The Greatest Job I Ever Had

Welcome to my inaugural Positive Blog, where I only blog about things that make me happy, and give the reader, you, a warm, fuzzy feeling in that dark pit of despair during these gloomy, troubled times. This blog is about the greatest job I ever had. The reason for this topic? Because its topical. And why is it topical? Because I held it yesterday. But only for one day.

Nope, but close.

As reconciliation for not getting any love on Valentine's day, God (or Job. I hear he's in the bible...God of Employment?) gave me a wonderful present: a promotional job at a ski-resort. And what did I have to do for the entire, glorious, sun-soaked day? That's right. Snowboard and do tricks off of jumps.

Clocking in for a hard-day's worth of work

I basically snowboarded up and down the mountain representing (or representin') Emergen-C vitamin C drink. I wore a large, bright-blue backpack, occasionally handed out the packets like your favorite neighborhood drug-dealer, and busted gnarly tricks off of sick-ass jumps. Oh, and I got to ride for free, plus another free lift ticket. And I got paid a lot. And, the icing on the cake: I won a free pair of socks. 

Socks: the black sheep of the cake-icing-metaphor industry

So, in honor of this being the first annual Positive Blog, I'd like to get a little Positive Feedback from those who read this blog. What is the best job you, the reader, have ever held? And, what cool stuff, if any, did you end up stealing/walking away with accidentally/handed and told "this is yours to keep, for free" at the job?

Please comment! I need to generate enough ad-revenue to pay for all of these copyrighted photos I keep stealing.

Blog War: The Black Dahlia

An epic duel between two bloggers regarding the scandalous frock-line of Lady Guinevere

Welcome to my first, and quite possibly last, installment of Blog Wars. In this episode, I go tete-a-tete against the formidable Lady Nordeen AKA Heather the Chaste, a seasoned veteran in the blog game. The topic: the 2006 movie Black Dahlia. No no no, not THE Black Dahlia, the critically panned Brian De Palma flick starring Scarlett Johansson, dummy! I would never spend 3.99 of my hard-earned cash at my local mom-and-pop Blockbuster for a movie that got 34% on Rottentomatoes.com. We got the Ulli Lommel classic Black Dahlia, which, at the time, had NO critical ratings ANYWHERE, thus we knew we were in for a diamond-in-the-rough, cinematic treat. Or a steaming, fetid pile of dog-shit that no one would touch with a 10-foot hazmat pole.

Anyway! Here is my submission into the fray. Let the Blog War begin!

ULLI LOMMEL'S The Black Dahlia

Over the course of my life I have witnessed all sorts of Bad. Camp Bad. Ironic Bad. Bad Bad. Revolting Bad. Bad the Creeps up on You. Bad that hurts your Forehead. Bad the leaves a Bad-Hangover for a Week. Even Bad that leaves Bad-Bugs rabidly crawling over your skin from a particularly atrocious Bad-Binge. The best kind of Bad movies are the kind that you can hunker down with a friend, throw a bunch of peanut gallery comments at, and WALK AWAY from with a feeling of superiority and minimal amount of residual discomfort. The worst kind of bad, on the other hand, are those that make you question Existence, re-evaluate your feeling of living in America, and worst of all, who you are friends with. It is with much chagrin that I have to say, Ulli Lommel's Black Dahlia, in short, is the absolute worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. And the reason I am filled with such sorrow, is that my good friend, Christopher Woolsey, was kidnapped by Ulli and his gang and forced at rubber knife-point to star in this horrible, horrible movie.

Christopher Woolsey AKA Sutton Christopher. Photo taken shortly before disappearing.

Before I launch into this movie, I want to make this clear: Chris is my friend and I would never slam him; I think he is a very fine and capable actor that desperately needed money and was lucky enough to get paid movie work down in LA. That being said, it is unfortunate that he ended up in this incomprehensible pile of garbage. 

Black Dahlia capitalizes on the torture-porn craze sweeping the multiplexes by essentially being a sequence of shots of young ingenues being systematically murdered at a "casting call". There really isn't much else to it, really. Interspersed is a pathetic detective "back-story" involving the cold case of the Black Dahlia--a notorious real-life case of a young starlet who was gruesomely murdered in the late 40's--and a shit-load of additive-dissolve bursts and ambient whispering. Thats REALLY it. You could read this whole paragraph and probably take away more from it than watching the actual movie.

