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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How to stay cool in the heat wave

It's hot outside. It's so hot, you could fry an egg in your car if you hated cars that smelled bearable to drive in.

Here's how to stay cool in the heat wave of 2017.

My lyrics largely make no sense but my fan base also hates "mumble" rap stuff. Nothing makes sense. Life is a vortex ending in death.

1. Shades. Everyone needs a cool pair of shades. I suggest Ray Ban Wayfarers. They're classic. They already match a coke nail perfectly.

Exhibit A: It's a coke nail despite your uncle telling you it's for the hard to reach boogers. It's for hard to reach boogers if you want to blast them with coke.

2. Get some cigarettes and pack them constantly. Everyone knows that's fucking cool no matter how hot it is.

Good form!

3. Tell everyone within earshot how much air conditioning is ruining the environment. Tell people you prefer kombucha as a natural way of cooling your body down. That and coconut oil. Lots of coconut oil. 



4. Get caught reading at every turn. On the shitter? Leave the door open so everyone knows you're extending your stay at Porcelain Hotel's pool to get through this nail-biting chapter of Capital by Karl Marx. 

5. Get angel investors for your start-up that is going to change the paradigm and disrupt the market through superior storytelling and a competitive benefits package. (*cough* hummusballgag.com *cough*)

Monday, June 26, 2017

New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest: Contest of Captioning Cartoons Edition!

Ugh, it's a tradition around these parts.

Ugh, it's like standing up and saying the national anthem when you're a kid. You don't want to do it but you also don't want to be thrown into the gulags, either.

It's like not wanting to support Chick-fil-A's abhorrent politics but your family always gets platters of their nuggets for Christmas, so you don't want to ruin Christmas either.

It's like a goddamn Alanis Morissette song. Who would've thought? It figures.

I swore to your father when we got married that I'd never let you go hungry. Well, honey, now all we can afford to eat are Italian leather briefcases. 

Pool's closed. It's just a little too gay right now.

You probably shouldn't have worn your birdseed suit out today, dear. 

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Could you pass this US citizenship test?



You call yourself an American? Ha, I bet you even VOTED. Voting is complicity. Voting is COMPLIANCE WITH THE SERPENT MEN. LOVE AMERICA? Prove it by passing this AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP TEST.



1. Who was the first President of the United States? And I mean the REAL first President, okay!? Not the corporate-backed bullshit narrative you're force fed in grammar school by little lemming corporatist sheeple.



2. Who is the current President of the United States? And I'm not talking about the guy you see on the first page of Wikipedia, OKAY?! I'm talking about the REAL overlord of the United States. So make sure you THINK about it WHILE YOU STILL CAN.



3. What is the national anthem? Oh, I know what you're thinking. Yeah, it's not that. OKAY!? It's REALLY the jingle of a major corporation. I'll let you think but it rhymes with FACTDONALDS.



4. You think your tomato is a simple fruit of nature? Wrong! Name the evil banker scientist who made an apple fuck a watermelon and then turn around and fuck a beet. THAT'S WHERE TOMATOES COME FROM, IDIOT.

5. What's the secret to eternal youth that ISN'T COCONUT OIL?

6. Avocados are a secret mission by homosexual Mexican terrorists to turn American men into kombucha farmers. TRUE OR FALSE?



7. The most important Americans are: Jesus, Moses, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, AND (fill in the blank).

8. The Alamo is currently protected by US National Guards because it houses a secret nuclear facility run by serpent-men. TRUE OR FALSE?


9. The Washington Monument is:
a) a beacon sending Morse code to Proximus Auri (a secret star system you're not allowed to know about)
b) a hotel for snake-people
c) an exact replica of George Washington's cyber dick

10. Baseball and apple pie is to the myth of American democracy as mind controlling satellites and e-mail is to ______________.

Note: A real citizenship test is 500 questions long. A patriot sent me a recreation via carrier-pigeon so as not to tip off the serpent-men as to what we were up to. And, as any true American knows, ba-da-ba-ba-ba.... I'm lovin' it. Brings a tear to my eye.

Buy the handbook on American patriotism here. 

Saturday, June 24, 2017

This motherfucker's putting peanut butter on apples

Look at this motherfucker.

This motherfucker is putting peanut butter on his apple.

Oh, shit. Wait up.

This motherfucker is putting almond butter on his apple.

It's a fucking honey crisp.

What is this guy? A billionaire?

Honey crisps: at least $2.54 EACH. That ain't no pound price. That's each.



And look at those damn things. They are huge.

Jiffy and Skippy and Peter Pan don't make almond butter, neither.

They make PEANUT BUTTER, friend. A classic. Cheap. Tasty.

Almond butter?

It looks like you ground that shit up yourself.

Did you know it takes ten self-satisfactory boners to grow ONE almond?

