an older meme...

...but it still cracks me up.

a bad day

Okay, so you think you're having a bad day, princess? Car wouldn't start? Couldn't sleep, so we're a little cranky? Out of milk for your cereal?

Well this gentleman wishes you would shut the hell up and quit your whining. Try getting HIT BY FUCKING LIGHTNING while crossing the street.

And then this bad-ass exemplar of the best strengths of humanity GETS UP AND CONTINUES WALKING.

See it to believe it.

ADDENDUM: I hear tell that some people think this might be hoaxerific. I don't know. Either way, it looks pretty awesome to my poor, naive, easily-fooled brain. If anyone hears or sees evidence that this is fake please let me know.



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oh, and...

Not sure the source on this. If anyone knows please tell me and I will attribute properly.

But only after I get done banging your sister.

early and often

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but where do you keep the corkscrew?

An idea whose time has come.

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Allen Ginsberg's Howl

The Denver Post got my review up online of square product theatre's production of 'Howl' a couple days early (thanks, John.)

But there were some formatting problems (that are hopefully getting worked out) and so a few grafs at the end got cut off. So here it is in its entirety.

Teresa Harrison adapted and stars in Allen Ginsberg's Howl, serving as host and carnival barker. (Marcin Mroz) (via the Denver Post)

ALLEN GINSBERG’S HOWL

The history of humankind is one of attempting to control: a plodding, tedious tale of our attempts to control our environment, our fellow humans, and even ourselves in ways large and small, all of which ultimately fail.

The universe laughs at our feeble efforts; it will still be laughing as the dust of our bones is eaten by the fireball that our sun will become.

So it’s no accident that the Beats, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, et al came along in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Control was the American watchword then, along with a certain Valium-induced false joy at the universal “success” of the American Dream--for everyone, that is, except blacks, women, homosexuals, and anyone else who thought there might be something better than a cookie-cutter life lived desperately grinning in the sweat-stained cracks between office, suburbia and suicide.

Square product theatre’s “Allen Ginsberg’s Howl” honors these ideas in a benevolent assault of words and images that suspends time and demands that we pay attention.

In “Howl” Teresa Harrison (who adapted the show) plays host and carnival barker, leading us down a rabbit-hole of seeming madness, a path that ultimately offers a sanity that is more true than the noise that surrounds us, if only we would look up from our computers and smartphones and televisions for a moment.

The audience is kept off-balance from the start, encouraged pre-show to wander into a room where a video depicting historical events plays and quotes about the show are scattered about, along with markers and a drawing book for guests to write in.

Soon, Harrison appears, announcing with the gonging of a hubcap that it’s time to head upstairs to the performance space.

A carnival/junkyard atmosphere permeates the early section of the show, with car parts strewn about and old typewriters dangling from the ceiling. Harrison banters with the crowd and with piano player Paul Fowler, and shamelessly flirts with bartender Bobby Dartt: “There’s no bar now, so you’re just...tender.”

Harrison and her co-director Emily K. Harrison have done tremendous work in creating the persona and honing the piece, dancing along the tightrope between weirdness and pretension. The only quibble about Harrison’s performance is she has a certain aggressive nervousness early on, likely a function of finding her comfort level in the audience interaction sections, a very difficult type of performance within which to be at ease.

Once she gets to her recitation of “Howl” itself, however, she is in her wheelhouse: hers is a heartfelt cry in the wilderness that echoes Ginsberg’s own.

But a blow-by-blow recounting of the events of the show would be not only useless but perhaps even counter-productive. It’s meant to mirror the visceral nature of Ginsberg’s poem in that it should wash through you, seeding you with images that stick to the soil of your soul.

As such, “Howl” is a show that some will love and some will hate. It is a short, sharp punch in the solar plexus; it is not orderly, and there are people who can’t stand that. Watching the opening-night audience was enlightening in itself, split as it was between clench-jawed “what the hell is this?” faces and laughing, irreverent ones.

But the two Harrisons (no relation) have done what they set out to do: celebrate Ginsberg’s seminal work while giving modern audiences plenty to think about in terms of our own complicity in this new era of control in which we live, one that is in some ways exponentially more oppressive, ominous, powerful and anti-human than the one the Beats struggled against.

