy swinging around an aluminum crutch for fifteen minutes plus (it was his crutch, by the way). Ya know, to which I (emphasis on "I") painted the hilarious scenario:

You'd think he'd learn. "Gee Bobo, how did ya get the crutch?"
"Daaaaa, I got my ass kicked in a fight." "Hmmmmmmmmmm…"

Nobody laughed at THAT either (the bastards). I guess it was because they were friends with someone actually GETTING their asses kicked. Anyway, the sane MINORITY of people just stood a good 100 yards away from all the fighting. It was fun, I was crackin' wise to everybody, the whole "nigh riot" thing just gave you the perfect icebreaker. I shared a moment of synchronicity with some goth-fag that didn't have eyebrows. I shook my head disapprovingly at all of it, pretending that I didn't find it as truly HILARIOUS as I DID find it.

Somewhere around this point, somebody told me that the whole thing was a big "punks" vs. "hippies" thing. And I mean REALLY, I DOUBT how much those "hippies" were hippies. Ya know, it was PUNK show, that and ONLY that, most of which were crusty bands. Now, crusties themselves are pretty much hippies, although they listen to mainly metal [Wait, are crusties even punks then?] And anyway, the "hippies" that were there really didn't look all the much different. They had tattoo's and were all long term-edly unwashed, and they smoked pot just like the crusties. If they were SUCH hippies, why were they at a crusty show? Just because it was in some field or something (the show was free, by the way)? "Dude, it'll be like Woodstock except all the crusties will ALREADY be caked with mud BEFORE they even get there."

Eventually, after the LONGEST time, all the fighting stops... Wait, no it doesn't, the one guy who's running the show (his dad owned the field), tells all the hippies they have leave (If they're such hippies, why were they so violent?). That doesn't solve the problem though, the disturbance just moves into the parking area, which is on the other side of this fence. I of course check a couple of times to make sure my car is unharmed (of course). It's fine...

Now to, another thing to keep in mind, is that hot chick is RIGHT dead in the center of all of this, she doesn't actually DO any fighting or get her ass kicked, but in EVERY other way she's in the DIRECT center of ALL of it. And she was just SOOOOOOO reacting to ALLLLL of it. Fuck, I could tell from a 100 yards off. I don't think she crying, but she had that fucking look she had the whole night, that whole "just ABOUT to cry and EVER so desperately holding it back" look (I know it well). She had that, but magnified four or five times while the fight was going on. And she was like RIGHT at the center of the maelstrom.

Anyway, EVENTUALLY, EVENTUALLY the hippies left, and a little while later all the "punks" that were in the fight left to. Actually, that's another thing, after the hippies left, there was maybe about a half-hour 'til the "punks" left. During this time, I walked out to my car to get my jacket to sit on/wear as it was getting chilly. Also, obviously, I wanted to further check out my car to make sure it was unharmed. As I'm WALKING to my car, I walk past hot chick, who's in HER car, listening to music in an OBVIOUS, BLATENT attempt to "cool off" after all the ugliness. Seriously, anyone could've read that whole thing clear as day. Just to make even further sure, I walked in front of her car on the way back and FUCK HELL yeah, eyes closed, head back TRYING to relax, but not succeeding. She wasn't asleep either, her eyes were like half closed and then she looked at me as I passed anyway...(by the way, this show was like nine hours all in total, so that's why all this shit could happen in such an extended timeframe).

Also to, before even the hippies left, before the fighting even stopped, there were tons of people getting on the mic bitching about the fight. Pretty easy to do since the stage was a good tenth of a mile away (or more). It was all just a bunch of moronic, generic comments, the one guitar guy for the one band (the one who thinks he's such hot shit). He gets on the mic and starts talking about what fucking morons everyone is... Fuck, that's just SOOOOO retarded on SOOOO many levels. First of all, the guy saying this is like THIRTY, so that's one thing (thirty years old and still pretending to be a teenager, which is pitiful). Next of all, he's married and his wife just had a baby. Third of all, he was talking about the people that were in the fight, but he was too dumb/trying too hard to be cool, and he didn't SPECIFY that he thought the fighting people were dumb. That's whom he WAS talking about though. Anyway, next of all, he never even thanked all the people that DIDN'T get involved in the fight... Duh, that's the classic "cool moron" move...(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:I apologize for this whole paragraph. What the fuck am I talking about?)

Most of all, the guy was a DIPSHWOD because he actually got UPSET that there was a fight, it made him angry, he took it fucking SERIOUSLY. There was nothing to be angry about surrounding that fight, it was just a hilarious "happening" of moronity at it's best. It was FUNNY. As long you of course kept a safe distance from the fighting itself...

Besides that though, one guy on the mic and got a good line in, "Punks, Hippies, from where I stand ALL of you just look like a bunch of rednecks." And that was the fucking TRUTH. Everybody there, ESPECIALLY those involved in the fighting ALL looked and "acted" like some of the most STONE retarded, pure bred, inbred REDNECKS EVER. Even as I walked INTO the show, before all the shit, I said to myself, "Whadda bunch of fucking crackers." Ya know, like almost every last one of them had the flopped over, outgrown mohawk, coupled with the goatee. Ne'er before (or since) has there ever been a more redneck look(MD2k5E'SN:The current crusty look of the dread mullet with racing strips is way worse than the old flopped over mowhawk w/ a goatee). Fuck, there were SOOOOOO many mohawked kids there, the most I've ever seen in one place. I had to try HARD not to laugh in their faces...

Besides the mic stuff, the people not fighting just started to get so bitchy and moany about the fight. Ya know, like about how they were SOOOOOOO mad that there was a fight, and they were SOOOOO angry, blah, blah... Ya know, they were actually UPSET about this, where as I just found it HILARIOUS. Fuck, I even found the fact that they were emotionally involved/affected by it, I found THAT hilarious too. Yeesh, it's like if a couple four years olds have a fight and then you take it SERIOUSLY... What MORONS, all the way around...

Anyway, after maybe and hour and a half, the next band finally played. Halfway through their set the generator conked out and we were all left in near darkness (it wasn't totally dark yet). I actually DID laugh out loud at this; it was just like fucking ICING on top of the world's most perfect day. After like WAY over twenty minutes, they finally got the generator back on and the band played a song or two more and finished.

Then, the next band plays, three songs in, the cops show up... From better to ever GREATER, if there was ANY doubt EVER that this night would live forever in my memory (and there WASN'T) the cops appearance would've cemented it(Actually, at this point, I had pretty much forgotten about all this stuff). The cops are there for over half an hour, finally they leave and the band plays a song or two more before ending things so there'll be time for the other band.

SO THEN, LASTLY, the Strap Ons play, and they were cool. Not great by any measure, but still damn good. I got their CD and it mainly sounds like early Blanks '77, if Blanks '77 were a WAY better band. Anyway, I talked to their singer afterwards, and actually banked on my status as a blankgen columnist for the first time. I won major cool points with him, even more so with their one guitar player who I didn't get a chance to talk to. Anyway, I talked to the singer for a long time and it turns out he actually went to college in Blacksburg, and graduated in '94, so we talked a good piece on THAT.

THEN, when it seemed the evening couldn't GET any cooler, a fucking fireball whizzes by us and hits the side of the stage. There was this one guy putting off firework stuff (DEFINETLY illegal stuff, WAY too big/powerful). Apparently, he got a little too drunk and wasn't paying attention to where he was shooting them, It came within one foot of about half a dozen people, me included. Actually, I think it nicked the jacket of some punker moron, because later on he was complaining about it...

God, so much mayhem, so much chaos, so much FUN...

Anyway, I got the Strap Ons full length and one of their seven inches, not the Rapid Pulse one though. It was cool though to, because he used to work at the radio station at tech and he gave me an extra copy of the seven inch to give to the radio station, so that was neat...

In regards to hot chick, she did INDEED have a boyfriend. Furthermore, I decided NOT to hit on her because she was way too whippy after all the unpleasantness. Ya know, how can you make pleasantly inane, cheery small talk with someone who REALLY IS about to cry? Still though, if I ever see her again(come to think of it, I think she was the same hot girl I lusted over at the aforementioned 2003 Roanoke show I went to... interesting) ... And dude, her boyfriend was SUCH a schmuck, he was one of the cracker-flopped over mohawk-goatee-crusty punks, he don't deserve a hot chick girlfriend, no matter how oddly she may behave...

Actually to, her just plain WEIRD behavior and reactions to stuff put me off of her. I said to myself "Dude, no matter how hot she is, she's obviously crazy, she's got a fucking crustie boyfriend for fuck's sake! You need to stay away from this girl."(ahahahaha, this comment would prolly get me beaten up nowadays. That's 'cause I live in a town WITH crusties now...)

Anyway, also to, just before leaving, I hear someone say in reguards to the fight; "Yeah, this is just like EVERY show at the Melting Pot." The Melting Pot of course being an old club... And even more of course-ly, there's the irony of people EXACTLY IDENTICAL TO EACH OTHER getting in a fight at a place called "the Melting Pot". Ya know, a "melting pot" ideally being a place where extremely DIFFERENT people come together and live in harmony, not a place where extremely SIMILIAR people CAN'T get along. But that kind of thing is a little over the head of most of the dumbfucks there...

One other thing too about all this whole Roanoke hilarity, at one point, some ultra-dumbfuck, I think that REALLY drunk guy, he was talking to someone and he's like, "Yeah, if someone came up to you and said, 'Hey you dumbfuck asshole, I don't like you, eat shit and die, cocksucker!' What else COULD you do but get into a fight with him?" Ya know, and I was thinking, "Gee, I don't know, I'd either shrug my shoulders and say Buuuuu...or I'd laugh directly in their face." But of course, Johnny MORON, being the MORON he is, the only solution HE can come up with is violence...

SOOOOOOO now, in conclusion to this story, I have to say that from the position of the detached observer, that that was one of the BEST nights I could of possibility had IN that "detached observer" role. Ya know, if yer gonna be doing some emotionally detached observing, IT DON'T GET ANY BETTER THEN THIS!

Moral of the Story: Roanoke sucks(very true)

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My First Blank Gen Column

2005-08-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so in my continuing, pathetic effort to post everything on here that I've ever written within the last five years, I present to you now the first blank generation.com column I wrote. This is from March of 2001:

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"I am the end, NOW is release, NOW comes revenge, now is the PAIN, you think you know pain, you know nothing, feel my touch, feel the pulsing stimulation. Know the meaning of....My gift to you......I LIVE......."

Or something like that, we're just dealing in Samhain lyrics here, so there's no need to be precise. Anyway, as you've maybe gleamed from the above (I feel the need to mention a cube here, I know not why) this is my first Blank Generation thingy, and as such, uhhhh, "welcome to the pain", welcome to my column. In the coming months AND years I plan on using this column as a tool to explore and/or define the vast, ummmm, unexplored, ill-defined beast that is modern rock'n'roll/punk rock culture. I shall explain its relation to other cultures, both main and side-stream. I'll offer up all my bullshit, over-simplified theories on the working of life. I'll strive my striviest to identify all the latest cliches and then, obviously, make fun of them. I'll do all of this in a profoundly punk rock context, and what's more, I'll do it with a lot less ego then has been displayed in this first paragraph. (MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:Obviously, I was not successful in THAT particular endeavor) Sorry, I guess that Samhain quote really got to me..........

SO then, in an effort to actually COME UP with a topic for the first column, I was looking around ol' Blank Gen, trying to find SOME source of inspiration. Wasn't coming up with much, obviously, but then, I stumbled across those geeky "staff profile" things where such and such talks about blah blah and blah blah and "I like this band", and "I'd give me first born to see the So and So's, circa '77" and "Ouuuuuuu, I'd just piss my pants for a chance to have Lou Reed shit in my mouth" and such. In those profiles though, someone mentioned something about the "Please Kill Me" book from a couple years back. A book which I just read (I had to order it, in case Paul Reject is reading this) recently. And clearly, this book is an AMAZING, AMAZING read. It's one of the first rock 'n' roll books EVER that doesn't sugarcoat a SINGLE THING. Sure, in other books you could read about Thunders' drug habit, but ne'er where else before would learn of just HOW disgusting he got towards the end. Ya know, how all the years of drug abuse had REALLY "taken its toll on his looks". How Liv Tyler's mommy WOULD've fucked him if he just weren't so repellent. And to think, Thunders has such a huge cult of junkie rockers nowadays, some of which actually ARE also copping a habit just to be like their hero. What the fuck, ya know?

Another cool thing about the book was all the small stuff that a lot of people maybe, probably, missed, like the fact that GG and crew hung out with the Ramones (Blondie was there to) while they were out in CA filming Rock 'N' Roll Highschool. Now, is it just me, or does it totally blow your mind that it's possible that while Dee Dee was fucking up his "Hey guys, it's pizza!" line, GG Allin himself might've been trying to mack on Debbie Harry? It's a Bizarro World, folks! (MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:Twasn't GG, the Ramones hung out with the Sic Fucks in LA, not the Scum Fucks. The Sic Fucks were led by two chicks that were backup singers in an early version of Blondie. Later I think they went on to found the very profitable Manic Panic hair dye line)And another thing, fucking JERRY ONLY was there when Sid's mom spred Sid's ashes on Nancy's grave, fucking inbred, everybody knows everybody else in the New York punk scene of the mid to late seventies.........

But anyway, anyway, ANYway, overall, the coolest part of the book HAS TO BE the chapter on all the male prostitutes. Dee Dee Ramone, Jim Carroll, Richard (or should I say "Dick") Hell, SO many of our rock 'n' roll idols took it up the ass to earn to some scratch. Talk about putting the "punk" in uhhhhhh "punk rock." After reading about all that though, it's kinda hard to have the same respect for 'em. I mean, we're all probably about half a step from being a junkie, that’s understandable, but I don't know about you, I don't think I could do the whole "peddling my ass" thing. That is, unless I was some kind of male prostitute that only fucked really good looking, disease free women, preferably RICH; good looking disease free women. Or actually, if they were good looking and rich enough, maybe you could bump the whole "disease free" qualifier. For some reason though, I DOUBT I'm ever gonna find my time employed in THAT specific occupation. I can always dream though.............

Still though, THINKING about all of that, THINKING about a lot of doof’s blind hero worship/imitation, THINKING about the whole "newly unveiled" history of a punk rock hustlin', I uhhhhh, well, I came to the obvious conclusion. Namely, if people ARE so truly stupid that they'll cop a heroin habit JUST to be like their heroes (Brad Knowle, anybody?), if they're gonna go to THAT extreme, then it AIN'T a long time 'til "Hustler Chic’ll" take hold and become the latest trend.

Yeah, you heard me, peddling your ass, ESPECIALLY if yer a guy, is gonna be the next big thing with yer hipster doofus types. They've already tried "bi", they could find work as a tattoo man in ANY 1930's circus, and they’ve pierced their genitals into nothing-ness… WHAT IS LEFT FOR THESE PEOPLE? WHERE DO THEY GO NOW? I'll tell ya where it's all a going, it's all headed straight for "Peddler Punk", for "Hustler Chic." You'll walk down the street in some metropolitan area (preferably somewhere around 53rd and 3rd) and some spiked, dog collared, Toilet Boys be-t-shirted moron is gonna walk up to you and say "Dude, do you like wanna uhhhhh, go on a DATE?"

Now, IN THEORY New Wave Hookers are cool, but fuck, in practice, in practice they're a mediocre band that DOES sound like they'd be in Junk....... Whoops, sorry, kinda got side tracked there, it's just that I had such high hopes for them, based on that song from the Spastics' LP, but oh well.………

Moral of the story: Hipster doofuses are doofuses, and fucking HELL, is the future ever gonna be a scary place. Between them and the amputee fetish freaks, I just think I might vote republican in uhhhhh, 2020 or whenever.

So anyway, that's it for this for now. Even though I'm not a reviewer, feel free to send me any free records or whatever (naked photos of yourself, but only if you are the aforementioned disease free, good looking WOMAN and the "rich" part don't hurt either). Also, as a faggy "end notes" type thing, I'm gonna do a "movie of the week" and "band of week" sorta dealie. WHY? Because I want to........

Movie of the Week: "The Tao of Steve"

Rented this a couple of weeks ago, stars Donal Logue of TV's "Growded For Life", which actually IS one of the few decent sit-coms on the air today(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:No it wasn't, that show sucked). Anyway, "Steve" is the tale of this post 30 philoso-slacker that still manages to get laid a lot even though he's real fat. Damn, I hope to one day to BE that post 30 philoso-slacker that still blah, blah....... But anyway, all in life is fine for him until he falls for this hot drummer chick, and THEN......... it all changes. Nothing great, but still, it's a new slacker movie, and I am duty bound to see ALL slacker movies. Actually, I'll probably DO a column on slacker movies sooner or later, but whatever.............

Band of week: Mission of Burma

Now I generally wanna spotlight a CURRENT band here, but what the fuck, Burma have been unappreciated their whole fucking career (and also in the nearly twenty years since they broke up) Fuck, I went to the only Burma web site the other day www.missionofburma.com and the counter was only at like 287, or something ridiculous like that(MODERN DAY, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE:Also, they had Clint Conley's personal email address on the website at the time. It's hard to believe that a mere half decade ago Burma was so overlooked) . The damn these kids today, they got no sense of history... So anyway, they formed in '78 and kept a stable line-up of Roger Miller on guitar and vocals; Clint Conley on bass and vocals, Peter Prescott on drums and backing vocals and Martin fucking Swope as the enigmatic "live tape manipulator/sound guy".

Now as for what Swope actually DID, I have no fucking clue, nothing further then like he MANIPULATED TAPES, and/or tape LOOPS.... LIVE. His presence can be felt most on the "VS." LP, where he is the guy responsible for all the backwards-y sounding stuff (side note here: Now this is just personal opinion, but I think Burma, and Swopes contributions in particular were a HUGE influence on all the strange-ness that was "Zen Arcade" but anyway, that just my opinion). In live settings, Swope was not a huge factor, you can hear his work on their cover of "Heart of Darkness" from the live "The Horrible Truth About Burma" CD. And you can really hear his stuff on any live version of "Mica" to. Still though, Swope was never a HUGE part of the group, he just did his part to add to the overall "riddle" that was Mission of Burma.

And I mean, that's what they were, they're hard to grasp, impossible to "figure out." I mean, who the fuck knows what "science can wait, democracy now" means? Like the linear notes to the rarities CD "Forget" says, They were too punk to be arty, but too arty to be punk. They live in some weird no man’s land in between the both. SOMEhow, someWAY they managed to do a bunch of arty shit without being the slighest bit pretentious about it, don't ask me how.

Anyway, in '83, after having only released one real LP, they broke up, mainly because Miller was loosing his hearing (he could be seen wearing one of those big sound dampening headset dealies during their last bunch shows). As for what record you should go for, fuck, they're all good, the "Signals, Calls and Marches" EP, the "VS." LP, the self titled, ten song rarity disc (contains the ULTRA classic "Peking Spring", TOTALLY essential), the SECOND rarities disc "Forget", the live record "The Horrible Truth About Burma" and if you look kinda hard, you can find their video "Live at the Bradford" without too much trouble. Half their stuff's on Rykodisc, half of it on Taang!!, the video's harder to find, but it's out there.

They've been covered by the likes of REM, Soul Asylum, Moby, Screaming Trees and the Spinnanes. In Rolling Stone, Peter Buck called "Forget" the album of the year, and fuck, that was their weekest (but still awesome) stuff. Definitely check these guys out, they were one of the FEW bands that actually did the whole arty-ness thing "right." And fuck, it's doubtful that bands like Le Shok and the Piranhas would be around today if it weren't for Burma (or well, maybe Devo or the Screamers, but whatever). - Clint Parson

BULLETPROOF NOTHING:The 00's in Review

2005-08-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

I ALSO wrote this for Panic Action. Twas penned in early January, 2005

"The Zero's In Review"

Hey hey, waste-buckets, it's time once again for some rock and a' reeling, lying and stealin', ramblin and a' ranting fun with yer good old buddy Clint. What can I say, what can I say? It's fucking 2005 now and we're all still alive. God damn, when did time ever get so fucking advanced? The future is now and I'll be god damned if it ain't a pretty good time to be alive. What has this modern age of wonders brought us? How have things changed? How is this decade(so far) different? Why are we NOW not like we were THEN?

Whelp, to start with, hardly any one gives half a fuck about Rip Off Records anymore, that's a big difference from the way things used to be. It's sad state of affairs, but what can ya do? Twas once a label that defined a genre, an aesthetic, a scene. Rip Off had a sound, a look and mostly certainly an attitude. What happened to all of it? Why did it all go downhill? Well, for one, they stopped making the cool seven inches; so there goes the "look". Also, Rip Off head honcho Greg Lowery started spouting off on message boards like a 'tard(which is usually a good thing, but not the way he did it), which totally ruined the "attitude". Most importantly, they fucked up the "sound" by slowing down their release schedule, only putting out only three or four records a YEAR, some of which were quite fucking questionable(I'm obviously talking about the Atomsmashers here). I really, really hate to say it, but Rip Off was a 90's label(well, late 90'/early 00's) and it just can't adapt to these modern times. Much like SST was a mega-huge label in the 80's, but then was pretty much forgotten in the 90's; some record companies really define the time in which they existed, they are by far and large the major pressence in that era, they EMBODY that time, and once those days are over; so are they, SO ARE THEY.

One need not fret though, new labels have more than stepped up to the mound. In The Red Records is the current industry standard what with their Reigning Sounds and Deadly Snakes, Lost Sounds, Ponys and Dirtbombs. Big Neck Records has also become a major player as well with their great seven inches and full lengths by the likes of: The Radio Beats; Sweet JAP; Baseball Furies and a host of others. Dirtnap Records is also a pretty well renouned, big player nowadays. When the Marked Men jumped ship from Rip Off, Dirtnap is where they landed. Dirtnap also put out the single greatest Mod-Revival LP since 1984 when they released "Guitar Romantic" by the late, great Exploding Hearts. Other consistantly great labels around currently include: Goner Records; Criminal IQ; Shit Sandwich; Trick Knee Productions; Contaminated; Alien Snatch; Goodbye Boozy; P. Trash; Nasty Product; Bancroft Records; SS Records; Solid Sex Lovie Doll; Deadbeat; Die Slaughterhous; Dropkick Records; Yakisakana, Kryptonite Records and a couple others I'm sure I'm forgetting right now.

This past year also brought the launch of the great new Terminal Boredom website which has picked up where the old Blank Generation.com left off and upped the ante a considerable degree. They essentially took the essense of Blank Gen and stripped off the superflous crap, the stuff that would look embarrasing nowadays. You aren't gonna find any positive reviews of the Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Terminal Boredom. Fuck the "neoteric", that's what TB says. They've also weeded out the long, boring, rambling columnists of Blank Gen who often times didn't even talk about music; godbye Shawn Abnoxious, goodbye Clint Parson(hey, wait a minute). TB, along with the Horizontal Action print-zine dominate the "zine scene" nowadays with their coverage of well, whatever it is that you wanna call this music that we listen to(Punk rock? Garage? Garage Punk? whatever...).

So what else? What else has come and/or gone in these last five years? Well, as mentioned above, we had the whole "neoteric" thing in early 00's, which has thankfully died out by this point. "Neoteric" for those unaware was basically just a big new wave of uhhh, keyboardy semi new wave/post punk bands. They were an arty, dancy, noisy, "fucked up sounding" bunch. There was a lot of hot pink and purple on their record covers, and they had really unimaginative, generic band names. A few years ago they were everywhere, and maybe they still ARE for all I know, but nobody really listens to 'em anymore, I mean, no one cool, anyways. The whole thing KINDA morphed into the electroclash scene as time wore on but all that crap was never worth paying attention to anyways. The only bands to survive the whole "neoteric punk/wave" were the best of genre. The Lost Sounds are still around and riding strong on the Black Wave, The Piranhas are also still banging about, even though people don' like them so much no more. The Spits are still as great as ever, of course, but they were always more "Killed By Synth" than straight "neoteric".

Speaking of the whole "Killed By.." genre, there was ANOTHER sound that really came big and LEFT big. Old, obscure punk rock from the '77 to '82 era, it started really catching on in the late 90's thanks to an endless deluge of reissue comps, most notably so the Killed By Death and Bloodstains series. Sooner than you knew it, every cock-goblin and his sister were starting a "KBD influenced" band. The whole thing was cool for about five seconds there. Pretty fucking quickly it went from "code for good band" to just another marketing term used by untalented douche-holes who were trying to trick you into buying their shitty records. Liking KBD stuff became akin to digging the Misfits, Ramones or Black Flag; i.e.SURE, they're still great bands and you really love them, but by this point they are burned into your very DNA(AKA:old news) and so many dipshits now dig them, it just annoys you. What can you say? The bloom is off the rose, time to move on. Still though, the shitty "KBD influenced" bands are still better than the awful Screeching Weasel rip off pop punk bands from the 90's. So that's some progress, I guess.

