Sideways Computer

I wish I was still growing. Then I could compare my height at the beginning of every year and that would give me something to do on Wednesday. I don,t have any beginning of the year traditions. I don,t really have any traditions. I need more traditions. That will be my New Year,s resolution. That is completely untrue. New Year,s resolutions are for suckers who can,t get stuff done without a contractual agreement.

I just got back from a job interview. I went to a gigantic building and met with a few terrifically miserable people. The interview was supposed to take three hours, but I think I was there for about thirty-five minutes. There were three candidates - myself, a fat, pretty girl, and a tall nerd with a long tie. I was the coolest. The girl was the prettiest and fattest. The tall nerd was the least cool. He probably got the job.

The first part of the interview process was an online test. I started on that part first. I had to look at a screen and answer boring questions about codes. I wasn,t paying very much attention to the test because I decided a few days ago that I wasn,t going to take the job even if they offered it to me. I was much more interested in the beasts of burden that were surrounding me.

Jai Paul - Jai Paul There was a sweaty woman next to me who was on the phone with somebody and getting very annoyed. Her words were incredibly practiced. It,s like she wasn,t even speaking. Her mouth would open and a fax would come out. The person on the other end of the line was obviously being a jerk. If I were to work there, I would have her job. It was her first call of the day and she was dealing with a jerk. I already hated everything.

Then, a few minutes later, the lady to my left started complaining about her desk and how she wanted to move ,,like now.,, She was probably forty years old and she was so upset about a seat. I would have to work with her and seventy other ladies just like her if I got that job. I would not have been able to stand being surrounded by that many miserable people all the time.

At least at my job I get to sit alone almost all the time. I don,t make very much money, but I don,t work with people who complain about nothing all day because I work alone. I only have to deal with a terrible customer every so often. I don,t have to deal with terrible coworkers. I guess that,s what I learned today. I am never going to get a grownup job.

Changing Your Clothes

Last night I got to almost complete one of my life goals. I don,t have very many life goals and the ones that I do still have are very lackluster, but I don,t care because boring stuff excites me to no end. While I was working yesterday, a weirdo came in smoking a cigarette and drink an ice cold beverage. I told him that he had to go outside if he was smoking and then he yanked a phone out of the wall and left. I didn,t care that much about the phone because I never use it, but he knocked over some stuff that I had to clean up and he left his lit cigarette inside so it smelled bad in here all night. That annoyed me. I mean, I threw the cigarette away outside, but it still smelled bad.

Right after he stole the phone and left, I heard a lady screaming outside. I went out there to tell her to use her inside voice and saw that the weirdo was in her car, trying to steal it as hard as he could. Luckily, he was too stupid and weird to do it. I pretended that I was tough and yelled at him to get out of the car and he did. I don,t want to say that I,m a hero or anything, but I completely saved everybody,s life.

He clumsily limped down the street as I talked to the shaky lady for a minute. She was pretty freaked out, but not that much because she got back in her car and drove away without calling the police. I called the police for her and told them what happened. They didn,t care that much. Some scrawny cop came and talked to me for a second a little while later and didn,t do anything. He left and I thought that was the end of it.

Hours later, a less scrawny cop called me and asked me about what happened and then said that he wanted to come hang out with me because he thought that I seemed like a cool guy. ,,I am a cool guy,,, I said. ,,You won,t be disappointed.,,

He came and hung out for a little while and I regaled him with my tales, but I think he was a little disappointed. He had that look in his eye like he thought I would be taller in real life or something. I didn,t care, though. I was just glad that there was a person in the world who was willing to listen to me talk nonsense for once. He left and told me that his friend was going to come hang out with me later.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas This is when I almost achieved one of my life goals. The less scrawny cop,s friend came by a few hours later. He was serious. He looked like a cartoon cop. His head was a rectangle and he never smiled and he looked like he only dated blonde girls who weighed under one hundred pounds and he was bad at math and hadn,t read a book is nine years and he loved running. He and I sat down and had a frank, solemn discussion. He showed me pictures of weird guys and I got to say which one was the weirdo that I had met earlier that day. It has always been my goal to identify somebody in a police lineup. I mainly just want to stand behind a two-way mirror and point at somebody, but this was the next best thing.

I had to look at six weirdies and decide which one was the weirdest. It was kind of tough because they all sort of looked alike and I mostly remembered the guy,s clothes, but he wasn,t wearing the same clothes in his picture. I had to trust my guy and my gut was saying that it was the guy with the weird eyes and pointy head. I think I picked the right one. I mean, I don,t think it matters because they already caught him and brought back the phone and everything, but I just want all of those boring cops to think that I,m good at remembering.

It wasn,t exactly how I dreamed it would be, but I am probably going to die soon so I will certainly take what I can get. Maybe I,ll just buy my own two-way mirror and replace my front door with it and point at people all I want.