The Beats demanded that we acknowledge the fearsome but ultimately freeing truth of the chaos at the heart of the universe and within ourselves. They showed us that there is beauty to be found among the broken, and the dispossessed, and the accidental--all of which are becoming harder than ever to find today, buried amid the mindless noise of our plastic and steel anti-culture.

###

god's power

Then there's this handy-dandy chart.

hmmm. touche.

It's probably one of those tortured, convoluted, Phelpsian punishments like God strikes at his most obedient believers because America is too supportive of gays. Or something.

That makes as much sense as any of the rest of it.

The case of the bald douche

The bald douche who inherited his daddy's money then went on to spectacularly implode several businesses and still claim he is both self-made and successful. Here's a vid of an interview in which the interviewer calls him out on his bullshit about 'success.'



Best lines: 'I didn't run the company [that went bankrupt six times].'
'You were chairman of the board. Why did you get paid $2 million a year then?'
...
'I didn't run the company.'

And here's what the title of his book should be. From the excellent site better book titles which you will love.

And then there's the birther thing. If you didn't see Jon Stewart's show last night, go here (Comedy Central's code for embedding video sucks my balls.)

Then there's this, via dangerous minds

Which goes hand in hand with this story, in which the Bald One is quoted as saying:

“China is raping this country,” Trump told employees at Wilcox Industries, a company that manufactures tactical equipment for U.S. military forces.

What does that make Trump? The shady frat-boy wingman who gives the girl a roofie colada?

don't talk to me before i have my off

Now that's good coffee.

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why is vin fucking diesel famous?

The Fast and The Furious FIVE?!?! Are we a nation of retards??

...

Oh yeah.

Well, at any rate, I remembered I had seen this video a while back and looked it up, because every time I see that bald headed semi-coherent moron on my television hawking his new movie for retards about retards (I bet the movie theaters where this is shown just REEK of Axe) I think of this breakdancing instructional video he shot way back in the day.

And I laugh heartily.

I suggest everyone think of this video--and share it with your neighbors--whenever you think of Vin Diesel.

norman

Why is this even a gif file? He's not doing any--OH FUCK!

intelligent life in the universe? not around here.

The news that SETI has suspended operations made me think of this cartoon.

Aliens: if I were you I would let voice mail pick up our calls too.

found my dentist sign

And after I administer the gas, you'll open even wider! :D

The Moment

There really only is one moment, when you think of it: this moment.

This moment right here. Any other moment is one you are imagining, a far-off one that your smart/stupid human brain tells you might exist someday. Or it is a moment from the past, one that your big ol' clever/retarded human brain tells you happened in a particular way--no doubt with the teller of the tale, you (your brain) at the center of the story.

It is a story told by an idiot-child to a drunk as recounted by an egomaniac.

And this idiot passenger inside your skull (speaking from experience) is clearly biased and not to be trusted.

Either way, these tales from past and future are in truth tales told by an observer, not by you, not by a participant. Because you are not participating in these imagined moments. You can only participate in one moment: this one.

image by troy found via

"If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself...you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing."

--Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"The eternal life is given to those who live in the present."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

national masturbation month

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Not sure which month this is, but...ah, hell. Doesn't really matter does it?

FB versus real life

Of course, we'd also shove pictures of our dinner in each others' faces, yell random, vaguely mysterious phrases that explain nothing but beg for attention, (eg: 'I'm so mad right now!' or 'Life is sometimes so hard!') and announce our medical conditions to the world.

girls like pr0n too!

And anal fisting too! Wait, what did you guys say?

bye bye apocalypse

This is the design of a t-shirt from threadless, and if anyone loves me, you can feel free to buy this for me.

XL please. :D

I like it because it is somehow creepy and soothing at once.

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The End of Empire

There is a breathless feeling in the air these days, is there not? A sensation that we’re hanging on near the edge of the world, that here there be dragons. There is undeniably something in the zeitgeist that tells us a massive change is afoot.