Another surprising trend in "the scene" as of late is the fact that for maybe the first time since 1984(or '85 in Europe) there are actually good, NEW hardcore bands. It's astonishing, no genre died deader than hardcore did after all those straight edge kids realized their "emotions were nothing but politics, politics". From '84 on outwards, a dual assault of metal and emo redendered ALL new hardcore bands wimpering, simpering, impotent, chugga-chugga-ing little fuckholes. A wonderous thing happened though, what with all the KBD hoopla, people also started listening to more old hardcore as well. In the reissue furor that had been started, tons and tons of pre-'84 hardcore records were easily available once again. Also, websites such as the great Kill From The Heart and the Dementlieu Punk Archive started up to provide people an exhausting amount of info on these type of bands. Thanks to all of this, there were now people who wouldn't even go NEAR post-'84 stuff, if they listened to hardcore, it was all exclusively the early crap. It was great, bands like Amdi Peterson's Arme, Career Suicide, Fucked Up, Holy Shit, No Hope For the Kids and a good handful of others all arrived on the scene and reminded us all what a good circle pit was all about(they go counter-clockwise).

Of course, one can't really write a review of "the 00's so far" without mentioning THE major force on the block right now. Wanna REALLY know why things have changed so much? What is the most pronounced, defining feature of the Now Times? It's fucking SOULSEEK(slsk), baby. This lil' p2p file sharing dealie has revolutionized the way EVERY SINGLE ONE of us listens to music. Napster was good, but there was a lot you couldn't find on there, Audio Galaxy was better, but it took a lot of time and effort to download stuff that often times was not of very good quality. By the time soulseek reared it's head, though, people generally had high speed internet access and that combined with the browser's easy to operate design really changed it all. Within a few short years, it became possible to literally find any record you wanted on there, no matter how obscure. A person could download over 500 songs in ONE SINGLE day, without all that much effort. So much music, and all of it free. To label it a "music fan's wet dream" is an understatement, soulseek is like Jesus coming down to earth and over the course of a few weeks continually giving you the best blow jobs man could NEVER imagine. It is pretty damn close to the full realization of all human potential. So much fucking music, and thank god it's still small enough that none of it's users have gotten sued yet. The full ramifications of slsk have still yet to be realized, within the coming years, no one, ANYwhere, EVER will have an excuse for being in a shitty band or listening to shitty music. So much great music, so easily available. With soulseek, it will be harder to NOT suck than TO suck(don't quote me on that one, though).

Lastly, and certainly not LEAST-ly, when it comes to "the scene" in the zero's, the most important thing in all of this is obviously, the BANDS, the fucking bands. This is an amazing time to be alive, there are at least a hundred some bands around nowadays that are all more than worth any amount of time you'd wanna put into 'em. To name but a few of these bands: Catholic Boys, Marked Men, Lost Sounds, Reigning Sound, Deadly Snakes, The Fatals, The Real Losers, Black Time, The Krunchies, The Functional Blackouts, The Tyrades, The Baseball Furies, The Dirges, Hot Machines, Headache City, The Black Lips, The Lids, BBQ, Feelers, Blank Its, Gris Gris, Kajun SS, Final Solutions, A-Frames, MOTO, Sweet JAP, Radio Beats, Human Eye, The Hunches, Henry Fiat's Open Sore, Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones, Mystery Girls, Young Ones, Zymotics, Clorox Girls. The list just goes on and on and on.

Say what you will about 2005, because there sure are a fuckload of problems, but honestly, this has GOT TO be the best time EVER to be a music fan. Fuck '77, fuck '82, fuck pre-WWII, and '66 and all the rest of them. The best time is NOW. So much amazing music all around us, so many great live acts, and so, so many records.

Don't miss out, fucker...

BULLETPROOF NOTHING:Old Man's Game

2005-08-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

Again, something that I sent to Troy to run in his zine. I haven't asked him if he minds me putting any of this stuff on here, but I doubt he does. I dunno, Troy, if you ain't kosher with me posting this stuff up here, just email me and I'll take it down.

This was written in July of 2004

Hey hey, kiddies, time for some more blathering. Today I'm here to pose the question: why is this whole RNR/punk rock thing such an old man's game now? Why are all the "scene big shots" so many summers removed from their teen years? When and how did they take over? Isn't rock'n'roll, and by extention, punk rock supposed to be by and for the kids? Don't trust anyone over 30? Wild in the streets, running, running?

Back in the day, kids would start in bands fairly fucking young and acheive awesomeness quickly. For example, when Minor Threat started, Ian MacKaye was the only member over 18 years of age. In some respects, you could've even called them a high school band. Could you ever possibly imagine a high school band nowadays that was even one quarter as good as Minor Threat(The Teenage Rejects?)? Look at the Jam, Joy Division and the Germs as well, all of them had established their legend before well they would've been of legal drinking age in this country. The same goes for most all of the Back From The Grave type bands, too.

Those were the days of "The Al Bundy Syndrome". Kids burned insanely bright for a few years, they were in awesome bands. They made history, blazed the trails and changed the world, but then, by the time they hit their mid-20's, they had all either died, burned out, given up or started making shitty music(again, take all the individual members of Minor Threat for example).

Thing is, you just don't see ABS that much nowadays. In general, people seem to start slow, gradually build up and really hit their peak sometime in their early thirties and then continue on for at least another decade or so past that at a somewhat disminished level of "awesome". What is so different about NOW, how did it all change? When did it go from "young" to "old"?

Could it be that the "musical awesome-ness" of all those earlier bands was tied directly to the movement which they were involved in? And once that initual movement died, they tweren't left with shit? I mean, hardcore, at it's peak years between '81 and '83, could really transform a person. It made gods out of fools. Somehow, when the magic was just right, three kids that couldn't play & a fourth that couldn't sing somehow all gelled together, their adolescent ids banging off one another and creating something really fucking ace.

We've all heard it a million times before. Look at the Heathens' songs from the "Get Off My Back" comp; bizarre, they can't really play in time, fairly random but it's totally fucking fantastic. doesn't make sense on any logic level, it just "works". That's what a new musical movement can do to a person when it's going strong.

In modern times though, we have no new, wholly original musical movements that come along. Everything's been fucking done already. There is nothing so alien & fresh that it can suck us up, transform us and make us mere mortals into mythical beings. Sure, we have the mini-movements like the "neoteric"-arty keyboard bands, and the recently unearthed proto-punk treasure-trove(Simply Saucer are my god!), but none of them are all that revolutionary, they weren't so much a change as they were just a mere extrapolation on things that already existed.

How then do people achieve "musical greatness" then in this day & age? I'll tell you how:they have to soak it all in. They have to spend years studying it, practicing it, BECOMING IT to the best of their ability. We live in the information age, and well, thats appropriate because we've all got a lot of learning to do. The kids back then, they were accidently "great". Nowadays, we are charged with the task of doing it all ON PURPOSE, and lemme tell ya, that's a whole fucking lot harder.

So WHO exactly nowadays is doing it all "on purpose"? To a large degree, it's the people that have been around for years and years. It's "old people" who have, by hook or by crook, figured out a little piece of the vast, ungraspable concept that is "a really fucking good record". Ya know, they've been around long enough to figure out something like, "Hey, some reverb or maybe just distortion on the vocals sounds good." Old bands had distortion or reverb on the vocals, but often times, it wasn't there because they CHOOSE for it to be there and they couldn't have gotten rid of it even if they wanted to.

We have so many choices now, and time & time again, the inexperienced "young" people will fall into a trap and be stuck there for whoever knows how long. Back in the day, there wasn't the OPTION of being in a shitty screamo band, so obviously, no one would ever waste their time on that type of thing. There was ONE CHOICE if you wanted to rebel, where as now, there's hundreds. Problem IS, there's still only one RIGHT choice to made musically(or well, there's a couple, but not many) and most of the time, the experienced, savy folks are the only ones that make it.

We are a generation of sifters and choosers; and for good or ill, old people are making the best sifters because of a vary of reasons. First of all, they've been around, they've seen a lot.

Just look at Larry Hardy of In The Red Records. If I read that interview in Terminal Boredom correctly, he said he's been going to shows since 1977, thats amazing. Never underestimate some life-experience. Old people know which choices are mistakes, because well, they've "mistook" before. They've fucked up, and now, hopefully, they know better. "Oh god, what was I thinking incorporating jazz influences?"

Second, old people are generally better with money than kids are, they have more of it and are better at holding onto it. This is extremely important considering a lot of those "ancient texts", i.e. old, amazing records, are going for insane amounts of money today. Obviously, one needs to learn at the foot of the masters, but what do you do if can't afford to get to that uhhhh, foot?

Finally, and this is the most important factor: old people have their shit more together than kids do. They aren't as fucking flakey. They firmly know who they are and what they want to do with their lives. This is of utmost importance when it comes to doing something both significant AND long term in the music arena. How could a kid keep a band together long enough to record three full lengths when he can't even keep a girlfriend for more than three weeks? I mean, sure, flakery is a double edged sword, it might lead to some impressive performances/songs in the short term, but it's all gonna burn out once he gets his shit FIGURED out.

Now, obviously, even way back when, there were always "old people"(do I need to point out how ridiculous it is that I'm refering to people in their early 30's as "old"?) in the scene that posessed all three of these chacteristics. Tim Yo, Larry Livermore, the Slash Records folks, they were all mainly ex-hippies, campus radicals from the 60's. The thing was though, people like that were more the EXCEPTION, than the rule. Old people did exist in prominent roles back then, but by far and large, the bulk of the scene, the bulk of the people that are now labeled "great", were young, super-enthusiastic kids that were, to some degree, just bumbling their way through shit.

The climate's changed though, conditions are different and the young bumbling kid just doesn't have the dominance they once had. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, "the kids" just DON'T produce any great music anymore. No longer is the scene about kids jsut barely outta high school, now is the age of the seasoned, road hardened(yet not weary) vet that can take whatever the fuck you throw out at them.

...

EPILOGUE:

Although, even THIS current climate is starting to change. Every middle class family has a computer now and what with high speed internet access and soulseek, kids can listen to as much great music as they want to. They can download an upwards of a 1000 free songs a day if they wish to put the time & energy into it. Within the next five years, this alone should serve to severely cut down the time on the learning curve.

The kids will have their revenge and they will once again start producing better, if not "great" music en-mass.

Or well, hopefully they will...

Anyway, end of column, see ya next issue maybe

IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS ON THIS COLUMN, FEEL FREE TO WRITE ME AT:crparson at hotmail

How Message Boards Killed Zines

2005-08-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this was written back in April of 2003. I believe I might'a "submitted" it to MRR, but I don't really remember. Anyway, eventially, the fucker did run in Troy Canady's "Panic Action" zine.

Enjoy:

The late 80's were a golden age for 'zines. Several people were writing them, everybody was buying them; and shockingly, people actually paid attention to what was being written. More so than even the bands themselves, the zines of that era helped form the scene, and guide the ideals of individuals involved in it.

The zines of the late 80's are the one's that crammed feminism; anarchism; the acceptance of homosexuals and several other agenda's down the more than willing throat of "punk". Indeed, especially in this time, punk became less a specific musical style and more a loose conglomeration of bands, journalists, artists and performers who shared the same basic set of ethics and morals.

But not everything was quite so cheery back then, because you see, they had the COMMUNITY of the zines, but music began to suffer. In the late 80's, fucking GRUNGE was even considered "punk", that's how pitiful things had become. The focus was on building consensus and WORDS, so of COURSE the music would fall by the wayside.

This sorriful trend reached it's zenith with the popularity of Nirvana's "Nevermind", a record that was heartely approved of by many Maximum Rock'n'Roll staffers. With the musical boundaries of "punk" almost completely distroyed, all it took was one band with vague lyrics and even vaguer ideals to breakthrough to the mainstream.

Not surprisingly, around this same time, an anti-indie rock, anti-grunge backlash was well underway. Bands such as Supercharger and the Mummies were reclaiming rock'n'roll and punk rock for what they truly were. They made abnoxious, short, fun songs that didn't even make the slightest pretense of being "art". These new bands did NOT bow down at the Sonic Youth altar like all the other indie rock schmucks.

Things became even further sudivided, more and more genre's branched out and then off. The "scene" had become too big, and it was more than time to further segregate things into smaller groups. Remarkably, it wasn't just "horrible" bands that were being excluded anymore, even "okay" groups, and mediocre bands were being left out in the cold. The Rip Off Records crowd rejected the Lookout Records bunch because their bands were NOT good enough, even though both labels spotlighted bands that were kinda similiar.

Slowly, the garage-punk of bands like the aforementioned Mummies began to permiate further and further into certain zine zeigeists. As the early 90's cranked into the mid-90's, even Maximum Rock'n'Roll itself instituted a new musical coverage policy which basically stated, "No emo, no indie rock, no major labels". More than anything else, this editorial direction change damaged MRR and it's credibility. No longer were people hailing it as "THE zine", or "the punk bible". In those days, the most often heard verbiage in reguards to MRR was, bluntly, "MRR Sucks".

The backlash started in the late eighties had basically won. People weren't taking zines so seriously anymore, and most of the new titles that sprung up didn't have half the passion or wit of older publications. Truly, in the mid-90's, zines were in trouble. But then it got worse.

The internet entered the mass public conscieness somewheres about 97-98 and it radically changed things. Simply put, people just stopped reading paper zines when the same info was easily available over the internet. People questioned why they should put in time and money to order zines when it was all there, at their fingertips, for free.

Once, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of paperzines, but the internet killed it all off more quickly than you could imagine. In those first five years, many e-zines sprung up, but even they themselves had trouble being noticed or even surviving for very long.

Attention spans shortened, and anymore, people had trouble reading anything that would take more than five minutes to finish. Paper zines gave way to e-zines and e-zines gave way to message boards. Any over-arching community that had been created by the late 80's zines had pretty much been annilated.

Sure, there were as many great bands as there's ever been, but there were a million more shitty-ones. Of course though, people now had genre specific message boards and discussion groups to point them in the right direction. And music sharing programs such as, Audiogalaxy; Napster and Soulseek made finding a lot of that music VERY easy. Suddenly, you could download the unreleased demo of a Dutch hardcore band from '81 in about fifteen minutes time, even with a slow connection. This is a feet that would've seemed impossible to people even ten years earlier. "I searched twenty years for that record and you got it in twenty minutes, fuck you!".

Times had certainly changed, and sadly, the obsolete and costly format of the old paper-zine had all but gone by the wayside. Sure, paper zines were still made and distributed, but their influence was just a pale shadow of what it used to be. It was apparent to zinesters in the know that it was time to either evolve or die off.

Things were ripe for a brand new backlash...............

"Everyone Says 'I Love You, But I'm Not IN Love With You"

2005-08-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

Yay, in the spirit of yesterday's post I dug through some shit and actually found the first three parts of my hipster melodrama "Everyone Says 'I Love You But I'm Not IN Love With You' . I thought this shit was lost forever, but no, there it was sitting in the "drafts" box of my email. This all was written in December of 2003:

INTERIOR: A MODERATELY DISHEVELED LIVING ROOM. There's a few pizza boxes scattered around the room and a small bong sits on the coffee table. TV is tuned to VH1 classics with the volume turned low. Two people, one male, one female, sit on a crummy lime green couch. The female is young-ish, in her early 20'S or perhaps late teens. She is wearing a pair of tight, dark blue jeans with fake fading patterns, a white belt, pink chucks, and a Pretty Girls Make Graves T-shirt with a black hoodie over that. She has a vaguely electro-clash haircut. The male, in his early to mid 20's is wearing light blue jeans of an average fit, not too tight, not too loose, navy chucks and an Oblivians T-shirt. They are in mid conversation.

BILLY(with a slight tenor of desparation in his voice)-I mean, I know things are all fucked up with us, and all we ever do is make each other miserable and hurt each other's feelings, but think about it; Haven't BOTH of us been completely miserable our whole lives? Whether we're with someone or not, the only constant has been pain and misery and crying.

ANN(slightly interupting, mildy annoyed)-Do you have a point with all of this?

BILLY-I'm just saying that we're constantly trying to blame on each other for all this pain and shit, when the truth is that we'd be feeling the exact same way reguardless of the situation. We are people who NEED to feel miserable.

ANN(more annoyed)-You kind of have a point, but that's still fucking stupid, and it doesn't excuse all these times you've been an asshole to me.

BILLY(getting more desparate)-No, you don't it get, I'm not trying to say that the things we've BOTH done haven't mattered and hurt. I'm saying that reguardless of the situation or person, we're ALWAYS gonna be doing something that makes us both miserable. That is the way we feel the most comfortable. That's what we're used to.

ANN(slightly amused)-Look, that's a very nice "freshman year psyche-major" analysis there, but yer really not adding anything new to the discussion with that.

BILLY(angry)-FUCK! Stop being such a cold, smart-assed jerk. I'm being serious here!

ANN-See, this is yet another reason why things don't work so well between us, yer just too fucking humorless. What do you want from me, anyway? I thought I made things clear from the beginning that I didn't want any serious relationship.

BILLY-Oh fuck, not this again, you use that bullshit as an excuse in every conversation we have. SURE, that's how things started OUT with us, but after we started hanging out and fucking EVERY day for three months straight, I think the dynamic between us changed a little bit and it was pretty safe to say we WERE in a "real", "serious" relationship.

ANN-Jesus Christ, you talk about three months like it's 20 fucking years or something And I mean, we don't hang out EVERY day, and certainly don't have that much sex. Maybe we DO have a serious relationship now, but honestly, I never wanted to HAVE that type relationship, not with you, not with anyone. I wanted to avoid all that stupid ultra-dramatic crap, which is essentially all our interaction is nowadays. I wanted to have FUN. I'm only 19, fer christ sake's. I'm not looking to get fucked married or anything like that for a long time yet.

BILLY-Yeah, you "wanted to have FUN", that's why you fucked John after the Coheed show.

ANN-How many times? How many times? Oh god, we had only been "going out" for two weeks at the time. I've said that I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt by that, but really, it wasn't any of your business.

BILLY(extremely angry)-"NONE OF MY BUSINESS"? You are my fucking girlfriend and you slept with another guy, how is that NOT my business?

ANN(irritated)-Fuck, I wasn't really your "girlfriend" then and well, now? I dunno...

BILLY-What is THAT supposed to mean? Do you even care about me AT ALL?

ANN-What? You know I care about you. I totally love you, you're like my best friend in the world, ya know?

BILLY-NO, I'm not your "best friend", I'm your fucking BOYFRIEND, get that through your head, BOYFRIEND, boy-friend....

ANN-Eeehhh, look, at the end of the day, what it comes down to is, I LOVE you, but I'm not IN LOVE with you.

BILLY-FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.... Do you have any fucking HEART at all?

ANN-Look, if you're gonna be like this, I'm just gonna leave.

BILLY-Oh please, you're not gonna leave, you're just scared that I am gonna leave you. Everyone in your fucking life, especially guys, have always just fucking LEFT you. Why? Because they could only tolerate your bullshit for so long. After a while, they couldn't take the constant emotional trama any more.

ANN-Blah, blah, blah....I like you so much better when you drink

BILLY-Shut up, just shut the fuck up. Look, I am the ONLY person EVER who really knows you and can really tolerate your bullshit. Sure you make me miserable, but like I was saying, I've always been miserable. You can label it some awful, low self esteem type compromise, but the fact is I want to be with you. That's right, I am giving up on being "happy", I just want to be with YOU.

ANN-Heh heh, that's sweet. Almost sounds like a song lyric or something... You KNOW I love you, right?

BILLY-Yeah, I know, but we need to deal with all these things, we need to talk about all this shit. Like I said, I think we mesh so well that we're gonna be together for a long time, and because of that, we need to make things work as well as we can.

ANN-Uhhhh, I guess so, but don't things work the best by NOT talking about them?

BILLY-Are you serious?

ANN-What? Who, me? When am I EVER serious?

BILLY-Eeehhhhhhh, anyway, "Family Guy" 's coming on now, we'll talk about this more later...

ANN-whatev'

"Our Time To Try" by the Bondsmen starts playing as the opening credits role. When the song ends we cut to:

INTERIOR:DINGY, CROWDED BASEMENT SHOW, 15 by 25 foot room, smoke filled air, approx. 30 to 40 people there, small-ish most pit. Unfinished basement, concrete floor, concrete walls, exposed support beams overhead, seven foot ceiling. the room is lit by a single 100 watt light bulb. An unremarkable grind/screamo band plays in the far corner of the room while people chatter loudly over the music at the back of the room. Two of these people, Mark and Dave are half-heartedly watching the band. Dave's perhaps 24/25, visibly receding hairline, a good fifty pounds over weight, six foot one or so, loose-fitting light blue jeans and a winter/ski type jacket. Mark's about 21 or so, skinny, about 5'8, with tight dark blue jeans, navy chucks, a black New York Dolls t-shirt and a black hoodie over that.

MARK(cups his hand and yells into Dave's ear)-This bands sucks.

DAVE(head nod, yells back loudly)-Yeah, I think I'd agree with that acessment. I heard though that the singer cuts himself up onstage, all GG/Iggy like.

MARK-Hmmm, does he do that every show?

DAVE-Naw, I think it's just every once in a while.

MARK-Aaah, I see. You wanna go to 7-11 to get some beer?

DAVE-Yeah, that'd be good, as long as we get back in time for the Dirtbombs, I don't wanna miss them.

MARK-Yeah, well, that goes without saying.

They go to the door at the back of the room but are momentarily delayed as the the general pit area lurches in their direction and they're pinned against the wall for a few seconds.

EXTERIOR-BACK YARD-NIGHT

Dave and Mark come out the back door and acsend the stairs. As they go up the stairs Mark exchanges a friendly head nod with another guy going down the stairs. They reach the top of the stairs. There's a crowd of 50 to 60 people all chatting in small-ish groups, as well as two vans parked there. Both Ann and Billy can be seen amungst the crowd in the back yard, although they are not in in the same group. Mark & Dave start to walk around to the front of the house.

MARK-So what was that band's name, anyway? They were terrib...

RANDOM SHOW GOER NUMBER ONE
(interupting their conversation)-Hey guys? What's up?

MARK-Muuuu, nothing much, just going to get beer.

DAVE(to SHOW GOER)-How ya doin', man?

RANDOM SHOW GOER NUMBER ONE-Ehhh, nothing much, same old same old. You know how it is. Anyway, I wanna check out this band, see ya's later.

DAVE-Later

MARK-see ya

Random Show Goer Number One walks off

MARK-So what was I saying? Oh yeah, WHAT was the name of that band?

DAVE-Ummm, I forget, something like "The Infinite Weight of Being" or something like that. I dunno, something faggy.

MARK-Sounds about right, god, what shit.

DAVE-Yeah, I know, really, back when I first started going to shows here, SURE, the bands sucked, but at least like they were sucky pop-punk bands or something. Sure, you had to suffer through bad Screeching Weasel covers, but it was still better than THAT.

MARK-Ehhhh, I wouldn't consider Screeching Weasel an improvement over ANYthing.

DAVE-Hey, they covered the Stooges on that one record of theirs.

Random Show Goer #2 walks by

RANDOM SHOW GOER NUMBER TWO(interupting)-Hey guys.

DAVE-Hey

Mark waves his hand as Random Show Goer walks off

DAVE-They did "Dirt".

MARK-Jesus, if yer gonna cover the Stooges, why in the fuck would a person cover "Dirt"?

DAVE-Yeah, I dunno. Their cover of it wasn't all that bad though.

Mark & Dave by this point have walked around to the front of the house and are on the sidewalk, slowly walking away from the house.

MARK-Ha ha, you used to listen to Screeching Weasel.

DAVE-Hey, we all have those dark, little skeletons our musical past. You shouldn't be talking, though, Mr. Primus. "Why, Winona's got herself a big, brown beaver..."

MARK-Fuck you, I was 14 at the time. I didn't know a good band from the hole in my ass at the time.

DAVE-Heh heh. But yeah, my musical taste wasn't THAT bad when I was younger. I was already digging on Teengenerate when I was about 16 or 17 or so.

MARK-Yeah, I think that's about when I started listening to them, maybe a little later, though 17/18.

As they walk off, they pass by Katie, who's walking towards the show. She's clad in tight, dark blue jeans, red chucks and a black hoodie with some indeterminate black t-shirt on under it.

DAVE-Hey Katie, what's going on?

KATIE-Nothing much

MARK-What's up?

KATIE-Hey

Katie continues to walk towards the show. She gets to the house and walks around to the back, where she encounters xSteviex.

xSTEVIEx-Hey hey, woman, what's going on?

KATIE-Nothing much, same old crap. What 've you been up to?

xSTEVIEx-Ehhh, who cares? You just missed it though, Band Together Stands Apart just played.

KATIE-What the fuck, dude? Just because I'm straight edge it doesn't mean I like that metal shit. You know that. I came here from the Dirtbombs and the Dirtbombs alone.

xSTEVIEx-Seriously, you should count your blessings. Be glad this isn't a bigger town. If there were ANY more than two gay straight edge kids in this town, I SOOO wouldn't give you the time of day.

KATIE-Wow, I don't even CARE if you're being sarcastic or not. Have you seen Marie around here anywhere?

xSTEVIEx-Ah-ha, someone's got a crush.

