SLAVE NATION

Dear Valued Customer

MEATGRINDER — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:27:34 +0000

Dear Valued Customer,

We are very pleased to announce… FUCK YOU! Your bullshit company is so unsophisticated and lazy that you can’t be bothered to have your junk mail robot print out my fucking name? If you don’t even know my name, why the hell should I even listen to one word you have to tell me? Suffice it to say I was fed up with San Diego, fed up with my life drama, fed up with my life. The trip couldn’t have come a moment too soon, and to be completely honest I needed the money. I board the private G5 jet after a shower and a breakfast burrito, then shoot due north at 500 mph to Alaska. This is the first stop on this backwards around the world journey.

We fly out of San Diego on what is touted as a grand adventure. I am cynical yet curious at the same time. My companions’ desire enlightenment but they do not want to risk anything to get it. They have no idea of sacrifice or pain, every accommodation booked is 5-star, every vehicle is top notch – driver included. If something is one minute later than expected, tantrums ensue, anger, frustration, bitterness, suffering. Suffering because the locals don’t speak English. Suffering because the locals don’t wear haute couture. Suffering because the locals are slow, lazy, different. There is no attempt to understand, only piles of demands for answers and results. Answers and results that can and will never come.

It’s funny, the thing they are so vexed by is actually the key to the whole equation. Suffering. Suffering is the commonality between every motherfucker on this planet. It is a part of the human condition. They surround themselves with luxury to try and learn of beauty and meaning, but these things are everywhere if you can learn to see it. Freedom is individualistic. If you ask me, I can show you the path to the appreciation of things, meaningful communion with the world, and serenity, but you must walk the path. When most people meet me, or read this blog, or hear me speaking they immediately judge me. All they see is suffering. You call me vile. Judge my pain. Condemn my words. What you don’t see is my serenity, not despite the strife of living, but because of it. Everyone imagines me so miserable, but it is in the most wretched moments that I am the most at peace.

Life is change. Life is the inevitability of sickness and death. Impermanence, pain, and an unavoidable darkness. Struggle after struggle. Horror after horror. This is not just somebody else’s fate, this is mine. Modern American society can be viewed as the struggle to suppress these things. Seeking ignorance, comfort, and a mindless peace. The peace of humans before the fall from grace. The peace of animals. An attempt to get back into the garden of eden. This is the path away from enlightenment. This is self delusion. This is why I seek horror, relish in it. I have been wounded by the enjoyment of this world. I have been wounded by pleasure. I must then explore the world of horrors, of mortal terrors. I am a seeker, but I have no expectation. I have no use for ceremony or ritual. People seeking the ignorant peace of animals seek the defiance of truth. This is slavery. I seek the enlightened tranquility of consciousness. This is mastery. Some people choose to exist in stubborn ignorance. Fuck ‘em. Zombies.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need rarified states of consciousness to churn out some bullshit answer to the human dilemma. I’ve been shot at, rocketed, mortared, punched, kicked, beaten with clubs, and bombed. I’ve killed men, women, children, and beasts. This is not the answer. The sensations are only temporary. This does not elicit penetrating truth into the nature of reality. Most people actually use it to embolden their ignorance. Rarified states of consciousness are more a bragging point to fool them into thinking that they have the ‘answer’. They’re just lying to themselves under the premise of being better than those who have not experienced this one strange thing. It’s all lies.

That’s what my clients think. They are looking to check the box on some fringe locations to give them the edge in parlor discussions. Fuck it, what do I care, I’m getting paid. The moment I’m on the road, the moment this ‘deployment’ began, I immediately settle into my business mindset. All bullshit back in the world ceases to exist, only doing the job right and making some coin while doing it matters now. My heart seals up like an airlock while my brain dials into the subtle subtext of everyday life. I love it.

This has happened to me before, being seduced by wanderlust. The world, like a magnificent whore, calling out to me. The whoring road, arms open wide, riddled with wounds, whispering the promise of a thousand unheard of pleasures. The plea of a leper – join me, break bread with me, drink from my cup. Latex lips that whisper the promise of cruel kisses. Like the boy who fell in love with the prostitute who gave him his first blowjob. Spinning the globe, looking at fanciful places whose mere names you cannot pronounce. Time zones, dates, language, currency, customs – all transient. Even night can be avoided if you just keep moving fast enough in the right direction. And if night can be avoided, then maybe even death.