My genuine hope for this movie is that it be revitalized 20 years later a la Troll 2 and shown at midnight screenings, though its so revoltingly bad I'm not sure people would be able to muster the energy to lob insults and/or food at the screen.

Lady Nordeen, additional thoughts?

lbk

Juno: Stop the Madness

Though it will never, ever happen, the 9 most feared words in the human language right now are And the Academy Award for Best Picture Goes to Juno. And not because it is wrong, or it proves once and for all the Oscars are entirely irrelevant, or because having to read that off of a script without laughing breaks WGA code, but because of the horror, oh the horror, that will ensue once the studios realize not only does indie over-preciousness equal box-office gold, but it can be sweet gold statue-bait as well. And this means, oh yes, this means my friends, year-round, factory-assembled hipster garbage will be pumped out at the same rate of J-horror remakes and Tyler Perry films. Which is to say, we will be literally buried in twee. 

So why didn't I like Juno? It has a lot of things going for it, thats for sure. I love Michael Cera and Jason Bateman. I enjoy the movies of Judd Apatow, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with Juno. Oh, and I do love strippers, especially when they can turn the tables they occasionally stand on and go from being exploited to doing the exploiting (in this case, the commercialization of indie culture).

Cody Diablo, wondering whether to use MLA or Chicago-Style editing

Then what did put me off? Juno starts out with an indie-by-numbers approach to filmmaking. Main character has established, albeit superficial, quirk? Check. Title sequence done over a handmade looking animation sequence? Double check. Does the main song have a whimsical, earnest quality that evokes feelings of childhood and/or sounds like it could possibly be a song originally intended for children? Check and Mate.

All is forgiven for a movie like this, though, if a script has a good, natural flow and quality dialogue. Diablo's method of screenwriting appears to be coin as many catchphrases and deliver enough quips to satisfy an hour-and-a-half long prime-time sitcom. Its good to have clever dialogue in a movie, but having every other line work-in some sort of pop-culture reference ("honest to blog", which may become this blog's new header, is one that seems to gather the most hatred from critics) or witty retort can easily make once was an aspiring movie look like a bad episode of Gilmore Girls.

Although the tidal wave of cutesy, quippy lines of dialogue tend to annoy, the final weight that sank the SS Juno for me was the sappy and contrived placement of lightweight indie music within the film. Although the soundtrack stands alone pretty well for containing some great Belle and Sebastian and Belle and Sebastian-ish tracks, their forceful entry into the movie is almost laughably ludicrous. Its the equivalent to being repeatedly smashed over the head with a twee-pop hammer, and it has the same, disorienting and derailing effect.

And because of its success, it is only certain now that the dawn of Juno copy-cats is upon us now. Like moths to the light, Hollywood execs are scrambling to assemble the next adorably hip, Movie-Of-Our-Generation, and probably hoping an ex-Circe du Soleil acrobat will have written it so every single entertainment rag, newspaper, and blog will write about it. In fact, the dawn of this age seems to already have come upon us (although I don't think, unfortunately, this one was written by anyone from a french-clown background).

Did punch-up for No Country for Old Men

So if Juno does get the accolades it so-much-doesn't-deserve (there's a decent chance Diablo's rags-to-riches backstory may sway the Academy to give her best original screenplay), we have nothing to look forward to but jugs of Sunny D and orange tic-tacs in our horizons, ill-placed children's sing-a-longs, and the tendency to emphasize quirk over character-development in our horizons. So do us all a favor, and if you want to see the movie, and still don't trust me, watch it illegally on the internet. Then maybe there will only be 10 of these things tops this year.

We Formed a Blog

Right now my throat is heavily breaded, much like a fish-stick, with a sooty coat of smoke from ye' olde emphysema-ridden establishment, The Horse Brass. Less than one year from now, patrons and bar employees alike should be enjoying a collective gasp of fresh air, as Oregon will follow suit of most of the States and adopt a smoking-ban, effectively keeping your hair and clothes from smelling like the basement of hell when you return home. I, for one, am giddy with anticipatory excitement. I no longer will have to be concerned about my laundry cycles, nor will I any longer will I be forced to wear ugly "bar clothes" when I go out. I will sadly miss you, though, generic gray shirt.