It Is All Open

I just got back from a place that was covered in lizards. There were lizards everywhere. I couldn,t tell you how many lizards I saw. It must have been in the hundreds or thousands. It was unbelievable. I can,t believe I hit my lizard quota at such a young age. I don,t have to see another lizard as long as I live and I,ll still get into heaven.

It was really hot where all of the lizards were. They were pointy, fast lizards and they did not like nonsense. I ended up staying there longer than I was supposed to. The entire country froze except for the place with all of the lizards which meant that none of the plane drivers, or ,,pilots,, as they call themselves, wanted to take me back home. It was cool, though. That just meant that I got to see more lizards.

Sam Amidon - All Is Well I also got to drink a lot of orange juice and eat a ton of food and I barely paid for any of it. That,s my kind of deal. I went to three restaurants and ate delicious food every day and I didn,t even spend all of the money in my wallet. Also, I saw a dead horseshoe crab and I,ve never seen one of those before.

Right before I saw the dead horse fish, I saw a sweaty, sunburned fat guy catch a thing that looked like a catfish and a shark mixed together. It was gross, but so was he so it was like they were meant for each other. I watched him kill that monster and I think I saw a part of his soul die as well. It was an intense few minutes. There were snails and lizards everywhere.

Very Close To Something

My belt broke the other day, but I,m still using it. It,s only partially broke. I think it will be completely unusable soon, though. I like this belt. I got it as a replacement for a belt that I had before this one. I liked that one even more. I got both of the belts from thrift stores. The broken one that I,m wearing right now isn,t as good as the first one, but it,s the same kind. It,s the same type.

I tried to look up what kind of belt it was so I could get another one, but I couldn,t figure it out at first. It,s not just a leather belt or a woven belt or a Boy Scout belt or anything like that. It,s weird. It,s like a canvass strap that has parts of a belt attached at either end. After trying to describe it to Google, I found out the name of this kind of belt and I couldn,t believe it. I still don,t know how to say it. I,ve never heard or seen this ,,word,, before.

Hood - Cold House It,s a surcingle belt. It might be said like ,,sir single,, but that,s stupid. I hope it,s ,,sir kingley.,, That,s so much better. I can,t wait to a into a belt store and demand a sir kingley belt and get thrown out. I,m going to name my first born Sir Kingley. I,m going to get them knighted. I,m going to get in trouble for naming my kid something insane.

Not Anymore

Today is Black Friday - the anniversary of the day that everybody in Europe died from rat bites. That happened exactly one hundred years ago today. People celebrate this horrible occasion by sitting outside of buildings all night and trying to find rats and kill them. If they kill a rat, they get to go inside the building and buy something.

Most people don,t really do the rat killing anymore, though. That,s sort of an old, forgotten part of the holiday. Most people just wait outside of buildings at night and then buy things, but they think about rats while they,re doing it. It,s the thought that counts.

Perfect Pussy - I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling I,ve never celebrated Black Friday. I,ve killed and eaten plenty of rats, but never for any special reason. I just do it to live. There,s no real need to stay up all night in the freezing wind to do it. You can do it in the comfort of your own home if it,s filthy enough. Plus, you can honor the billions of dead Europeans in other ways. You can talk in a funny accent for a little while.

I wrote all of this with a funny accent. I know it,s difficult to read an accent sometimes, but as I read it, I can hear it in my brain box. Celebrating things internally is much more dignified and respectful. It,s like having an erection during class and not making a big deal about it.

Preparation

I am surrounded by maniacs right now. There is a convention at my work for people who like to pay to drink special water. They all seem like they are incredibly lonely and this is one of the few times each year when they are around other people who are insane enough to talk to them for more than a few seconds. They,re loving it. They all smell like they only eat dirt and figs.

One of the guys has teeth that look like they are just one tooth. There are no separations between them. They have melded together to form a lumpy, grey band. It is horrible to look at. It seems like his teeth would crumble if he tried to brush them. They are made out of old, wet clay. I,m sure that it,s a side effect from only drinking the special water that they all hold so dear.

Lindsay Lowend - Wind Fish "It removes every toxin in your body, even your teeth." That,s the tagline on every bottle. Teeth are God,s greatest mistake. You don,t need them. Dissolve them with this expensive water. Clean your organs and get rid of the white waste monopolizing your mouth. The mouth should be a celebration of the lips and tongue. Teeth have been showboating for too long. Put them in their place - the trash. Pay for this water and drink it.

Several Weird Notes

I went to a job interview today. I can,t believe I was a little nervous about it. It was dumb. The president of the company interviewed me. He was wearing a baseball hat. One of the employees is a gross dog. The carpet was in tatters. The receptionist looked like a melting pepperoni. There were crumpled papers everywhere.

