life in the seventh level

it just struck me that mardi gras is next week. i'm terrified. i can already sense my eyeballs starting to bleed. i hate crowds, i hate stupid drunk people (including myself), i hate crowds of stupid drunk people, i hate watching whores (that's right - WHORES!) flash body parts for fake plastic jewelry made in malaysia by ten-year-olds, i hate cajun music, and i hate watching people having fun while i'm miserable.

"but i'm not a whore! i just like to have a good time." okay, if you offer up sexual favors of any kind in the hopes of getting something in return (especially something so cheap and useless), you are a whore. but jesus loves you.

this is just another bad stretch of the year. first mardi gras, then v.d., and then easter (when the ghost of peter rabbit rises from the grave to feast on the cabbage of the living). and then the ides of march. i may as well go drink brake fluid and eat vioxx.

thanks pfizer.

didn't we just get done with one holiday season? and now another? for fuck's sake.

and please, skip the valentine's day stories. or don't ask why when you drop off my blogroll and you never hear from me again. if those sound like positives, then by all means write something really saccharine that makes you feel better and the rest of us worse.

see: goddamned pink

in. re. right now

usually i answer the monday morning question "how was your weekend" with a pacifying "fine, how was yours". but i'm not going to do that anymore. i've realized that my weekends inherently suck. it's time to hold my weekends and my weekend self to higher standards.

staying in my cave with the blinds drawn, fan on, hiding under my duvet and spending 80% of the two days in a drug-induced slumber is not a good way to consistently ride out the weekend.

that other 20%, incidentally, usually involves drinking and the late-night drunk-dialing of obscure friends (acquaintances, really) and family. i'm really starting to loathe the "dialed numbers" feature of my phone. it's not bad enough that i make the calls, now i have to have it on record? fakakta.

but this isn't normal, and probably isn't healthy. it does little for my social and sex life and even less for my ever-teetering-on-the-brink-of-being-non-existent self-esteem. i don't know what the alternative is, but the point is that i should start looking. i guess. whatever. insert other generic gen-x phrase here.

you think you have a headache

it's rainy and dreary and cold outside and i couldn't be happier. seriously. i love bad weather, especially when i don't have to be walking to class in it.

yesterday the wonderful avatar wrote about the ills of men behaving badly in rituals of courtship and inter-gender relations. it's inspired me to opine on the very similar habits of the fairer sex, whom i don't think monopolize the market on dating etiquette.

so, just a few irritating points about girl-behavior:

• when a female feels compelled to awkwardly interject into the conversation that she has a boyfriend and/or husband to dissuade me from flirting with her when i have no intention of flirting. example: at the chiropractor last week the receptionist girl was hooking me up to this massage chair, and warned that it would work my calves as well, because "that freaks my husband out". (side note - is anyone freaked out by something touching their calves? i could understand eyeballs or teeth maybe, but calves?). don't flatter yourself pumpkin - me wincing and complaining about back pain is not flirting. neither is my asking about the level of electricity being shot into my back by that machine (apparently her husband likes electricity).
• men do not corner the market on "playing games". i have never known of or beheld a man dramatizing a situation for no apparent reason. i've known females who do it all the time. don't make shit more difficult than it has to be because you want attention. life isn't kindergarten.
• if you want men to stop treating you badly then stop going for the guys who are asshoies. if you want to date abusive dickshits because somewhere in your subconscious you like being treated badly, that's fine. but don't complain about all men being assholes when you're secretly motivating them to be so.
• if a guy isn't great in the sack, then for the love of deity say something. the female genitalia are a veritable rubik's cube, and not everyone watches at least an hour or more of porn everyday when i get home from work.

and if you want to please your man just do as dave chappelle says: "suck his dick, make him a sandwich, play with his balls and just don't talk so much".

borrowing another line, from the movie clerks: i'm not making broad generalizations, i'm making generalizations about broads.

autre television fallacy

i'm a big fan of smallville on the wb, but my how those kids (those damn kids!) do not look like high-schoolers.

remember 90210 during the fifth or sixth season? they were seniors for about the third year in a row and dylan was balding, brenda had hot flashes and jason priestly was collecting social security.