Getting laid success-rate: 0.00078%. 

So, as I sit here in bed, recovering from a night of second-hand smoke and hard cider, I will wistfully recall those smoke-free Washingtonian days of yesteryear by inaugurating this blog as the Best Of Blog. Within it you shall find delicious old morsels of writing from my Northern days in Bellingham, nuggets of wisdom from my fleeting moments in Vancouver, and all things in between. I'll even throw in a few free steak-knives in the form of Portland blogging and, of course, the ubiquitous "more-to-come".

So what's first up? My about my watered-down indictment of Costco, a pretty tame screed considering I wrote it as a employee with a slowly forming hernia:

Casket 2-Pack Sale!

Originally Posted June 21, 2005



Many people think Costco was an invention of California. It wasn't. Costco was born and raised right here in the verdant NW, corporately masterminded in Issaquah. The first one sprouted up in the environs of Seattle almost a quarter of a century ago. Costco, a wholesale retail outlet that typically settles in remote locations to keep real-estate overhead at minimal levels, became embroiled in a heated battle with Priceclub in the mid 80s, winning out and buying out the rival company, skyrocketing Costco as the dominant membership based warehouse-seller in the US economy. It's no-frills, cement and re-bar environment paved the way for a new era of consumerism-- one that focuses less on flashy displays and superfluous marketing techniques and settles on the nitty-gritty: selling high-volume with rapid-turnover in addition to procuring membership fees in order to pass on staggering savings to the customer.

Costco has becoming synomous with exogenous perceptions of American culture: big, bulk, and uniform. Nothing at Costco comes "Le Petit". You don't go to Costco to buy a few items, or an impulsive pack of gum: you leave with more than you feel like you can digest. Costco is one of the only retailers where flatbed-carts are offered as a reasonable alternative adjacent to normal-sized shopping carts. It is based on the same subliminal and nebulous marketing technique known as "upsizing", where the consumer typically leaves with more material than he/she intended to leave with, at an inversely exponential fraction of savings. The lure of this indelible practice in our culture for retailers is as obvious as the gaudy displays of marketing grandiosity. Get the consumer in for a taste, then offer the whole pie for a little bit more. It preys on American's inability to eschew greed for moderation, and it works great.

When I was in Europe, I never saw any mega-stores quite like Costco. Sure there were markets that carried a bevy of goods, but none that held the sheer volume and selection of a Walmart or Target. Everything was localized. Most items were purchased at specialty stores, patissaries, boulangeries, brasseries, or open flea markets. European's last bastion of national individuality is held in this informal decree. When someone talks of the non-stop barrage of globalization, "Americanization", or "Mconaldization", they aren't specifically referring to the employment of 11-year-old Laotian amputees in sweatshops, but the growing tide of encroachment on these slowing drowning beacons of culture. The sad fact is, however, the economy is pretty much unstoppable. French people will begin to realize they would rather pay 11 cents for a baguette instead of 1euro40, and these monolithic superstores will begin sweeping into the historical outposts of civilization. Costco's tentacles only sinew up into the UK and Japan right now, and I doubt that it will spill into any of the EU for a a long time.


Neoclassical economics aside, and cultural morals aside, there's something I love about these stores other than the rock-bottom prices, the quality-control of the goods, and our AMAZING level of customer service in America (If there is one thing we take for granted in this country, its how respected the phrase "Can i see your manager?" is). It's the well-lubricated efficiency, the briskness of a management based structure, and all of it being a throwback to the heyday of the Rockafellers and Morgans and Pullmans (minus the employee-abuse).

Easiest way to smuggle-out 5 pallets of Kirkland Bottled Water

The other week Costco announced they would be teaming up with a California based funeral-services company to sell coffins. All obvious jokes aside, Costco has become an organization that is a microcosm of the country. You could live there and have all of your worldly needs attended to, from life to death.

5 Actors Who Could Never Play Convincing Normal Dudes

Originally posted January 10th, 2008.