You can sense it everywhere--the day after I wrote the beginnings of this piece I came across these articles: ‘Mad Max in America: Our Republican Future’ and ‘Imperial Decline: How Does It Feel To Be Inside A Dying Empire.’

The first is an excellent if somewhat heavy-handed piece from Dangerous Minds that talks a lot about income imbalance, and the second is from Alternet and deals more with the notion of empire as a military occupational force.

(Sidebar: I swear I started writing along these lines Tuesday night at rehearsal. I think these articles and even the title of the second one might just serve to prove part of my point, that this is something in the air, and also that once an idea is released into the world, it circulates. Somehow.)

So, you can sense it everywhere--everywhere, that is, except in the halls of power. Those who occupy the aeries of Washington, the elites and those who serve them continue playing The Old Game apace, despite the naked fact of the rules having been recently rendered invalid and inapplicable, at least to them. The Elites are, as always, quite immune from reality. Only this time they have so blatantly rigged the game in their favor that a sour, poisonous feeling permeates the national mood outside the Beltway.

Across the country and the globe there is a tension, as if humankind were a rubber band pulled so taut that it must surely soon snap, that there must soon, any second come a reckoning, one that is likely to put out more than an eye. But our fearless leaders continue to lead as if we were still living in the 90s, or the 80s, or any other decade since World War Two. They talk as if this mad lie they laughably continue to call America or Democracy were still something noble, not an overgrown, petulant behemoth-child fattened on wealth and privilege, a retarded, inbred oaf crammed into too-small overalls, snot smeared on his sleeves, drool dangling from his jutting chin, accidentally crushing pets, mindlessly raping the nanny and hulking over even his parents, striking out at those around him even as they view him with a weird combination of fear and pity.

It is the looming end of empire, of course. That’s what many, many different groups of people sense but perhaps are ill-equipped to define (e.g. the tea party’s predictions about the socialist-led usurpation of some imagined Christian America; religious groups seeing Armageddon around every corner; everyone, left and right, predicting Obama will destroy us all.)

But of course, one must presume that people of every era felt something similar when their own time was nearing an end. Mustn’t the Aztecs have recognized their own doom reflected in the glittering armor of Cortez and his men as they swept ashore like a clanking, disease-ridden sea? Didn’t the Emperor of Japan see in the blood-red sails of Marco Polo the setting of his own sun? Surely the relics of the Roman peoples could smell the wolves and the wilderness closing in as the barbarians crashed the Civilization Party with increasing boldness, as weeds grew through the cracks in the piazza and the empire’s sphere of influence shrank until it was no more than the heavily-guarded palaces of the privileged.

Also, the world obviously spins on--without Romans, without Aztecs and with a much different Japan than Marco Polo (might have) encountered--yet it spins on nonetheless.

Yet I can’t help but think that the greedy and short-sighted who are running things now--and scrambling desperately to get their own golden ticket at the expense of everyone and everything else--are in a way hastening the end of their own power. As the sheer unprecedented scale of their selfishness shreds the fabric of the presumed fairness of our nation, they hasten the dissolution of that nation, and thus the very machinery that gave them all that wealth and power. As they do violence to a sense of shared sacrifice, a sense of shared goals, they do violence to the sense that we even are one nation.

And of course that’s reflected on the streets as well; the leaders who should be suffering for the war crimes and financial crimes they have committed continue to babble away on the news, advise congressmen, and generally ply their trade, which is generally to make money for themselves.

So how and why should regular Americans continue to believe that we are all in this together when we are so clearly not?

And perhaps I read too much into things, but is there not a sense on the street of a certain cold barbarism creeping into the way we deal with and think about one another? There is a turning-away at the mention of the hungry or the homeless or any of a thousand kinds of unfortunate circumstances that affect our fellow Americans that would have been unthinkable during the first Great Depression.

Certainly times were tough back then, certainly a hardness must have affected people and made them reluctant to help. Yet, help they did. And people saw emerging from the Depression as something that ALL of us would achieve, together. This two-tiered economy of today is poison to the notion that an America might continue to exist. It poisons all of us.

It could be argued that we are becoming them, the insensate, inhuman, moneyed titans who feel nothing for anyone but their own, and are only concerned with their own mountains of wealth, even if the nation and the very planet itself be damned in the process. This mad imbalance cannot hold.