the only teen tv show i've ever seen that was believable in depicting high school was my so-called life. although it's been so long since i've watched it that maybe my substance-abused memory is lying to me.

i had a girlfriend in high school who kinda looked like claire danes. i think she joined the marines, got married and crapped out kids.

smallville is great and entertaining, but mostly i want to see how long they can pass clark kent off as a teenager.

and holy crap sarah carter is hot! i think i'm heartbroken that i can't see her on television 24 hours a day. seriously.

this is an actual headline from cnn:

Astronauts stretch legs, install arm, find goo

i miss dangerous otc stuff

remember metabolife? wasn't it awesome? i could take two and sustain consciousness during a night of heavy drinking for a few extra hours. it was like legal cocaine. cut it up, snort it, cook it in a spoon, free-base... it makes me lament regular nights of heavy drinking (but not that much).

i never actually tried to use it for weight loss. at that time i was in college and ran up credit card debt paying bills, and spent every cent of disposable income i had buying alcohol. the sign of a true juice junkie - you buy vodka before food. priorities. anyway, it wasn't a lifestyle conducive to obesity so i used the diet pills as supplements to partying.

whatever, i don't care, we all die

today is officially the most depressing day of the year. i would have thought last week's inaugural thursday would have won.

on saturday night my friend r was so fucked up that he urinated in my bathroom sink (mental note: buy new toothbrush, toothpaste, hand soap, razor, deodorant, faucet fixtures, bathroom sink). friend r is an odd fellow, and brought back to my apartment from downtown ("out") a homeless person. that's right, a homeless person. i gave him a $20 to leave. i was drunk and stoned and stupid.

and my saturday was shaping up so well. i had an xsnacks buzz during the afternoon, i was lounging outside enjoying the overcast weather, smoking my menthols, sucking down my beloved tanqueray. and then all the weirdness.

and listen to the injustice of this. my friend j who lives in new york city met thurston moore and kim gordon at a bar saturday night. god my life sucks taint! i'm bribing homeless people to leave my home (my home! where i sleep and play with toys) and my friend is small-talking with thurston moore at a bar.

cherish these moments phizz. these truly are your wonder years (sans a winnie cooper... oh danica, when will you answer my calls and emails?).

accidental tv exposure

spending the night at my aunt's last night (to do laundry and visit mister kitty) i had little recourse but to channel-surf.

here's my not-necessarily original unified theory of network television: get young(ish), or at least unrealitically attractive and skinny, people, dress them up in lots of colors and metallic things and denim and anything passable as trendy, get them to spout scripted bad jokes, use lots of segue material in dramas (ala "oh my god!" or "call security!" or "nooooooooooo!"), sexual innuendo as far as the now powell-free fcc will allow you to use, and appeal to the dumbs. you make them feel like they understand and you make smart people feel smarter (although they probably aren't truly smart if they're watching in the first place). then call it "must-see".

time to have a cocktail or two or twelve. i just made a bunch of ice cubes.

also i bought my guitar yesterday. i know all the notes and a few chords, and my fingers hurt. rock on. now i just have to learn to worship the devil like jenna.

random thoughts, or what i like to call "talking poitns"

it's about enough with the inauguration, but some random thoughts:

• i would absolutely violate the bush twins' sexuality if given the opportunity.
• lord, deliver us from the perception of evil...
• be a republican first, american second (or third, or not at all)
• somehow we will war it up with iran, despite the lack of troops
• the right is probably going to get fucked in the mid-terms, because of the social security thing
• "freedom" and "liberty" are only punch lines
• tyranny is the new terror (mentioned 5 times in speech)
• iraq was not mentioned once
• god bless protesters
• laura bush always looks like she's on percocet. she may be a cyborg.
• we'll continue to feel very smart for the next four years just by keeping up with politics

send in the clowns

this first picture is haunting and ominous if you look at it for a minute. did anyone notice all the black clothing people were wearing in the photos from the inauguration? i realize it was cold and alot of overcoats are black, but it seemed odd. if i were a foreign country i'd feel pretty intimidated.