Well, with my last blog landing in far more esoteric realms, I decided this week I would make it simple: a list of actors with some acute and witty observations about their amazing talent and complete lack of ability to play normal people. These are all actors in the peak of their histrionic prowess that possess certain features, physical or eerily subliminal, that disallow them from playing the average Joe Shlub in the latest shitty comedy. Some of them "could" hypothetically summon all of their dramatic energy and channel it into being best buds with Adam Sandler, but it'd still leave us with an unsettling feeling afterwards. Here's the list:


1) Cillian Murphy




Most of you know him as Dr. Crane AKA the Scarecrow in Batman Begins. I know him as "The Eyes". Even if you see him telling someone he loves them, or is petting a kitten, be warned: some horrible shit is about to go down. You know just by looking into those bulbous, infinite blue orbs that whatever he does is going to be followed by slicing your throat with a penknife and unleashing locusts in your parents house.

2) Ben Foster



Most notable for playing characters that are absolutely, positively fucking nuts, you probably know Ben Foster best as Russell, Claire's mercurial, bi-sexual, sometimes-boyfriend in 6 Feet Under. From there he graduated to playing a self-loathing Jewish Skinhead that makes Edward Norton's American History X neo-nazi look like Hello Kitty. He's also played an Archangel of Death, a blood-thirsty vampire, and a nihilistic murderer. So no, he's probably not going to be in the next Hollywood heart-warmer anytime soon.

3) Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick



The fat guy on the right is looking calm, but right after this photo was taken, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick AKA Damien turned towards him and said "You promised to take me to Baskin and Robbins before this. We didn't go to Baskin and Robbins" before releasing a pustule of blood-soaked larvae and fire-ants from his forehead. There is an obvious reason why this kid was cast in the newest incarnation of The Omen. It's because he IS the child of Satan. Sheesh, when are they gonna start hiring actors instead of reciting incantations at casting calls and conjuring up the spawn of Beezelbub?

4) Christian Bale



I'll admit, Christian Bale has played normal guys before. Hell, he was even a Newsie! But that doesn't mean he can convincing pull down the Everyman schtick like, say, Tom Hanks. Want proof? Try to find evidence of him telling a joke in any of the movies he's ever been in. Do you get the creepy feeling that he's about to stab whoever he's joking with? If not, maybe you have a sick, sick sense of humor or you're somehow missing the perpetual maniacal glow in his eyes (the same glow that allows him to lose 200 pounds for a low-budget indie film like it was no big deal).

5) Jeremy Davies



Jeremy Davies will always be a slimeball. Or a sleaze-bucket. Or someone with 1001 ticks, idiosyncracies, and obsessive-compulsive neuroses. But he will never, ever, ever be the guy you trust to diffuse the bomb and save the city in the nick of time. Davies has played a lot of great characters over the years, from a small part as a Press Corps member in Saving Private Ryan to an emaciated, Mansonish character in the new Werner Herzog film Rescue Dawn, and he's definitely an underrated and underused actor. Just don't expect him to be Aquaman.

The Bucket List

Originally posted December 28th, 2007. The start of my "writing reviews without seeing the actual thing" thread.

So I decided instead of actually waiting for a movie to be released and then reviewing it, I would submit a movie review sheerly based on watching half of a trailer, online hearsay, and whatever gaps my mind filled in for the rest.

The movie I've decided to review is "The Bucket List", a movie about to be unleashed upon the age-ed, decrepit, movie-going masses; in other words, those that don't illegally download movies and who are wooed in by Morgan Freeman's authoritative baritone and the come-hithering, arched-buttresses of Jack Nicolson's eye-brows.

The title "The Bucket List" derives from the age-old trope of the list of the 10, or 20, or, hell, even 100 things one should do before they die. The Acropolis, Skydiving, Same-Sex Experience; What sort of things would you do if you all of a sudden woke up and realized "Hey, I share the same hospital room as the narrator from every Frank Darabont movie and we're both going to be gone soon?".