But. But, but, but.

Perhaps it is a bit apocalyptic to announce that, because the way we are used to doing things is about to go away, it portends the end of everything always.

On the other hand, this particular era of empire is one that has controlled the world for a long, long time, and has so permeated everything we think of as reality that it promises to be particularly wrenching as it is forced to give up the ghost, whether by revolution or by the sheer weight of history. The people who have inherited the wealth and power of this American empire, the decadent and inbred bluebloods, the dim-witted, frayed threads of the tapestry of U.S. royalty who cling to their great-grandfathers’ fortunes, wealth grown obscene and cancerous, wealth so institutionalized that it threatens the very stability of our democracy, these behemoth-children will not give way easily.

click to embiggen. via.

And they have guns and tanks and all the weight of government on their side.

But as weeds spring up along the highways, as potholes remain unrepaired, as police calls go longer and longer unanswered, as we walk past bleeding people lying on the sidewalk, one can’t help but wonder at the road we’ve started along, and if there is any turning back now.

It's a nice day for a walk, come to think of it. I can almost see the crumbling edifice of the coliseum in the distance, shining in a brilliant, red-orange glow as the sun sets.

--kjb

well this just isn't a fair fight

self-explanatory.

this...I don't know what this is.

This is Batman surfing. Your argument is invalid.



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there's a slightly green haze on the meadow

via (lots more pics here.)

So this is my alma mater on 420. Good old CU-Boulder. And actually I'm kind of proud that this is the scene here.

I mean, don't get me wrong. There are a whole lot of things to hate about Boulder. And I do tend to go on about them at the slightest provocation.

To wit: Yuppie boomer douchetards living in million dollar houses pretending to still have hippie values; ski-douche California princes and princesses with clueless parents paying ridiculous out of state tuitions and thus driving actual humans to relocate in Broomfield and Lafayette; a certain dip-shitted, smug self-righteousness in all things granolatastic like environmentalism and tolerance.

But 420 at Farrand Field? This is pure, hardcore civil disobedience. This is a mighty 'fuck you' to ridiculous drug laws and mindless authority with no common sense behind it. This is grand scale anarchy, and it is beautiful in its own way.

If we could get people to respond this strongly to the unprecedented usurpation of the rule of law in favor of the rich and connected we've seen in the past couple years, we might be able to get actual change in this country.

But that's neither here nor there.

Now, as to whether I personally could deal with getting baked and being crammed in among ten thousand stinking patchouli-drenched people?

Not likely. I shall enjoy the view from here, safely behind the haze behind my computer screen.

Go Buffs. Just, like...get me a beer while you're there. And some Cheetos. Maybe a bowl of cereal...but not, like, granola or anything. You know. Captain Crunch. Like that. What were you saying?

f7u12 that director

Too true. Likely found this on reddit. Go to this sub-reddit for all the f7u12 in the entire world.

how to get laid

Oh, but I have to disagree. You've got to throw a minor chord in there too in order to ensure maximum lust factors are all fully engaged. A nice E minor does wonders. For the more advanced, an occasional 7th adds a hint of craziness, and edge to the song.

steal everything

Love me some Jim Jarmusch.

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dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb

I have to get to NYC this spring and see Trey Parker and Matt Stone's musical 'The Book of Mormon.' It's not only the product of the twisted (fellow CU alum) freaks who brought us South Park, it is also getting rave reviews from like, real musical theatre critics. Here's an ABC piece on it.



Then here's them discussing the Mormon episode of South Park.

super emo friends

click to embiggen.

by jsalvadore design. awesome.

true inspiration from one of the greatest minds of our generation

Deep thoughts. Very, very deep thoughts indeed.

masterpiece

Happiness is finding both.
And a napkin for afterward.

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literal band names

This is brilliant. I can't believe no one thought of this before now. Click to embiggen.

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how far will you get on a first date?

Well, according to music-themed dating site Tastebuds, if you're a Coldplay fan, you will be ending your date alone with a bottle of Jergins and a box of tissues.

HOWEVER! All glory to us filthy, nasty, slutty Nirvana fans! Thanks, Kurt Cobain!