fuck your yankee blue jeans

i'm hearing "four more years of hell", but i have to say that the second term is going to be great. i mean, what better than to be white and male in america right now? and i'm employed with health insurance and don't have to worry about social security for another fifty years (who cares about the future) and i'm ineligible for the forthcoming draft and i'm going to incorporate myself so i'll be getting MAD bonuses and tax breaks.

and when i think about it, i never really liked alaskan caribou or free speech or breathable air or non-radioactive nevada or objectivity or mercury-free fish or full disclosure or bruce springsteen or factory tours or the aclu or black people or abortions (my murderer girlfriends liked them though) or judaism or evolution or museums or homosexuals or spongebob (supposedly gay) or not being christian or foreigners or art or premarital sex or anal sex or oral sex or inter-species sex or loosely-defined sex or dan rather.

i'm going to rustle up some velveeta now and make rattlesnake nachos.

my neck, my back

i heard on the radio that jenna bush was denied a teaching position at some school because the "no child left behind" program's requirements deemed her unqualified. what funnnnn.

in other ironic inaugural bits: a country band called asleep at the wheel is playing at the festivities.

the reason i've been reticent in bloggyworld the last couple of days is that my back has totally abandoned all functionality and i've been home in bed. apparently working in front of the computer eight hours a day plus whatever time i'm on it at home isn't good for the lower lumbar. so i've been in severe pain for two days. only moderate pain now.

i saw a chiropractor and he beat on my back a bit. i don't know if it's working or not. if it doesn't go completely away in a couple of days i'm just going to go to my gp and get some pain killers or muscle relaxers, which i would have done initially had i thought of it. god bless drugs.

metamorphosomething

in one seinfeld episode george complains about going from having orgasms like *that, to taking forever to get an orgasm. he never had a nice, medium orgasm.

coming home from work yesterday my street was lined with vehicles. the house across from me was having a large party, i surmise in celebration of martin luther king day. i only say that because they were playing a traditional martin luther king day anthem by fitty cent. which was odd, considering each and every partygoer was a white boy with a baseball hat. i counted 3 girls, and i think they left. (stalk much?)

i had to walk an entire block with my bag from work, four gallons of water, a 12-pack of diet dr. pepper (diet cherry vanilla - worthy of a cindy lauper commercial), and other sundries in plastic bags from the store.

the whole time walking i kept thinking "those fucking kids".

those fucking kids? christ almighty. my sweet dick. when did i go from longing to party on a monday afternoon with alcohol and glue sticks to cursing my neighbors for doing so? am i just bitter because i can't get drunk on a weekday afternoon anymore? i want my mommy!

(by "mommy" i mean "bottle of something" and "life back")

and i could have called the cops for the myriad illegal parking going on that greatly inconvenienced and depressed me, but the thought made me feel even older.

those kids are lucky i didn't drop any of my groceries. i would have had to do some serious... fist shaking. i'd be perfect for lesbian porn.

altruism in character

this is what i get for watching stephanopoulos every sunday morning.

power brings out and tests a person's true character. it's when you know right from wrong, and you choose the former even though it's not beneficial for you personally, that you pass that test.

something that seems uniform in the republican party (republicans, not necessarily conservatives) is the will to first and foremost side with party lines on any issue (before and after knowing what the issue is).

this, to me, signifies some deep-seeded flaw of character. they're not stupid. they're not just liars. intrinsically there is something askew and bitter within their character - an emotional axe to grind, childhood trama, emotional abuse, whatever - that somehow shapes their intentions.

john mccain (arizona senator) was accused of fathering an illegitiamate black child (he adopted a bangladeshi girl), being gay, and cheating on his wife during the 2000 republican primaries against bush in south carolina. his wife was also accused of being a drug addict.

why would mccain campaign for the man who accused him of these things four years later?

why would senator bill frist (r)-texas, a medical doctor, go on national tv and claim not to know how aids is transmitted? why would he do that?

because they do what's best for their party and themselves regardless of anything else.

and i acknowledge that it's not just republicans. it's everyone inside politics and mostly everyone outside. but you have to look at it comparatively.