Strange memories echo in my mind. My subconscious, now dialed into focus, is telling me something. There was a time back at old Scolari’s Office, before they renamed it and replaced the motley assortment of locals with white gold wearing Persians in black silk shirts. I picked up this hooker from the end of the bar. Her face looked like somebody had used it for batting practice. Don’t ask me why, but I took her back to my place. She wanted to get after it, go heels to jesus. Me, not so much. We talked. I played acoustic guitar. She sang, softly, horribly. The old lady downstairs was banging on my door. It was a hot summer night. I was sweating, drinking booze to kill the heat, to kill my restless mind. I was nearly passed out on the couch. The whore ate the dried crumbs of week old leftovers off the roach patrolled dishes piled up on my counters. Emptying pizza boxes of rock hard crusts. She asked me what I was into, I said travel and poetry. She said she was into licking arm pits. She said that they are the most neglected part of the human body. Funny, I always thought it was the brain – now maybe I think it’s the soul.

We arrive in Anchorage, quaint little town. Alaskans in other parts of the state love to hate Anchorage. As one old joke goes, Anchorage isn’t in Alaska, but you can see Alaska from there. The city is low-rise, automobile-dominated, and thoroughly 20th-century. If you happen to forget where you are, just take a second look. All the cars have mud spray on their undersides, and you are caged in by 5 mountain ranges. I dump my kit in the hotel room then we take a private charter flight up to Mt. McKinley. The pilot was a madman. Insensitive, careless, spouting unasked for advice. The Korean lady in the front seat sat patiently, like an old worn out sponge, absorbing his filth.

Bush Pilot, “Hey lady, you don’t smell at all. Usually you Koreans smell like vinegar, it’s all that formaldehyde that you drink over there. I can’t hardly stand it. But not you, you don’t smell at all.”

Expensive seafood dinner, strong vodka drinks, it’s midnight – still light. Two drunken Indians stumble down the road, drinking from a Sprite bottle that is not filled with Sprite. Go into a local place, ‘Bumpy’s’, meet a fish hatchery worker. He says I’m relaxed like a local, but I’m writing in my notebook like a tourist. I tell him I’m a local everywhere I go. He tells me about some 30” rainbow trout he caught. We go to another bar, then to a strip club – he’s never been. He gets suckered in by the first fat stripper that winks at him. I get a double lap dance then throw up in the bushes outside. He follows me out and immediately falls down, drunk off his ass. They don’t let us back in.

We cab it back to town. It’s 1:30 am and the sun is starting to rise. We missed the 45 minutes of darkness watching naked women dance under neon lights. I could lose myself in this place. The land of the midnight sun. A haunting, ghostly glow. Our dying star burns orange just out of view, like a forest fire on the horizon. You don’t know what’s day or night, like a rustic Vegas. I lose myself in the afterglow of the zombie sun. The undead sky eternally illuminated. There was a time when I saw black spots on the sun. It was in Afghanistan. Sweat burning my eyes, dust in my teeth, I stared into the sun. I thought that was it at the time, but I was wrong. This, right here, is the end of the earth.

Maiden Voyage

MEATGRINDER — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:58:23 +0000

It was just before the 4^th of July. I had got back in touch with an old friend and we decided to catch up over drinks before I spent the next day with family. Going back to Orange County is always conflicting for me. I remember very well the absolute revile I used to feel about the place when I lived there. The sterility, the pointlessness, the frivolity in place of what I would consider ‘real experience’. I had my Holden Caufield moments here, my Gatsby ones as well. I drank and wrestled my soul like Hemingway, although my heroes were always more manly – like Ayn Rand. I didn’t need to sneak out of any palace to know of sickness, old age, or death – yet I sought to escape, like Siddartha, or maybe Joyce, and find my own truth in this world. I was driving north up the 5. My spidey senses start to tingle, I hear smashing metal over the cowboy guitar on my stereo and a plume of dust rises just 100 meters ahead of me in the southbound lanes. The dramatic conclusion to a high speed chase. I momentarily flash back to Baghdad, route Irish, an IED has just exploded – then two Mexicans spring out of the car and hop over the median. One crumples immediately, succumbing to injuries suffered when a police cruiser slammed their car into the divider. The other runs about 20 feet before two other trucks and myself corral him in so that the officers on foot can take him down. And they do. Hard. I am stopped there for a few minutes while things get wrapped up, next to me a father and son are locked in argument, not knowing the real cause for the accident or delay.