(Sidebar: Of course they don't mention if the Coldplay fans in question are the usual fans of that limp, watery and tepid band: gay guys who still think they're straight. Because, just saying, if two Coldplay fans who were gay and out got together, the results of the chart might be very different. Poor Coldplay fan-girls.)

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the more you know...

Well, if you're one of those characters who didn't understand jive talk before, I'm hippin' you, man. I have discovered a list (via via) that should help you out. Now you too can be really in there.

I'm laying it on you straight; just watch out for hipsters and clipsters, will ya? Now I've got to cut on down, off to get my juices flowing.

it's windy in here

Um...I don't think that means what you think it means.

Hello Kitty, indeed.

everyone sing with me:

'Ewoks roasting on an open fiiiiirrrre...'

a new communication tool

via.

Okay, now, I am man enough to admit that I overuse texting. I hate talking on the phone. I'm not sure why, but it is my belief that there is something vital that is lost in voice communication when one doesn't have the benefit of seeing the other person's face. Communication is perhaps a whole lot more non-verbal than we give it credit for, and perhaps we see and register much, much more from a person's non-verbal cues than we know. Those micro-seconds of expression indicate so much that we can't even consciously comprehend what all is there; we just know and understand more face-to-face.

Of course, something is lost in texting and email messages as well. But perhaps the difference there is that no one pretends or feels the need to pretend that a text message is the same as a conversation. With the phone, it just SEEMS like it should be equivalent. But it is not. It is much worse, and often weird and awkward and forced. Talking on the phone was the worst part about being a music journalist. You have about five seconds to form a rapport with someone who has no idea who you are, and who has to deal with assholes like yourself dozens of times a week, answering the same asinine questions. It is an impossible mission.

Anyway. Found this and thought it was pretty fucking funny.

we have each other

I know, I have a strict 'no cute kitteh pics' rule on this blog. But come on. This one is destined to become a classic.
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women in the workplace

"I know most of the answers when it comes to the men."

"You handle the men well, Joe. I think you'll find that most of the problems you face with the men also apply to the women."

"Women scare me."

"..."



This awesomely dated PSA short on dealing with women in the workplace came from a very cool site called dangerous minds.

"All those technical terms must sound like a bunch of double-talk to them!"

"It takes time to make them feel at home. It helps a lot to get them off."

...Whoops! the rest of that sentence is as follows: "...It helps a lot to get them off to a good start."

reality

oh shi--

hellz yah, voltaire

oh that's just nasty

but still pretty goddamn funny.
*lock*

(now is that pedophilia? or incest?)

marriage looks pretty fun...

...I guess...

this second one is older, but it still cracks me up.

RIP Kurt Cobain

Somehow I do this every year: I block out the fact that Kurt Cobain died on my birthday. Probably because that's a weird, sad thing. What a sad, damaged person, what amazing music he made, and how many lives he touched, almost unwillingly. But he is certainly illustrative of my theory that it takes damaged people to make good art. Very very few calm, centered, content people create provocative things of beauty.

Anyway. I am a big fan, and not only because he has the best name in the universe. :)

ADDENDUM: Should have said I'm a big fan, despite his terrible taste in stupid, fat, murderous, fame-whore cunts. Proof there is no god: Kurt Cobain is dead and that sloppy-ass reality-show refugee still lives off his money.

ADDENDUM 2: Wow, Kurt. (Me, not Cobain.) Cranky much? I didn't sleep well last night and I wore myself out yesterday working out and running, so I may be a little under the weather today. Which may have led to a slightly more robust terminology when I was posting this earlier.

I perhaps should not have used the 'C' word to describe a woman, even a woman like Courtney Love. I just find her so completely bereft of any humanity or value of her own, so utterly empty and awful that I find it hard not to refer to her in the vilest of terms. In truth she is the blueprint for our modern scourge of fame-whores, people with no talent but only a goal of achieving even the cheapest and most empty fame, no matter who or what they have to do to get it.

birthday

but i don't feel (or act) a day over 14...
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happy easter!

i mean, this makes as much sense as everything else about easter. why not?
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