And I'm not talking any kind of self-satisfaction, I'm talking putting your Bernie sticker on your car after January 20, 2017 kind of self-satisfaction. I'm talking kombucha brand loyalty satisfaction. I'm talking "I don't drink cow's milk because I think a cow should drink her own milk" satisfaction. I'm talking "I don't eat gluten out of solidarity with the folks that are actually gluten intolerant" satisfaction. I'm talking I don't listen to music made by artists who once said they preferred their chicken laying eggs to be caged.

I'm talking slapping a spoonful of almond butter on a fucking honey crisp apple level of satisfaction.

That's how much it takes to be that guy.



Friday, June 23, 2017

Books I've liked recently





Heathenish by Kelby Losack - This book is dripping with style. It's a gut wrenching tale of redemption that is told so cleanly and without frills, that it's like a bullet to the heart. I wouldn't even know what a bullet to the toe felt like so let's just say it's like two dentists furiously wrenching out your tooth if your tooth was on your heart. I know what that's like. There aren't too many folks out there that write with such clarity. Check it out.



Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin  - I've always loved Russians and Soviet era writers. The writers that we get from Russia, translated into English, always embrace the absurd weirdness of reality while we get stuck with too many writers who embrace ordinary boredom and try to make some grand statement out of being bored with nothing happening. There is no statement there but a fart. Victor Pelevin is like the more cynical Vonnegut of contemporary Russia. This story was touching. It was sad. It was kind of funny. It was absurd. There's a grand conspiracy. At the end you realize there is nothing to anything and we're all trapped in a cosmic joke that we can't make sense of until we finally do make sense of it and that's when it makes even less sense... and you didn't have to suffer through one hundred pages about some "fictional" asshole writer struggling with his book. As if anybody wants to read about a writer's life. Let me tell you: It's boring. It's the same as anybody else's.

Last Dance In Phoenix by Kurt Reichenbaugh - This is a great noir that I read in one and a half sittings. A good diet full of meat and french fries will allow you the time to read a lot in long spurts with your pants off. Reichenbaugh does a good job of creating utterly detestable characters that you end up rooting for. It's a pretty intense but quick read.

Bend of the World by Jacob Bacharach - A fancy friend in New York recommended I read this. I trust this guy. He's got good taste and seems to be pretty keen on recommending things to people that they'll actually like. I bought it the day after he recommended it and read it in the next three days. I think he read the summary of Invasion of the Weirdos before it came out and recommended this book to me because he thought our senses of humor would align. Boy, was he right. Bacharach is hilarious. If you like cult stuff, drug stuff, bad art stuff... you'll like this stuff.

Numero Zero by Umberto Eco - This book should be seen as prophetic at this point. But the whole fucking point is that the news has been "fake" for quite some time. This revolves around a fascist conspiracy in Italy to cover up the true fate of Benito Mussolini. The protagonist works for a newspaper that has a strong agenda and is financially backed by a weirdo millionaire with an axe to grind. In an era of alternate facts and fake news, this book is worth reading. It's tiny, too.

The Nightly Disease by Max Booth III - Due to some publisher weirdness, this book is set to go out of print soon so snatch it up while you can. Every chapter is hilarious and dark. I'm afraid of owls and I no longer believe that whenever I stay at a hotel, it's birds that are shitting on my cars. Beware the night auditors.

Hard To Be A God by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - More Russians. Soviet era, actually. I was recommended this by a great friend who is an Eastern European film enthusiast. He actually recommended the movie but I got to the book first. It's harder for me to pay attention to movies. These guys were truly the Soviet Vonneguts. They saw the absurdity in censorship and trying to engineer a perfect society. This book is funny and is a hell of a lot like the Soviet version of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. And that, my friends, is one of my favorite books of all time.

Things I'm looking forward to:

Hollow by Owen Egerton - I'm damn sure I've read everything by Owen Egerton and I've never been disappointed. From the moment he told me what he was working on a few years ago at Once Over Coffee, I knew this one was going to be a masterpiece. I haven't read it yet but I've got a damn good feeling about it.

Gods on the Lam by Christopher David Rosales - I'm pretty lucky to be published by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Everything they publish is gold. That's not hyperbole. That's not ass kissing. It's the damn truth. Before I sent off my manuscript to PMMP, I was a huge fan of Jessica McHugh's Green Kangaroos. This was my first introduction to PMMP. Since then, I've eaten their stuff up. I was also a fan of Max Booth III (one half the powerhouse that is PMMP). His writing is so fucking funny on a visceral level. So, when Max told me about Gods on the Lam... I knew it was a book right up my alley. Conspiracy, western, etc etc. It's on its way now. Can't wait.


Thursday, June 22, 2017

It's time we talked with our mouths

My fucking mouth.


Boy, let me tell you.