Father, “Look, I just don’t want you to see a dead body on the side of the road.”

Son, “Screw you dad!”

Traffic was completely stopped in the opposite direction. I drove past a bumper to bumper parking lot of cars for the next 15 miles. Thousands of people held up, unknowing the basis, able neither to move forward nor divert. Two illegal Mexicans caused all this. I become painfully aware of how lonely a person I truly am when moments like these mean phone calls and not immediate discussions. I make it up to Dana Point. The place has changed and yet remains the same in some startling way. Like an old friend who had facial work done, reassuringly familiar yet completely alien. I met my old friend, she was frustrated that I was enjoying more the conversation with her parents than with her. We hit a few bars in Laguna Beach. I met a girl who enjoyed the pleasure of ten abortions. This girl was now a single mother of two children, working for a bail bondsman. “UFC is awesome, I love it when they are all covered in blood.” She quipped. This might have been music to my ears had I not been trampled so thoroughly by women like her in the past. Sometimes I feel as though I have had enough love and loss for one lifetime. I got fairly drunk, passed out back at my friend’s house, ate bacon for breakfast, heard patriotic music in the distance. The world here is so clean, it is truly surreal. Too perfect to be real. Even hangovers feel good, have a romantic quality, are something to look forward to. No wonder my perceptions of the world are so warped, look where I grew up. Surrounded by mannequins. Puppets and animatronics in a meticulously crafted store front display, a dream world created to appear as what everyone wants but can never have. Unattainable even to those who live within it, especially to them.

I do not feel guilty or ashamed. My life has been no embarrassment of riches. People in this country are embarrassed of their inheritance though, and yet their lives are defined by it inextricably. The president himself has apologized for a history that he is neither responsible for nor am I ashamed of. I’m not a wanton sinner or heathen, corrupting myself simply to despoil the world, cast out from god’s love. I’m not really even a modern man in a condo typing on his laptop, more a prophet in a cave. A drunk in a motel room. An incontinent in a hospital bed. Gasping unwanted wisdom into the dust. Life is not like a black and white photograph of a coal engine, smokey, beautiful, complex, romantic. Life is smelly and dirty, noisy, churning and vile. My eyes, hungry for destruction, gorging on the feast of ruins. Having come from this strange television world its no wonder why.

I have a trip coming up. All conversations seem to flow back into it, like the heart of a strange city not of roads but canals. I am to travel backwards around the world. San Diego – Alaska – Siberia – Mongolia – Bhutan – Moscow – Stockholm and wherever else fate points its skeletal finger. One would expect that I am excited, yet I feel all the triumph of throwing a ball of crushed paper into the wastebasket from across the room. I am working as security on this trip but I have the feeling I will not be working at all. I am the guest of people whose goal in travel, all around the world, is the search for meaning. They seek experience. Seek meaningful experience, a meaningful existence. They believe that I’ve found it. This city of gold. This fountain of youth. They think I can lead them to it because they know I have answers to questions they don’t even know how to ask.

Like vampires they wish to feed on me. Glean from me that secret they believe I hold. I am the experienced tracker in the search for meaning, and they are on safari. They don’t know about this web page or my life and experiences, and they don’t care. “Shut up and just give me the answer.” is their attitude. The answer. The answer is that there is no answer. There is no enlightenment. The quest is the destination, but they are too blinded to ever understand that. Too impatient to allow me to explain. I don’t really want to explain, that cheapens it all somehow. Some things are better expressed in poetry than prose.

In comparison to these people, yes, I have the “answer”. I know the secret. I hold the key. I can’t help but find it, yet have no use for it. All their jets and expensive cars and designer shoes… worthless to them, meaningless to me. All their knowledge of art, architecture, and design – mere trivia… trivial treasures of the mind. Game show answers. To be hoarded greedily. Bragged about snobbishly. Dangled in front of the coveting cultural proletariat, friends and family, anyone with one less life-widget than themselves. Arbitrary capital really, a dollar with no gold standard, no wonder they continually drink yet remain thirsty. Not insatiable, but frustrated and unsatisfied. Socialism of the soul, they are printing more money to buy themselves out of debt. They live in Tartyrus, amassing worthlessness in the name of fortune. Myself, like a dog, just as happy with an old wool flea ridden blanket as with starched white sheets. Knowing the difference, yet indifferent to it. Must be the soldier in me.