KATIE(slightly annoyed)-When have I ever denied that I had a thing for Marie?

xSTEVIEx-I meeeean, you need to face facts, she's 7 years older than you. She's 25 and she's only bi.

KATIE-"Only bi"? What does THAT mean?

xSTEVIEx-Oh please, you know, all bi girls eventually end up with a dude in the long run.

KATIE-Hmmmm. There's exceptions to every rule and well, heh heh, Mare-mare is prolly one of the most exceptional people I've ever known.

xSTEVIEx-Yeah, you WISH you'd "known" her before; biblically, that is. Anyway, if you have such a high opinion of her, why don't you go and tell her. You may've never DENIED that you had a thing for her, but we all know that you've never actually gone and done anything about it.

KATIE-I can't help it, I'm shy and stuff. Aha ha ha. Besides, I don't know if she'd really go for a girl like me. Is she into fat chicks?

xSTEVIEx-Dude. yer not fat. Anyway, I don't really know WHAT type of person she's into. I remember back when I was 18 or so, she had this boyfriend that was like 28, so maybe she likes older dudes.

KATIE-Hmmmm, that doesn't bode well for me. SEE, this is why I'm so hesitant to hit on her. Also, I don't wanna come off as a creep.

xSTEVIEx-Oh fuck, are we just gonna stand here and talk about it or are you gonna go and talk to her?

KATIE-I dunno, I mean, I WANT to, but...

xSTEVIEx-Oh fuck you. I DARE you to talk to her. I officially DARE you. Come on you fucking coward, you fucking pussy. I know you can't do it, that's the only reason why I dared you, I wanted to make you look stupid. You are incapable of meeting this challenge.

KATIE-Ahhhh, you really know how to pull my strings. I've never been able to resist a well worded dare. Okay, I'll try, where's she at, again?

xSTEVIEx-I think she's somewhere's about the living room or kitchen. Or no, wait, she's in her bedroom making out with Ann because you pussy footed around too much, emphasis on "PUSSY".

KATIE-Yeah yeah, blah blah, I hear you. Okay, wish me luck.

xSTEVIEx-You don't need luck, you WILL win.

KATIE-What's with you and this alternately negative and supportive thing?

xSTEVIEx-Oh please, I'm always supportive, the negativity is just fun. I don't care what Mike Patton says, irony is alive and well.

KATIE-What are you talking about?

xSTEVIEx-Just go and "conquer" Marie and I'll go hit on some young impressionable hardcore kids.

KATIE-Alright, here I go.

Katie walks to the backdoor of the house and enters.

INTERIOR-NARROW, SLIGHTLY DARK-ISH HALLWAY ABOUT !6 FEET IN LENGTH.

Two very loud, drunk people stand in line for the bathroom, the door of which stands a few feet from the back door. Katie squeezes by them with a little annoyance. She reaches the end of the hallway and enters the kitchen.

INTERIOR-A SMALL POORLY KEPT KITCHEN

There's a good half dozen some people packed into the kitchen. Four sorority type looking girls and a guy in a baseball hat that looks somewhere in between a frat guy and pop punk dude. The sorority girls and the hat guy are all doing shots out of a handle of cheap vodka.

SORISTITUTE #1-Woooo, I'm so wasted!

HAT GUY-Aha ha, dude, yo, I'm seeing double!

SORISTITUTE #2(drunkenly whispering to Soristitute #3)-So then I went down on him and...

Katie squeezes through the kitchen as fast a possible with a disgusted look on her face. She exits before she hears the end of that sentence. She then enters the living room

INTERIOR-a large living room.

Several crappy couches line the walls. There are about 20 some people all engaged in conversations of some sort. Alone, standing close to the front door is Patrick

PATRICK(VOICE OVER)-Bored bored bored bored. Look at all these idiots, so wrapped up in their little hipster melodrama's. "Ouuuuu, I'm fucking so and so and I'm also fucking his best friend behind his back. Aren't I ever so naughty?" I hate these people. They're all just such a sad perversion of what punk was originally supposed to be about. Why do I even COME to these shows anymore? I come for the music, and ONLY that. A long time ago the sad conclusion dawned on me that ALL of the community aspects of punk are just bullshit. These people are the enemy just as much any frat-jock asshole out there. Hell, in some cases, they ARE actually frat boy, date rapist dickshits. How could I not hate them?

Patrick's eye wander over to a drunken hipster blatently hitting on a girl...

.......................TO BE CONTINUED.....................

We All Knew It Would Eventually Come To This

2005-08-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

Sope, here 'tis, an easier to digest form of my writing:

OPEN SCENE:TWO MALES IN THEIR MID-20's SIT IN A MILDY UNKEMPT LIVING ROOM, ONE ON A COUCH, THE OTHER ON A RECLINER. THEY ARE WATCHING CABLE.

BILL:I just don't get it...

ANDY:Don't get what now?

BILL:I mean, I'm smart, reasonably attractive, often times hilarious, and yet, I just terminally can't get laid. Why is that?

ANDY:Eeeeh, maybe's it's your shitty job, or your even shittier social skills. Maybe it's your professed fear of phone calls that last more than 90 seconds. Hell, it might even be your borderline autistic disinterest in other people.

BILL:Yeah, I guess, but all that type of shit seems too typical. I wanna have problems that are much more complex, something more nuianced. I don't want these blatent, every day moron type problems. I like the romantic notion that I'm some kind of culture warrior rebelling against whatever the current repressive cultural millieu is. I want to be a loser for all the right reasons, none of this bargin basement shit. I want my current state to be a noble choice, not just some sad, pathetic tale of woe.

ANDY:Again, EEEEH, I don't think it really matters. Basically, all attempted "noble" efforts of the past have essentially just been a ploy to get laid. Everything artistic, creative, any type of grab for power, it's all about just trying to get chicks. That's why chicks are never really a dominant force in art or politics or the business world or whatever. Ya know, it's just too easy for them to get laid.

BILL:Well what about gay guys, it's insanely easy for them to get laid. How come they still produce so much good art?

ANDY:Well, I wouldn't call Pansy Division great art, but you have to take into account that gay guys have always been hated and relegated to AT BEST second class status. Any of type of repression like that usually leads to good art.

BILL: But aren't women second class citizens as well?

ANDY:It depends on how you define power. Basically, as outlined before, guys want power so as to get laid. Women, they already have that power. How can they be truly second class if they wield that much power?

BILL:I dunno, this sounds kind of stupid and regressive.

ANDY:Just think about your situation, for example. How much power do you have in the area of getting laid?

BILL:Well... not much, I guess.

ANDY:Exactly, it's the women that are sitting on the throne. They control the sex, so they are the masters, or mistresses, if you will, of everything. All that 60's talk of women being second class citizens was just pure bullshit. It was them wanting to have their cake and eat it to. They still wanted to be those sexual objects, yet they wanted to conquer the traditional male ways of being sexually desirable as well.

BILL:Fucking stupid, this is just blatent sexism now. Furthermore, not all women are all that attractive. What about ugly girls, WHAT ABOUT UGLY GIRLS?

ANDY:Well, they have ugly GUYS to push around.

BILL:God, no wonder I can't get any girl to come within a ten foot radius of me, you scare 'em all away.

ANDY:Please, you know as well as any one else that girls LOVE a guy that hates all women. Why? Because they hate themselves. Women are all crazy. They get the world handed to them on a silver platter, it's just too easy. They say they wanna be equal, so why don't they actually just DO IT. They need to start really competing with men. If they ever want to stop hating themselves they need to throw themselves into the fire, they need to reject female priviledge and at least TRY and run with the big dogs.

BILL:So fucking stupid. Women ARE doing that now, they are making serious inroads everywhere.

ANDY:Yeah, that's true, but they've still got a long way to go. Have you ever met a truly hilarious woman in your life? How many girls do you know that are obsessed with video games? How about girls with really good record collections?

BILL:I know a few.

ANDY:Are they ugly girls?

BILL:Yeah, maybe...

ANDY:And have you ever really had a really intellegent conversation with a girl about sociology or culture? How many girls do you know that have a really good grasp on the intricate nature of interpersonal communication?

BILL:The one therapist of mine had a pretty decent understanding of such things. Beyond that though, maybe I just suck and I don't really KNOW any cool girls.

ANDY:No, it's more like you just don't hold your female friends up to the same exacting standards that you do with guys. They get a pass, you don't expect them to run with the big dogs. You like having them around not because they're interesting people, but just because you want to fuck them.

BILL:Fuck, you almost kind of have HALF a point here, but the rest of it is just buried in hatred of all womankind. And I mean, the god's honest truth is that I barely think ANYone is all that interesting of a person, at least not on a one to one basis. I find stuff like mass trends and personality types to be much more interesting. Everyone is a fucking cliche, it's all just repetition and I find it infuriating that people are so inable to break out of their bullshit. Even with people in the punk community. They are supposed to be all about rebellion, but by this point things have really gelled into a pretty firm set of rules. It's still rebellious in a way, but it's all this first generation type of thought. Nothing really goes all that in depth and people don't seem to realize that their new systems of thought are just as rife with problems as the old ones they rejected. Basically, humanity is always gonna be disfunctional and just as soon as we fix and old problem, something else is gonna pop up to make us miserable. We will always find newer, smarter ways to make our lives a living hell. I mean, essentially, I think that's my problem, I'm still involved in the punk community, when the truth is that I've outgrown it. Actually, it's not that I've outgrown it, it's more of an issue of me having moved up to the next level, when everybody else is still stuck on the old shit. The scene is basically me when I was 18, and boy lemme tell ya, I've grown up a lot since then.

ANDY:Again you're talking all this "rebellious" shit. Who gives a fuck about rebelling all the time? Ever since the ad agencies locked onto that type of stuff it's all just been passe. Live your life, but forget about trying to rebel, it's already been co-opted.

BILL:Bullshit, rebellion is a natural part of any moral person's life. You fight FOR the good thinks and you fight AGAINST the bad things. That's what rebellion is, it's that struggle against the negative, soul crushing aspects of life.

ANDY:Well, maybe, but in that context it seems like a pretty simple mechanism. I thought you were against such rudimentry personality traits.

BILL:Yeah, I am against stuff like. But you have to understand that rebellion, it's like the first chapter of a book. It's neccessary for setting the proper tone and what the major conflicts are, but if yer gonna be living a satisfying intellectual life, you have to read several more chapters in. I fancy myself more of Chapter 8 fellow or something. Heh heh, I didn't like all that sexist stuff you were saying before because it was like Chapter 2 type of shit. Move forward, dude. You KINDA, MAYBE had a little bit of a point, but it was still entrenched in too much old style monkey brain BS.

ANDY:What the hell are you even talking about?

BILL:Exactly... Let's go get drunk.

ANDY:Now there's something I can understand.

FADE TO BLACK

Explanations & Apologies, AKA:Pointless Ego-Wank

2005-08-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I think there's an entry or two on here that already deals with this type of stuff, but I'll be fucked if I can find it. I might as well write up something new.

(10)So suffice it to say, there are people that just don't get it. What is the "it" in this instance? They don't get my whole deal, my schtick, my personality and my "writerly persona"(there IS a difference between the latter two). Time and time again people will read a few paragraphs and formulate some extremely negative opinion of me based on very little. My writing sparks all these weird emotional reactions in people and I've spent a good deal of my adult life(ahaha) trying to understand and manage such reactions.

(9)Ya know, people call me arrogant all the time, which is true to a certain extent; but to merely label me as that is a gross over-simplification. I alternate between arrogant and self-depricating, or more precisely "fake arrogant" and "fake self-depricating". Conan O'Brien does it all the time. The blog is called the JESUS of FAILURE for a reason. I am like the coolest guy ever, but I'm a huge fucking loser as well. I push both fronts at the same time. That's my "image", my "persona". And at the end of the day, all of that basically just equals out to me KINDA believing in myself. Ouuuu, how threatening. Actually, in a world where most people are really arrogant and pretend to be humble, maybe such concepts are challenging.

(8)Also, these people apply the "egotistical" tag like it's some kind of surprise or original insight. YEAH, I'm aware of the arrogant stuff. It's supposed to be so blatent that you can't miss it. It's serves as parody, I'm satirizing people with out of hand ego's. You're not doing anything clever by "calling me out" about that shit, you're just proving that you haven't been paying enough attention.

(7)But even beyond that, I DO think I'm at least somewhat arrogant. I think EVERYone is arrogant, especially so most of my friends. Everyone is their own personal deity, I thinking they're right and being harshly critical of people that differ from their point of view. Jesus Christ, punk rock is all about arrogance, it's about screaming at the world, "The way most people do things most of the time is WRONG, I know the true path, I am an enlightened one." If that isn't arrogance, then I don't know what is.

(6)Furthermore, other "arrogant" stuff I write is just me acknowleding my own strengths. Yeah, I know a lot about music, I'm a good critic and I know a lot about human interaction and culture. Some would call me "arrogant" because they choose to not believe that I am strong in those fields. But those people are just wrong. This is not me being arrogant, this is me "slightly believing in myself".

(5)My main writing influences are stand up comedy and pro-wrestling promo's. That should give you a good hint as to where my head is at with most of this stuff. So much of it is just arrogant ego-wank that's played for laughs. I'm either trying to get you to hate me or love me. I'm awesome, and then I'm dick. I'm as guilty of distancing myself emotionally as any hipster, it's just that I do it in different way. I'm very slippery and elusive, hard to pin down. And YEAH, I'm AWARE that that last sentence was pretentious and full of shit, I know, I know, it's part of the gag

(4)It's like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, yet I don't specifically say "I keed". I obscure that line because it makes things much more impactful that way. "Is he kidding or not?" "Hmmm, this seems to be like 85% of his actual opinion and then 15% out of control arrogant hatemongering."

(3)Ya gotta understand that all of this shit isn't just some elementry, easy to sum up thing. A one sentence encapsulation isn't a sufficient explanation. It's tough, complex and often times contradictry paradigm. Simply labeling me as "arrogant" or an asshole or as this or that isn't sufficient. It's all about stuff much nuianced.

(2)Do I think I'm better than everyone else? Well, I have my strengths and weaknesses. I AM better than people in certain areas, but I'm cleary WORSE than people in other fields. Ultimately, I DO think all people end up being equal, they all have their different mixes of strengths and weaknesses.

(1)Do I think I'm a "great writer"? Nope, but I do have SOME weird type of talent in there. It's not in any conventional, technical sense, it's more of an ability to grab people's emotions and provoke extreme reactions(again, the pro-wrestling influence). Do I think I'm a genius? No, but I am definetly smarter than average.

...Birthday Breakdown...

2005-08-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

(EDITOR'S NOTE:Okay, so the mood that the following post was written in has officially passed and in this more sober, somber state, I wanna comment on the stuff below. First of all, it needs to kept in mind that I wrote that shit while I was seriously bummed out, twas melodramatic, over-simplied and I used way too many absolute terms, i.e."no one", "never", "all alone", etc. I was aware of this even when I was writing it, that's what the "good and depressed" line is about. I mean, the post is just fucking emotion, which is okay. It's not exactly "true", but it is definetly what I felt at the time.)

(FURTHER EDITOR'S NOTES:Furthermore, I've been rallying against my own alienation for years and I've done tons of work to tear down that negative aparatus in my mind. The basic working notion reguarding all of this is that it's just fucking imaginary, that "wall" between me and everyone else only exists because I keep on telling myself that it does. Ya know, and I set up myself for situations where I feel awkward and out of place. I latch on to crap and manipulate it so it fits my bullshit. I mean, specifically with this birthday crap, no matter what year it is or what specific social situation I'm in at the time, I ALWAYS manage to come up with some type of scenario on that day that fits into that feeling. I mean, honestly, most people I know just throw themSELVES birthday parties, which I would probably never do, so just right there, that's a fine example of me engineering a situation(i.e.no party) that will help contribute to me feeling unliked on my birthday, heh heh.

(STILL IN THE PRE-SHOW:Additionally, thinking about it, what exactly do I expect out of people on my birthday? There's this notion of SOMEthing, I want people to do SOMEthing, to act in some specific way ON my birthday, but it's kind of a mirky idea and well, if even I can't figure it out, how are other people? Ya know, if I tell myself I'll only have a "good birthday" if people jump through all these ultra-specific hoops in certain, precise way, then I'm pretty much guarenteed to have a bad day. Also, another "Birthday Bum Out Factor" is the whole present issue. Basically, I'm prolly one of the hardest people in the world to shop for. For the most part, I already HAVE everything I would ever want that's in the 25 dollar and below range. Duder #1:"Oh, I got him such and such book." Duder #2:"Oh, he already has that." Ya can't make me a mix tape, either, because my record collection/musical tastes are much better than yours, and I prolly wouldn't like it. There's only a handful of people in the entire world that can hip me to cool new stuff that I haven't heard yet and the odds are you aren't one of them. ALL of it, it's just fucking hard, some of it is my own fault, some of it is just the situation, but it still all equals out to it being hard for people to express foundness for me or something.)

(WE'LL GET TO THE COLUMN EVENTIALLY:But don't get me wrong, I was more than prepared to have a bad fucking time today, which really isn't the proper attitude to go into things with, BUT, and this is a big but, there were two definite incidents during the day that set it all off. These were clear examples of people being inconsiderate assholes to me, leaving me out and/or behind. Of course, there's the question of how "bad" these incidents were, which I think is a valid point. I don't know if I can really objectively judge that. Ya know, I was so expecting some type of situation like those two, and I convinced myself that I was going to be really bummed if something like that happened, and well, I was. ANYthing in that territory would've set me off. I'm still trying to figure out whether I was justified in getting pissed over such things. Were those things big deals? Maybe yes, maybe no... Even beyond all of that, I more than knew that person's I would be hanging out with didn't give the slightest fuck about me and well, I should'a seen it coming. Or not, I dunno, why do I have to be so fucking sensitive on my birthday? Fuck it, next year I ain't gonna do this "pity party" shit again.)

(JUST SKIP PAST THESE PARTS AND READ THE COLUMN PROPER:I dunno, as I mentioned way back in some earlier entry on here, all these "creative spurts" are usually inspired by one specific person, usually a girl. And basically, the bullshit is that, on whatever level(platonic, romantic, etc.) I usually care about said person more than they care about me. A pretty typical story, everybody goes through that. And yeah, this fucking sprawling, 150 page plus blog, it's the result of that same exact thing. There's one specific person who's the main "inspiration", although honestly, there are a lot of people. All of this, my writing, this blog, the whole thing, it's my attempt, my pretty damn GOOD attempt to prove that I am greatly skilled in certain area's, I more than have my aptitudes and strengths. I'm not a sporty fellow, I'm only slightly an outdoorsy type. Some people would judge me harshly because of this, but the fact IS I am more than worthy. This blog is me shouting a big "fuck you" in the face of every person that thinks I'm not amazing. Unfortunetly, the people that need that shouted in their face the most are never gonna read this. Whatever... Why do I give a fuck about people who don't think I'm worthy of their attention? Ehhhh, because there are so many of them? I dunno... Stupid, simple basic human crap, "wanting to be liked, to be popular", "wanting to fit in"... It's all so stupid, but it's hard wired into our fucking brains and we can't get away from it. Anyway, here finally is the actual blog post that inspired all this further commentary)

Aaaaah, birthday's, the worst day of the year. What is it about this fucking day that just puts me in the worst possible mood? Every birthday since I've been about 15 has just been pure hell. It's this nice little encapsulation of everything wrong with my life. Things don't get better. Year after year, it's still all the same old shit.

I guess part of it is the expectations for the day, ya know, it's supposed to be the one day of the year where all your friends really show you how much they care... or in my case, how much they don't give a fuck. Yeah, the birthday just shines a nice spotlight on all of that. I fool myself, I try and pretend that things have gotten better over the years, but the birthday, oh that sweet birthday, it knows what a black fucking hole of charisma I am and always will be.

Yay, what a nice little pity party I'm having here. Heh heh, it's the only party for me that's going on today. I just need to get used it, I will always be alone, completely, completely alone. I just need to stop caring about anyone or anything and then I'll be fine.

It's just this constant rejection, over and over and over again; rejection or more accurately, DISINTEREST. It's that same fucking reason why I never got called on in school, it's how I flew under the radar for that short amount of time I was group therapy. I just have this uncanny knack for making myself invisible.

Only now am I starting to realize just how all of this type of crap has served to really fuck me up.. Why did I turn to punk rock? Because of THIS feeling. It hasn't gotten one iota better though, still that same pain. How fucking typical, "severe alienation". Always on the outside looking in, never comfortable in my own skin. I hate it, I hate being this person. I try to change, I've been the biggest asshole in the world, I've been "the most empathic person I've ever met", I've been all points in between. I've been stupid, I've been smart, I've been hilarious, I've been serious, but none of it changes anything. I'm still this fucking person. The world has always told me I'm a loser and I've always argued otherwise, but it just doesn't change.

Yeah, days like today, they just make me wanna completely give up on life and spend my last miserable days locked in my parent's basement. What's the point? Why try? I've put more conscious effort into my life than anyone I know. I've given it a go and I've failed. Why not just give up on life? No matter what I do, it'll never be good enough for all these people that find me so uninteresting.

Nobody believes in me, nobody thinks I'm awesome, nobody thinks I'm deserving of their love and/or attention(other than family members). I just need to get used to that fact.

Yay, it's been a long time since I've been this good and depressed, I need to relish the moment, because I'm sure it'll have faded by tomorrow.

People can say what they want about me. they can say what they want about this post even, but at the end of the day, I actually have the courage to confront these feelings and not just drink myself into oblivian in a pathetic effort to try and ignore this type of crap. Make no mistake, almost everyone that I know feels these same things to one degree or another, but they'd never have the balls to actually admit to it.

Like a great man once said, "In a world where everyone has their damning flaws, the only truly strong people are those that can admit to them."

Happy fucking birthday to me

The Problem with "Drawn Together"

2005-07-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, time to pull up a chair, young-ins and I'll tell ya 'bout yet another great, yet short lived TV show. "Drawn Together" was basically a parody of reality shows, it featured 8 cartoon characters slapped together in one house, with "camera's following them all the time". The show lasted for a mere 8 episodes before Comedy Central pulled the plug.

Why did things go so sour so quickly? To put it simply, the show just asked WAY too much of it's audience. You had to have a master's degree in pop culture(such as myself) just to understand what the fuck was going on in each episode. Permit me to explain further.

Okay, so first, all of the 8 main characters on the show were parodies of popular cartoon characters. You had Captain Hero who was obviously Superman. Then, you had Princess Clara, who was an amalgam of every Disney fairy tale princess. Then, you had Foxy Love, who uhh, well, was the black one from "Josey & The Pussycats". Then you had Xandir who was Link from Legend of Zelda. They gave you a Betty Boop parody in Toot and a Pokemon spoof with Ling-Ling. THEN, there was Spanky Ham, who's a little harder to nail down, but he's basically a super offensive internet download, something akin to a Space Moose or mayhaps even Trey Parker & Matt Stone's aborted "Princess" project. Lastly, FINALLY, we had Wooldoor who was a take off of Spong Bob.

Confused yet? Baffled by the sheer magnitude of pop culturala? It gets worse, ALL of these characters, as I noted, were SPOOFS of the original. They took the personalities of the original and amplified them in certain ways to make them funny. They made the Link character gay, because well, the original Link was hella gay and his girlfriend was a bitch. Of course, you wouldn't know that unless you've played a decent amount of Zelda in your life.

Next, they pointed out that the Betty Boop character, who WAS a sex symbol in the 20's, just isn't attractive by modern day standards. There's some pathos there. The Princess was bigoted and naive, Pikachoo was homocidal.

ANYway, just with all of this crap, they're already set the "excruciating cultural minutia" bar pretty high for the show. They raised it to evewn loftier hieghts with the fact that they lampoon countless REALITY SHOWS as well. There was an episode with a character that was cross between Donald Trump in "The Apprentice" and Richy Rich. They made numerous references to Frankie, the cutter girl from the one season of "The Real World". The line "What is going on?" from the first season of "The Joe Schmoe Show" was invoked countless times.

Futhermore, they made fun of countless reality shows institutions; i.e.the "confessional room"; the need for there always to be an evil bitch character. The list of stuff like that just goes on and on.

Much like Kevin Smith's "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back", you had to have watched a FUCKLOAD of TV before the jokes made proper sense. In the prime era of "The Simpsons" there were an average of 12 pop cutural references per episode, meanwhile, "Drawn Together" averaged like 12 references per MINUTE.

Sadly, people just aren't that media savy yet. Things are better than they used to be, but the world just wasn't ready for a show that requires that much studying beforehand. Maybe in five to ten years the world will finally be able to handle it, but not now.

Anyway, the 8 episodes that were made still run late at night on Comedy Central and there's a DVD of 'em coming out soon.

Great, great, awesome fucking show.....

Telling Friends Their Band Sucks

2005-07-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

So I've been in a new locale for a good six months plus now and I gotta tell ya, I'm scared. Scared of WHAT, you ask? Whelp, it's getting to the point where I just can't hold back any more. I mean, there are just some bands in town that fucking suck and I have this overwhelming need to tell them in exact detail just how bad they are, I wanna shout it from the mountain tops. It feels like a public service, these bands NEED to know and if no one else is gonna tell them, than it might as well be me.