bill clinton lying about a blowjob and george bush lying about why we went to war are NOT the same thing. they're both dishonest, but do their lies have the same repercussions?

you can say that politicians' motivation is just money and power and sex, but who isn't motivated by money and power and sex? the only variable is whether you're willing to act in ways detrimental to others in order to attain them.

i am not george bush. i don't have his power. i can only control my own behavior and speech, and all i, or anyone, can do is act along a general concensus of morality, not necessarily what i believe is morality. not below the standard, at least.

but the president's means are exponentially greater than mine, and i think that it's evident he hasn't acted in totally selfless ways with his power; the word "abhorrent" comes to mind. the latest example:

he throws himself a $40 million inauguration party (billed to you and i) in his own honor during a time when:

• soldiers are ill-equipped and dying in his war
• veterans are living on the streets
• millions of americans have no health insurance
• southeast asia lays in waste (no, $350 million is not enough by far)
• mercury levels in fish are so high that 1 in 6 women will give birth to children with some sort of mental deficiency (which i guess is good for bush's party - they'll all grow up and vote republican)
• africa and aids (let me know if explanation is needed, or ask bono)

and he launches a $200 billion unnecessary war to "protect americans" while our own country's ports and borders are utterly unsecure. what really was that all about? oil? ego? re-election? a vendetta?

so these, to me, aren't signposts of a man whose character is deeply seeded in selflessness. granted, every president has misallocated large sums of money for an inauguration party - and i think they're all devoid of true altruism for it.

politicians don't get elected without partaking in some sort of nefariousness. but again, it's all about relativity, and bush is exceptionally and inhumanely low on the totem pole.

---

i don't post alot of song lyrics. maybe i should. my favorite poetry comes from song lyrics. anyway, these are from the song "so says i" by one of my favorite groups the shins. they seemed appropriate:

An address to the golden door
I was strumming on a stone again
pulling teeth from the pimps of gore when hatched
a tragic opera in my mind...
and it told of a new design
in which every soul is duty bound
to uphold all the statues of boredom therein lies
the fatal flaw of the red age

Because it was nothing like we'd ever dremt
our lust for life had gone away with the rent we hated
and because it made no money nobody saved no one's life.

So we burned all our uniforms
and let nature take its course again
and the big ones just eat all the little ones
that sent us back to the drawing board.

In our darkest hours
we have all asked for some
angel to come
sprinkle his dust all around
but all our crying voices they can't turn it around
and you've had some crazy conversations of your own.

We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs
but we still can't just behave ourselves
even if to save our own lives so, says I, WE ARE A BRUTAL KIND.

Cuz this is nothing like we'd ever dremt
tell Sir Thomas More we've got another failed attempt
cuz if it makes them money they might just give you life this time.

an evil dead remake!

it's true, sam raimi is talking about making a remake of the culturally phenomenal and flat-out fucking awesome evil dead. hollywood isn't satisfied with putting out garbage that fucks over the minds of the children of today - now they have to ruin what was formerly great? (george lucas i'm looking in your direction)

if you've ever seen the movie then you uderstand why its memory has to be preserved, and if you haven't seen it then you really need to.

below is taken from a website where you can sign a petition to protest the remake:

To: Ghost House and Senator Intl.

I have just heard of news of an Evil Dead remake. This to me is a disgrace and painful to hear, my childhood developed from that film. Before it the only horror me and my friends watched was mainstream but then it all changed, from the corner of a run-down video store we saw Evil Dead. We were 13 and it was important and wonderful to tell people about this great movie they'd never heard of. Please don't let Evil Dead be remade, tell the studios to fuck themselves, we want original horror, not re-hashes of our classics that we hold so dearly in our sick and twisted hearts. The line has been crossed too far. Evil Dead should not be remade with a "fresh hip cast". Leave classics alone and make Hollywood be original.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

i'm going to leave a link to the petition on my sidebar. if you understand the importance of not ruining happy memories, please tell others to sign it.

supposedly sam raimi (original director) and bruce campbell (original main character) are both going to be involved. i think a collaborative effort between those two is great, but why can't they make a different horror film instead of resurrecting (ha) and remaking an old one? what's happened to originality in this country?