So what is to come? Will this trip either unfold like origami or unravel like an old sweater? I honestly don’t know. What I know is that I will be tested. On trial. When in the employ of people with no values, yours will be truly challenged. I feel like something is coming that will change everything, but I don’t know what it is. As time draws near to departure I’m edgy, nervous, sporadic. I open beers only to rediscover them later, flat and warm. I drink them anyway. My apartment is cold, skin tingles. I wrap up in warm clothes, claw at them, pull them off. And I still can’t sleep. My bandwidth is starting to max out. Time moves like a drunken dancer. My mind jumps through space, clutching random images before being snatched away. I fight to understand the metaphor. The dark conversations of whores in the night. A throne of swords. A lizard eating its own skin. An army of shadows in retreat. A sky racing, clouds fighting towards the horizon, escaping. Rats crawling through a sewer pipe. Flies sucking on dead eyes – staring into eternity. Worms swimming through sour flesh. A lonely cigarette, lit and left to burn out unsmoked, wedged into the crease of an overflowing ashtray. Smoke rising like a serpent in a trance, I reach out to touch it. I’m attuning myself to the subtle influences in the universe, the vagaries of human nature. I stand before a transition, pennies on my eyes, lost between two worlds. I’m ready.

Serpentor

MEATGRINDER — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:43:20 +0000

I walk into the sandwich shop. I was starving. I just wanted to grab a quick bite, something somewhat healthy, before I get too grouchy and start crabbing at people for no reason. It happens whenever I’m hungry, I start to lose my shit and all I can do is eat before I end up going postal. I was already pretty out of it. Working nights always tweaks my mindset – I float through the days in a valium haze.

The woman behind the counter was pretty fat. She had one of those fat faces, the kind that looks like a big angry witch, the chin all big and pointy, sunken slanted eyes with a dirty look in them, cheeks that are so full that they bend her visage into something askew, deep make-up plastered pock marks here and there. She asks me about my tattoos, I give her a quick rundown. The same stupid mark-1 mod-0 answer I give to all meaningless people. “Blah blah blah machinery, alien flesh, chaos, consciousness, death.” She says she saw a TV show the other day where they were saying that people look like certain types of animals. She then says that I look like a snake to her. A snake. She then says that I look dangerous, scary.

Really!?

Fuck you lady! I don’t need this shit. I just wanted to get a fucking sandwich, you hag. Do you have any idea the week I’ve had? Come the fuck on. A snake, really? The archetypal image of evil in every human culture? So what the fuck am I the fucking devil!?

Now I’m sure you all expect, if you’ve read any of my crap on here before, that I give her both barrels and leave her ruined. Well I didn’t. I just ordered my stupid sandwich and left. I just wanted a fucking sandwich, not to be judged by some twisted Judeo-Christian mind control. I mean, who the fuck are you anyway you repulsive sandwich shrew? Keep your television propaganda to yourself lady, I could burn your whole life to the ground. What the fuck!? Where do these fucktards get off thinking I want to hear about their television lives? I can only imagine the caved in spot on the couch crying out in horror as your obese ass sits for countless hours as your life drips off of your bloated carcass like pork fat in a fire.

Regardless, I still had to go get a haircut, my Mohawk was turning into something weird as it grew out (thanks male pattern baldness), and I needed to get cleaned up. I’m trying to pull my head out of the toilet, apparently I’ve been drowning there for a while now, just ask my ex-girlfriend.

I picked up a bunch of BBQ stuff at Costco. Extra lean ground beef, buns, sliced pepper jack cheese, lettuce, condiments, that kind of crap. I even snagged this badass kit of BBQ tools from Cock Balls and Beyond. I was kick-starting a BBQ at work tonight so I wanted it to be awesome. Sometimes you have to take complete initiative in order to get things done. All these committees and sign up lists and assigned duties, it all turns to shit. People are completely lazy so if you don’t just ramrod it will probably never happen. I was trying to get some momentum going at work. We’ve been working nights, guys are coming together because everyone is cool as fuck, but we need some canonizing events to forge the team. Nothing works better than a BBQ.