The problem is, a lot of the people in these bands are, at least to some degree, my friends. Now, I used to tell bands just exactly how badly they sucked all the time and I never batted an eye, it was easy, it was fun. The thing was though that I made tons and tons of enemies. I was seriously disliked and it took years and years to properly condition them, to make it so they could even remotely tolerate the often times harsh critisizm that I'd hurl their way.

I feel like such a coward for not speaking up about these shitty bands, I've always been the FIRST call a band shitty, but now, well, I just don't know anymore. I don't wanna repeat all those steps all over again. I was hated and/or misunderstood for years and frankly, I'm quite tired of it by this point. I went through my "asshole" phase just like tons of people here, but the thing is, I think I've outgrown it at this point(never got me laid, anyways.....Or well, the girls that were attracted by that stuff creeped me out).

So I mean, the question here is: where do you strike the balance? To what degree can one tell the truth in public without alienating tons and tons of people? I'd like to think that my friends are healthy and secure enough to take some critisizm, but I know better. I mean, rock'n'roll is just a bunch of fucked up, immature douchewads... There's no way I wouldn't loose friends by being honest. I've already had more than my fair share of enemies, I wanna find a better a way.

It's sad, but we all know that so much of the scene is built on lies. It's about being nice to someone's face, and then cruelly cutting down their band(or their personality) when they aren't around. How can one be honest IN PUBLIC without offending all the emotionally crippled dipshits?

It's such a conflict... I'm just "mature" enough to fully identify the problem, but I'm not healthy enough to actually break free of all. I hate to admit it, but I still "need" the scene, I'm not ready yet to just give up on the world and become a hermit. I still have very real problems and conflicts and I am more than aware of why I am drawn to and stuck in "the scene".

I think another reason why I'm hesitant to tell friends just how shitty their bands are is because past experience has shown that I'm just too good at that type of thing. It's always hits way too close to home for people. Time and time again, stuff I have said to people has REALLY stuck with them, years later even they're still upset about it. Like for example: once I told a guy what I thought of his band(a shitty NOFX rip off) when he asked me, and I made him fucking cry. Yes, I actually made him cry. Then every time I saw him for the next two years, he'd bring that whole incident up again. Later on, I found out that he was seriously bummed out for like two months afterwards and had nearly quit his band. Ya know, and I thought I was taking it easy on him with my accessment there of. I could've easily been way more cruel if I wanted to. His band sucked, but he was an okay guy on overall. I felt bad that he so was bummed out by what I said.

It's a hard line to strike, between being an asshole or a liar. I know a lot of us, myself included, have held up the character of "the asshole" as some type of romantic and/or comedic figure, but in reality, at the end of day, you don't wanna be an asshole. An asshole fucks your girlfriend just to piss you off, he steals your beer out of the fridge at a party right in front of your face and then he laughs about it. Das ist nicht gut...

You don't wanna compromise your opinion but you don't wanna be a sadist, either. You don't wanna just be purposely cruel. It's a narrow line to walk. And it's especially hard to do when yer analysis of a band is paired with a critique of the personalities involved. Ya know, something like "Band A sound like a bunch of dumbfuck pop-punk kids who heard the first Beat record and liked the Exploding Hearts and have now decided to play power-pop even though they know absolutely nothing about it, what a bunch of fucking imposters. Every naive rookie mistake is present in their material, their instincts are horrible." People are definetly gonna be offended by that, and yet, it's the truth, how else can you properly explain just how shitty the band is without including that type of stuff?

Furthermore, what do you do when you LIVE with people like that? You see their record collections, you know what they listen to regularly and you are just horrified at how awful and LAZY their taste in music is. "How are these people allowed to be in bands?", you ask yourself. And I don't know about you, but it's really hard for me to keep my mouth shut in such situations. I mean, I know I can easily withstand a good evisceration, but I doubt a lot of these kids could. And as far as roommates go, I've always been a firm believer in the policy that "you shouldn't piss in the water you have to drink out of". You don't want to make a really uncomfortable living situation for yourself...

It seems like compromise is the only real answer, but theres no point in compromising when it comes to music. Compromise just leads to generic sounds being allowed to exist and ESPECIALLY in this day and age, the last thing any of us needs is another "okay" band. There are so many really great bands out there and it's so easy to get access to their music nowadays, no one needs to waste any of their time on something thats any less than "amazing" ...

It's a very basic conflict there:Don't wanna compromise, HAVE TO compromise, CAN'T compromise... WILL EVENTUALLY MAKE MANY, MANY ENEMIES.....

Fuck, 50 posts in under a month, I officially suck

2005-07-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a short ficitional piece I wrote a while back in anticipation for a certain movie. I never continued the story because well, I didn't have any further story thought out AND people had alreadly gotten the joke. It was very well received:

The incessant drone of the box fan in the window was his only company. It was a hot summer, but that was nothing new. He sat there trying to watch various DVD's on his computer, in the hope that one of them would provide him with whatever he was searching for that night. He gave up on this notion when his version of Fellini's "8 and 1/2" refused to work properly. No, that wasn't true, it was the bonus disc that was malfunctioning. Recently, he'd had similiar problems with a Sonic Youth DVD, but on that occasion it was because the disc was mastered in 24 bit sound and his shit wasn't able to support the format. After aborting the DVD idea, he briefly pondered playing some music, but that as well would not be satisfactory.

Bored, unsettled, completely sober and wide awake at 3AM, he walks downstairs and exits through the front door. Perhaps a short walk to 7-11 and the purchase of a Slurpee will provide distraction for a good half hour or so before he just gives up on the day and goes to bed. He muses to himself, "Aaaah, if only I lived in a bigger town with more insomniacs, there would be something to do right now. Someone to hang out with, somewhere to go, something."

His walk carries him past the local library & police station, which he has deliberately jaywalked in front of ever since his family moved to this town when he was seven. "Fucking cops" he mutters under his breath, while shaking his head in dissaproval. It's a move done on an almost pre-conscience, reflexive level. It's the same knee jerk reaction has he always had to the cops. Lately, he's even started making hard eye contact with police officiers when he sees them. They never look away first like a normal person does. They always just stare right back, giving you that "What are you up to, mother-fucker?" look.

Don't get him wrong though, he has had his fair share of good experiences with police officiers in town and is even on a first name basis with many of them. He's a good kid, his criminal record is completely clean, or well, it was until recently.

He enters the 7-11 and finds that same old damn woman in there. "I wonder if she reconizes me, I'm in here nearly every god damned day." He walks to the back of the store to the Slurpee machine. The Cherry flavor, his favorite is still all soft and liquidy. He opts instead for the Blue Raspberry.

Slurpee filled, he turns around and heads for the register. All the sudden the front door opens with a with a loud swooshing sound. This is bizarre because it is not at all windy day. Just as he is about to dismss this, the old woman behind the counter screams and raises up a good two feet off the ground, A blade then pentrates the front of her chest and she goes limp.

Before our hero can shit his pants, there's an eletric crackling sound and the air directly behind the old woman becomes wavey and distorted, slowly revealing a figure.

"Fucking Predator, yer back again. I thought I killed your extraterrestrial ass." The beast screams, retracts it's claws and throws the now lifeless body of the old woman at him. He manages to just barely leap out of the way, falling face first into a candy rack. In a split second, with Chicklets still raining down upon him, he gets back up and draws his thermal pistol out of his pocket. Its shaped to look like a cell phone, but the Predator knows full well what it is. The monster re-enters it stealth mode. Bert shoots off two quick 'rounds but neither hit their mark. The animal crashes through one of the front plate glass windows and runs off into the night.

"Fuck", he says to himself. He takes a moment to let the adrenaline subside, and then, with his wrist communicator, he hails head quarters. "Jim, this is Bert, the Rastaman is back in town. I need a clean up crew at the downtown 7-11." A faint voices crackles back at him, " God damned shit & hell! Are you sure it's who you say? Case PDR was believed to be effectively terminated."

Bert leans into his wrist and says, "Hey, if anyone knows that fucker, it's me."

"Okay, we'll be there in a few minutes..."

I Heart Fat Chicks, both then & now

2005-07-13T22:57:00.000-07:00

From February 2003:

Okay, so I was just watching the rerun of Entertainment Tonight that comes on at 4AM. I was watching it for the ultra-disturbing Michael Jackson stuff, good god. Anyway, they also did a story on the Lane Bryant fashion show thingy. Now, for those of you that don't know(i.e.every guy reading this), Lane Bryant is a clothing store for so called "plus size" women. Now, 60% of the women in this country are size 14 or over, so needless to say, what "plus size" really means is NORMAL, AVERAGE SIZED WOMEN....

Now, they show clips from the fashion show itself and FUCK, none of those women looked "plus size" or "fat" at all. They all just looked really, really fucking hot. Then, they show Mia Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Liv Tyler's half-sister. Mia is SOOOOOO fucking hot, she looks like a non-anorexic version of Liz and mainly because of that, she's like literally twice as fucking hot. Then they show some interview footage with her and she grabs two hand fulls of her gut and says; "I love my gut, it's my best friend, I'm never getting rid of it." It was just so fucking HOT when she said that. I was so turned on.

God damn, I fucking dig "fat" chicks and there tain't a thing wrong with that. Some people would try and tell me I have some weird "fetish" because I dig the "plus size" girls, but it ain't a SICK thing, it's a fucking HEALTHY thing. I don't like little fucking twig girls. I like a woman with some meat on her bones. Like I said earlier, I like average sized women and it's just our sick culture that labels NORMAL women "fat".

There's just something that's so fucking HOT about fat chicks, I can't even describe it. It's like, you look at them and you KNOW they'd enjoy a good, wild, hot, sloppy FUCK. Down and dirty, that's how they like it....

And too, fat chicks just generally seem to be cooler than skinny chicks. I mean, of course, not all fat chicks are cool. We've all meant some truly evil bigger women, but generally, heavy girls are just cooler. The theory is that since it's a little harder for fat girls to get laid, they just can't get away with a lot of the crazy bullshit that skinny girls pull. They CAN'T play those same insane headgames, so they DON'T. In general, they're nicer, cooler and they definetly listen to better bands. Shit, EVERY single GREAT band that had female members had fat chicks in the band. Loli & The Chones, anybody?

And shit, it doesn't matter how skinny a girl gets, that doesn't make her sexy, what makes her fucking HOT is confidence. She should look however the fuck she looks and she should OWN that. She should scream out loud "This is how I look and I am amazingly hot and you wanna fuck me so bad that you can't see straight." That's what made Mia so hot, her god damned confidence.

Skinny, anoxeric twig girls just put forth weakness and insecurity, they say "I am so crazy I barely eat and I work out two hours a day EVERY day because this soceity is so crazy that it tells me I have to weight 25 pounds less than I naturally would." Plus size, fat, NORMAL girls say "This is how I look, this is the way nature made me, I'm perfectly healthy the way I am and you wanna fuck me."

People offer the arguement that it's this deep set animal thing, that people go for skinny girls because they have better genes. That's not true, they don't have better genes. If they can eat three whole meals a day and not retain an ounce of it, they'd die in a week out in the wild. It's the FAT girls who are gonna survive, because they can eat only one meal a day and STILL not lose an ounce......... Yes, "fat" people ARE genetically superior, so fuck anyone that says different. On a desert island, who's gonna last longer: Ally McBeal or, or, or.....Hey wait, ARE there any female "plus sized" celebrities?

Shit, maybe that's why it was so hot to see "fat" women on TV, because you NEVER SEE bigger girls on TV......

Anyway, I'm not writing in some kind of odd effort to "bag some plumpers", I'm just genuinely stating my opinion, I fucking dig fat chicks. That Mia Tyler is just so ungodly hot..............

..................................................................................

And from May of this year:

So a while ago, back home, I was hanging out with some friends and they were talking about this one girl. They were talking about how cool she was AND about how she just wasn't attractive at all. They didn't say it outright but it was obvious that they didn't find her attractive because she was fat. I heard them talk about this and I thought to myself, "Well, I guess it's my duty then to try hook up with her." I mean, as a fat guy, there is a very clear sense of obligation there. Ya know, its as if there's no choice and I just HAVE TO do it. Every time there's a girl of a certain girth there's automatically this pressure there. "Look, it's another one of your own kind, go for it. This is something you have no say in, you must do it."

I remember once, there was this girl I hung out with(and I do stress "ONCE"), and YEAH, she was fat, and the whole situation was just god-damned umcomfortable. She was so fucking lame. She was 26(I was 23 at the time), she still lived at home, still had a curfew, she wore sweatpants and liked Blur, for fuck's sake. What respectable american likes Blur in this day and age? I just hated her but there was this undeniable pressure there, I felt like I just HAD to hook up with her. I HAD to fuck her just because she was fat. No other reason, I didn't like her in the slightest. It was some weird kind of reverse discrimination. I would've been fucking her just because of her looks, her "bad" looks.

And I mean, don't get me wrong about any of this, physically, I like fat girls. I visit chubby girl porn sites as regularly as any other category. I dig 'em because there's more mystery there. Everyone's seen a million naked skinny girls, there's no surprises there. With the more fuller figured gals though, you don't know what the fuck yer gonna get, it's intriguing the places people store fat, heh heh...

Even beyond all that, the whole area of "looks" is fairly far down on the list of "Things that most attract me to a girl"(well, far down on the list for a GUY, at least). I appreciate crap such as sensitivity, intellegence, creavity and emotional stability way more than just a "nice ass and a good face". There've been plenty of girls who I've initually found unattractive physically who then became WAY fucking hot once I got to know them and see how awesome they were.

And I mean, in theory, a few times I've been able to overcome my OWN "bad looks" by being awesome enough. I've had plenty of intimacy with "hot" girls. Although, honestly, very rarely is there any PHYSICAL intimacy in that equation beyond like cuddling or whatever. Heh heh, at this point in my life I just wanna fucking scream every time a girl says to me, "Clint, I love you so much and you're so great and you're like my best friend and you understand me better than anyone, you know me better than I ever know myself........but I don't like you in that way." It's fucking annoying, there have been so many, and I mean SOOOOO many girls that I KNOW would've been my girlfriend if I just wasn't so ugly.

So yeah, fat asses are a beat down minority(heh heh), and I understand the plight of my fellow travelers, but I fucking balk at the notion that I HAVE TO fuck other fatties just BECAUSE they are fat. I need something more... politics just isn't enough. Being FAT isn't enough, I need something more to relate to, something more to be ATTRACTED to...

(note:I did NOT end up fucking that sweat pants girl I mentioned earlier... she DID though end up stalking me for the next six months or so...)

The New Hate

2005-07-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

From a year ago, in this I basically turn on myself and rip my "old persona" a new asshole. I'll chime after all this is over with my current thoughts on such things:

A STRING OF RELATED POSTS THAT DRAWL FROM OLD NOTIONS AND EXPAND UPON THEM:

........................................................................................................................

Seriously, song lyrics are fucking retarded. They're for 16 year olds and no one else. "Oh, no one understands me, no one gets me, I'm so alone in this world. I am so alienated... The only one that understands me is Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon. It knows what its like to be misunderstood and under-appreciated because it's uhhhh, one of the best selling records of all time, and uhhhhh, oh fuck, there goes my fragile teenage reality."

I dunno, I've been annoyed about such things for quite a while now, but as more time goes on, it just gets more and more blatent and obnoxious. I mean, the only "genius" lyrics I've heard in the last couple years have been Loli & The Chones "I'm A Mess":"Sleep all day, stay awake at night and I can't get a job, no...sleep all day, stay awake at night and I can't get a job, no...I'm a mess, I could care less". That and fucking murder-ballads; if yer gonna over-dramatise yer stupid life, you might as well REALLY over-dramatize it.

All these whining fucking teenage kids, all those emotional arrested lyricists, WHO GIVES A SHIT? I mean, sirse, is "alienation" the key component of every single person's "coming of age"? Everyone whining about how they're so "different" but its all still the exact same ass-drip.

These type of themes are just fucking annoying, they're over-used and god damned boring by this point. Yeah, so what if people don't like you? It doesn't matter if yer parents/family don't understand you, they're not supposed to, that's one of things that inspires you to move away from home in the first place.

Who cares? WHO FUCKING CARES? You're not that special, you're problems are the same as everyone else's. There's nothing dramatic or woeful to any of your shit. Yer just another retard, get used to it. Stop whining, there are more important and more interesting things in life than this type of bullshit. Stop being such a dumbfuck and maybe you'll actually learn something about that type of stuff.

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So yeah, I turned 25 a couple weeks ago, and well, even though I'm more involved in music/punk/rock'n'roll than ever, the whole "emotionally arrested" aspect of the whole deal just doesn't appeal to me anymore. Fuck the lyrics, fuck the conscious side of it, I'm just into the sound, the mood conjured(sp?), whatever...

People seem to have this conception that you can't "grow up" and still remain involved in music. They think you have to maintain this perpetual state of suspended adolescence,"sex-drugs 'n' r'n'r", all that shit.

That mode of thought is idiotic; you can stay involved with it for as long as you want. It's just that you view it in a change-ed light and are getting OTHER things out of it as you grow older. You can stay vital and/or "soulful" for as long as you fucking put the effort into it. You don't get lame just because you get OLD, you get lame because you stop trying.

EXAMPLE:We all know this person; they book shows all the time, and they were in bands consistantly all-throughout, but HEY, once they graduated and moved away they didn't do SHIT anymore. Sure, when they left they had the INTENTION of being in more bands. but well, they never followed through. Like I said, they didn't get lame because they got old, they got lame because they stopped TRYING...

And don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending that I'm the happiest person in the world here and I'm, "so mature and so grown up" and everything's so great, I'm just saying that by this point, the old, simplistic shit has been worked over in my head so much that it just doesn't mean anything anymore, it has no emotional impact.

When I was 17 I might'a been bummed that people didn't "understand" me, but nowadays, I couldn't give less of a fuck. Sure, the same, basic conflicts are still there, my "problems" now aren't so different than my problems from five or ten years ago; (fer example)hipster-retard-bartender-chick still isn't gonna fuck me no matter what I do, but well, who gives a shit? The capacity just isn't there to get upset about it anymore.
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And just like how complaining about being "alienated" is fucking tacky, so is complaining about yer problems with the ladies, how you got dumped or can't get laid or whatever. Seriously, all you assholes out there reading this, stop being such boring shitfaces and learn how to talk about something fucking INTERESTING for a change. It's always the same one or two themes, repeated ad-nausem through-out your whole fucking existance.

Grow up, get over it, talk about something that hasn't been talked about a million times before.

Yeah, so that's the "New Hate" the new "complaint" the new "annoyance": yinz's need to stop living such carbon-copy, simplistic bullshit lives. We don't care if yer alienated and having problems with people you wanna fuck. Transcendence, getting over it, growing up and moving on, becoming the most awesome person yer capable of being, THAT is what it's all a-fucking-bout now people. Fighting and fighting and fighting and WINNING, that's what fucking matters.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I still "hate the world", but really, I don't think about that anymore. What I DO think about and what I DO really hate is people that aren't contributing anything, people that aren't moving shit forward. People that just aren't even TRYING.

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Don't cha hate those teenage-fuckhole-brains(as mentioned earlier) who think they're SOOO alienated, and SOOOO different, but then, THEN, they're at a party, and they actually manage a half hour conversation with a girl(although, this applies to both genders equally here) and suddenly, SUDDENLY, OH MY GOD, there's someone in the world that understands them and immediately they drop their pants and are in love, only to find out a few days/weeks later that it was all just imaginary bullshit dreamt up in their head? And don't cha like how they repeat that same pattern over and over again for like 20 years solid?

Why can't they get it through their heads that a drunken hook-up with someone they just met at the bar that night isn't gonna lead to anything significant? Some of these folk might pretend that the one night stand is really all they want(for some, that really IS their only goal), but with so many of these people you can just SEE that point when they are so totally buying into that guy's line of bullshit and he can totally fuck her that night if he wants to. It's like they're in some kind of trance or something? Why do they fall for such simplistic crap that pretty much everyone else can see through?

Is it because shit hain't about stuff they're consciencly aware of? Could it be that what they're really attracted to is subtle little behaviors of the other person that clue their brain into the fact that "HEY, associating with this moron will permit me to remain miserable in the exact same way that I've been unhappy for my entire life."
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At a party a couple of months ago, I started talking to this one person, and they go on and on about how socially awkward they are and how they have trouble at parties and how they don't leave the house that much and blah, blah, blah... Ya know, and I was saying back to them, "Well, yeah, I mean, I more than understand and empathize with that type of thing. God knows I was there myself for quite a long time, hell, I STILL might be there for all I really know, but well..." And what I didn't SAY to that person, although I thought it was, "Ya know, even though I can very much relate to your problems, I'm just fucking annoyed because yer shit is too simple. Its crap I identified and dealt with years ago. Nowadays, even though I might still have similiar problems, I really would never, ever express them in such a manor."

I mean, I needs me some meaty self-expression to sink my teeth into, I need some real, heavy-duty, hardcore, next-gen existential-angstholing, or otherwise, I just get bored. Anybody that's been around me on a night where I was "heroic drunk" night knows what I'm talking about. It's like these GRO posts, but in real life performancing....

or whatever, blah, blah, blah.....
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Okay, so back to 2005 now. What can I say? This is a VERY, interesting post from me. It shows some marked emotional growth(which I think is actually a really interesting part of all these old posts, you can see how my ideas have developed over the years). In the above I am actually decrying people who complain about not being able to get laid, people who talk about how they're alienated.

Obviously, those two topics are just about the ONLY things I ever talk about, whether it be five years ago or five minutes ago. What then inspired me to write all that stuff putting down such talk? Was it any real, true emotional growth? Was I just bullshitting myself? Whelp, I think at that point I truly WAS tired of those topics and in writing that post, to a certain degree, I WAS just bullshitting myself. I was saying that I was done with them, OVER them. The truth is, I wasn't, but I really, really wanted to be. I've made tons and tons of progress over the years, but those same basic conflicts are all still there(something which I say in the post). Ya know, I definetly AM tired of having trouble relating to people, and I've been tired of not being able to get a girlfriend for about a decade now. These are topics that I've gone over again and again and again. I've devised a million different scenario's in effort to beat them, I've GONE to therapy. I've "done the work" over and over again, and still, it doesn't change, it just doesn't change. The enraging reality of the matter is that THIS is my fucking life.

When I was 18-19 I went through a really hard period. Ya see, I was basically just STARTING to come to terms with the fact that THIS was prolly what my life was gonna be. Yeah, I was depressed because I didn't wanna be "Clint", I couldn't fucking handle it. I thought I was pretty awesome, meanwhile, the rest of the world kept on labeling me the biggest loser ever. I thought it would get better when I got into punk rock and the community surrounding it. I thought they were more accepting of different people. They weren't though, they were just accepting of people LIKE THEM. I reacted to that of course by becoming even MORE punk rock and labeling THEM the imposters, which they largely were.

And yeah, I thought things would get better when I moved to Milwaukee, and in some ways, they have, but I still feel as though in the social circle I'm in, I get pushed to the perifery because I'm not a vegetarian, pop-punk loving, bike riding, crossword puzzle doing, dumpster diving, lazy taste in music having, crusty accepting, non-media savy type like the rest of them. Milwaukee is basically me when I was 19, and boy howdy has it been a LONG time since I was 19. Fuck, I relate to the town(or more specifically, the social circles I'm IN in Milwaukee) like I would a younger brother, I get where he's coming from and the stuff he's going through but it's all shit I was done with years ago.

FUCK, all of this is just such bargin basement bullshit alienation. Half of me is saying, "All of this is imaginary, it exists inside your own head and no where else, if you just put some more effort into interacting with them you wouldn't feel so much on the outside", while the OTHER half of me is envious of how similiar they are to each other and how easy their interactions are. I find it astonishing that they're actually having a good time at these stupid fucking bullshit parties. I mean, are they just deluding themselves into thinking they're having a great time at such non-events? EXAMPLE:A couple weeks ago I as at a friend's house and there were these photo booth pictures of her roommate lying on the table. I looked at them and thought, "Wow, she sure does seem to be having the time of her life in those pictures." Then I thought about it more, in every fucking my space picture I've ever seen, EVERYbody looks like they're having the time of their life. Then I thought about some of my OWN my space pictures, there were definetly certain ones I posted up there because it looked like I was having a really fun time.

Is that what people DO? Do they pretend to be as happy as possible in pictures so that when they, or someone else, looks back at them, it appears as though their life is uber-fun and glamous? Are we all trying to sell ourselves on the lie that our lives are much more awesome than they actually are? Do we romantisize pointless binge drinking and forgotten, superficial four minute conversations(i.e.every party all of us have ever been to), imagining that all of it is actually something significant?

So yeah, I DO hate alienation and not being able to get laid, and I AM bored of talking about it, yet, it still fucking exists. It's still there... The brick wall that's been in front of my face my whole fucking life.

Anyway, just to make this entry even MORE painfully long, here's something I said a few weeks later after that initual "The New Hate" post:
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SPOILER WARNING........SPOILER WARNING..........SPOILER WARNING..........