but do they julienne

what's the deal with the new jennifer garner movie? is she fighting people with steak knives? they have guns, and she has steak knives? seems... odd. unless they're those knives that can cut a soup can in half. those are super.

i've taken probably too much xanax and will be sleeping a deep sleep soon, and for a while. i have nothing to eat in my apartment so i had little recourse. i'll always opt for sleep over hunger. or sleep over anything.

so i'm going to go make love to my favorite recliner and watch my new dvd of garden state, which, if you haven't seen it, is just as super as knives that cut cans.

i ordered some other dvd's today (t'was a spend-happy day) including but not limited to: evil dead 2, a clockwork orange, dr. strangelove (yes, both kubrick films), and da ali g show season 1.

reminder: in protest of the bush inauguration festivities this week, make sure not to buy anything on thursday, january 20. economic boycott - it's a national thing, look it up. spread the word. fight the power. eat your vegetables.

orafice space day

really i wanted to be milton, in the worst way. and did you see how fucking funny that picture of lumbergh is? woot. office space day founded by bunny, as far as i know.


Pre-Hyptnotized Peter

---

off-office topic...

my blogger template is really plain. i don't have the advanced skills to add the happy graphics and backgrounds and bells and whistles. and jimmy crack corn. i don't regularly visit the blogs i visit because of the pictures and graphics, i do it for the content.

but how much does a blog's design affect it's enjoyability for the non-authors? i'm not talking about ease-of-use (even though i have written off some blogs because of it), just the oft-extemporaneous decorative stuff.

if it's a really big deal i'd consider doing something about my blogger-plain-and-tall. personally all i want from a blog is an easy-to-read font and at least a modecum of creativity put into what's written. substance over style.

god this post is boring. i should punch myself. again.

thick eight?

internets pornography is great. tony-the-tiger grrrrreat. it's a daily sacrament of mine to peruse the free clips, saving what i feel is pertinent to my hard drive. i don't think i'm alone; i could be wrong (no i couldn't - the porn industry is huge). everyone knows that everyone looks at porn at least semi-regularly, and i'm not special.

here's the rub (pun intended). i've heard (and believe) women (who) complain about airbrushed, waifish models in magazines and the unrealistic goals they set for female readers (and males too - how are we supposed to get dates with those types? fuck.). but how about the dudes in pornos with the mutant genitals? how do they make the average man feel by comparison? i refuse to believe that the median size of a penis is comparable to a police baton. call it denial, but i'm only trying to be realistic.

i am perfectly content with my own mr. monkey, and he is perfectly content with mr. lefthand. and while i will continue to enjoy erotic copulative acts (i call it "art") on the internets, i must constantly remember in the back of my mind that an almost inverse relationship exists between published media and reality.

this is not my way of saying i have a small penis. if my penis was small i'd be a republican with a big truck, lots of guns, and a belt buckle the size of a hubcap. i'd probably also be homophobic and gay.

i just want to see a more accurate depiction of life in media, even in an online triple-x throwdown.

goddamned pink!

this is a warning to the bloggers whose blogs i read (if you know who you are). if i read any vignettes about how wonderful of a valentine's day you and your other will have/have had, you are dead_to_me.

if you're in love, and happy and you know it, then that's great. bully for you. but what good does it do to proclaim it to the world except to make yourself feel better by making everyone else feel worse? which, consciously or otherwise, is all it does. it's bragging in its simplest form. the only kind of love i want to hear about is the kind that produces slappity-whappity noises.

i passed the v-day aisle at the store and am now giving serious thought to buying one of those giant teddy bears holding a red heart, ripping off the head and mounting it on a giant pole in front of my house as a warning to all those who may approach.