He didn,t even know what questions to ask me. The first thing he said was that he hated doing interviews and hiring people. I laughed right in his face. He kept asking me what other questions he should ask me. I told him that I wasn,t hired yet so I wasn,t going to do his job for him. Then I laughed right in his stupid face again.

Jon Hopkins - Immunity I asked him what benefits the company offered and he said that employees get some holidays off. That was so insulting that I actually liked it a little. I bet he pays them in expired wartime food rations. I bet they are all related to him. I bet they ate the other dog that used to be employed there last year for Thanksgiving dinner.

I knew that I wouldn,t take the job right after the interview started, but I sat through the whole thing to find out how bad it would get. I was hoping that the dog would poop on the carpet and then eat it and then throw it up, but that didn,t happen. At least, it didn,t happen while I was there. It probably happened right after I left.

Taco Tuesday

I visited a nerd factory the other day. It was a small, hot room filled to the brim with nerds of all sorts. There were ugly, bug-eyed nerds, handsome, well dressed nerds, greasy nerds, dry nerds, and there were even a couple of professional nerds there. It was outstanding. I have never been surrounded by some many of my own people before.

These nerds were very intense. They had to pay money to get into the factory to watch the two professional nerds show off their wares. What I,m trying to say is that I drove an hour and a half away to watch two geniuses play weirdo piano music for a while. It was awesome. The music was so cool and sounded so ugly that I had to stifle my joyous laughter several times. I loved it. 

Pete Drake - Talking Steel & Singing Strings

It,s weird to think that there were people other than myself who would want to go to a thing like that - a performance of some of the ugliest music I have ever heard. I maybe have been the biggest nerd there, though. I think I get to wear that crown for now. I probably drove the farthest to get there so I probably paid the most and I also sat in the front row. I am so embarrassed and proud of the horrible monster that I am. 

The troll who was taking money would have been the biggest nerd if I hadn,t been there. Actually, I,m not sure how much physical appearance plays into being a nerd nowadays. If it,s still how it was in movies about the fifties and sixties, the uglier they are, the more nerd points they get. Unfortunately, I am terribly beautiful so I may lose some points there. All I know for sure is that I don,t like being around people who like the same things that I do because everybody is gross.

No Money

My Death Cab For Cutie cover band and I woke up really early the other day so we could drive to San Francisco and play some of out adult alternative songs on a college radio station that isn,t even a real radio station. There is no ,,station.,, They play music that is streamed twenty-four hours a day on a website that nobody visits. Most of the time, it,s just a computer playing songs at random.

Knowing that nobody would be listening, we thought that this would be the opportunity of a lifetime. We could play as poorly as we normally do and say whatever insane stuff we wanted and it wouldn,t matter because we couldn,t get in trouble because nobody could hear us other than the two nerds that were ,,hosting,, the two hour radio show.

Peter Brötzmann - Nipples We got there early and set up our trash and when it was time, we played our dumb songs to an icy, barren, digital emptiness. Then the fun part happened. They let us talk on the radio. I spent the rest of the ninety minutes screaming and vaguely insulting one of the hosts. That was pretty fun. I was being extremely obnoxious and nuts.

After that, we loaded our trash back into the trusty old vehicle and drove home and broke down over and over again in the middle of heavy traffic in a densely populated metropolitan area. That was extremely exhausting and instead of getting home in two hours like we thought we would, it took us seven. At one point, the car broke down so hard that we had to eat papusas. That was great. That was probably the highlight of the day. Well, that and when we finally got towed to a mechanic and all of our phones were out of batteries so I decided that we should go to the Apple store in the mall to charge them. That was the other highlight.

White Shirt

What a day. Am I right? I slept in, ate some bread, went grocery shopping, and got one hundred dollars cash back that was supposed to last me until my next pay check in two weeks. The best part of the day was that I got my cash back and now it doesn,t exist anymore. I have no idea what happened. I almost never lose things so I don,t think that is the case.

My favorite theory that I have come up with so far is that when I was putting the groceries in my car, a homeless man approached me and asked me for fifty cents so he could buy a taco. Being a lover of tacos myself, I gave him two quarters that were in my car. I leaned in to get them and that,s when he must have picked my pocket. He was very good. I didn,t feel a thing. As soon as I gave him the two quarters, he dashed across the street.

Henry Flynt - Glissando No. 1 I thought he was walking away especially fast for a homeless person with a weird eye, but I figured that maybe he just really wanted a taco. There was a Mexican restaurant across the street and he was headed in that direction. A few minutes later, I noticed that my money was gone and I formulated this insane theory in order to feel less guilty about losing such a large sum of money.

If that guy really did pick my pocket, I,m proud of him. I never hear of that happening anymore. That is a dead or dying art and if he is the last of his kind, I hope he makes a grand living from his profession. I would much rather have him steal my money than clumsily drop it in a parking lot and have some moron pick it up and be rewarded for doing nothing. At least the thief put some effort into gaining his reward. The sloppy hag who picks up a crumpled bill from the street deserves it less than anybody.