So I saw "Before Sunset" earlier today at the Lyric(7 and 9:15, go see it). It's the sequel to "Before Sunrise". "Sunrise" was a movie about an american guy and a french girl that meet on a train in Europe. He has to go home the next day, so they they get off the train in some scenic locale and walk around the city all night long and just have one big, long conversation and get all "bondy" with each other... At the the end of the movie, they don't exchange numbers or anything, they just a make pledge to meet each other at the train station in six months time.

The sequel, which I saw tonight, takes place nine years later and is basically pretty damn similiar to the original. The whole movie is just one big, long conversation. (MORE SPOILER WARNING) The movie picks up with the two reuniting after having not seen each other since the night they met(i.e. the first movie).

Here now is where I start to get pissed off... Within like four minutes of talking they are already into one of the best conversations one could possibly imagine. This is fucking annoying because well, fucking hell, how many times does one have really good conversations in their life? It's all awkward pauses and chit-chat about stuff that no ones gives a fuck about and nobody ever really reveals their true character.

Even when you CAN get something like that out of a person it's always after months and months and years and years of a relationship/interaction. The movie is irritating in that way because it suggests that that "magic" is not so hard to obtain and can be had with a nigh stranger...

It also pisses me off because well, I can make the god damned magic happen every single time in print, but hardly EVER in face to face conversations. Why is it that relating to a piece of paper, to a computer screen is so much easy than to a person? Why am I so fucking fearless here, but so restrained other respects? Its like HERE I have limitless access to "the magic", but it other sectors of my life? Its a whole fucking lot harder.

Hell, sometimes, sometimes I even DO manage the "magic" in real life, I CAN spout off stuff like this. All the existential, self reflective, bullshit, I CAAAAAAN push it out my mouth, but it doesn't fall on receptive ears. People just look at me like I'm weird or something.

Sure I'm more "popular" now, I have many more friends, but it's nothing all that "fufilling" or "enriching", most of it is just shallow boring assdrip and the only enjoyment I get out off things is trying to interject as many jokes as possible.

That fucking movie pisses me off because I KNOW I am capable of great conversations like that and I KNOW that I haven't found any-fucking-body capable of echoing something similiar back to me.

Why does it have to be so fucking hard to make a connection with another fucking human being sometimes? And I'm not talking a sexual connection, I'm just talking about ANY kind of closeness or intimacy AT ALL. Something fucking real.

God damn it, I hate to paraphrase Ben Fold Five, but why is everyone in this fucking community/soceity/sub-culture always fighting the battle of who could care less? Its like some competion, a show where the one that cares the least about ANYone is the winner. It's always kept on the surface level, just boring fucking bullshit. Isn't there anything MORE to these people? A lot of them are stupid, but a few aren't and there has to be at least one of them that has SOME-fucking-thing interesting to say. Something that isn't so isolated and specific that it can only be understood by someone with a BA in whatever. Something fucking relatable...

So yeah, I'll prolly go see the movie again tomorrow...

...

Damn it, I thought I said I was bored with alienation(i.e.the "New Hate" post). Fucking hell... See, that movie's also annoying because it uhhhh, emotionally set me back, or something...

It was a reminder that no matter how sociable an introvert gets, they still crave the fucking depth... They need it to survive. Shits at odds people, at fucking odds... You can't HAVE a million friends and be all that close to them, and yet, you NEED intimacy, BUT, you need to have a million friends as well, and yet.....

Fucking hell, extraverts are crazy cause they have difficulty connecting on a deeper level, and introverts are crazy because they NEED the fucking depth and well, they have trouble with small talk, heh heh.....

shitcock... See, that "New Hate" thread was all about me rallying against the only things truly worth rebellion, i.e. the flaws in yourself....

fuck.....

(SIDE NOTE:"Before Sunset" was written and directed by the same guy that did "Waking Life" and "Slacker").....

Maybe it was just so "impactful" because it's been a long time since I've seen a really good movie. Or well, it wasn't THAT great, I mean, their emotional insights weren't all THAT profound... Maybe I just like movies that are one big, long conversation("My Dinner With Andre", "Mind Walk", etc.)...

Ahahahahha, movies like that are kinda like a whet dream to introvert types... Ya know, it's like, "Wow, all the stuff I think in my head has finally been spit out there on the movie screen, great." I forget who it was, but some director said that all dialogue in movies is inherently utopian and facistic(facistic because it imposes only ONE PERSON'S view of utopia) because the writer is crafting this world where the stuff the people say fits perfectly together with what the other people are saying. Ya know, its the author saying, "In a perfect world, this is how a conversation would work." Utopian and fascistic at the same time...

Moral of the Story:In theory I'm still bored with alienation, but after being back at my mom's house for almost a month now, a lot of wind has been taken out of THOSE particular sails... Damn it, can't let this emotional growth; this epiphany, slip away... I gotta be more in a July mindframe, not the August mindframe... Don't get bogged down by August because the September mindframe is gonna blow even the July mindframe way out of the water(potentially).... Anyway, hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about here; hopefully they get the joke...

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Fucking hell, life annoys me....

As close as I'll ever come to being tortured

2005-07-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

So this is my memoir of the all night sleep study I had to do back then when they were trying to figure out if I had sleep apnea or not. In all honesty, I probably DO have it, but the machine thingie didn't help at all with it(and YEAH, I never did get used to it). Ummm, in all likelyhood I prolly have like two different sleeping problems, the sleep apnea with porphyria on top of it. Not to over simplify, but one keeps me from falling asleep and the other wakes me back up once I've fallen asleep. As for the references to my imminent(sp?) death, I should say that the sleep specialist said I was gonna need surgery within five years or I was gonna die. He, of course, was full of shit. Within a few months of all this, he had washed his hands of me, saying there was nothing more he could do to help me. Basically, he did absolutely nothing besides prescribe me a sleep medication that I might be allergic to. Yay, way-ta deal with a complicated, non-obvious case.

Anyway, I still have serious trouble sleeping all the time, but it's better than it used to be. The visit to the specialist was spurred on by a six month stretch of sleeping only two hours a night. That sucked.

Another thing that really needs to be mentioned is the fact that RIGHT BEFORE I went in to do this sleep study, literally, right before, minutes before, a close friend of mine had told me she was gonna kill herself within the next week. A big part of what made that whole experience so shitty was the fact that I was just freaking out about that stuff. I was trying not to cry or hyper-ventilate during the testing and it was just fucking terrible. I would've rather been any other place then there doing that sleep study at that moment.

Also, this all happened the night before the accident at my house. I wrote this in the afternoon and the tragedy happened at 10PM that night. Fucking hell was that a bad patch to go through.

Anyway, here's the "memoir":
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Okay, so close your mouth...

Take a deep breath in through your nose and then release it...

Repeat this for 8 hours solid...

Do not move while you are doing this...

Strap a piece of machinery on your nose that forces a constant stream of air down your throat, and sometimes into your eye socket if the seal isn't quite right...

Listen in grand annoyance as your warm breath hits the cool mask, and water condenses, pooling at the bottom and making a bong type sound every SINGLE time you breath in and out...

Try to sleep while doing all of this...

Ponder the fact that you are 24 and this what you will have go through every night if you want to live to your mid 30's...

Dread the fact that if you CAN'T get used to all of this, you'll be lucky to last five years...

Further dread the fact that the machinery is so awkward and uncomfortable that you probably WON'T be able to get used to it....

Spend all those 8 hours deeply reflecting upon yourself, after you've already spent like 5 hours earlier that day doing the same thing....

Reconize the semi-tragic irony that you are barely into your mid-20's and already you are having to come to terms with the prospect that yer gonna die a NATURAL death before too long...

Stop yourself from near hyperventilation about three dozen times during those 8 hours because you really can't breath properly while wearing that fucker....

Spend approximately one hour of that night writing this post in your head...

Spend some time trying to figure out why your best friend(FORMER best friend) doesn't like you anymore...

Spend some more time trying to figure out why certain people that say they care about you, act like they don't give a fuck at all...

Spend even more time thinking some of the most stupid, desparate, crazy thoughts you've ever come up with, and then wonder if they'd work as lines to pick up chicks....

Surrender to dispair.....

Then fight it off again, kicking it squarely in the balls....

Surrender to dispair once more.....

Get bored with being depressed and just switch over to anger....ANGER AT THAT DAMN FUCKING MACHINE THAT ANNOUNCES MY EVERY FUCKING BREATH LIKE I'M GOD DAMNED DARTH VADER AND I'M GONNA HAVE TO WEAR IT FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE BUT HOW CAN THAT BE BECAUSE I ALREADY WANT TO SMASH IT RIGHT NOW....

Realize at some point that you can't move, talk and essentially a machine is breathing for you, just like old people in coma's or whatever. Make a note to yourself to tell your family that if yer ever in one of those type of situations, you DO want them to pull the plug. 8 hours of that stuff was enough, you don't need 8 months of that crap, only then to just die anyway....

Once the mask is taken off, note that your skin was so irritated by it that you now have like six pimples around your nose that weren't there beforehand....

Debate whether you should go back to bed or not now that you're home...

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AND THAT, FRIENDS, WAS HOW I SPENT MY SATURDAY NIGHT.... YAY FOR ALL NIGHT SLEEP OVERS AT THE SLEEP DOCTORS(exclamation point).

THE SEMI-EX

2005-07-13T21:30:00.001-07:00

a companion piece to the "Kinda Boyfriend" post

(from October 2003, edited down from a longer, boring dealie)

Okay, now there's another trend that I've been noticing a lot lately. It's nothing new, but for some reason, it seems to be even more pronounced nowadays. This phenominon(sp?) is of course all them damn people's that have a shitty relationship for under six months and then officially "break up", but then afterwards they never actually really break up. The whole thing is kinda left in this weird emotional limbo where nobody really knows WHAT the deal is with it all, not the friends of the two involved, not the "couple" themselves, NO ONE. It's like they tell themselves, "Oh, I put so much effort into getting close with this person, and it's so hard for me to connect to someone else, so now even though things have gone sour, I need to maintain this relationship." Now, this is ALMOST a good idea, but the thing IS, when you BREAK UP...you actually have to BREAK UP. You can't go from being a couple and being in love to being "just friends" within the course of a few days. You need time away from each other, time to actually genuinly heal. And needless to say, if things between you two are too fucked for you to be a couple, well then the odds of you being able to maintain a healthy PLATONIC relationship are not very good. All of yinz's in these type of situations(I should note here that I'm NOT talking about any one specific "couple" here, this is a trend I've noticed well over half a dozen times in the last couple months) need to stop pretending yer so "mature" and emotionally detached from the situation. Of course you care and of course it's a big deal and OF COURSE you are very upset. YOU ARE NOT READY OR CAPABLE TO BE "JUST FRIENDS" WITH THAT PERSON RIGHT NOW...you might not ever be, and that's okay.... That's actually a fairly healthy thing, it's NATURAL for someone not to get along with their ex, that's how it works. If the situation was bad for you and they consistantly made you feel like shit, then you probably DON'T need to hang around them anymore. And yes, breaking up really hurts, but the way to get over it is NOT to just plunge headlong back into crap with your ex and pretend that you don't care. ALL OF YOU CARE, VERY MUCH SO.... You can lie to yourself about it, but the truth is clear to anyone that observes your actions. ALSO, another factor that people don't seem to think about in these type of situations is that when you are involved in something like this, it drives away NEW PEOPLE who you could potentially have a sound relationship with. They see all the stupid bullshit yer involved in, and their HEALTHY responce to it is, "What is all this stupid-ass weird crap? Why can't they actually break the fuck up? Eeeeeh, I'm staying away from her, I don't want to get involved in any of that type of craziness." Also, there comes the point where one of two go out with someone new for the first time. Now the other preTENDS not to be horribly jealous, they preTEND to be okay about it, but it's all just so fucking obvious. Also, this type of stuff FUTHER destablizes any NEW relationship you might attempt because if you still "regretably" fuck your ex every once in a while, a NEW girl/boyfriend isn't gonna be too accepting of that. It's the biggest, oldest cliche in the world, cheating on your current significant other with your ex. I'm surprised its not mentioned in the 10 Commandments. See, maybe you geniunly DO have a problem with making a real emotional connection with someone else, dot dot dot, and it's partually because you engage in stuff like this. Sure, maybe you ARE miserable, but at least part of that is because you surround yourself with people that help KEEP you fucking miserable(and you do the same for them). You continue to pour energy into these doomed associations, while you ignore those that you probably could have something healthy with. Break the god damned cycle, get out of all the insanity and just break the fuck UP... You've already tried long enough and hard enough with that person, IT'S NOT GONNA WORK.... Move on, find someone else.... Yer fucking young, you don't need to hold onto these fuck-knobs forever... OTHER PEOPLE WILL COME ALONG.... OTHER PEOPLE ALWAYS COME ALONG.... PART OF THE REASON WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE ANY NEW EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS WITH PEOPLE IS BECAUSE YOU ARE WASTING ALL YOUR TIME AND EFFORT ON PEOPLE THAT THINGS ARE ALREADY FUCKED UP WITH... ANOTHER REASON YOU CAN'T CONNECT IS BECAUSE YOU SPEND SO MUCH TIME CONVINCING YOURSELF THAT YOU REALLY CAN'T CONNECT WITH ANYONE NEW...... Believe me, it's easy to connect with new people.....you just have to put in the effort....just a little effort, a FRACTION of the effort you put in with your "semi-ex". There are other people out there who will love you, you can take the lessons you learned in that old, bad relationship and use it all to not fuck up the new one. And fuck, moving on is ESSENTIAL because you'll never really understand why things happened the way you did until you get some perspective on who you really are. Ya know, time after time, do you repeat the same mistakes in relationships, OR was it just that one time? Was you or was it him? WHAT exactly was it.... Until you get some distance from the thing, you'll never know, and you can't get distance while you're still there hanging out with them at least once a week and "accidently" fucking maybe once a month or so when yer both "really drunk"... Becoming close friends with yer ex within a few days after you break up isn't being adult, it's being really fucking weak and unhealthy AT BEST and at worst, it's kinda sociopathic if you DON'T actually care.... But anyway, there's my official commentary on the phenom. of the "semi-ex"....

More than ANYone ANYwhere is EVER gonna read

2005-07-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

This is from the same time period as the last post. I should say that I'm not really "surrounded" by mental illness anymore, at least not serious, uppercase mental illness. Yeah, I've cut most of those "toxic" types outta my lfie at this point and I'm all the better for it. Fuck trying to "help" people, it's bullshit...

Anyway, POST:

So I think for the MAYBE the first time in my life, I've started to have a reoccuring dream, an UPSETTING dream. Previous to this, I've maybe had ONE other long term, reoccuring dream. I'd be back in high school again, and even though I had already graduated, I would have to take all the classes over again. Anyone that knows me well enough knows what that dream was about.

Still though, that dream was never very upsetting, not like this NEW dream. In it, basically, a person that I really care about goes insane. Their old personality ceases to be and it's just replaced by bold faced craziness. It's almost like that person has died in way, because what they WERE is gone. They were gone and a monster, essentially, had taken their place. Even worse, within the last month or so, the dream's taken on a new characteristic in that when said person loses it, they also begin to engage in some breed of ultra weird, ultra scary, perverse sexual practice.

These dreams always leave me really shaken and upset, and even thinking about it now kinda puts me off. What exactly is so scary about them, why am I so disturbed? Now, I ain't gonna attempt any ultra-deep Freudian dream analysis here, but basically, yer brain's going all the time, and the mellow-drama going on in your waking life(huuuuuu) is echoed in your dreams. So the question IS, is stuff somewhat similiar to this happening in your real life? MY real life?

The answer is YES, a bold, resounding yes. I'm surrounded my mental illness on all sides, it's inexcapable, I'm in up to my neck with all this shit. Everywhere I look and everyone I know, it's just like this ever present spector looming over everything. And I ain't just talking about mental illness within acceptable, everyday boundries, I mean people with full blown, diagnosed personality disorders.

Fuck, I remember back when I was 18, I made enemies by suggesting that most of "us" had some kind of emotional problem. I said that back then like it was some kind of "revolutionary" idea, but NOW, it's just so blatently fucking obvious and SO staring EVERYONE in the face that I just can't imagine how anyone could ever pretend that it's not there.

It's obvious, it's clear, THIS is what it's all about, it's ALL about mental fucking illness, and I want a fucking break from it. I want out, beyond it, above it, removed from it.... Where-ever, I just want fucking FREEDOM. It's ALL mental illness and some, a FEW, are earnestly trying to beat it, but majority are just fucking wallowing in it.

So yeah, THAT's what the dream's about:everyone I fucking know is in process losing their mind, they're unconsciencly constructing their worlds to keep themselves permanently miserable. They're doing all that and I'm terrified that one day their mental problems will completely consume their personality and the person I knew and cared about will be gone.....

Endless Backlog of Material

2005-07-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

Fuck, I should really just change the name of this blog to "Endless backlog of material", because that's all it's really shaping up to be.

From the fall of 2003, BEFORE I read "Sex, Drugs & Coco Puffs" and just after "American Splendor"'s theatrical run.:

I dunno, you ever get the feeling that people in the past could "get away" with a lot more unhealthy behavior because people just weren't as aware of various mental problems back then? The most glaring(and recent?) example of this is the movie "Say Anything". It's been said countless times that if Lloyd Doubler did today what he did back then, he'd be labeled a stalker within seconds(side note:odd though how so many girls nowadays look up to Lloyd though as the "perfect boyfriend" type). It just seems like the past is filled with so many blatent examples of unhealthy behavior and one wonders how it never raised an eyebrow back then. Why didn't people say, "Oh my god, that dude's obviously a psycho." I mean, none of you have seen it, but "American Splendor" is FULL of behavior that would just never fly nowadays. You do that stuff today and you'd just be crucified.

Back then people just had so little knowledge of personality disorders and stuff that was way over the line of "neurotic" would just be waved off with a "Oh, that's just Johnny, he's a little off in the head."

Of course, the flipside to this is that now more than ever, the dialogue and treatment of such things has been built up so much that it's actually forseeable that a person could really beat these type of problems WAY more consistantly than they could back then. What used to be a lifelong problem can now just be a stumbling block for a few years or so.

You can label the modern day environment as being "bad" because it's "less tolerant" of those type of things, but that's just because they are aware of how distructive these behaviors can be and how they can disrupt EVERYthing. Less tolerant in THAT capacity, but perhaps far more tolerant about talking in depth about such problems and attempting, with some success to actually TREAT them...

Of course though, now that the old problems have been identified and people know to avoid those behaviors, they're just developing new, more complex modes of self distructive interaction that are much harder to figure out. Also, nowadays people seem to "own" their problems like never before. They can tell you exactly how they're fucked up, they KNOW exactly what is wrong with them, and perversely they seem to take pride in their mental disorders. Ya know, instead of attacking that problem and trying to beat it, they just pretend to laugh it off, as if it doesn't matter. As if their whole shattered reality is nothing more than a prank they're pulling on the world.

Of course though, this is basically just a "prank" they're pulling on themself, because they just can't STOP all of this whenever they want to. Making it all into a huge gag is a way for them to pretend like they have some control over their problems, but it's really just anti-thetical to their recovery because all they're doing is avoiding all those really hard questions. Along with people "owning" their problems more and more nowadays, they are also claiming with increased frequency that their emotional problems are COMPLETELY chemical in nature.

Believe me, they're not, even if they start OFF that way. A lot of those negative feelings end up being the result of ACTIONS, fucked up actions, not just chemicals. Fer example:You have a fight with your boyfriend because of chemical problems; the fight un-earths other tentions in your relationship; you continue to fight; you break up. Now you are depressed because you have broken up with your boyfriend. The chemicals in your head unbalanced things, but YOU are the one that tipped it over.

If your life is constant doom and gloom and you're ALWAYS fighting with people, it ain't so much "chemical imbalances" as it is YOU dealing POORLY with things and making BAD CHOICES that aggravate your problems.

The trick is to write/post so much that no one actually can read all of it

2005-07-13T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so some might be kinda surprised or even taken aback by how honest and open I am with all this type-a crap. "How can he expose himself like that? I would never leave myself so vulnerable." The thing is though, I am not without my defense mechanisms, i.e.there's so much bulk tonage of writing to wade through that effectively, NO ONE can read all this stuff. My "secrets" are safe-ish because nobody is so interested in me that they wanna read 150 pages of my crap(which is just about how long this blog is now).

Anyway, from 2-25-2004(a good period for me writing shit), here's some lengthy crap:

Yeah, I hate to say it, it totally goes against what I stand for, but I've been on a pretty even keel lately, emotionally. It's not so much that I'm blindingly happy or anything, but I'm a million miles from being bummed out.
Even through all the getting sued stuff(or well, that stuff's just started, so who knows how it's gonna turn out), I dunno, just I haven't let it wreck me or anything. Sure, I'm still as unsatisfied as fuck, but that's more of a thematic, emotionally detached notion that exists mainly to urge me on to greater heights.

As cliche as it is, maybe now that I have "real problems", everything has been put into proper perspective. Not that my on going health problems(or whatever) aren't real, it's just that with all the melodrama going on around me, it'd be so easy to fall into some hole of depression and anymore it's like, "Fuck, you could waste yer time being bummed out about all this stuff, or you could do your best to enjoy life as much as you can." At this point, I'm just happy when a whole week goes by and there's not some new, huge problem to deal with.

I dunno, is this "maturity"? Is "Adulthood" just the result of having slogged your way through so much bullshit, so many wars, that you don't sweat the small stuff anymore? Or hell, it's not even "small stuff", like I said, there's like easily half a dozen things I could be really down out about right now and basically I'm just making the conscience decision to NOT let myself be bummed out about it.

God damn, this whole past year or so has prolly be one of, if not THE most life changing years of my life. So much stuff going on from so many angles, and anymore, I just don't feel like whining about it because there's so many people that have it worse. It almost seems like an insult to those people; I'm not gonna whine because what's my "pain" compared to theirs?

Every once and a while, someone I don't know brings up that whole, old "Clint as an asshole" thing and it's just like, "Where have you been lately? It's been a million fucking years since all of that." Ya know, that all was kid's stuff, at BEST it was phase and now it's clearly over. I mean, at some later point, I might do it again if I can make a career/some money off of it, but that'd be just about the only way(heh heh). Since then, its like the few people that DID have a genuinly negative reaction to it are like, "Oh wait, he actually WAS able to stop? What the fuck? I assumed it was this compulsive thing that he had no control over.... FUCK!"

I dunno, now is NOT the era of people "out growing" things. Ya know, now is the time of people being emotional stuck, locked into one problem that they never beat. They become defined by that problem. They know it's there, they knows it exists within themself; yet they make almost no progess against it. The stuff they're struggling with now is what they'll be struggling with 20 years from now. Gone is that ability for people to trandscend/triumph over shit.

Often times it seems like they don't even WANNA beat it; they continue making choices that they know are the wrong ones and somehow, they don't quite connect the dots. "HEY, I'm doing things that I know are morally incorrect, but that's no big deal, I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm so unhappy and have no self esteem." That's like our generation in a nutshell: deseparately unhappy, yet too unmotivated to do anything about it.

I dunno, ultimately, those "triumphant" type people are the ones that I really respect. People that have had problems, they've gotten some serious bullshit handed to them, they HAVE gotten screwed, royally, and yet, they don't let it destroy them. They beat it, often times using those negative experiences as a catalyst to bigger, better things(example here being Stone Cold getting fucked over by WCW, only then use that negative experience as promo fodder in ECW. Those promos being so heart-felt and intense that it caused the WWF to be interested in him. The character of Stone Cold would've never developed if it weren't for him getting fucked in WCW. This is what "triumphant" people DO; put simply, they turn lemons into the positives.) Not that this type of characterization has ever been wide spread, but nowadays, you'll be REALLY hard pressed to find tales of such triumph. For every one story of someone who's "beaten it", there are a million stories about people beaten BY it......

I dunno, some people don't like stuipid, simple "positivity". They think its too cliched, too oft repeated(mindlessly repeated); but at the end of the day, once you've had any level of experience with sub-cultura, you find that dumb, mindless, cliched negativity is just as prevalent. Ya know, it's like, "If I read another LJ about how so and so wants to kill themself, FUCK, I'm gonna find where they live and do it myself." Being "depressed" and "negative" is no more creative or original than being some deluded Tony Robbins(self help guru)-esque character. Losing is not intrinsically more interesting than winning...

What IS interesting though is losing, and losing big time, and then turning it all around again until you're winning. That is the story I identify with. Maybe more than anything else, that's the story of "punk"(as if that word still means anything[or ever did]). Ya know, young, fractured, alienated kids go into it, they are the "lost" and through socializationing, and educationing, and responsibility taking-ing(setting up shows, being in bands, writing zines, etc.) they pull themselves out of the more-rass and uhhh, I dunno, WIN...