So you wake up, put on your slippers, kick aside your academy awards, step-around your Harley that was a gift from Peter Fonda, stick the keys to your Crown Victoria in the ignition, and meet with the director of "This is Spinal Tap" and "Kate and Leopold" and talk about the great watermark-leaving opus you want to make before you die. You both discuss the details of the movie: Will there be an initial salty dis-ease between the two hard-veneered leads? Will they get into sticky situations with high-potential for comic pratfalls unbecoming of men their age? And will they, oh for the love of god will they, uncover the true meaning of Christmas (hint: it lies in the doe-like eyes of a adorably naive 6-year-old)?

You decide on the demographic of your picture: septuagenarians with adopted Chinese children who aren't yet old enough to know good from crap. Should there be a hi-larious scene where the two lads attempt to ride motorcycles? Would a PG-13 rated scene of sexual-misunderstanding and naughty euphemisms be too much for the adopted Chinese child? Will Annette Benning be willing to phone-in a scene with a burned Thanksgiving turkey?

And while wistfully looking back and reminiscing about the movies you've made, you decide you've created the perfect denouement to your solid-gold careers. The Bucket List has been completed. You can go home now.

And no, this man is not in it:

Struggles

Originally Posted Jan. 19th, 2008. In case you are wondering what this is all about, it is a parody of http://everystudent.com/wires/jenniferm.html which was run as a Facebook ad for a while.



One student writes about his struggles with internet pornography addiction, and how god intervened and set his path straight.


I was 18 and living on a houseboat in an abusive foster family. My foster father used to toss his cigarettes into the water and make me jump into the lake in sub-freezing temperatures and retrieve them for him with my mouth, just like a dog. If only I would have been fed as well as one, I wouldn't have complained. If I didn't allow any of the cigarettes to get wet, he would occasionally let me smoke one, even though I had acute asthma and a weak lung. Suffice to say, these were some of my good memories of my teenage years.

When I moved away to college a year later on a student loan, I felt as astray and rudderless as the buoys that sometimes kept our houseboat afloat during those tumultuous times. In order to satiate the yearning void of loneliness, I turned to the only natural avenue of escape available in an alcohol-free dorm: Internet Pornography. In stead of checking my grades, I'd check on the nakedness status of my cam-whore subscriptions. Any idle moment available became an opportunity to scan the latest updates at bigtitsroundasses.com. I'd sometimes stay up till dawn surfing the web until my eyelids were chapped with the crust of the new day and my fingers were but mere sacs of blistery fluid.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was addicted to internet porn, big time. And even worse, I didn't realize it had anything to do with my abusive foster father and his mongrelization of me, thus I didn't have any way to figure out how to right myself. It wasn't until one late Spring afternoon when I stumbled upon a campus Christian potato-sack race that I found Christ and steadied my wayward skiff.

I was searching for the ResTek offices, since the internet had been down for an hour and I was starting to get pangs of withdrawal-related nausea, when literally "tripped" upon this glorious beacon of hope in the stormy sea of my amorality. "Look Out!" screamed a girl, but it was too late. Just like the Holy Spirit, she knocked into me like a force of nature. Seeing how this was my first physical contact with a real human girl since I had matriculated, I was so befuddled by the interaction I tried clicking on her breasts with an invisible mouse.

Luckily, like all of god's children, she was forgiving of my prurient ways and settled on teaching me how to sack-race. Before I had the chance to make an off-color joke like I would normally do on a comment page, I was off and running with the flock, and being slowly but surely saved by the invisible, indiscriminate hand of god in the process.

As it says in Matthew 3:29 "...And he shall no longer looketh at the anointed cup, nor the 2 comely young virgins supplicating over the receptacle, or he shall bring shame unto himself and other onlookers", and in Luke 30:15 "...avert thine eyes from thy boobie".

I feel lucky to be saved.

My Mom and Walter Powell

Originally Posted Oct. 26th, 2007.

After returning from an extended stay-over in Europe and Asia, my mother returned to Portland nearly penniless but instilled with the vim and vigor traveling abroad puts in one’s world-view. She was strolling downtown Portland one afternoon and came across a tiny bookstore. Yes, it was Powell’s, but not the monolithic mega-store it has become today, but a modest, intimate building several blocks away from the current location. Inside, she found a wonderful coffee-table book about hiking destinations in the area, filled with lush photography.