You Are Wrong

It,s autumn. You know what that means. It means that my hands are so dry and I sniff constantly. It also means that I get to finally dress like a human being again. No more sloppy t-shirts. No more bare skin. I,m wearing a sweater right now even though it,s way too hot for it. I,m wearing it on principle. I was driving earlier and had to turn on the air conditioner because I am a stubborn idiot. I look nice, though.

To celebrate this new season, the person in the apartment next to mine invited their weirdo relative who has a Monster Energy Drink tattoo to stay with them for a few days. They made sure to tell them to bring their ugly, screaming child with them as well. I don,t know if that giant baby has a energy drink logo tattooed on its body, but if I had to guess, I would certainly say that it did.

Raw Nerve - Every Problem Solved I don,t understand that baby. I walked passed the open door of their apartment a little while ago and I saw it. It was wearing a diaper and a collared shirt. It was gigantic. It could have been three or four years old. It was drinking from a bottle filled with what I can only assume was Monster Energy Drink and it was staring blankly at a television screen.

I hear it constantly when it is over there. It runs and screams, but it doesn,t ever scream words. It only knows sounds. I have never heard it make any sound that came close to resembling a word in any language. That,s the part that doesn,t make sense to me. It is large enough to know words, but it refuses. It just emits long, pulsating noise cubes that pierce the walls and terrify me. Now that I,m thinking about it, I,m not even sure that it,s a child. I suppose a shaved raccoon would possess all of the same qualities that I just described. The neighbors are harboring a shaved wild animal in their home.

I Need To Sweep

I wish my body was okay with me pooping only four times each week. I wish it worked like that. I would only ever poop at work. I feel stupid if I poop before or after work because if I would have just done it a little earlier or a little later, I would have been getting paid to do it. That,s all I want in this world. That,s all anybody wants - to get paid to do something that they are passionate about. Plus, when I get paid to poop, I feel like I,m finally putting my degree to good use.

I,m at work right now and I might go force a turd out of my body on principle. Maybe I won,t. A bunch of kids are supposed to be here soon. I don,t want them to show up while I,m ripping a gnarly mess in the bathroom. I don,t like being able to hear people when I,m pooping. I think that,s way worse than people hearing me. A poop closet should be a place of peace, solitude, and contemplation.

Agata - Spike One of my arms has been hurting for a few days. I played badminton and I think I broke every bone and pulled every muscle in my body. That,s what I get for never exercising once in my entire life. It was fun though. I was doing trick shots and pretending that the racquet was a guitar and sweating. I felt alive even though I lost. Nobody was keeping score, but in my heart I felt like I was losing. I always feel like that .

Calling A Lot

The other day I went on a trip to the beach to play a show with my Death Cab For Cutie cover band. I drove so much. We played in a very gross punker house. The room we played in looked like a crazy person,s bedroom. Their were soiled, broken mattresses lining the walls and the floor sloped dramatically to one side and felt like it was a wrestling ring because it was so bouncy. The mattresses were really gross and I am still in the process of trying to find out if I am up to date on all of my vaccinations after accidentally touching some of them. I feel like I have heartworm now.

Each room in the house had a very distinct odor. The kitchen smelled like drugs because there were so many people doing drugs in there. The living room smelled like a sweaty person doing drugs. The bathroom smelled like somebody grilling an old hot dog wrapped in tire rubber smeared with poop. The best room was the room that we played in. It smelled like a very wet cat had crawled in there on August fifth and decided to get sick and die. The smell was so intense. I could smell the sound of worms crawling through its decomposing body.

White Shit - Carry Me The people there were exactly the type of people that should live there. They were all very nice and very drunk and very fragrant. Sure, I immediately regretted high fiving some of them, but that,s the price you pay, you know? I think it was worth it. I do not think all of the dreadlock touching was worth it. That was done against my will. I,ve never wanted to touch a dreadlock, but I came into contact with quite a few that evening. I think one went in my mouth for a second.

Driving home was interesting. I have never slept so much while driving. I guess that made the trip seem shorter since I wasn,t awake for so much of it. That was nice. I made it home safe and went to bed at four in the morning. The next day, my car exploded and now it,s going to cost me a million dollars to fix it. This is the rock and roll lifestyle that I,ve been dreaming of since I was a stupid baby.

Three Bean Salad

Some terrible website wrote me an email and asked if my Death Cab For Cutie cover band wanted to be interviewed. I told him that we did. He sent me the interview questions and then I took a closer look at his website and realized that it was terrible so I wrote up insane answers to all of his questions and was going to send it back to him, but he was asking for pictures and videos and links and that is all way too much effort for something that I don,t care about so I decided to ignore him forever and just put the interview on here.