It's like some kind of alternative, a third opinion between "pyscho fringe culture type" and "mainstream boring idiot"(although, to be honest, most "punks" ARE either psycho, fringe culture types or boring, mainstream idiots, but hey, like I said, the term don't mean nothing no more). The path of the true punk rocker has always seemed like some kind of balancing act, because all interesting art & culture comes from crazy people, all advances are conceived in their fevered minds, BUT, you can't be like that, because these people ARE fucking crazy, blindlingly unhappy and totally full of shit. On the other hand, boring, mainstream types, at their BEST, they are capable of things like happiness and stable, long term relationships, but they fucking SUCK, they're boring, they couldn't have an interesting conversation to save their lifes.

The trick is to take the best qualities of each group and use them to form a new identity. Take all your craziness and repress it, constrain it, lock it all in a box(there's a difference between restraint and repression). A box which you only open when yer doing artful shit. Take all your pain, all your negavity and put into something creative. Spare your friends and family from your bullshit and it turn it into product(ahaha). Instead of just blindly reacting and "doing what you feel like doing", you've gotta stop and analyse, take all it apart. Don't just automatically spit out a responce to something. Stop and think about it for a long time, put a lot of thought into what the RIGHT thing is to say. Think about what the most beneficial thing to do in a situation would be. Don't let your self distructive impulses rule you. Swim with the psycho's, but keep your head above water(ahahaha), learn what you can from them, but don't get sucked down into their bullshit...(side note here, the WORST of both worlds is of course crazy mainstream types... All the turmoil of "cool" people but none of the redeeming qualities).

I mean, just look at my immediate family as an example(sister's 13 years older than me, brother's 8 years older than me). My sister, she rebelled against my parents as a teenager, with all the typical sex & drugs and stuff like that. Had kids early, didn't graduate college, blah, blah. My older BROTHER, though, on the other hand, he saw things turned out for HER, and instead in HIS teenage year's he rebelled against my sister. He took
more of the "straight & narrow, hard working" path. He's been married now for 12 some years, just had his first kid three years ago, has his PhD and goes to church a bunch of times a week(or DID, at least, before the kid).

Myself on the other hand, I didn't rebel against my parents so much, or older siblings, or anything like that. I instead rebelled against "the world". Different without being a degenerate. Where as my mom approves/is proud of my brother, and is often times just plain angry at my sister, she just doesn't know HOW TO react to me. And odd mix of contradictions(kind of), that you really can't put your finger on...

I mean, that's one of the main things "punk" is, a third, obscure choice in a world with only two options(go Nader?).

Or something, blah, blah, blah..........

The First Rip Off Column

2005-07-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

I commented way too much on that other dealie, so I'll keep this short, from January 2002, my first Rip Off column..... It's maybe the first thing that's actually about MUSIC that I've posted on this blog. It's total Rip Off propaganda back from when that type of thing was still fairly cool:

Okay, it all started off somewhere in mid 1996. I was reading MRR, I was only sixteen at the time, so I still took that crap-zine seriously. I was knee deep in a Rev. Norb column. At the time, I really only knew him as that annoying DJ guy from the first Riverdales album. What can I say, I was young and dumb. Two years earlier I was still listening to fucking Nirvana. Anyway, he starts blathering on about some band called the Registrators and the differing hole sizes of their seven inches. I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, but I stored the band name in my head for future reference. A few months later, I come across a seven inch BY a band called "The Registrators". I thought to myself, "Hmmmm, is this the same band that Norb guy was talking about, or were THEY called "The RegisTRAITORS? Hmmmm....." Also, at the time, I noted how cool and cheap looking the packaging was. I decided to take a chance on the record because even if it WASN'T the same band, the record did LOOK really cool, so that was a good sign.

I bought the record and I liked it. Eventually, I dug out that old MRR and conFIRMED that it was indeed the same band. A few weeks later, I saw the Rip Off Teengenerate single. I bought that as well because the packaging was the same and I kinda knew who Teengenerate was. From there it all snowballed, I bought the Registrators full length when that came out, I bought the old Rip Offs full length and THEN, by March-ish of the next year, when the Loli & The Chones full length came out, I was hooked.

I was a full on Rip Off Records junkie, I bought everything with the Rip Off tag on it. The Registrators, the Infections, Loli & the Chones, ALL of it, and all of it was GREAT. Rip Off never let me down, they still haven't........

It's cool, a modern day label I actually BELIEVE in, a modern day label that actually puts out NEW bands that are every bit as good as the old, 77-82 era bands. Bands that are, in some cases, even fucking BETTER then those old bands. When I hear people complaining about how shitty modern bands are, I just wanna put on that fucking Intimate Fags' single and scream; "Lookit fucktard, SEE, there are still great bands out there. All you have to do is LOOK, fucko." Rip Off is THE label of the now times. Rip Off is the current SST, the current Dischord, the current Dangerhouse. It's MY FUCKING Stiff Records. A great, influential label that I WAS ABLE TO EXPERIENCE FIRSTHAND. It's shaped who I am and informed a LOT of choices I've made in and out of the musical arena. Rip Off Records, pretty much the ONLY fucking label that means SHIT nowadays(although Big Neck is cool to). Rip Off is a label the caters to the record collector, to the rock critic. Rip Off is the label that caters to people that actually KNOW their fucking shit when it comes to punk rock. The release dates on the records, the awesome packaging on the singles AND full lengths, the lack of lyric sheets, the fucking ATTITUDE, which is the main point OF rock'n'roll and punk rock anyways. ALL of that comes together to MAKE Rip Off the fucking amazing, LEGENDARY label that it is.

Punk rock isn't dead, the heart of rock'n'roll is still beating pretty damn LOUDLY on each and every ONE of those Rip Off releases, and if you can't see that, well then, FUCK YOU.................

Moral of the story: Rip Off Records rocks(excla-fucking-mation point).

Mission Statement

2005-07-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

Here's my second Rip Off column. This is where I really distinguished it from the Blank Gen stuff. It's basically my bullshit bad attitude mixed with the official "Rip Off Records Attitude"... As time went on, these columns became more and more just pure bullshit. A lot of people liked them. Yeah, the more blatently negative and dark I got, the more people liked it. Heh heh, girls dug the Blank Gen stuff and guys liked the Rip Off drivel.

Anyway, here 'tis:

Okay, losers, here be my latest Rip Off column. I'd start it off with some
kind of clever quote or something, but I'm trying to develop some new gimics for this column. Ya know, so as to not just repeat my blankgeneration.com crap. The first real "difference" will be that these Rip Off fuckers ain't gonna be
nearly as long as the bizantinian (is that even a word?) death marches to the
sea that my Blank Gen columns are. Also, I plan on actually trying to talk
about rock'n'ROLL here and not the meandering, exisitential BS that chokes all
fun out of my usual columns. Also, I'll do two a month instead of one

The first weapon in my "battle" to fight off my own boring-ness is that I
shall be accepting records for review. Yes, you want your band's shitty CD demo reviewed by the website of the greatest record company currently in existance? Then feel more then free to send me whatEVER at:(address erased)

I promise to that EVERYthing I get WILL be reviewed, although, obviously, it
probably ain't gonna be a good review.

Having said that, lets get into the meat of this fucker(ouuuuu, there's my
first new catch-phrase). Now is a time much unlike any other time in the past.
Well, not really, but let's just pretend it is. Now is a time when perception
not only EFFECTS reality, it doesn't INFLUENCE reality, now is a time when
perception IS reality. "Actual" reality doesn't matter anymore, public opinion,
what people THINK is real, THAT is reality nowadays.

Take for example this "war" we're in. First of all, WHO are we fighting?
Afganistan? Haven't we beat them already? Ya know, they have that new
government thing in place now. And how can it be a "war" if only ONE american
soldier died in combat? More americans have died in helicopter malfunctions in
this "war". More americans have been killed by OTHER americans in this
"war"(friendly fire, anyone?). HOW exactly is this a "war"? A war against
TERRORISM? Ummmm, yeah.....wait, WHO are we fighting? WHY is this exactly a war?

And yet, people say again and again that we are "AT WAR" right now. What in
the fuck are they talking about? Obviously, now is a time when ACTUAL reality
doesn't matter in the slightest. REAL, ACTUAL, GENUINE reality just doesn't
factor into the equation any more. We are living in an era where the spin,
where hype, where lies and BS manipulation have TAKEN CONTROL. We are
GENERATION MINDFUCK, our only gods are the add men. There are our leaders, they tell us what to think and well, we think it. "PR" no longer stand for "public relations", it now stands for ummmm "the Producers of Reality"(sorry, I tried to come up with something clever-er, but "the Producers of Reality" was the best I could do).

In a climate like this, what are our options? Do we reject the bullshit, do
we reject the manipulation? Do we try and stop them from fucking with our
heads? Well, YEAH, we do, but since now is a much more cerebral time, since the enemy is that much more coy and SLICK, we have to fight them on their level. WE have to become smarter, turn ourselves into better manipulators. We have to make the hype and propaganda work FOR us. There's no going back, we can't resort to simplistic "truth" and "honesty". HYPE is the atom bomb of our
generation, and we have to take control of it.

How do we do this? How do we fuck with people's heads, how do we get them
to buy our bullshit wholeheartedly? Well, it's not all that hard, most people
are pretty stupid and easy to manipulate. You have to play to their emotions,
make them "FEEL" your "cause". Movies have been doing it for ever. You have to target to their insecurities, make them feel stupid if they don't support you.
Most people are very insecure about their intellegence level, and it's real easy
to yank them around by that chain. Make them feel as if they are the ONLY one
who doesn't know about you(or whatever), as if they are the ONLY person that
doesn't support this idea or cause. No wants to feel LONELY, they all want to
be accepted, just play on that and you'll get results.

Next, don't be afraid to piss people off, in fact, TRY and piss people off.
That's playing to their emotions just as much as anything else. As I said, the
primary key to manipulating people is to target their emotions. If you get
people all EMOTIONAL, they won't be thinking straight, and you can get away with all sorts of shit. Fer instance, going back to this 9/11 crap, did anyone
NOTICE a couple months back when that report came out that said old Bushy
actually DIDN'T win the election in ANY way what so ever? Didn't win the popular vote, didn't win Florida, didn't win SHIT. WHY hasn't much of any one NOTICED this, why hasn't it been a HUGE fucking deal? Because people are all busy being whipped into this blind, idiotic, patriotic frenzy. It you can peopel to STOP thinking, you can get away with anything.

In a sane, rational world, the fact that our "president" didn't even WIN
election WOULD be a big deal. But like I said, that AIN'T the world we live in,
we live in a world where our reality is just lies. Yes, LIES are the only truth
anymore. And IN that environment, there could BE no more perfect leader then a man that did NOT actually win the election. It's all just fundimentally a LIE.
It started back in the 50's or so, when the PR industry merged with politics and
it's evolved to this present point where, as I said, ACTUAL reality just has NO
bearing anymore. Generarion Mindfuck.................

Emotion, insecurites, THIS is what THEY target, and sadly, nowadays, it is
what WE must target. Psychological warfare is the only kind of warfare left.
Even the nightly news nowadays, with this whole "war" thing, they report and
treat the latest PR campaigns with as much seriousness and importance as they do bombing raids. They know it, we know it. They're lying to us, trying to
manipulate us, they essentially just outright adMIT it. As I've repeated a
couple times here now, we need to take up "arms" against them.

We need to try and piss people off, seVERELY piss people off. If we aren't
getting death threats, then we aren't doing something right. If no one hates
us, then what's the point? Pro-wrestling has been working this concept for
decades and has earned assloads of money off of it. Currently, the richest,
most popular wrestlers are the one that can work the mic the best, the one that
can stir up peoples emotions the best. The ones that can target those
insecurities, those weaknesses, the ones that can FIND those buttons and PUSH
them. They are MILLIONARES because of this. They are "great" because they have mastered the ART of the mindfuck.

Call people stupid, call them losers, you can work off the negative end of
things just as easily as you can the positive. Talk yourSELF up, make it sound
as though you are the greatest thing ever to walk the earth. It doesn't matter
if you don't believe it, it doesn't matter if THEY don't believe it at first.
Just keep on saying it, and eventually, people will start to believe it. How in
the FUCK do you think a crap band like Blink 182 ever sold millions of records?
Talent-wise, they're about at the level of that crummy NOFX knock off band from down the street that's only been together for six months. And yet I've heard lots of people on TV talking about how they like them. HOW are now considered a "good" band by large numbers of people? Well, first of all, everyone ELSE likes them, so why don't YOU? All your FRIENDS think they're great. Three million people CAN'T be wrong.

Again, as with everything else, it doesn't MATTER what the actual REALITY of the matter is, all that matters is what people THINK, how they perceive things.
Blink 182 is perceived as a "good" band, and as such, that is how people see
them.

Reality doesn't matter, just fucking SELL yourself as something, repeat it
over and over again enough times and eventually someone somewhere will start to believe it. Come up with some BS set of rules, it doesn't matter what they say or if they're "good" rules or "bad" rules. Just come up with some set of rules and say it out loud and SOMEone, SOMEwhere will follow them. Going back to wrestling thing, RVD said for years that he was the greatest wreslter ever, and well, people believe him now. As long as your "talents" are at least above average, there ARE people that will buy it.

Sure, a lot of this is stupid, blatent stuff that NO ONE would EVER fall
for, but you'd be surprised, people DO buy it. If you just throw in some kind
of emotional ploy, if you can get people to STOP thinking and just make them
blindly emotional, then theres no limit to what you can accomplish. And I mean,
most people don't think all that much to begin with, so it's not that hard to
get them to stop thinking. People are lazy, play into that. Most people would
MUCH rather believe a blatent lie as opposed to a TRUTH that would require them to get off their ass and dedicate a lot of effort to something. Fuck, just look at all the stupid bullshit the government craps out, people buy THAT shit hook line and sinker, no matter HOW stupid is, no matter the fact that any average intellegence 16 year old can easily see through their petty lies and
manipulations.

Fuck with people's heads, lie to them, manipulate them, play on their
emotions, play on their laziness, try and get them to stop thinking, THAT's what
life is about nowadays. Honestly and Nobility NEVER really existed, so don't
worry about that. Just fucking lie to them

MORAL OF THE STORY:Generation Mindfuck......what more need I say?

email any and all comments/hatemail to: crparson at hotmail.com
.................................................................................................................

The worst part about that column is, even through all the bullshit, I still kinda had a good point there. Oh fuck, we really ARE living in odd times.....

The End of the End

2005-07-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

So this was the last column I ever wrote for Blank Gen. It actually never RAN on the site because Joe Domino rejected it. I tried to explain and justify the column with some lengthy email(the only kind I know) that has thankfully been lost to the winds of time.

Anyway, a few weeks later the column ran on the Rip Off Records site. Surprise surprise, once again, there was a lot of controversy and a lot of debate surrounding the column(I believe the offical Rip Off take on the dispute was that it was a "classic feud"). In retrospect, it's very annoying, even when I DON'T set out to be all "provocative", my shit still gets that same reaction. Actually, I think that's one of the main reasons I started ACTIVELY trying to piss off people all those years ago. Ya know, I was gonna irritate them no matter what I did, so why not take control of it? I wanted to own my self distructive annoying-ness(heh heh).

I think I mentioned this in one of the other blog posts, but what I still don't get is: why? Why does any of this shit have to be such a big deal? I can more than understand if something I write is just plain BORING, that's bound to happen, but what I don't get is why I always, and I mean ALWAYS provoke these powerful, emotional reactions out of people. I'm never JUST an idiot or JUST an asshole or just whatEVER. People always go on, at length, about my collosal(sp?) shortcomings. Of course, there's the positive stuff as well, but hey, I'm fueled off the negative end, just like any sane person, THATS the type of stuff I pay attention to.

But fuck, hey, I guess that's the point, their negativity puts me on the defensive, it makes me uncomfortable and anxietious, and when I'm in that mood I produce my best writing. I maybe need a constant flow of naysayers to rally against, I have to prove to them, time and time again, that I AM a worthy human being; and in the process of proving it to THEM, I prove it to myself as well. Yay for dime-store psycho analysis.

But eeeeeh, I'm just rambling right now, and there'll be more than enough of that in the column that follows. Ummmm, my shortened defense for the column is that it's a lot like "My Dinner With Andre", if you can get past the first part, you'll really like the second half. Or not, whatever.... I dunno, this column prolly combines both the best and the worst of my Blank Gen stuff. The first half is me killing off my "Blank Gen Persona" and the second half is me building it back up again.

Either way, it was the last thing I wrote for either Blank Gen or Rip Off. Why was this? Well, first of all, everybody was bailing out on Blank Gen at the time. Not that I'm a "rat from a sinking ship" type, in fact if you count it in pure bulk tonage, I contributed more to Blank Gen than anyone barring Joe, but well, the writing was on the wall. In all likely-hood, Blank Gen was gonna be ending soon. Joe was stepping away from most of his editorial duties, the zine was going on the backburner for him. His musical tastes had also changed/refined somewhat, and he started to vere away from the standard Blank Gen stuff. The zine started as his baby, but as things progressed different voices came to prominence, different camps with different directions started to emerge. There was the core group that went on to do Terminal Boredom, and there was Joe with his tastes, his direction, there was Shawn Abnoxious and there was fucking ME, with my lack of direction.

Hell, when Terminal Boredom started up, there were a good number of people that thought I should write for 'em(most notably Cardwell), but my shit isn't really compatable with their focus. I'm off in my own weird fucking world here and they don't need this bullshit clogging up their page. Most of the time, I DON'T write about music, and I prolly would end up clashing with any editor that I'd have. I got my own thing going on and if I wanna continue fucking doing it at some kind of semi-prominent level, I just need to start my own fucking site. Ya know, at my best/worst, my shit isn't something you can cram into another zine, it is it's OWN stand alone zine.....

Or something, just read the fucking column already(I didn't do any proof reading)

"The Best Lack all Conviction"

-by Clint R. Parson(the "R" stands for "Rarely Uncontrovercial")

Ya know, a lot of people've been saying lately that I've lost my edge. That my columns aren't what they used to be. That my "genius spark" has seemingly sparked out. They ask me "What happened to all your brilliant and hilarious social theories?" "Why don't you write any insightful columns about chicks anymore?". They say that I've run out of ideas, that I'm just coasting on past acheivements. They say I'm now like "End of the Century" era Ramones. And not just readers of this column, people that knew me before all of this, people I corresponded with via email, even THEY are wondering what happened to that mad, passionate genius that used to flow so easily and effortlessly. Night after night, email after email, I'd somehow be able to write ten pages worth of completely life changing, perception altering, reVOLUTIONary spiel. But not anymore, they say, not anymore. Nowadays they say that I'm just a pale shadow of what I used to be, a self parody, my own personal Spinal Tap. They say I've "lost" "it"............In this column, I intend to prove them wrong. Yes, I intend on proving that I never had "it" to begin with.

Sure, I had some funny ideas in those first bunch of columns, stuff that people hadn't heard before, but you've gotta realize that most of that crap was just backlog, it was rewritten, extended versions of things I had said to people in emails(and other places), stuff that had been floating around for years. Eventually, after I had written enough of these columns, I ran OUT of that old material, and I had to come up with NEW stuff. And well, obviously, so far, I've FAILED at really coming up with any new, clever, hilarious social theories. My last Blank Gen column just basically felt like a complete rip off of an older column. I'm SURE I've made fun of Biafra and Bad Religion SOMEwhere before, I dunno.

For a few months I was able to bullshit my way through things, that's where the whole "Grand Theory of Engagement" came from. Just a stupid, half formed idea that well, I BULLSHITTED my way through. In all those early columns I felt such a need to build up the "legend of Clint", to make myself look so great and brilliant, but now, now that a decent amount of people have bought INto it, I'm finding that they actually exPECT me to BE all brilliant like, to continue on with all the funny stuff from before.

In the early days, writing these columns was simple, I'd have three or four possible subjects in my head, any of which I could've turned into a decent rant on whatever, but in the couple of months, I've started to run out of subjects. And this last month in specific, the well has run pretty fucking dry. What the FUCK was that "kill all nerds" thing about, anyway? Before these fuckers used to be filled with pain and rage and bitter resentment, but well, now, I've gotten less resentful lately, my grand overwhelming anger at EVERYthing seems to be burning off somewhat. I'm actually GETTING a decent amount of reconition from all of this, people know who I AM, and well, the hate is ebbing. I hate to say it, but the "core" of my writing ability, my "talent" is slowly fading away. I don't know what to do, every new column is getting a little bit worse then the last and I have my doubts as to much longer I can go on with this. I always said I'd never burn out, but who thought I'd just fade away?

I remember a time when I was pissed off during the writing of these things, when I felt each and every line, when it ALL meant "so much" to me. But no, not any more. I'm happier now, more content, more secure and it's just destroying everything that ever made me interesting. I'm not even really all that "misunderstood" anymore, people generally seem to understand what I'm doing, they don't get all angry and pissed off at me. I'm probably the happiest I've ever BEEN in my life and I fucking HATE IT, I can't STAND it.

I don't know, there's the temptation of trying to go back, to try and repeat myself. I could write another column about chicks, some complex and goofy theory about them, but what does even matter any more? Those columns were mainly just the result of my inability to get laid, the result of me trying to figure out WHY I couldn't get me a piece. Now though I realize WHY exactly I can't get laid and the reason is far simpler and stupider than I thought. I can't get none because I'm a fat ass, plain and simple. Sure, I'm more intellegent then your average person, sure I can easily PROVE that, but it doesn't matter, it's just ALL about me being overweight. If I was me and I had my same personality and all the sudden I looked like Brad Pitt, I'd be fucking GOD, people'd worship at my feet, they'd LIVE my ideas as GOSPEL. But no, since I'm ME, and I look like I DO, I am stuck where I am.

Disgustingly, I've come to accept this, it's not even something I get upset about anymore. On a mental/intellectual level, I can easily out class any of those fuck-rods, fuck-rods that seemingly can get chicks fairly easily. Ya know, and if they can get a piece SOOOO easily when they're SOOOO dumb, then OBVIOUSLY, it has to be about looks.

There've been countless times, especially lately, where I've been talking to a girl and I just KNEW that if I were skinnier, then she'd DEFINETLY be my girlfriend. Before, when I'd get rejected, I'd assume that my personality wasn't good enough, that I just didn't "stack up" in that capacity. Now though I intrinsically understand that that has absolutely NOTHING to do with ANY of it. But whatever, I'm really far past the point of caring about that crap now.

Fuck, when I take another look at ALL my wacky social theories, they ALL just seem to be an excuse, a justification, an attempted explanation of WHY I couldn't get none. Those were explanations that didn't need to be uhhhh explained. A person doesn't need these long, thought out, complex theories to explain it all, all they need is just simple, shallow vapid-hood(long "a").

More and more lately I've just unequivicably arrived at the conclusion that persoNALITY wise, I'm head and shoulders above most people, and that obviously, my problems can not lie there. But whatever, I dunno.................... Shit, even this column itself is seeming to run out of steam. Will this be it? Will this be my last column ever? After these next few sentences will I NEVER write another column, be it for Rip Off, Blank or whoEVER? No, I can't let that happen, even if all I AM anymore is a pale, faded self parody, I STILL have to go on, I still have to play this game. I have to keep on pounding out uninspired mediocra in the hope that it will gain me some larger scale reconition. Maybe one day soon, if I keep up the suck, the bland, personality-less ASS, one of the "big" zines like MRR or Hitlist will read my stuff and decide to bring me on. Yeah, so what if I don't have anything left to offer anymore, MRR doesn't have anything to offer, I'm SURE I'll fit in there.

But no, I can't let that happen, I won't let that happen and I CAN'T let that happen. I will NOT go quetly into the night, I WILL get pissed off and en-rage-ed about SOMEthing again, I will FIND a new direction, I will BREAK new ground, I will talk about shit and unveil ideas NO one's ever heard of before. Hell, I might even write a column about rock'n'roll or something(heaven forbid). I can't let myself wallow in the past, I need to change with the times, I need to roll with the new, I need to reinvent myself. The old shit I used to talk about, it's already been devoured, assimilated into the beast. If I TRULY wanna stay on the cutting edge, I now have to push things even further. My old columns were "The Simpsons" at THEIR peak,,, my NEW columns have to be "DUCKman" at IT's peak.

I HAVE to be smarter, I HAVE to try harder, I've got to be BETTER, just fucking BETTER. And I'll start with that now by ummmmmm, uhhhhhhh, lemme think, uhhhhhhh, what's the deal with breeze anyways? How come when it's cold outside and there's wind it's called "wind", but when it's WARM outside and there's wind it's called "breeze"? Why is wind so bad and breeze so good? What did wind ever do to you? Hmmmmmm, okay, so maybe that's not exactly "genuis" but uhhhhhh, well, I GUESS I COULD reinvent myself as a horrible stand up comedian(aren't I that alREADY?), that'd MAYBE be a new direction. I don know, it'd be really hard though to translate things into written form, because I imagine I'd be using a lot of props(prop comics of course occupying the LOWEST wrung of the comedy ladder, along with vantriliquists and comedy magicians{but that doesn't include the Amazing Jonathan, that guy's fucking HILARIOUS}). Oh shit, I just abused ye old "parenthetical aside" there, I haven't done THAT in ages, I must REALLY be running out of material.