Since her stint in Europe, my mother had become a shrewd bargainer, and was still teeming with the same confidence she left behind at the Spanish marketplaces and Parisian vendors. She inquired to the older gentleman running the store what it would take to get the book at a discounted price, hoping to talk him down to slightly above wholesale cost.

“I’ll tell you what” said the man, “I’m a little short-staffed today, and the shelves are a mess. If you help me for a few hours, the book is yours.”

My mother, having already mastered the vagaries of the dewey decimal system as a part-time librarian in the university library, felt as if she would be up to the task. She accepted his offer and had the shelves ship-shape in no time.

Years later, after beginning to see this man more prominently in the press, she would realize that this man was the store owner, Walter Powell, which leads me to wonder if I unconsciously lied in the job interview that I am indeed related to a Powell’s employee.

Emily Powell; Depending on what happened during those 3 hours, may also be my cousin

I love and heart you, internet

Originally Posted May 18th, 2006. This is one of my favorite, infamously exhausting rants on the eroding standards of the world.

I used to take the time to correct my spelling in IM, even sometimes carefully taking the time to insert "commas" (haha, remember those wastes of space?), apostraphes in contractions (I'm lovin' it!), and using a painful assortment of words to describe difficult moments in my life instead of using the emoticon with the X through its mouth (yeah, that one). I used to even DESCRIBE to people where I was going, giving them a reasonable time-frame of expected return, and then informing them when I was returning with an affixed apology in postscript.

Wait, hold on a sec...BRB. Ok, I'm B.

HAHA!!! What a n00b I was.

But the real question is, with the encroaching dumbening down of language: what is life going to be like, etymologically, linguistically, culturally, etc... 10 years from now?

Here's a GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE FROM A FAKE TIME TRAVELLER WHO DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN BLOG HIS EXPERIENCES RATHER THAN BET ON THE SUPERBOWL AND THE TRIPLE CROWN!!!!

I should probably try to make SOME money to make payments on my DeLorean, though

10 years from now communication is solely going to based on Napolean Dynamite quotes, extremely long acronyms (IWOTAMPMRNWAPP: I'm waiting outside the AM/PM right now with a pizza pocket), and the phrase "oh, just read about it in my blog". All other forms of communication, especially amongst the exiled "literati" (the non-philistines who read "outside of the blogosphere"), will be punishable via reintegration into the sub-comminicae by being forced to read a 14 year old girl's myspace "likes and dislikes" page until their eyelids attempt to fully devour your eyeballs.

Saying phrases like "I appreciate Rousseau, but I think his earlier works were a tad defeatist", "Wasn't Jesus really Black?" and "I actually read the preface AND the epilogue!" will all be punishable by death. All foreign films with subtitles shall be banned, for people do not wish to "read" when they go to the movie theaters. In fact, movie theaters will no longer be allowed to display any words, including on the marquee, advertising, and confusing movie times, for they remind patrons of books too much. All books will be adaptations of existing movies, and even then, they will always be far worse than their cinematic counterparts so no one will buy them.

Your summer-reading assignment

"Ulysses", "Gravity's Rainbow", and "The Old Man and the Sea" will all be downloadable in text messaging format, with the main characters thoughts and feelings expressed with an animated cartoon owl in place of rich and descriptive prose. By this time, text messaging will be so obsolete that barely anyone will do this, thus leading libraries to replace physical tomes with text message transcripts. People will still read the inside liners to write their book reports.

Unfortunately, book reports will be banned several months later because they drive down standardized test scores too much. Speaking of standardized test scores, thankfully they will have not left ANY CHILD BEHIND...except the poor kids, the minorities, the males in writing and reading comprehension, the females in mathamatics and science (okay, far fewer than in that category than the males in the other category), and the teachers' inner children. But thankfully, well-endowed, predominantly-white schools and their children will not be left behind...they will be WELL-COMPENSATED for keeping ahead of the pack while having started 3-laps ahead.

They will all be given complimentary text-messaged copies of the book "Superfudge" by Judy Bloom.


TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>>

December Wishes

Originally Posted Christmas Eve, 2003.