Sam Amidon - Home Alone Inside My Head

1. Can I get a backstory on the band/band biography?
We,ve all been living with each other for six or seven years now. We got a little farmhouse for really cheap. It,s near a river and it,s basically falling apart, but we love it there. We would spend all of our time together and when Boscar first got a guitar, it inspired C-Pipe and I to learn instruments too. One thing lead to another and now we all play music together. It all happened really quickly. We never took lessons or anything. I don,t know scales or anything like that. We just play what feels right to us and our music is the result. We,re all really happy with what we,ve done.

2. What lyrical theme do you guys use in your music? What message do you want to send?
A lot of our songs are about deep, personal experiences that we,ve shared. All three of us live together and spend pretty much all of our time together so it almost feels like we,re one person. We go through the same challenges and accomplish the same goals. We take turns writing songs, but it,s not like we even need to because we all basically live the same life. Our thoughts are all the same. We usually write our songs about heartbreak and hatred and emptiness and junk like that. I guess our message is that stuff is the worst.

3. How have the gigs you guys been doing been?
What a terribly phrased question. People seem confused a lot when we play because we don,t all wear black all the time.

4. What equipment do you guys use?
I play an Oat Brundle. It,s an instrument that I invented. It,s like a really tiny bass guitar, but it,s all digital. Boscar uses a Telecaster and a Fender solid state combo amplifier. C-Pipe uses a drum set that he mostly built himself out of wine barrels. His family makes wine so he gets the barrels for free. It,s awesome. They sound really good.

5. What bands have influenced your band and its sound?
Michael Jackson is a really big influence for me. I don,t think we sound like him, but he influenced me musically a lot. I think we are all collectively influenced by Black Flag and KoЯn and The Bloodhound Gang and other good music like that. Oh, and we all like Stone Temple Pilots a lot.

6. Do you remember your first show and what was it like?
I don,t remember it at all, but I wish I did. I guess drinking too much does that to a guy. Ha Ha Ha.

7. What made you guys decide to form a band?
Well, it wasn,t something that we ever really talked about or decided. It just seemed like the natural thing to do since we were all living together and had the same ideas about stuff. We all play music so we just started doing it together and we haven,t looked back since. It,s been great and I hope it never stops.

8. What is your opinion on sites posting your guys material and other bands material?
I wish every website in the world had ever piece of music ever recorded on there for free.

9. Are there any bands that you guys enjoyed playing with more than the others?
We got to play a huge outdoor picnic thing with Papa Roach a few years ago and that was really awesome. I think about that day all the time.

10. How do you guys feel about the classifications in metal; like deathcore, metalcore and other subgenres and how some have a negative connotation?
I don,t know too much about genres and classifications. All I know is that if it,s loud, then it,s good. Ha Ha Ha. But seriously. Ha Ha Ha.

11. What song do you enjoy playing the most?
Our favorite song to play right now is ,,Noodle Man.,, It,s not one that we have recorded, but it is so awesome. It,s like an evil dance party/marching song. It,s so awesome.

12. When not doing things with the band, what can you guys be seen doing?
Just living together, mostly. None of us have jobs or go to school so we spend a lot of time watching movies together or fishing and we try to always be home to make a big meal together every night. That,s always fun.

13.Your biggest band moment?
Probably the Papa Roach picnic.

14. What is your opinion on the current state of metal?
I love it. I love metal more than anything in the world.

15. How did you guys come up with your band name?
I don,t remember. I think we stole it from some other band that,s not around anymore.

16. What can the fans expect to see from you in the future?
We,re recording an album right now called Turkey Legs that should be out in the next six months or so. We,re not sure who is going to put it out, but it,s going to be rockin,.

Getting Caught

I really, really need to stop buying cereal that has raisins in it. I don,t even like raisins. I just buy it because it,s usually one of the cheaper ones and it weighs a lot. That,s how I play the game. I look at the prices and I look at the weights. Most people just compare prices. They,re amateurs. They,re stupid amateurs. I,m not a kid. I know how important weight is in the cereal game.

The real reason I need to stop buying that kind of cereal is because it makes my farts way too foul. I can,t take it and I know that nobody around me can either. It,s inconsiderate of me. I don,t want to be an inconsiderate person. I like caring for/about my friends. I don,t want to put them through that sort of torture all the time. I only want to do it sometimes. I don,t want my overwhelmingly bad farts to lose their novelty and just be a never-ending barrage of pure odium. Farts should be lighthearted.

William Basinski - A Red Score In Tile Luckily, I went to the store today and saw that they had my favorite cereal on sale. Its, usually really expensive and it still kind of was, but it being less than four dollars is good enough for me. It doesn,t have raisins in it. It barely has flavor. That,s why I like it. It,s plain and bland, just like me. If I were a cereal, I would be a much cheaper, knockoff version of that cereal. If they made shallot cereal, I would eat it every day.