Hmmmm, maybe I could start talking about more topical stuff. What's in the news? Uhhhhhh, have you seen all this jazz with the priests and the alter boys lately? It's almost like molesting children is something that christians fully and whole heartedly approve of........... Aaaaaaah, maybe I DO have something here with my horrible stand up comedian act..........No, wait, I KNOW I've still got it in me to be pissed off about SOMEthing. Theoretically, I have to have SOME real opinions left, something that gets me pissed off, something that I feel passionate about. I can't be SOOOO totally cynical that I just have this sociopathic "non-care-ance" for all things. I am not empty inside, I still have a soul........ Er well, I GUESS I still do.

It's not so much that I don't have any strong opinions anymore, it's more that I see a lot of different angles on subjects. I don't just hold ONE opinion on a topic to the exclusion of all others, I try and see ALL the differing viewpoints, all the different angles and contexts from which people are coming from. I try and see ALL those things and more so, I try and UNDERSTAND why people hold those viewpoints. Sure, in some cases I myself may hold a strong opinion on whatever topic, but even THEN, I try to understand where I mySELF am coming from, I try and figure out what in my OWN background is making me HOLD that opinion. Ya know, because well, the opinions you hold, the uhhhh "causes" you care about, you only CARE about them, they only make you FEEL because they play on your own personal damage. Your fucked-up-ed-ness dictates pretty much ALL THAT YOU ARE TO(double emphasis on "TO") YOU.

So that's why I have trouble strongly believing in any of the topics I strongly BELIEVE in, because I KNOW that I only CARE about those topics because they appeal to some sick, deep down, dark part of my psyche. I mean, I don't think I believe in ANYthing 100%, I'm ALWAYS, by nature, looking for flaws in things, trying to identify the cracks in whatEVER sysyem and either repair them or well, "destroy" the old system. No system of thought, no philosophy, no religion is perfect, and yet pretty much ALL of them like to present themselves as the all knowing, all seeing, all being answer to EVERYTHING. It's laughable. They market themselves as the end all, be all, they basically SAY to people "You don't need to think any more, we've got it all figured out, do as we say", even though, usually, the flaws are pretty damn easy to point out. Any philosophy that is even reMOTELY true should be able to freely and openly adMIT that it could SOOOO easily be wrong about ALL the things it's talking about. It can't present itself as "the conclusion" to all thought, it instead needs to acknowledge that AT BEST it is MAYbe just helping adVANCE human thought a little bit.

So yeah, THAT's why more and more lately I've been having trouble subscribing to any theory, any dogma, whether it be political or spiritual or whatEVER. I don't fully supPORT any of that crap because they all(pretty much) present themselves as "perfect", and would never EVER openly and honestly talk about all the flaws and contradictions and oversimplifications inherent in their theories. Like I said, they are unable to admit that they are wrong, they are convinced that they are "right" and THAT it what prevents them from ever really being effective. Being wholly convinced about ANY complex philosophy is just fucking bullshit, NONE of them know the whole story, ALL of them have flaws, and VERY few of them ever adVANCE their thought beyond the initual, early crap that they come up with. They just pound that old, dead rhetoric into the ground pretending that it's gonna change the world and solve ALL ills, completely ignorant of that fact that their GRAND philosophy has pretty much already GOTTEN it's chance to solve all problems, it "got it's chance" and it FAILED. WHY? Because while it might be correct on SEVERAL issues, there's still a WHOLE lot more that it doesn't even touch on. Problems or contradictions that it's completely ignorant of, problems and contradicitions that completely inVALIDATE everything that they have to say.

Get this, humanity, life, it's too fucking comPLEX to be fully explained by some say 500 page book(ala the bible), it'd take a fucking 50 billion page book to even BEGIN to REALLY understand all the nuiance-ed complexities of EVERY-fucking-thing. And guess what? We people living today, beCAUSE of our grand ignorance, beCAUSE of our even GRANDER ARROgance, we don't have the slightest fucking clue about ANYthing. Moreso, we don't even have the pure, raw CAPACITY to REALLY understand things. We're all dumbfucks, full of contradiction, ignorance, arrogance. A bunch of fucking monkeys held inslaved by their own mental problems.

Contradiction, gaps, flaws, that's all we are, and of course the greatest(and worst) ability man ever developed was the ability to ignore his own contradictions. We all think we're great, we truly believe that we've got it "all figured out", but we don't have the slightest fucking clue. We're wrong, you're wrong, I'M fucking wrong, this whole column is bullshit, over simplified ass designed to make me look like I'm a "genuis", to make me look like I'm better and smarter then everyone else. It's all just ego, masturbation, a frustrated loser raging against his own ineffectual impotence. As it's lived today,.all of life is just a game, a cruel manipulation aimed at keeping us all in the dark for as long as possible. Just shut up, do as we say and stop thinking, we have the conclusion, buy our bullshit and you'll be happy. It's all lies, there are no conclusions, there is no end point that we could arrive at. For NOW, the best we can do is just keep on moving fucking FORWARD, FORWARD, FOR-FUCKING-WARD(excla-fucking-fucking-mation point)

Long story short:Obviously, the "edge' is back. Cower in fear, mother fucker...............
..................................................................................................................

Hey, I kinda predicted the advent of Neil Hamburger in this column, sweet.....

The Beginning of the End

2005-07-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

So this was the last column of mine that ever ran on Blank Gen. It hit the public in May of 2002. Looking at it now, the first paragraph is kinda annoying, but hey, I had a persona to sell at the time. Like a lot of my Blank Gen stuff, this column is pretty fucking broad, but I GUESS that was kinda the point, I was trying to drawl in a different audience to the site. Anyway, here tis:

"I am the end, NOW is release, NOW comes revenge, now is the PAIN, you think you know pain, you know nothing, feel my touch, fell the pulsing stimulation, knowing the meaning of....My gift to you......I LIVE......"

-----Glen Danzig

And so, with those words, like a uhhhh 1950's B-movie abomination, my column was BORN one year ago. It crawled out of its digital womb all pink, swinty eyed and discombobulated, with nary a hint of the beast it would soon transform into. Yup, that first column was like a pilot episode, all raw and crude, with me attempting to establish the gimmicks, carve out some kind niche, trying to draw attention in SOMEhow, and yet not quite achieving that. Yup, those early days were all quite primate indeed, not up until the third or fourth column had I really gotten a firm grasp on "my style", hell, my style didn't even exist yet on the first column. As those months went by though, things got more refined, the hate, the fire, was concentrated down into is purest form and unleashed upon an unaware public. As each month went by, I'd top myself, I led a uhhh personal revolution that just kept on revolving. New ideas were stressed, new opinions, the old rhetoric was analyzed and found to be unworthy, too simple. I, month after month, pointed in a new direction. The more time that went by the more feedback I got from people, both positive and negative. Hell, I even got a legit groupie back in the fall. Yes, things were good. I started writing for Rip Off Records at the beginning of this year, a label which I have idolized ever since I was 17 years old. Yup, in this last year, all thanks to Joe and Blank Gen and this fucking column, I have actually gotten sorta, kinda "famous"-ish. Needless to say, a million thanks to Joe for letting me write for Blank Gen. And now, since I'm sure you're all waiting for it: STRAP YOURSELVES IN, BECAUSE THIS IS GONNA BE A BUMPY RIDE THROUGH "insert-the-blank" TOWN (excla-FUCKING-FUCKING-mation point).

The thing is, IN my Blank Gen columns, one of the reasons I TRIED to come up with original ideas month after month is because I'm just not SEEING much of that ANYwhere else in "punk culture" nowadays. Ideas aren't moving forward, thoughts aren't being developed. People are just touting the same old rhetoric, the same old bullshit that's been around for the last twenty years now. Look at fucking MRR nowadays, they just did an all gay issue.....HMMMMM, that would've been a really powerful, NEEDED statement in uhhhhhh, 198-fucking-TWO when Bad Brains were going around calling everyone "blood clot faggots." But no, nowadays in the modern context, an all-gay issue is just fucking cliche, there's no point, it's just rehashing the old crap, recovering ground that's already been covered. The only people that issue was "revolutionary" for is the fucking 16 year olds just picking up their first copy of MRR. But that's what MRR is nowadays, a zine for the youngsters, a TRL of punk. No one over the age of 17 takes it seriously, and most wonder whether it EVER was really deserving of its "legendary" status.

Yeah, NONE of the old heroes seem to stand up very well in modern times. Take "punk icon" Jello Biafra. Now when I was fifteen, he was the shit, the Dead Kennedys were the shit. I listened to those songs, I OWNED the fucking spoken word albums and I listened and PAID ATTENTION to what he was saying. Thing is, after a while, I had absorbed pretty much all of what Jello had to say. Then, having learned all I could from him, I moved on to bigger and more complicated issues. I stopped paying attention to him; I went and learned about things he didnae teach. Recently, after a good five-year plus absence, I checked out some new Jello crap, and guess WHAT? It is still the exact same brand of bullshit he peddling before. The same ideas, the same rhetoric… In that time period I was (emphasis on "I") moved so far forward, where I learned SO much, he learned nothing. He was like a broken answering machine, mindlessly repeating the same ass over and over again. "Lemme tell ya about when I ran for Mayor of San Francisco." "Lemme tell ya about when I got taken to court for distribution of harmful matter to minors." There had been no growth since I left off; his particular brand of "revolution" certainly wasn't still revolving. He was sitting there, talking about shit that he did 20 years ago when he was 18, acting as if it all was the grandest thing ever in some sort of sick Al Bundy-an type way, more or less adMITTING that he peaked artistically YEARS ago and that now, he has very little to offer. Yeah, do a me a favor folks, if at 40, I obsessively talk about "the good old days" and repeat a few key stories ad nausem, just fucking KILL me already. Yep, I’ve slowly started realizing that Jello is just a jingoistic idiot.

Sadly, he was not the only one. More and more, I started paying new attention to old heroes that I had neglected within the last several years. I saw Bad Religion on Conan and they were horrible. I hadn't listened to them in years, and now, seeing them again, they were just a fucking JOKE. Sure, back when I was 16 they were the shit to me and I obsessively read and memorized their lyrics, lyrics that I thought were brilliant. Now though, seeing them anew, seeing them though my older, wizened eyes, they were awful and their lyrics were laughable. It all just came across as total bullshit; stupid multi-syllabic words brought in to distract people from the fact that they HAD no actual ideas, nothing to offer. Once again, another old "hero" was revealed as an idiot. Even more shocking, I recently saw Paul Westerberg on a VH1 special for Green Day. Pauly talked about how great of a record "Dookie" was and how he really enjoyed it. I wanted to cry when I heard him say that. It suddenly made sense to me why he hasn't put a good, much less GREAT record in the last decade or two. Obviously, "Dookie" was a mediocre record by a mediocre Lookout Records band. At the time they put that out, there were a good half dozen bands on Lookout ALONE that were markedly better then them. And of course, needless to say, even the BEST Lookout band isn't even all that good (some of the Panic Button ones are arguable though…). Still though, for Paul Westerberg to whole-heartedly embrace "Dookie" was, and still is, shattering to me. MY brain just can't get a handle on it. The guy from the Replacements was touting bland pap as greatness. I'm still bummed out about that…

Time and time again, when I checked back in with those old heroes of mine, the heroes of my teens, I found that none of them had anything new to offer. None of them had built upon what they had previously done. The ones that WERE great certainly did not retain much of their former uhhhh "fire." I just slowly came to realize that YEAH, all of my old hero's were now idiots. I hated them all not for what they ARE or what they WERE, but instead for what they AREN'T. I still believe the truths they told, but now I understand that their "truths" were only a very a small portion of reality. Jello's truths only address about five percent of reality; there are still a million other issues in a million different directions that he wholly and completely neglects. I don't hate him for what he SAYS, I hate him for what he SHOULD say, but doesn't. No longer can we be satisfied with being all compartmentalized and shut off. Having an obsessively detailed knowledge of ONE leaf is useless when you're dealing with an entire forest. So yeah, I don't hate my old heroes for where they WENT; I hate them because they didn't go any FURTHER. Can you imagine Biafra talking about his FEELINGS, his emotions and how that effected things back then? Ya know, he got married in '80 or so and got divorced somewhere around that whole court case thing in 86 or whenever. Have you ever heard him mention his wife? Surely getting divorced must've weighed heavily on him at the time, surely that must've GREATLY affected things. But no, we never hear anything about any of that. Why? Because Biafra's a coward, too afraid to open up and let his personal side come though, too afraid to be a real artist. Instead he's more comfortable with being a one dimensional comic book character. And ultimately, that's what will forEVER prevent him from EVER changing ANY thing of ANY kind of significance.

We can't be closed off and compartmentalized with our knowledge/art/whatEVER nowadays. Fuck, with the Internet sitting here in front of us, we have more access to more information then people have ever had before EVER. There's no excuse for ignorance anymore. The old "Oh, I hadn't heard about that" doesn't fly any more. The rules have changed. Ten years ago, some one like me, living in a shitty, shitty area for music, I wouldn't be aware of all the greatest bands in the world. Now though, because of the Internet, I was aware of the Lost Sounds before their first record even came out. I loved the Dirtbombs WELL before "Ultraglide in Black"; I knew what rock'n'roll imposters Rocket from the CRYPT were since about 1996 or so. That Dutch seven inch from 78 that they only pressed 500 copies of, that one that goes for hundreds, the one that you'd have to search ten years for, hoping against hope to even find a BOOTLEG of it, now it can be downloaded in five easy from audio galaxy. Ya wanna read up on anything, the info's out there on the Internet and it's not all that hard to find. In the now times, information is cheap and easy to acquire, and the GODS are, simply put, the ones that know the most. It's a constant forward race to learn more and become more knowledgeable about EVERY fucking thing, ya gotta keep on revolving, keep on seeking out the holes in your current life/way of thinking, you've gotta seek out those holes and DESTROY them. You have to be perpetual learning motion, never standing still for a moment.

That's where the old "heroes" let us down, that’s where they reveal themselves as idiots, because with them, at a certain point, they STOPPED moving forward, they stopped learning. They just started repeating themselves and degenerating into the mediocrity of middle age (and as we all know, mediocrity is the enemy). And I mean, it's sad, it really is sad when you realize just how LIMITED, how SELF limited your heroes are, how they probably never deserved to BE heroes in the first place. But that's life, that's growing up, you trade in an old set of idols for a new, better, more nuanced and reality addressing ones. So yeah, don't cry for me, I have tons of new hero's now, everyone from Denic Tek to Loli to uhhhh Tufty.

Moral of the story: Don't get to know your heroes too well, otherwise they may not reMAIN your heroes for very long.

OFFICIAL MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Uhhhh, I dunno, the one I'M writing, the one that I'll probably end up making a (couple) columns out. You wouldn't mind three or four thirty-page columns in a row, would you?

OFFICIAL SIGN THAT THESE "ENDNOTES" THINGS ARE GETTING TIRESOME FOR ME OF THE WEEK: Yeah, they kinda are. I guess it's mainly because lately I've been getting all excited about the new gimmicks I have for my Rip Off column ("Now having said that, let's get into the meat of this fucker." "Long Story Short", record reviews). And I've maybe lost enthusiasm for my classic Blank Gen ones. Well, NO MORE, I must correct this trend, I shall make THIS "OFFICIAL..........OF THE WEEK" section the BEST "OFFICIAL.........OF THE WEEK" section I've ever done. Ummmmmm…

OFFICIAL WEIRD OCCURANCE OF THE WEEK: Dude, I don't know if they're still doing it, but for a week or two there, MTV was showing the FUCK out of that White Stripes Lego video. Fucking WEIRD dude…

OFFICIAL DVD PURCHASE OF THE WEEK: The complete first season of HBO's "Oz", viva la man on man rape!!!!!!!!

OFFICIAL HBO SPECIAL OF THE WEEK: "Autopsy 8"......She fed her victims bodies to her hogs, her HOGS I tells ya.

OFFICIAL MTV SPECIAL OF THE WEEK: That damn "Goth Sex" special, haven't seen it yet, but I sure as fuck WANNA see it. Sure, it's nothing I haven't seen on HBO's "Real Sex", but still......

OFFICIAL PLEA TO READ MY RIP OFF COLUMN OF THE WEEK: Read my Rip Off column, you fuckers. www.ripoffrecords.org

OFFICIAL POINT AT WHICH I GET BORED WITH TRYING TO MAKE THIS THE BEST EVER "OFFICIAL.........OF THE WEEK" SECTION: Yeah, I AM bored with trying to ahhhh, you know......

THE STRIP CLUB STORY

2005-07-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

So this is the rewritten version of the old chesnut, "The Strip Club Story". Honestly, it needs another rewrite(the intro especially), but I don't feel like doing it right now. Anyway, this, the rewritten version was prepared for Wendy Norton's "What We Do Is Secret" zine but it never ran. Ummmm, I might've given it to Troy to run in his "Panic Action" zine, but I forget, who knows? At one point the Horizontal Action folks were gonna let me write for 'em and I was gonna prepare a version of this for them, but I just totally flaked out on the whole deal...

Anyway, here tis:

So this past tuesday night, Jimmy comes by to pick up Garrett. He mentions that a couple of the folks from the Greatest, this one local band, are going to Southern Exposures that night. I am not so shocked & relatively intrigued by this. Why? Southern X-ies is a strip club, an out of state dealie just over the
border in West Virginia. It's about an hour drive from us. I'm not so shocked because well, them Greatest folk, they be the philandering type, aheh-heh

Jimmy asks everyone at le Casa de Solaar(where I live, The Solar Haus, a punk house in Blacksburg, VA) if they wanna come along to the titty bar. Everyone declines the offer, myself included, mainly because I only had like two bucks cash on me at the time. Duder noticed that my resistance was low and he kept pesturing me until I half hearted accepted the invite. Hell, the bank WAS still open.

So eventually the whole crew comes back by to pick me up. It's me, Phil(from the Greatest), Justin, Jimmy and Garrett. On the drive to WV, it's noted that I'm being even more quiet than usual. This was true and even I myself noticed
it. Why was I so silenty? Well, I couldn't hear the conversation that was going on in the back seats very well, and I had like seven beers in me already, and I was kinda drowsy, and maybe, just maybe I was kinda nervous about going to
strip club for the first time? I dunno, it might not 've been that, I was just in some odd mood that night, maybe sleep deprivation or something, it's hard to tell, but I'll get into all of that later.

...

We get there somewhere around midnight. I note how stupid it is for the ID guy/doorman to be behind this two way mirror thing that allows him to see us but not us him, whatever. If yer that concerned about cops, just wear a ski mask or something, heh heh. So we go in, and well, at the bar there are these "well dressed" ladies and I wonder, perhaps naively, "Are those girls strippers to? I'd expect them to be dressed more skanky."

This stupid question is answered in about three seconds when this creepy, really short asian stripper with a thick accent comes to me and tries, really awkwardly, to make small talk. I immediately think, "Oh god, what the fuck, go away. I know yer just trying to get me to buy a lap dance from you, but seriously."

After that horror(heh heh), I buy a drink, sit down with the rest of the gang and within like five minutes, I wonder why I'm not more into it. I joke that it was perhaps because I had already jerked off twice that day, but that wasn't the case. There was just something supremely artificial about the environment. The
stupid black light shit everywhere. I mean, it was like every strip club you've ever seen in some bad movie. I felt like I shoulda been dealing with mafia business there, arranging a hit or something.

Every so often, another girl would come by and do the whole "I'm pretending to come on to you" thing, and each time it was doing absolutely nothing for me. I joked that girls hitting on me seemed unnatural and that what they needed to do was let me hit on them, and then reject me, and then I'd start whining and complaining until they finally came around. Ya know, because that's the type of thing I was used to in real life.

More beers followed, I was probably up to ten for the evening, but I still wasn't drunk. I don't know what the hell it was about but I just seemed so stone cold sober for most of that night. It was as if my body wanted me to soak in
this experience for everything that it was. I "didn't wanna miss a thing" Perhaps I was just scared shit-less.

...

Eventually, everybody started pestering me to get a lap dance, but I wasn't about to, as those fuckers cost 35 bucks. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? 35 is way too rich for my blood. I ain't no jew, but there's no way in hell,
I'd pay that much for just a lap dance. I mean I'd swing MAYBE ten for a lap dance and MAYBE 35 for full on sex, but well, even then I prolly wouldn't go for it, 'cause that shits fucking creepy, yo.

More girls came out and danced. They all picked their own music and it was all the most torturous shit i-maginable. That's prolly the reason I wasn't getting more into it, because a girl with really bad music tastes is just a total turnoff. Also, I think it's a GOOD thing that I can't really get aroused when a Linkin
Park song is playing. I think the closest thing to a "good" song that was played was some later-era Danzig stuff. Good lord, what crap.

I was kinda bugged by the fact that I wasn't getting into things more than I was. Within 15 minutes or so of me arriving there I was already questioning if maybe I was I gay or not. But then I thought about the kind of girls that I DID like, ultimately arriving at the fact that I need to know at least a LITTLE about their
personality in order to be really turned on. Also, a lot of the girls there just didn't seem like the type of gals I'd be interested in. But that's fucking stupid, because who's not interested in naked girls? Even naked redneck
girls?

I wondered why I always think that like every chick at shows is hot, but why none of these girls were doing it for me. Maybe it was the whole "mystery" angle, and how the strippers didn't have it because well, I KNEW what they
looked like naked......heh heh..... Maybe it's because I actually have some respect for girls at shows because well, they're at least cool enough to be at the show. Those stripper girls though, even if they were at a show, they'd seem
horribly out of place.

...

So all of this was going on, and I was waiting and watching and hoping for a girl to come out to some tolerable music. Then, all the sudden, the whole night took a huge, unbelievable turn. It changed the night from an awkward, semi-drunken escapade into one of the most historic nights of my comedic life.

A girl came out on the stage. I noticed she had these back piercings. There were like six of them, three on either side of her spine, and then she had like a ribbon laced through them. I thought, "Wow, that girl has the same piercing
as that girl I've talked to at a couple of shows and Kroger." Then it hit me, that was THE SAME GIRL.

Yes everybody, the stripper was a girl from Blacksburg who I had talked to at a couple shows before and had even remarked upon how hot she was. I immediately started cracking up uncontrollably. I say this honest and whole-
heartedly, it was probably the most hilarious thing that's ever happened to me, beating out even that time I saw a bum have a seizure right in the middle of a riot(that fucking AWESOME).

I went to an out of state strip club over an hour away and I knew one of the girls there, a girl that's from Blacksburg, the town I live in. I knew her real name, I knew where she lived before Blacksburg. I knew that one guy
she hangs out with who used to be a coke dealer, the same dude that tore up the latice work here at the Solar Haus. I immediately knew that this was a story that I'd be telling for the rest of my life.

About 20 seconds into my fit of uncontrollable tee-hee-ing, Justin suggested that I go up to the stage and tip her while she was dancing, but I would've just ended up laughing right in her face, or possibly cooch, and well, that wouldn't 've been polite. Sadly, she also danced to really bad music, like Tool or something, I forget. I remember just taking note of what she looked like naked, because well, I had imagined such things before that night. Also, it was some weird kind of fantasy fufillment thing, because finally, one of those dozens of girls from shows that I had always wanted to see naked, I was GETTING TO SEE NAKED.

...

After she got off stage, the pestering continued about me getting a lap dance, and well, Jimmy said he'd pay for one, so well, I gots me lap dance from Back Piercing Girl.

Within about fifteen seconds, she had reconized me and we started talking about how we knew each other. We then conversed about show shit and
how the places here in town had gotten shut down and stuff like that. As this conversation was going on, she was of course grinding on my crotch and slowly losing more and more clothes. It was basically like the exact type of
conversation I'd have with someone at a show, but with the obvious differences.

Then I started talking about how artificial the whole strip club experience was(I was up to 12 beers at that point, and I was finally starting to get a little drunk). I tried to get her to admit that all of her "friendless" was just completely fake, but she wouldn't. I dunno, she even said that I should come over her place here in town sometime and hang out, but I'm sure that was just a line she fed me in hopes that she'd get a better tip. I continued on with the "fake" stuff until I hit that point where I realized that, "Hey, this is the point where people'd start to get offended by what I'm saying." I then apologized if anything I had said had pissed her off. She remarked that it took a lot to upset her and not to worry about it.

Heh heh, this is where she really started to "hook" me, where I maybe starting "falling for the stripper game"(the "stripper game" of course being "give the guy whatever you think he wants"). So yeah, then I said, "Oh, I don't know, I can say some pretty offensive stuff." And she's all, "Come on, just say something really offensive right now, I'll love it." Yeah, definite weakness with me, she was daring me to be a jerk, that's nailing me on two fronts, how
could I resist? I'm a sucker for a well worded dare.

But don't get me wrong, I didn't say it, I resisted because the offensive statement I was thinking of was just too over the line and would've ruined everything. That comment was, "So, experts say that the vast majority of
strippers were sexually abused as children, were you ever molested?" Now, I wasn't going to ask that just to be a dick, I was just genuinly curious about such things.

So I restrain myself in that reguard, and well, it starts to seem like she's maybe a little bummed that I'm not more into the lap dance than I am. Almost kind of a "so I'm not sexy enough for you?" type thing. Then though, she did something that well, I suppose, got me "into it", but it was also a little bit of the whole "Wow, look at what you're doing, I have no smart-ass comments to make about this."