Most of my free time lately has been spent reading about the US Constitution, the D of I, and the founding fathers as well as battling my way to the end of some more Ayn Rand. Well, reading a lot and preparing for the revolution. Setting up rally points, getting my kit together, setting plans and precautions with all my close buddies, stockpiling guns – you know, ‘crazy militia weirdo’ stuff. Everybody relax, I’m not joining a militia… I’m not a joiner; I’m more of an outsider, a misfit. I don’t think there’s any fear of me losing my mind and becoming a rooftop sniper or blowing up university professors, but just the world around me these days seems so oppressive. I usually rail against the oppression imposed by stupidity, modern technology gone awry, and psychological forces on here, but lately I’ve been delving into the oppression of individual rights in America… more so, what the fuck happened to them!?

I was talking to my coworker at the BBQ and he was like, “Dude, do you really think a revolution is coming?” My answer was simply, “Bro, I think we’re already in a war, but it’s a war of ideas. The thing is that there aren’t any bombs going off or guns shooting so nobody knows that anything is even going on.” But the truth is that I tend to dive into stuff full power – but don’t fear for me losing myself into the American flag bandanna wearing, ‘don’t tread on me’ bumper sticker sporting… well actually, Dave did just order a bunch of badass bumper stickers and he said I could have the ones he doesn’t want I the thought of that got me fired up… belay my last. I am turning into a ‘from my cold dead hands’ crazy person, where’s my moonshine?

All bullshit aside, just in case anyone was wondering the kind of stuff that is causing me concern, check this out. The ten planks of communism as detailed in the Communist Manifesto, if you don’t believe me look it up yourself. I’m not going to write an explanation of how each of these is rocking America, but I think you’ll see where I’m going with this.

1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Fuck man, I am turning into one of those militia freaks. Maybe that lady was right, maybe I am the fucking devil. I need a vacation.

Colossus

MEATGRINDER — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:31:36 +0000

“This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.”

- Colossus, the Forbin Project

El Dorado

MEATGRINDER — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:46:03 +0000

I got a phone call from a special lady who was very close to me a long time ago. Her mouth was a knife, a scalpel, and she performed surgery on me.

“Honestly, I feel sorry for you.”

“What? Fuck you!? Why!?”

“Well you used to be insightful and funny and awesome, but now you exist on the dark side.”

“Whatever, I dance the line just like you do with your painting. I peer into the void but I don’t live there.”

“No. I go to the dark side when I’m painting but I have love in my life and I come back. You used to do the same thing, but you have started to live on the dark side and that’s just… well… that’s sad. Just don’t go there, just choose to not go there. Please!?”

A bomb explodes in my heart. She was right. My writing has become too much, too thick, too heavy, too dark. Without joy there is no humanity in my writing, in my life. Writhing in my insect fear? Even the title is Kafkaesque. What the hell is going on with me. I like to feel the world around me, but lately I just feel my face pressing through a noose.

June 20th, 2010. I started my rock tumbler today. Turning the least valued thing in the world into the most precious, even if only for me. It all started this morning…

A light beam in my face, I splash to life. Stumbling out of bed, my bladder is screaming. Memories from the night start to flash into my head like some kind of CIA mind control experiment. My fingertips hurt as I lift the lid to the toilet, I recall playing guitar for hours and hours last night. Lauren had me play ‘Holiday Road’ about a million times on my acoustic, the song still echoes in my brain. I start to brush my teeth, my breath smells like garlic death – I ordered a pizza from the local and completely crushed myself with it. My head swimming, drowning, more whiskey than I can even remember was poured into it last night. I feel sick, consider taking a shower, decide to check on the rest of my place before I do. Yep, just as I suspected. AC/DC had a concert in my living room last night… again.

Oh god my body is in pain. Not good pain. Not emotional pain, or spiritual pain, or life pain. Just good plain old fashioned pain. Sometimes pain is good for you. It alerts you of danger, warns you, tells you that something isn’t right. That’s why blood is red, and why the color red causes your heart to palpitate. That’s the reason a woman in a red dress can take your breath away so dramatically. It’s primal, it’s genetic, it’s in our blood. Sometimes pain is necessary to help us get where we need to go, do what we need to do. I don’t believe in fate or destiny or anything like that. In my book you make your own fate. That being said, if you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing then you will know it. Somehow, in some way, the universe will let you know that you’re on the right path. This, right here, right now, is not where I’m supposed to be. I’m on the wrong path.