The Long Coat

I,m pretending to be a real man and I,m letting my face hair grow. I don,t know how long it will last. It probably won,t be that long. That,s why I say ,,pretending,, to be a man. I can,t even handle a couple of soft, delicate hairs touching my cheeks. I can,t handle waking up from a black, dreamless sleep with my beard filled with drool as if it were a terrible, coarse sponge.

I,m glad that I can grow a beard, though. A lot of people can,t. Most people in the world can,t. The only thing that is weird and wimpy about my beard is that hair doesn,t really grow in the area right under my bottom lip. I don,t get it. I,m thankful that it,s not a patchy, Johnny Depp beard, but that little area should fill in with the rest of my face. It grows plenty high, but it refuses to grow low.

Dreamdecay - N V N V N V LP I keep looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, ,,I still can,t grow hair under my bottom lip. Maybe it,ll start coming in during the next year or so.,, Then I remember that I am already a grown up and I am not going to gain anymore hair unless it,s on my back. I,m only losing hair from now on. That,s a bummer. Writing this is making me deal with my own mortality.

Good Luck

A new person moved in above me. I haven,t met them yet, but so far I,m kind of happy with them. They make too much noise for me, but everybody makes too much noise for me. They are a whole lot quieter than the last people, though. They don,t yell across the apartment at each other. In fact, they are only one person so doing that is impossible. They also don,t have a little diarrhea machine running all over the place for hours at a time. That,s another nice touch. Not recreating is considerate.

I had to interact with a different neighbor today. They asked for my laundry key. Apparently, they started doing their laundry and then somebody came and locked the door with all of their clothes in there. At least that,s the story they told me. They could have been laundry thieves for all I know. I didn,t go out there and check. Thankfully, he wasn,t a key thief. He gave it back to me.

Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen I sort of had to interact with a different neighbor today, too. I think it was a neighbor. I was in my living room with two of my friends and I smelled a terrible, earthy stink. I figured it was one of them ripping a quiet disaster out of their bowels, but when I asked them about it, they both told me that their holes were clean. I think they would have told me if it had been them. They knew that I just wanted to congratulate them. The only explanation I could come up with was that one of my neighbors created that foul odor and it seeped down or to the side and got into my home.

I think that counts as interaction. I had to breathe in and smell something that their body created as waste. That,s really intimate if you think about it. Smelling somebody,s fart is basically the same thing as seeing somebody naked.

Magazines

They finally got a new chair at work. I,ve been sitting in the same one for at least three years. I guess everybody got tired of the stink. I ruined that thing. I have pushed so many terrible, dark, sour odors out of my butt and deep into the fibers of that old chair. I,m surprised it lasted so long. I gave it everything I had. I would release gasses so foul and potent into that jester,s throne that it would sometimes stink for days. Now it,s in the trash. That once proud monument to perseverance and tolerance is now rotting in a landfill like some common sanitary napkin. Rest in peace, baby girl.

This new chair brings new possibilities, new challenges, and a new canvas on which to paint my unique, powerful masterpieces. It will not be easy. I will be forced to approach this from new, creative angles. The old chair was a soft, cottony mess. Its fibers were loose and forgiving. This new chair, however, is cut from a different cloth. It is a synthetic, plastic, leather-like material. It will not be as easy to penetrate its walls and imbue it with the stench of my innards. It will be difficult, but I am up for the adventure.

Storm & Stress - Under Thunder And Fluorescent Lights My first step will be to change my diet to consist only of raisins, garbanzo beans, and milk that is teetering on the brink of spoiling. I will put these three ingredients together in a filthy saucepan and I will slow cook them for several hours. My home will be filled with the stink of victory. My bowels, overwhelmed by this perfect storm of rancid, inedible slop, will rebel with gasses so horrendous, so lasting, so magnificent, that this new chair will not stand a chance. There will be but one victor in this fight, and the victor will be me.

Sleeping In

My friend is staying at my house with me for a few days and now I,m scared to poop. That,s totally untrue. I,m still going to rip some gnarly ones, but I guess I,m kind of scared of him hearing. It,s not the act. It,s the sound created by the act. My place is so small and the bathroom is pointed right at the living room. There,s not way out of it unless I wait until he,s asleep and my weak, tender bowels will have nothing to do with that. They run on their own schedule. I am just the humble vessel which they control.

Speaking of bowels, I was going to meet up with my ex-roommate today and have a tasty, nutritious lunch, but when I called him to see what was up, he said that he was in a hospital bed because he started dumping blood out of his pooper and became so weak that he couldn,t stand. I talked to him a day and a half ago and he was totally fine so I don,t know what happened. I hope he feels better soon, though. Blood does not belong in the toilet. It belongs in your veins.