Now, I'll tell you what she did to shut me up, but you have to keep in mind that I only reveal this in the spirit of honesty. I am not "bragging about my exploits" here, or something.

Anyway, yeah, what she did was, she started gingerly fingering herself, with her AREA about two inches away from my face.

You heard me.

The only thing I was thinking right then was, "Fuck, why can't you touch these girls? I don't care if I catch something." I entered into that glorious moment of male-dom where conscience thought was a little beyond me because most of my blood flow was employed elsewhere. Lordy, lordy...

...

So, eventually, her stuff was removed from my general face area and I regained the power to wise-off. I believe I said, "Wow, you know I was
into it there because I finally shut up." After a while the dance ended and amungst other things, I noticed that she had left some of "herself" on my jeans....so unsanitary, so damp. I felt dirty, aha ha.

Anyway, I gave her a ten dollar tip saying, "Here, yer getting this because I was kinda friends with you before." I tried to just hand it to her, but she insisted that I put it in her garter... whatever... Can't she even drop her front for even like five seconds?

Afterwards when we came back to the main area, she attempted some small talk for a couple minutes, but it was nothing major. I was left with the feeling that basically all of it was fake on her part. I tried to remember how friendly she had been when I had talked to her at shows, but I couldn't really remember. She had seemed nice, but not really friendly or anything, I dunno.

...

The place closed not too much longer after that so, my buds, myself, and my jeans damped by stripper juices, we all drove back to Blacksburg. What a night. On the ride homeward, I reflected upon the things I had observed and/or learned that night:

-I must be a little more "european" than I know, because the nudity so wasn't a big deal after like 20 minutes

-There were only like two girls with really bad, obvious boob jobs, and overall, I approved of the wide variety of boob sizes. Back Piercing Girl had these nice smaller tits that were enjoyable. Of course, like almost all of them had pierced nippled and clits..... Wasn't so into that

-Not much pube action either....I'm not so much a fan of shaved girls, but I guess in that setting where you don't exactly get an up close view, they need to have uh, genitals that are unobstructured....

-I thought I'd get shit from someone about going there, but no one has said the slightest negative thing about it. In fact, I've prolly told more girls about it than guys, and all them thought it was awesome. One even kinda got mad that I wasn't more into the lap dance thing. What can I say, it was kinda awkward.

-Overall, it was a fun time, but mainly just because I reconized a girl there

-Would I go again? Ehhhhhhh, maybe, but I doubt it'd ever become something I'd do regularly. I went with the idea in mind that "everyone should
go to a strip club at least once"

...

So yeah, there's the story of the first time I went to strip club, AND reconized one of the girls there. Hoo-ra hoo-ra...

I never wore that pair of jeans again...

The First Time I Ever Got Drunk

2005-07-13T21:10:00.001-07:00

So I didn't start drinking until I was 23....Yes, you heard me right, twenty-three. Why is this? Because I have serious health problems and several doctors had advised me not to. Anyway, on September 7th, 2002 I threw caution to the wind and got drunk for the first time. The evening ended early that night and I was left awake, inebriated and bored. I then wrote this post on ye olde hometown message board. Heh heh, it became the first thread on that board that went over 100 posts and it understandibly pissed a lot of people off. I think the second part, where I unleash all the hate, was mainly just meant as bait to try and trick people into responding to the deal.....

Anyway, join me now for, "THE FIRST TIME CLINT EVER GOT DRUNK" in unedited form:

So, after a night of hard rockin', hard partying and hard fucking(I wish...although, there is still time for masturbation), I just got one question for you fuckrods: WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN?

Huh? Huh? What? What do you believe in? What are yer stances on whatver, what ideals do you subscribe to? HUH? HUH? What, in your mind is moral, ethical...WHAT WHAT WHAT???????????

I myself am some breed of uhhh post-"post anarchist" anarchist. Ya know, I've heard the good things all the post anarchists have had to say, and I've incorporated them into my "overall worldview", but STILL, STILL, I do indentify as an "anachist.

Ya know, I believe that ultimately, the best way for humanity to live would be in a non-hierarchal system, BUT, BUT right now, there's just WAY too much fucking mental illness for anarchism to work. Anarchism is about everyone functioning to their fullest capacity at all times, where as with mental illness, it's just all about DISFUNCTION.........

Ya see though, that's the problem with anarchism, it's just basically utopianism. It's saying the OBVIOUS thing that: "Things will be the best when everything's perfect". I mean, DUHHHH, of course everyone would be great if all was perfect, but the blatent problem with that way of thinking is that THINGS AREN'T PERFECT RIGHT NOW.......

I mean, mental illness is just running fucking crazy. Just look at the punk scene/ALL undergroundy musical based sub-cultures. Studies show that 95% of people that participate in these groups suffer from SOME kind of mental illness(note:If you're reading this and you think you're amung that "healthy" 5%, then you're NOT. Just because you're unaware of your emotional problems, it doesn't mean you don't have any. People that are GENUINLY healthy on an emotional level can more than easily admit that they are fucked up on whatever level. In a world where everyone has their own emotional weaknesses, the only ones that are TRULY strong are those that can ADMIT to their flaws.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, if you're reading these words, then the odds are that you suffer from SOME brand of pronounced mental illness. Ya know, and you can waste your life/youth pretending to rebel against all the problems in the world. And don't get me wrong, the world's a steaming pile of SHIT, BUT for most people "rebelling", that rebellion just serves as a distraction for them, a form of entertainment to keep them occupied, to keep them from thinking about themselves and their own problems.

You want something to rebel against, rebel against youSELF, rebel against your own problems, your own shortcomings. Fight against your flaws.

Sure, one person CAN change the world, BUT, that one person has to be a charismatic GENUIS. They can't be held back by stupid anxieties and fears, they have to plow straight forward through all their own emotional bullshit.

You have to beat yourself before you can beat the world............

Anyway, so that's the type fo crap running through my head, Anarchism combined with a heaping helping of psychology and philosophy, all in a THROUGHLY(sp?) punk rock context..................

Also, I about as hardcore of an atheist as you can get. Although, I don't really like the label of "atheist". Ya know, when you use that label, there's shit applied to you that I don't want applied to me. I know atheists, and BOY, are they fuckholes.............

So yeah, I'm extremely "radical" politically, but really, I don't give a shit about most of that stuff and I don't really ever think about it that much.

I mean, politics, religion, in a perfect world, NONE of that shit would exist. It's all just BS and healthy people, that type of stuff doesn't really cross their mind all that much.

But anyway, there's a simplified version of what I(emphasis on "I") believe in, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN?

I so bet that most of you are either too chickenshit or too stupid to actually reply to this with your real opinions. Either you're just a moron and don't really have any thoughts on ANYthing, OR you're too afraid to publisize your thoughts, you don't wanna put your real feelings up here because you're scared shitless that someone will tear you apart and reveal you as the idiot that you know you are..........

Lookit, this is why I keep on saying that I'm better then you, because I actually have the BALLS to SPEAK MY MIND. Something which most of you all don't have in the slightest. I mean, I have to insult you and piss you of just to get the SLIGHTEST amount of truth out of you.

You're liars, shams, fakes, frauds. You're playing the game and hoping to reap the rewards. You're conforming to some idiot ideal, thinking the "correct" thoughts, wearing the "correct" clothes, listening to the "correct" bands. Like I said, you are playing a GAME. That's why you hate someone like me so much, because I come along and I so easily poke holes in your bullshit. I reveal you to be the fools that you so obviously are. I show, time and time again, that you are NOT what you present yourself as. And I do it so painfully easily that it is ridiculous...........

And I do it all in an artful way, which just makes it that much better......

We're living in some shallow, soulless times. Well, no, things have ALWAYS been soulless, but NOW, that soullessness is applied to punk rock. Punk rock which used to be the only bastion of soulFULness.

So yeah, that's why I rebel agin most all of you emo/metal-core neu artificial fucks, because yer FAKE, shallow conformists that are destroying the only idealogically worthwhile asspect of punk.

I mean, there's five things that piss me off more then anything else:

1.Ignorant people
2.Ignorant people that don't wanna learn
3.People that pretend to be something they aren't
4.People that pretend to be like me, without having the slightest understanding of what it's actually like to be me, and
5.People who label all that they don't understand as "wrong" or "crazy"

And you asscocks fall into ALL of those categories, so it's no surprise that I don like most of you.........

It's funny, you have such high, grand images of yourselves, but the reality is, you're just these ultra-bigoted, super-conformist assholes. Ya know, yer like a watered-down version of Nazi's for fuck's sake. And you wonder why I don't get along with you..............

Of course though, I get along with girls way better then I get along with guys, that's a factor that definetly has to be taken into account. I'm probably some kind of weird reverse-sexist who doesn't like guys all that much. I understand guys too well, their motivations, their thoughts(or lack there of). With chicks though, there's a little bit more mystery there, I don't understand as completely as I do guys. And in some cases, I'm sure the whole "sexually attractive" thing blinds my eyes to the obvious idiocy of some chicks.

Also, I was way closer emotionally with my dad then my mom, so that has to mean SOMEthing(i.e.your average guy is "buddies" with his dad, but it's his mom who he shares REAL emotional intimacy with).

But anyway, I kinda drunk right now, so I'll shut up(note:I have serious health problems, and getting drunk is a big risk for me. Hopefully I ain't gonna get sick)..............................

One last thing though, this level of openess, this level of honesty, 95% of you are scared shitless of this type of thing. Label this post as "crazy" or "assholic" if you want, but you all know that deep down, NONE of you are capable of writing something this. You're cowards........................

PS-I didn't do any proofreading, so sorry if any of this came out garbled....

I really like this one

2005-07-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

Whelp, the internet archive dealie isn't working right now, and I actually don't still HAVE copies of those old columns, so I'm gonna have to pull some shit off of ye olde hometown message board. What follows is the bulk of a column I wrote for Blank Gen. somewhere's around dec of 2001, it's one of the better ones.

It got a lot of postive feedback about it although it was also the focus of some controversy; a misunderstanding that lead to my old columns being taken off the Blank Gen archives. Ya see, the thing was, whilst reading the column, Blank Gen editor Joe Domino misinterpreted something I wrote and somehow thought that I was advocating sexual assault. He placed editorial comments in my column decrying this and then ran the whole deal without even telling me about it. Once it ran, someone alerted me to what he had said and within a few days it was all cleared up. Joe officially apologized for it and took his comments out of the column.

How did this lead to my old columns being taken off of Blank Gen? Well, Joe thought, well over a year later, that I was still pissed at him over all of that and he took my stuff off of there because he thought I didn't want to be associated with the zine anymore. That wasn't all the case at all, just another misunderstanding. Unfortunetly, after he took that stuff off, I didn't have a copy of it anymore, and there was no way it could've gotten reposted. I suppose with the internet archive dealie now it could be placed back on the site again, but it's really no big deal.

I dunno, not that I ever knew Joe all that well, but I think our relationship really started to degenerate as Blank Gen went on. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but someone suggested that the reason things soured between us is because my columns were just starting to get too much attention and he felt that the direction of Blank Gen was kinda being changed, ya know, he thought that control was being taken away from him and it all was just turning into a vechicle for my own personal ego enhancement. Again, I don't know how much, if any, truth there is to that theory but it makes sense. All I know is, within six month of the column I'm about post, he just outright banned another one of the columns I wrote. I also don't think he liked the direction of my Rip Off columns either, which were a darker, stupider version of my Blank Gen stuff, that prolly influenced the banning as well. Once the internet archive is back up, I'll post the banned column, which was essentially me commiting artistic suicide. Heh heh, that column was me addressing all my critics and telling them they were RIGHT.....

Anyway, that's not what yer getting right now, what you ARE getting is one of my most popular columns, the one that got me laid, the BEST FOOT FORWARD column:

........................

But anyway, getting to the fucking SUBJECT here. Lying, "best foot forward" theory. Girls, when you first meet us, you expect us put on a little show for you. You expect us to sing and dance and laugh and be merry and make like we are the greatest person to ever set foot on the face of the earth. You expect us to SELL ourselves, you expect a performance. You expect us to have our little routine DOWN PAT. Everyone knows this, when a guy is trying fuck a girl, at first he ALWAYS puts his "best foot forward". He tries to put on this big show trying to convince the girl that he is the best of everything.

It's a fairly well known thing, TV shows have made jokes about it, it's been in movies, so you know it's a real thing. I believe NBC's "Mad About You" had a bit about this, like when they first meet, Helen Hunt says to Paul Riser: "So when do I get to meet the real you?" And he says "Oh, you won't get to meet the real me for at least, like, six months." There've been a couple jokes on Seinfeld to about this, like Jerry talking about how he can fake being a decent human being for like at least three to six months.

Ya see, that's the point though, you expect us to put on this big, impressive ACT for you at first, you expect us sell ourselves as the greatest human being EVER, but the problem is, ITS JUST A FUCKING ACT. It has no relation to actual REALITY, it's doesn't reflect the person that you TRULY are on the inside. It's just a fucking dog and pony show with uhhhh, us being ummmmm, ya know, the ponies and dogs. Although, without that negative connotation that "dogs" has nowadays when talking about men.

It's an act, nothing more, nothing less. Fuck, how do you think date rapist type assholes operate? Obviously, they aren't good people, and yet, they can some/oftentimes fool girls into thinking otherwise. HOW? By deceiving women and lying to them. By using the whole "best foot forward" thing to their advantage. They got "the act" down cold. They come across as the slickest, coolest guy in the room. And it's ALL just bullshit; NONE of it's the truth at all.

Sadly, I've KNOWN guys like that (not as extreme as date rapist types, but almost), I've seen them in operation and it's just fucking DISGUSTING. I've seen their relationships with women and I was just appalled at how the WHOLE FUCKING THING was a lie. He didn't care about her; he wasn't in the slightest bit interested in her background or feelings, her hopes, her dreams. All he was interested in was fucking her and that was it. And I mean, it was just lie piled atop another lie, all bigger and higher, stretching on for as far as the eye could see. He kept the relationship going until he got bored with it, and then just lied to get out of it. Fuck, at one point he even said he loved her.....needless to say, he didn't.

Fuck, most serial killers operate on this same principle to (the better looking ones, at least). How do you think they lure their victims? By AT FIRST coming across as some ultra-great, stand up guy. They can fake that for a couple hours and then they get all stabby-stabby. If a guy, when you first meet him, if he comes across as just the greatest human being to ever set foot on the face of the earth, the answer to all your dreams, well then, guess WHAT? Ten times out of ten, if a guy comes across THAT well, if your first impression of him is THAT good, then he's just fucking LYING to you, out and out, bold faced LYING......

Actually, to, this whole "best foot forward" phenomenon is where the term "before the other shoe fell" comes from. Ya know, because if you put your BEST FOOT FORWARD, then EVENTUALLY that other SHOE is gonna have to, ya know, hit the FLOOR and uhhhh, catch up to the other one or whatever. Or at least I THINK that's where it came from, I dunno. The point is, you gotta be wary of slick guys, of "cool" guys. Remember, "cool" really only just means someone's emotionally detached. And if they're emotionally deTACHED, then who KNOWS what kind of horrible atrocities they're are capable of........

ANYway, where do "nice guys" fall on this spectrum? Well shit, "nice guys" suck just as badly as those "asshole guys" up there do. WHY? 'Cause they're just fucking liars as well, only they lie to themSELVES just as much as they do to you. The stereotypical "nice guy" is just a fucking schmuck. He lets women walk all over him and he mindlessly obeys their orders. He's a fucking DOORMAT. You can punch him in the face and shit in his sundae and he'll ALWAYS still come back, grinning for more. A nice guy is just a fucking GLUTTON for punishment. HE has low self-esteem, he doesn't believe he deserves any better treatment then that. Asshole guys are DOMINANT, "nice guys" are SUBMISSIVE personalities, and that's why BOTH attitudes are FUCKED. They're both just the flipside to the same fucking coin of bullshit and lies. Nice guys lie to themselves and assholes lie to EVERYone except themselves..........

So I hear you asking now, "If I can't be an asshole and I can't be a nice guy, then what option is there left for me?" Simple, ya just STOP fucking lying. When you first meet a girl, you don't have any rap, any act, you don't have any routine that do, you don't jump through any hoops. You don't play UP certain aspects of your personality, you don't play DOWN other parts of personality. You just BE fucking you. You have to BE just fucking HONEST and OPEN and maybe even a wee bit VULNERABLE..... But don't PRETEND to be vulnerable, just BE fucking YOU. Presenting yourself as the greatest human being to ever walk the earth is just blatantly WRONG, it's a lie and sooner or later she's gonna catch on.

Don't lie to girls, if you're physically attracted to them, TELL them that; don't pretend you "only wanna be friends". Don't get into a relationship with them if your only purpose is to fuck them. That type of thing is unconscionable. You DO know that you're gonna HURT someone if you do shit like that? To put all that time and effort into all of those lies just so you can fuck her once and then get bored and move on, WHAT THE FUCK? How do those types of people LIVE with themselves? I guess that's where the emotional detachment, the COOLNESS, comes in. They really DON'T give a fuck about ANYthing, especially people........

And girls, you have to STOP EXPECTING guys to lie to you. You have to stop expecting them to put on some little show for you, to frolic around and be all slick-like and say all the right bullshit at exactly the right time. You have to stop FALLING FOR THE LIES. The slicker a guy is, the cooler he comes off, the more you have to be on guard. If he knocks your socks or possibly PANTS off the first time you meet him, if you just "fall in love" off of that first impression, WELL THEN. he's lying to you, I guarantee. Like less then 0.001% of the time is the guy ACTUALLY as good as he puts forward during that first impression.

Ya gotta stop relying so heavily ON that first impression to judge people. I mean, how many times has there been a guy that you just thought was SOOOO great when you first met him, but then, a few weeks later, he turns out to be the biggest fucking asshole in the world? HOW MANY TIMES HAS THAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Huh? Huh? EVERYtime? First impressions don't mean SHIT, and placing a lot of IMPORTANCE on them just leads to a fucking world of bullshit and lies and manipulation and all sorts of shit like that. I mean, just think about how patently ridiculous it is, you are deeming a guy "unworthy" just because ONE fucking time he didn't come up with twenty some minutes of small talk that was to your liking. How idiotic and shallow is that? How small-minded and not thinking of the future-ful is that? It's stupid.

By expecting guys to perform for you the first time you meet them, by judging them unworthy if they DON'T "dance" then you are just as bad as they are. You are just as much of an asshole and JUST as responsible for ALL of it. If guys couldn't get away with lying, if they couldn't still get LAID, then they'd just stop lying. You're contributing to the bullshit by letting assholes get away with being assholes, by being blind to their lies. It's your fault just as much as anybody else’s.........

Of course, don't get me wrong here, I'm talking about asshole guys and not date-rapist types (EXTREME asshole guys are date rapists, while extreme "nice guys" on the other hand are a uhhh, DIFFERENT kind of serial killer). What was my point? Oh yeah, don't get me wrong here, I am NOT saying it's a woman's fault if she gets raped.

I AM saying a girl is fifty percent to blame if she's in a relationship with some total fucktard that's just lying to her, preTENDing he's in love with her and then just dumping her once he gets bored... In that type of thing, YOU are just as much to blame as the guy...........

Ya want a HEALTHY relationship (and this goes out to girls AND guys, of whatEVER sexual preference)? Then just be fucking HONEST; don't place a lot of importance on superficial things. A relationship should be a slow, build your positive feelings for a person, just grow and grow. Ya know, don't automatically fall in love with a person based off of one performance, only to have your heart broken a few weeks later. And obviously, guys, if a chick is good looking, that doesn't mean she's a good PERSON. That doesn't mean she's worth any of your time or attention.

And also to, you can't "save" the crazy ones, so don't even try. You can't be a hero, NO ONE's a hero. No one acts out of noble purposes; no one REALLY "fights for what's right". People are motivated by fear and pain… They wanna try and AVOID as much pain as possible, so they just cave into the fear. Guys are afraid of being alone, so they do what they can to get a girl, even if that involves lying. Women are afraid of being alone as well, so they lie to THEMSELVES and pretend they don't recognize the asshole's lies.

Like I was saying earlier about "nice guys", most women in this society take on a PASSIVE role, part of which means lying to yourSELF. That in turn forces most GUYS to take on a DOMINANT role, which means lying to OTHER people. If we want things to EVEN OUT, if we want a healthy, happy world, we need to do away with these Dominant and Submissive roles and just BE fucking human beings.

Obviously though, it's more complicated then that, it's not like the passive never lie to other people, it's just that they lie MORE to themselves than they do to other people. Dominant people, yeah, they lie to themselves to whatever degree, but the majority of their lies are outward, to other people.

Ya wanna be a REAL rebel, a REAL revolutionary? Ya wanna do something that's new and valid and viable in today’s context? Ya wanna do something that will REALLY piss off all the right people? Ya want something that can REALLY change the world? Then stop fucking LYING, be honest, stop being domineering, stop being submissive....... Just fucking BE.................. That's the ONLY way things are gonna change.

Like I was saying in that "second level" column, THIS is where humanity is going, THIS type of thing is really the only unexplored territory we have left. Ya want revolution, THIS is fucking revolution. It's the biggest fucking change any of us could ever imagine.....

But anyway, I myself, I've actually TRIED doing some of this stuff, ya know, NOT lying, being myself, not putting on some grand show, and well, people don’ like it. Ya know, cause I don’ come across as slick (because I'm against that type of thing, and because I couldn't be slick even if I wanted to), and here I am just talking all this bullshit like I do, and I mean, it's just so much easier for most people to label me nutty then to actually take me seriously. They give into the fear/pain/laziness and just label me crazy, rather then take what I have to say SERIOUSLY and use that to evaluate/RE-evaluate themselves..... I mean, fuck it, none of what I have to say is all THAT original, it can't be THAT threatening. Even at my fucking BEST I'd say that my ideas are about maybe 1% genuinely "new". Although, in this day and age, 1% "new" is TOTAL fucking revolution. Now is the time where people are COMPETING to be as exactly the same as each other as possible. In THAT environment, being 1% new/different is an act of bold defiance.....

Anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, even though 99% of what I say/espouse isn't even remotely "new", people still have a strong emotional reaction to it (because I'm telling the truth?), and feel the need to label me (or whoever's genuinely challenging people; although, I doubt I really EVER genuinely challenge people, so whatever) "insane" because that's MUCH easier then taking ANY of it seriously........

Of course, even NOW, I (emphasis on "I") am not even taking myself all that seriously. Most of the shit I write, it falls into some gray area where you wonder whether I'm really being serious or not. Kind of like a stand up comedian, but taken up a couple of notches. It's definitely the Andy Kaufman influence coming into play. His great artistic achievement was to always keep the people wondering. Wondering whether he was serious, whether he was joking, whether he was insane, whether he was dying, whether a certain joke was supposed to be funny or if it was supposed to NOT be funny. "Wait, should I laugh at this, or am I an idiot if I DO laugh at this?" He fucking FORCED people to analyze it ALL, he FORCED them to think..... He used the "fear" against them....

Anyway, hopefully, that's what I (emphasis on "I") also do, at my best. But like I said, I'm rarely EVER at my best, and in today's world, things are a fuckload more complicated, and it's MUCH harder to genuinely challenge people, and get them to analyze themselves. Forcing people to actually THINK when they don't want to is next to impossible.......

Fuck though, I'm SOOOOOO far off topic here, didn't I start out talking about "best foot forward" theory and making sitcom references? For most of my better columns though, this is generally how they turn out. I start off with some stupid bullshit, and slowly turn it into some pseudo-deep, moral/ethical/philosophical musing on WHATever that's ultimately AS big a load as the earlier stuff I was talking about.

But fuck, I'm the ultimate evolution of the rock critic, THIS is the exact type of shit Lester Bangs always wanted to write about, but never really did. He aspired to this type of shit, if he hadn't died so young, he might’ve made it. Of course though, he was a much better writer then I am, so there’s that. But fuck, "good writing" is ALSO being "slicK", good writing sells you shit you don't wanna buy. "Good writing" has for CENTURIES glorified the atrocities of war, romanticized it up into some great, noble endeavor. Shit, like I said, NOTHING's "noble", no one actually DOES something because "it's the right thing to do".

"Good writing" lies to you like that, it pushes the concept that some things ARE indeed noble or glorious, or glamorous or whatEVER. That's why it's wrong. "Good" writers are salesmen, and all they sell you are lies. That is why I am NOT a "good writer", I have a MILLION fucking ideas in a MILLION different directions and yet I strive to NOT sell you on any single one of them. A better writer could probably shape some kind of bullshit RELIGION out of the ideas I've relayed via these columns. But no, I've done no such thing; I'm no salesman.

And THAT's what makes ANY of what I have to say valid. That's also what makes me a "failure" by most people's standards. In a capitalist society, the only gods are salesmen. Of course, in THIS society, the ONLY truly sane choice is to be a "failure"......

But whatever, this column's long enough now, I can stop rambling....

MORAL OF THE STORY: I really just pull these columns RIGHT out of my ass, don't I?