The night was cathartic. Whiskey after whiskey, my god. My sister, my own flesh and blood, was calling me a pussy for not slamming my drinks as fast as her. It’s funny, we both drink whiskey on the rocks these days. Genetics, possibly, although dad used to drink whiskey. I found the giant bottle he had stashed at the bottom of his sleeping bag when I was looking for his old combat boots one day in high school. He was in the den, “working”. By working I mean he was sitting there staring at the computer screen, he had this screen saver where little marbles would drop down from the top of the screen, bouncing off pegs and crap as the fell, until they piled up at the bottom of the screen. He would watch marble after marble until the entire screen was filled up. He sat there for hours and hours and hours, zen-like, doing nothing, staring at that screen. God knows what was going through his brain, our family was counting on him to pull his shit together and make shit happen. He never did. Alcoholism. He was a product of alcoholism. A product of emotional abuse. The source of emotional abuse. His wrathful words haunt me even now.

My sister and I both struggle against the memories of dad being a tyrannical loser. She, always striving, a driven careerwoman, never quitting a job even when it becomes unhealthy. Me, almost the same way. Two jobs, a business, always looking for something more to do, another pot to put on the stove even if there aren’t any burners open. We are hyper achievers simply because we do not want to end up like dad. Failure and unfulfilled potential, that is his legacy. Unbelievably intelligent, but so painfully flawed. His advice was always amazing, his example disastrous. “Just keep doing the right thing, son, and good things will happen.” I did it dad, why didn’t you? I will never allow myself to fail, the child in me still sees him failing and the promise to never become that man burns white hot at my core.

I was already completely faced, I did my best to keep up. She was emotional – we had been drunkenly psychoanalyzing our parents all night. Talking about childhood memories is like a trip to the cemetery at night. Wandering through the tombstones, each one a marker for joy and pain. Finding the one we were looking for, digging up the dead body, shining our flashlights on it. Trying to figure out the cause of death while recalling the myriad memories and experiences.

It’s funny. He was always so big in my mind, my father that is. He had smaller feet than me. I tried to fit into his old Viet-Nam combat boots but by the time I finally worked up the guts in high school they didn’t fit me. Not even close. The pictures I saw of him when he was my age. Angry, big, tough-looking. He played football at Lafayette. He fought in Viet-Nam. I never got to walk a mile in his shoes, and I wanted to so fucking bad.

I can’t stop thinking about my mistakes sometimes. All my fucking mistakes. Piled up like dead bodies, and I’m trapped underneath. Is that how he feels? He was so controlling. He always tried to be the best – maybe not be the best, but appear to be the best. What am I talking about, the guy was amazing. Emotional, insightful, endlessly intelligent, but he was always trying to win the conversation and not just have it. He programmed that into me. Now I can’t lose anything.

I talked to him today. I love him. It was father’s day, another bullshit Hallmark holiday, but I wanted to tell him that I love him. He’s my fucking father for Christ’s sake.

“Hellooow?”

He always sounds so confused when he answers the phone, like he was completely asleep on the couch, drunk and passed out, and the phone ringing somehow rattled his whole world. He was always jumpy. Hardcore PTSD for the Nam.

“Hey dad, it’s me, happy father’s day!”

“Oh, hi son! It’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been really wanting to talk to you. How is everything going?”

I feel like a piece of shit. I haven’t talked to him in a good 8 months. Not since I just broke up with my girlfriend. I’ve been avoiding him. I can’t stand it, seeing him in ruins. He was so enormous, so powerful, but now he’s just a broken old man. Sixty eight years old, and I feel weathered at thirty four, god fucking damn.

I catch him up on all my hundreds of jobs and crap. He’s still unemployed, still going to AA, still the same flawed man I remembered – just older now.

“Hey pop, how was that pancake breakfast this morning?”

“Oh, hey, yeah. (he is definitely starting to slow down with age) It was OK, I went to visit a lady friend of mine.”

“Cool man, you dating some new foxy lady now dad?”