Calculator - This Will Come To Pass Tomorrow I have to go to Napa and play a weird, probably empty show with my Death Cab For Cutie cover band. I don,t know anything about it. I don,t know where it,s going to be or who we,re playing with or when exactly it is. That,s good. That way I get to hope that it,s in a winery. I want to play to a bunch of bewildered, rich, old, white people who pay eighty dollars for a bottle of wine. That,s all I,ve ever wanted. I would also like to get free crackers and cheese.

Stand Up Straight

I never had a crush on a cartoon character when I was younger, but I think that is a pretty normal thing to do. I,m sure in elementary and middle school, kids were getting their hearts broken when characters in their favorite cartoon liked other cartoon characters. I,m sure there is a cutoff point when having feelings for fictional animated characters becomes too much. I would say that being older than fifteen and feeling that way is probably pretty weird.

People my age still do it, though. There is an entire nation dedicated to profiting from the idea that cartoons are worthy of sexual and emotional feelings. It,s called Japan. They make cartoons with boobs all the time and people eat that up. I don,t get it. All of the boobs are always wet and perfectly spherical. That,s not how boobs are. Maybe that,s the point. They are weird looking and the people that like that are into it so much because they have no idea that those boobs look weird. They,ve never seen a real boob. They were raised on the fake stuff. Their mothers fed them animated milk when they were babies.

Zapp - II I remember I once asked this guy that I knew if he had ever masturbated while looking at the tattoo on his arm of a topless lady and he told me that he had. I think that takes guts. It takes guts to do it and it takes guts to proudly admit it to somebody. I respect anybody who can look down at their own forearm and reach orgasm. I wonder if his tattoo was on the arm he used to help himself. It would probably be better if it was. It would look like she was sensually wiggling. I bet that would help.

Right And Wrong

The other day I sat on a huge bus for four and a half hours. It wasn,t all at once, but it was all in one day. I had never been in one of those tall buses before. It wasn,t as cool as England wants you to think it is. I sat on the top for the first half and I sat on the bottom during the second half. Each section had their own pros and cons. Overall it was stupid, though.

On the first leg of the trip, I sat on top in almost the very back. I used to sit in the back of the bus in middle school because that,s what the cool kids did and I was cool. I thought it was be the same now, but I was wrong. There was a girl who was sitting near me who sounded as though she had just regained consciousness after having extremely invasive brain surgery. I had never heard anybody talk like her. She slowly and sloppily puked ,,words,, into her cell phone throughout the voyage. I never looked at her, but I would bet the million that she was slowly blinking one eye at a time on accident.

Nico Muhly - A Good Understanding The second leg of the trip was spent downstairs. It smelled like a urinal cake. I think that,s because I was sitting much closer to the urinal cakes. There were trash/puke bags tied to every seat down there. Some of them were full. The people downstairs were much quieter with the exception of a very entitled, boring looking girl who barged her way onto the bus at the last second. I don,t even think she paid. She charged her phone the entire time and yelped rather than spoke. She complained on the phone to a relative. Her attitude matched her stupid face so perfectly that I was awestruck for quite some time. She was a miserable beast and if I never see her again, it will still be too soon.

What I learned that day is that buses are stupid even when they are terribly cheap. They are slow and the drivers are almost as incompetent as the passengers. Everybody cusses as loud as the can the whole time and even the quiet old guy holding flowers figures out some way to be annoying without ever actually interacting with you.

Hat

The other day I cleaned my ears in a really dangerous way. I jammed a cotton swab really far in there. I was super dirty and I wanted to make sure that I got all of the slime out of my brain. I think I went too far in because I felt dizzy for a day and a half afterward. That was scary. I was sure that I had head cancer. I,m not dizzy anymore, but I guess I still might have cancer and just not know it yet.

I cured my stupid head by twisting it certain ways. I watched an insane video on how to do it and I thought it was crazy, but I guess people go to real doctors to have them do it so I tired it and it worked immediately. It was nuts. I can,t believe somebody figured out how to cure a case of the old wiggly brain just by tilting your head. The first six seconds of the video are absolutely terrifying.

Antony And The Johnsons - The Crying Light I,ve been applying for jobs that I am completely unqualified for. I look for ones that specifically say things like, ,,You must have at least five years of experience piloting spaceships,,, and I send them my resume and tell them that I have no experience doing anything like that, but that I am a really cool person and I bet that they,d like me. Nobody has responded yet, but I bet somebody will. Somebody will understand how valuable a cool dude with no experience is. They,ll call me and beg me to be a part of their science factory. They,ll offer me a million dollar salary and I,ll take it because I could use a million dollars right now.