I've stopped eating popcorn entirely. Let me tell you why.

The first time I had a botched dental procedure was after I cracked a tooth on popcorn watching the Simpsons episode about Homer protesting for dental insurance for Lisa. That sounds too good to be true but, let me tell you motherfucker, it's true.


Popcorn wasn't the bad guy, of course. The tooth was already necrotic. Popcorn was just the catalyst for me doing something about it. That's neither a cow nor a buffalo. I got a root canal, drill bit broke off inside my root. It couldn't be fished out so they left it in and after a whole month of scheduling appointments with specialists and whatever, I finally got my mouth back.



Fast forward a few years and I'm sitting around eating popcorn again because sometimes a motherfucker likes to eat popcorn. It was Smart Pop which is surprisingly good for bagged popcorn. Tooth cracks. I ignore it for months because the memory of the botched dental procedure lingered.

I ate with half a molar for months. I was constantly flossing to dislodge whatever bullshit got stuck in it. It didn't hurt though so I never bothered with Big Dental.

It doesn't hurt until it does. And it always comes at the worst times. Right before Nina's and my honeymoon. So I delayed any action until after we got back from the pure paradise that is Isla Holbox in Mexico. Seriously, cheap vacation that is absolutely beautiful. It almost made me forget I had a mouth if it wasn't for all that great food I was shoving down my gullet.

We get back to America and I hear about a dentistry school in San Antonio that does extractions for cheap. Students gotta learn. We all know my issues with Big Dental so I'm eager to let some C student work on my mouth. What do you say to a C dentistry student when he graduates? "Doctor, I think you left your fucking drill in my tooth."

It couldn't be worse.

But it'll probably rhyme with the pain.

And rhyme it did.

It took about an hour to pry this tooth out and there were two dudes working on it. I literally tasted their sweat as they wrenched the damn thing from side to side, taking turns, and saying things like, "I don't think it's going to come out," and, "you might feel some pressure." Well, it finally came out.

My mouth was sore, they stuffed some gauze in my mouth and told me to stay on liquids for at least a day but no drinking through a straw. They warned me about dry sockets and I immediately became paranoid.

Three days passed, I felt on the up and up. I ate a burger with a fork and knife because my mouth was too sore to open wide enough to eat a burger the normal way. I went to work and felt my face in massive pain. I asked a co-worker, "hey, man. Is something wrong with my face?"

He laughed and I knew that yes, there indeed was something wrong. I looked like elephant man.

The pain was excruciating. You know the feeling when someone sticks a screwdriver into where your tooth used to be and digs in, twisting and turning the damn thing until it gets into your brain? No? You don't know the feeling?

Imagine that pain but with two screwdrivers handled by a naked maniac who has no control of his arms and frequently stabs you in the eye. That's more in line with the kind of pain it was. I've been hit by a car, folks. This was worse.

"Maybe I shouldn't have let students into my mouth."


All night I have an ice pack on my face. I alternate between that and a wet rag that I put in the microwave for 15 seconds. I don't get a lick of sleep. I debate grabbing a hammer and bludgeoning it against my jaw until it falls off but the better sense of me realized the hammer was in the garage and my security system was already turned on so if I got up, I'd have to walk to the security system and disarm it, unlock a fucking door, hit a goddamn light switch, and then look through the thousand places it could possibly be. It wasn't worth it.

The next morning, I call the place in tears.

"Oh, dear. Please get here as soon as you can!" the lady says to me.

"Ow, ooowee, owie, ouch, ow, okay," I said. I was already out the door.

"Oh, dear. You got here fast."

"Ow, oowee, owie, ouch, ow, okay."

I live in Austin. The dentistry school is in San Antonio. That's about an hour and fifteen minutes away. I GOT THERE IN FIVE.

It was an abscess. It infected my whole fucking side of my face. The real dentist comes in and says to his students, "Back off, bitches. This abscess is mine," and I'm rocking a boner so hard it might as well be a full set of teeth.

They put some shades on me and they tell the same joke every fucking time I'm there: "I know they're cool but you can't have them!"

"Haha," I say and then I point to my actual prescription glasses, "Fuck off, you ableist dickheads. I can't wear shades unless they're prescription."

We all shared a good chuckle while the actual dentist put a million syringes in my jaw then got a scalpel and dug in.

Look, I know the lidocaine or whatever fucking drug they use is supposed to make you feel nothing but I swear to you, I felt that scalpel go in and I felt him cut it open and I felt them draining the yellow stuff from my gums.

The pain was worse than their hour long tug of war with my tooth three days beforehand.

I was on a smoothie diet for over a week. I forgot how to chew. God had forsook me.

Here's the moral: Brush twice a day. Floss. Use mouthwash. Cherish your teeth. Buy my books to help me keep my teeth.