“Oh no son, we used to date but now were just really good friends. I went by her church just to say hi but ended up making pancakes and getting involved.”

“Whoa, awesome. I slept in this morning then drove to the top of this big hill down here is San Diego with all these antennas on top of it. I couldn’t get to the top because there was a gate with padlocks but I’m going back next weekend with a bolt cutter to go up there. I had to go meet with my friend Dave to get HF radios before the revolution happens.”

“Oh, remember when I used to wake you and Lauren up early on the weekends and we would go hike to the top of hills around Dana Point and watch the sunrise? Boy, we used to have so much fun. Those times were really great.”

“Yeah dad, I do remember that. That was pretty cool. I used to love going on adventures with you.”

“So how is your sister doing?”

“Oh she’s doing great! She just quit her job in L.A., her boss was a total asshole and she finally told them all to shove it up their ass. She’s moving to New York City to go for it in the big apple.”

“Oh wow, that’s amazing. I am so proud of her. She is such an amazing woman. I still haven’t talked to her. I sent her some emails, does she still have that same email? I don’t know if she’s ever going to talk to me again.”

“Well dad, our family totally blew up. There is still a lot of pain and rough edges from all that. Those emails you sent only made her more angry. I never read them but she said they were totally selfish, talked all about your pain, were all about you. You need to understand that you hurt her very deeply man.”

“Son, all I said was that I was sorry, I love her, and that I’m not that person any more, I’ve changed.”

“Look dad, you were a tyrant when we were growing up. Mom and Lauren and I had to get everything perfect in the house, I mean clean everything and put on our nice clothes and wash our goddamn hands before you got home so that you wouldn’t blow up. But dude it was never good enough and you would smash the kitchen table or stab yourself with a fork when you got angry. You would cry out ‘what’s wrong with me!?’ and rage against invisible demons. Mom said that the traffic got you really frustrated, but bro it was emotional abuse. I don’t want to come down on you, it’s father’s day, I love you dad, but you need to understand that the pain of my childhood has helped me get places I couldn’t go without it, but I’m not going to thank you for that. You hurt me, you hurt all of us. I don’t think you wanted to, but brother that shit happened. What the fuck!? My success in life is not because of that pain you caused, but despite it.”

“Look, I’m sorry son, I love you very much. I want to come down to San Diego and see you. Maybe we can just meet for coffee, just tell me when you can meet. I really want to meet with you.”

“I don’t know dad, I’m pretty busy with everything, I’ll call you OK?”

“Um, OK, I’ll talk to you then. I love you very much son.”

“Goodbye dad.”

Writhing In My Insect Fear

MEATGRINDER — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:08:17 +0000

I don’t like how sometimes you can see light through your fingers. It reminds me how thin humans are. My soul has felt pretty thin lately. Aside from that there have been a rash of people that have tried to find me, search me out. Let me pose this warning to all would be glory seekers; I am to you as the yeti to the Himalayan explorer – exciting and dangerous all at once. A beer keg in the trunk of a cop car. It has been said by some that there is no “Meatgrinder”, that I do not exist. The mad scrawling here is the work of many authors, or even none. Let me assure everybody that every single solitary syllable was my own creation. Mine. Every grizzly piece of prose present on this website is signed with an ‘M’ by a bloody finger, like the forehead of a mortally wounded patient given morphine by a field medic in some 3^rd world hell hole. The bloody ‘M’ announcing to all that the man is both damned and delivered simultaneously. I started this website to help me cope. To help me vent the madness of war and this modern life. To help me figure out what the fuck was going on and at the same time to be my epitaph. That being said, fuck it, seek me out. Buy me a beer, punch me in the mouth. Maybe you’ll make the next posting. In a play even the audience is part of the performance. In this swirling maelstrom why shouldn’t art imitate life imitating art.

Live humbly, die nobly!? Bullshit. Live nobly, die miserably. That’s the way I want it. I want to go out kicking and screaming and fighting against the darkness. I’m just a troubled ape walking around on a giant ball of dirt. Kick and mock me as I spiral towards infinity. My words are the death rattle of my failed life.