Mordecai And Margaret

I just got back from a sweet little trip. In more important news, my right ear has been kind of deaf for the past day and I think it just started working again a few seconds ago. That,s great. Now I won,t have to email my stupid doctor and ask him how much new ears cost. I have never met my doctor, but I have been to his office a few times for things. I always see nurses. That,s how I like it. I hate my doctor because he scolded me when I asked him if he could give me a vasectomy. When I grow up, I,m going to give that guy a bad Yelp review.

The trip I went on was pretty good. The weather was nice, I didn,t get struck by lightening like I thought I would, I still don,t have lice, I still have my important body parts, and I made it home on schedule. I saw some cool stuff. I ate some tasty French fries and some very bad pancakes. I drank some very warm water. I got kicked out of a bus station by a woman wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I broke an inflatable pillow.

Dur-Dur Band - Volume 5 The best part was seeing cool mountains and lakes. The most uncomfortable part was when a weird deer looked at me. The worst part was spending six hours with two of the most terrible people I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. They were a couple. Their names were Jonah and The Pig Woman. Jonah had a head half-full of short dreadlocks and a beautiful anarchy symbol tattooed under one of his eyes. He yelled with a thick, stupid accent and lied about everything. The Pig Woman looked like a human grub. She worse a stained, ripped, puke green shirt and I can,t remember what her face looked like because I tried to look at it as little as possible.

They were indescribably awful, but I,ll try to do my best. Jonah didn,t have an inside voice. He only yelled and he yelled for hours. He yelled about how stupid he was. He yelled about how many times he had been to jail. He yelled about doing a back flip and landing on his face the other day. I believed that part. He drank bottle after bottle of piss-yellow beer and ate bites of dirty hot dog with room temperature relish mushed on them.

The Pig Woman was similar. She would yell a story as loud as she could and Jonah would try to outdo her stupidity with an even more uninteresting tale. They went back and forth like this for hours until their swollen bodies were so full of alcohol and hot dog chunks and cigarette papers that they could no longer maintain consciousness. If even a momentary lull occurred in the conversation, The Pig Woman would fill it with a loud, long acapella version of a song. She puked out full, exhausting interpretations of songs by Sublime, Everlast, and The Counting Crows. It was intolerable. I am very thankful that it is very unlikely that I will ever have to see them again.

Eating Hot Dogs

Last night at work, some guy wearing all white climbed through a window. That was pretty wacky. He was hanging out for a while and eventually I told him he had to leave. He didn,t leave so I told him again and again and he finally left. A few minutes later, somebody came and told me that somebody just climbed through a window downstairs. I went down there to see what was up and the all white dude saw me and sort of ducked away. I told him to come upstairs and he did and the police got called and he took off.

That,s the normal part of the story. Then a cop came and I told him what happened and what the dude looked like and he said that it would probably be easy to find him. He didn,t find him, though. He didn,t find him at all because an hour later the all white guy came back. It was nuts. It was like he didn,t realize that he had just broken into a building and had the cops called on him.

Sean McCann - Music For Private Ensemble I asked him to hang out for a bit while I made some calls to see if it was cool if he stayed. I called the police and he just sat in a chair like an idiot until they finally arrived. I told them what was up and they took the dude outside to talk to him. He was getting pretty weird and antsy by that time. I was guessing that maybe he had drugs on him or something illegal, but I didn,t care. I had been at work for over eight hours at that point and I was tired of this dude making me work while I was at work.

I was packing up my stuff to finally leave when I heard the front gate slam and somebody yell a couple of times. They weren,t yelling words. They were yelling noises. I looked outside to see what happened and the cops had the dude on the ground. Maybe he tried to run or something. He was a thin guy. He was probably a good runner. Maybe he tried to jump the gate and smashed into it instead and then the police just laid on him for a minute and put him in their car. The strangest part of all of it was that his ,,mother,, called today and asked if it would be alright if he stayed here tonight.

Cross Your Fingers

I recently started making my own bread. It,s pretty crazy and awesome. It takes forever because you have to wait for the dough to fart a lot and it makes my apartment really hot because I have to cook it at a million degrees, but it,s totally worth it. It,s so cheap and tasty and cool. It makes me feel like a real human.

There are only two downsides to making and eating my own delicious bread. One is that I don,t have a Dutch oven so I cook it in a big, cheap soup pot that apparently is not made to withstand such extreme temperatures. The pot is slowly turning more and more brown each time I use it. Soon it will start releasing toxic fumes in the oven and it will imbue an extremely potent poison into the cooking dough. I will die.

Matt Dotson - Revolution/Circumvention The other downside is that I have been eating so much crusty bread lately that my mouth looks like I have been eating teeth. It is so cut up right now. Its horrible. I can only eat soft stuff or my eyes start crying. I tried to eat crackers yesterday and I only got through three of them before I had to call it quits. That,s so embarrassing. I,m glad nobody saw that and I,m glad that nobody is reading this.