PRESENTING! The most cliche, sentimental, and pretentious christmas post ever!

Remember when you used to wake-up in the middle of the night a hear your dad trip over the space-heater, and think Santa Claus and his Reindeer had finally arrived? 

Remember setting those cookies and carrots out and waking up the next morning to find them half-eaten with your mothers shade of lipstick on them and a note written in her hand-writing on the table, but being too naive to notice?

Remember tearing through presents christmas morning, skipping over the softer wrapped gifts for the harder and bigger ones?

I remember when I was really young I peeped out of my room and thought Santa had brought me a spaceship (which was really a particle board puppet theater assembled by my father). I couldn't get any sleep, fancying all of the distant galaxies and nebulas I would visit in my newly acquired spaceship that night. The excitement and anticipation of waking up the next morning, feigning surprise, and learning how to operate the nodes, dials, and buttons in order to pilot my way to Cignus 5 to visit our extraterrestrial brethern while my parents opened up relatives gifts of pottery and candles, was excruciating. I turned on my hummel-like christmas house-lamp and read through every one of my magazines, even "National Geographic Kids" and "Highlights", in order to fall asleep. No such luck was had, so I tried the tired and true method of counting sheep jumping over fences in the back of my mind. Still a bust. I eventually fell asleep around 4am, with visions of ET and guitar-picked shaped space aliens flashing me the "live long and prosper sign" then heralding their outer-planetary visitor as their honorary emperor. 

The dissapointment of finding out I wouldn't be cruising to the Andromeda galaxy the next day was crushing, but I learned to love my puppet theater. I created short little Shakespearean tragedies with paper-mache puppets, typically which involved bashing the King and the Friar puppet violently together, and then doing the same with the King and the Queen to indicate they were making out. My whimsical plays never quite evolved out of this childish template, however, they just seemed to involve more and more puppets as I soon figured out how to manipulated several on one hand. 

What amounted to a grotesque orgy of flannel and terry-cloth, I soon gave up my puppeteering racket and retired the theater to the fabled annals of the geodesic shed, the graveyard of all flash-in-the-pan presents and failed knickknacks. Out there also lies am Olympic diving trophy which I'm pretty sure my dad never won, a Tweety Bird mask from halloween that accidental merged with surgical tubing and a caulking gun, creating the most macabre looking looney tune since Daffy Duck got shot in the face by Elmer Fudd, fireworks long past expiration, and I'm almost positive at least one dead transient. 

Well, on the delightful notion of me harboring a dead hobo in my shed, I bid everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone gets their spaceships and ponies and dirtbikes and Redrider bee bee guns and Nintendos and Teddy Ruxpins (and if you dont know who that is, you obviously were not a child byproduct of the 80's). 

Remember, if you didn't get what you wanted, there's always receipts, and if the receipts are MIA, then there's always the black market and the potential for smashing stuff.

Ugh

Originally Posted October 12th, 2003, I think this simultaneously foreshadows my musical elitism and retroactively negates all of my musical opinions in the Bands I Like section. But I'm posting it because I still find it pretty funny.

Bands I fucking hate:

Dave Matthews "Band"

Creed

Good Charlotte

Any band with "Mud" in their name

Any band that purposely mispells a word in their name, or inserts backwards letters, in order to connect with their illiterate, low IQ fanbase.

International Noise Conspiracy

Jack Johnson or any shitty open mic artist that attempts to cop his "style" or mentions that he used to be a surfer. Yeah, douche, he also was a heavyweight boxer that nearly stole the title from mohammhed ali.

Phish. Take a shower.

Alien Ant Farm. God, the inverted mohawk is so anti-everything, you rebel.

Bush. Stop whining about how handsome and rich you are, and how every time you bang Gwen Stephanie she screams out her bassists name.

Dashboard. Stop whining about everything, ditch the ovaries, kick aside the miles of tissue, and punch yourself in the face, ugly. (Some people say I look like Chris Caraberra)

Coldplay. Fuck Coldplay. Wow, life is miserable. I'm a goodlooking brit with oodles of money who's boning Gwenyth Paltrow, whom worships the ground I walk on.

Limp Bizkit. Wait, I already covered them with the misspelling category. Shit, they deserve to be on here twice.