"ohhhh... wonder why you're single phizz?" no, i don't. the people who think me deranged for mounting a stuffed bear's head on a pig pole aren't the kind i'd like to hang around with anyway. call it a screening process.

and if you're that "in love" then why only celebrate it one day a year? don't you see that it's just a made-up holiday whose sole purpose is to guilt your boyfriend or girlfriend or nongirlfriend/boyfriend or inflatable girlfriend into buying unnecessary garbage? didn't we spend enough in december? am i wrong?

coincidentally i also saw an aisle full of mardi gras tchotchkes, after which i had to make a bee-line for the alcohol aisle. you'd think they'd put the two closer together.

boycott!!!!!

a blogger boycott of v-day - everyone pledge not to participate in the feb. 14 rituals, both by not writing about it nor buying anything v-day-related. no flowers or candy or stuffed animals or cards or even anything red or pink. if you have a bf/gf, then talk it over with them - they should understand. and if they don't then you should dump them, kill them, and bury them at sea.

spread the word!!!

i am raging against the commercialism and exploitation of love. fuck you hallmark! eat me russell stovers!

stage world

hey is a world where brad and jen aren't married a world we really want to live in?

at work i hate who i have to be. i talk and behave in a certain way that i really despise. i hear myself saying things like "how 'bout that" and other colloquialisms that are very uncharacteristic of me.

it's not being true to oneself, but if it means you have a job does that make it acceptable? the boss has a big deer head trophy in his office and isn't abashed at calling blacks "n-words", and i don't say anything contradictory because i like the job.

which furthers the importance of this whole big blog experiment - where i can be who i actually am and not fear reprisal. in the blog world i don't wear pants or shirts with buttons or put up with racist bull cookieness, and i can call republicans ball-lickers, because they are. and on the phone i don't have to act like joe whiteman with a wife and three kids and a dog named connor who prays before eating.

the plague

january has been such a vapid emotional wasteland. i'm not happy or sad, the weather isn't hot or cold or sunny or cloudy or rainy or dry, and sometimes i'm not sure if i'm awake or asleep. like now, for instance. i went out friday night, but i don't know if i had a good time or bad. i think i saw a mouse in my house the other day, and maybe i don't care. my apartment isn't dirty, but not exactly clean. today is sunday - the no-man's-land day of the week. and i don't know if i want to write or not. so blame january.

done with dems

as much as i want to i can't really be mad at john kerry. even though he conceded prematurely and skipped town when he should have been here (for the electoral vote count, he was in iraq) and ran a god-awful campaign and lost against a man who the majority of the country thinks is doing a bad job, i have to remember that he has dedicated his life to public service and risked his life in a time of war.

bud damn dude. can you roll over ANY more?

i'm done with the democratic party. all of this moving-to-the-right bullshit about trying to appeal to religiosos is fucking weak. move further to the left and get some fucking chutzpah.

people respect leadership and conviction, even when you're obviously wrong (george) and/or they disagree with you. trying to please everyone in this country means you please noone.

so i am an official independent. how sad is that - as much as i dislike republicans (and i REALLY dislike republicans. i can't use the word "hate" because i'm liberal and we don't hate anyone) i just cannot align myself with their opposing party.

it's completely metaphoric for the 2004 election; as much as people disliked bush they just couldn't bring themselves to vote for kerry.

anyway, that's that.

my new year's rockin' eve

i am happy that the holiday season is over. that period starting the day before thanksgiving and ending on january 2 is grueling. i'm sick of all things red and green, and frankly sick of reading and writing posts about the season.

that having been said, here's how my new year's eve went.

two friends and i get room at hotel acadiana, drink for a while, go downtown. sitting at a table in a bar chatting with three girls we didn't know (i still don't - me no remember. developing pictures). midnight - anonymous blonde girl who i'm talking to sticks tongue in my mouth. god bless sluts.

drink more, go back to hotel room circa 2:30, drink more, shmooze with some people who came back with us, sleep.

and now it's diet time. but i'm not going to "diet" so much as go on a "hunger strike" to protest holiday weight gain.

free alcohol = not... good...

new year's eve or not, if a bar is giving away free champagne it's never a great idea to drink myriad amounts of it. i should know better anyway - never my poison of choice. good times nonetheless.

i hate fireworks. except the kind i make daily in the shower. seriously, hangovers and loud noises are not complimentary. jackass neighbors. you were supposed to waste those things last night fucktards.