Maroon 5. I don't really know who they are, but I hate them already.

Metallica. Seriously. Never has there been a band that has caused me to hastily turn the radio to NPR faster than these white-trash dinosaurs. And fuck Lars Ulrich for ratting out his fans and starting the RIAA's crusade to get people to stop listening to music. Everytime I hear one of your shitty songs off of "Saint Anger" you should pay ME royalties for having to endure your turds.

Slipknot. Fat trailer trash in clown make-up pretending to make jock rock. At least KISS exploited it better than you did, number 1-8.

All-American Rejects. Whiny emo kids tailor-made to sell style over substance. Possibly some of the worst stuff I've ever heard.

Incubus. Okay, they aren't that terrible. I'm just sick of every dude with a backwards Abercrombie and Fitch hat think that he's rebelling against conformist rap when he blares another "5 dudes and a DJ" band out of his Toyota Tundra.

The Vines. Okay, where are they now?

Bands that are still kicking my ass:

Modest Mouse
Minus the Bear
The Mars Volta
Wilco
Sigur Ros
Unearth
Mos Def
One of These Days
Hella
Stretch Arm Strong
Dillinger Escape Plan
Atmosphere
The Witness Protection Program
Rythm of 84 (thats not a misspelled name, I just dont know how to spell that damn word. Sigh, after all of these years in public education)
Led Zepplin (Who?)
Darkest Hour

My commencement speech: 2006

Originally Posted April 20th, 2007

First and foremost, I would like to thank the Dean of Students, Karen Morse for inviting me here to speak. If you are wondering where the money went to getting a commencement speaker of more status and integrity, then look no further than your Student Recreational Center. Man that’s one sweet rock-climbing wall!!!

I’d like to congratulate you on reaching a pinnacle in your educational careers. Now we can all start the exciting process of moving back into our parent’s basements.

Over the years at Western, I have learned many things.

I have learned that campus has over 3 million bricks, I think. I have also learned that 2 and a half million of these bricks are precariously dislodged and in no way help you out when you are 10 minutes late to your final exam.

I have learned that a member of our faculty can semi-publicly wish a cancer-stricken student to die, and somehow not get fired.

I have learned in 2003 that apparently Mathes hall is actually an elaborate terrorist training institution run by left-wing hippies.

I have learned that streaking in front of a camera is best done in a ski-mask during live coverage of the aforementioned residence hall.

I have learned that the best place to put level III sex offenders is within several blocks of a college campus in a poorly lit neighborhood.

I have learned that online file-sharing is, shockingly, illegal, unless, of course, no one catches you.

I have learned what plagiarism is. Plagiarism is the usurping of intellectual property, either intentional or unintentional, from a non-public domain source, without properly citing and giving due credit to the legal forbearers of said information. I came up with that one MYSELF.

I have learned that Sodexho, the food-service provider for our dormitories, also is the number one prison caterer in the United States.

I learned that downtown Bellingham has an incredibly vibrant night-life. It’s the only place you can walk a single block and see a college guy puke in the bushes, a homeless man masturbating, and a police car driving by ignoring all of this so he can go issue MIPs at a well-controlled house party

I have found that you always seem to get an MIP a week before your 21st birthday. I have also found that the 30 hours of community service getting an MIP entails is surprisingly easy to “do” if you have a knack for mimicking certain styles of handwriting.


I have learned that the free New York Time’s kiosks run out quite faster than the Western Front ones do.

I have learned that open mic at the underground coffeehouse is a great place to perform in front of a diverse audience of other musicians waiting to play and their girlfriends.


As you can see, the many great classes at Western have taught me vital life skills.

Many of you are wondering what’s next? Graduate School? Internships? Becoming one of those creepy older guys that still go to college parties?

The answer is not a simple one. For some, you may consider taking a year off, traveling around Europe, and coming back broke and hating the United States slightly more than when you left it. For others, you may wish to enter the existential hell known as working--perhaps for “the man” or perhaps for “the man known as your father at his used car dealership”. Regardless of your life’s trajectory, one thing is for certain: You WILL wish got you got a few more seconds in on that keg stand before leaving behind this glorified summer-camp.