I’ve been puking a lot lately. I’ve been just washing my mouth out with beer, happens when I’m drinking mostly. I walk down the street from the bar. A crusty old bum lays sleeping under cardboard. He has about half a million more dollars than me, give or take some pocket change, and yet he is the beggar. I am entombed in debt – it is the modern day replacement for original sin. His weapon is guilt, my weakness is ambition. Decadence. I don’t need or want it, but nobody tells Buddy Holly how to play Buddy Holly god damn it. I’ve been wandering in the desert, but sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make the world go away. Pain. It takes a long time to get over it – it is almost sensual in that way. Romance is simply actions, moving slowly towards anticipation. Guilt. What a senseless waste. It’s Christian roots sicken me. Irritate me immensely. I don’t want to be victim to it but the streets are filled with regret. Alone in this circumstance. There are so few people who can even understand the context of my complaint even if there were to be one. The Rosetta stone is missing. I’m left speaking a dead language hoping and expecting the nuance of my inflection to be appreciated. All the while I am perceived as unintelligible, erratic, insane. People with such meticulously crafted lives need to call me crazy, because the whole house of cards comes down if I’m not. For the wealthy money is taboo. Discussing money is vulgar – in poor taste. For the soldier maybe killing is the taboo. Maybe mortality or experiences on the very brink of existence. Many rich people try and feign importance because they’re not important. They can’t be. Their wealth actually precludes them from it. For the soldier maybe it’s the same thing. You have all these accomplishments, large and small, physical, emotional, intellectual. And nobody will ever understand it, can’t even see it, and don’t care. They pretend like they want to care, because appearing to care about this shit can improve your social status, but nobody really cares. An army of yes men. Again I am Huxley’s savage, prostrating myself in existential terror, misinterpreted, debauched. As a soldier your life and achievements are lost. There is that commonality almost. The thing you want to talk about the most is the last thing you are permitted to by your own set of rules.

“Roy: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.” – Blade Runner (1982)

Modern samurai with doctorate degrees sitting on the skid of a little bird – that’s what’s going on. This is the cream of America’s crop. This is the cream of humanity’s crop. Doctors, lawyers, poets, and philosophers – all philosophers. For some all their poetry written in blood.

The American Dream – I want to live outside this dream. I don’t ever want to see or for it to be said about me that I live in a fucking dream. I want a lucid waking state. I want consciousness and no bullshit. I always wanted to live on a desert island with dinosaurs and mutants, which is pretty much what happened. The universe is just as untranslatable as my life. The universe has me stuck with a pin, writhing in my insect fear. This is horror. Not vampires or werewolves or monsters. Not physical horror, this is mental horror. I live in Babylon after the collapse. Fuck humans. Everybody believing that they are immortal. Waiting, endlessly, for their immortality. Life is nothing, its garbage, its shit. Life is a hot beer shit. At first, glorious. You get up. You turn around, and you look at it and you’re proud. The fumes, the stink of the shit are rising up. You think ‘god, I did it, I’m good.’ Then you flush it away and there’s this sense of sadness when just the water is staring back at you. The history of melancholy includes all of us. So I go many nights, sleepless. There is an economy of insomnia. The things you do at certain times, certain actions, certain decisions – all of it driven by this fear that you won’t fall asleep, can’t fall asleep. Counting the hours down. Counting the hours of potential sleep. Counting the hours of sleep you’ve already lost. Tick tock tick tock. The clock, a nemesis. Time, unstoppable, immutable, in your face. You hate it. You hate time. You hate yourself. You get desperate, walk around your apartment, walk around the block, read a book, jerk off, drink warm milk, drink whiskey, drink cough syrup, pop pills. You give up, put on a pot of coffee. Suicide. You hate yourself, go to a bar, talk to the worn out whore who makes origami out of cigarette tin foil. You self destruct. If you’re not going to sleep then you’re definitely not gonna sleep. Fuck sleep. Fuck your job that makes you fear for drowsiness – coworkers staring at you like a carnival freak. Fuck your life that depends on masochistic routines. Fuck your loneliness that left you to deal with the universe with just your own pathetic beer-soaked brain. Fuck you. Unable to love, unable to live, unable to ever be content. Fuck your mind, endlessly churning. Fuck the sound of gears in your head. Fuck all the unanswerable questions. Fuck the whole fucking world.

But the warm Santa Ana wind still blows in from the desert. The salty sea spray rolls in softly over the beaches at night. And dew, like tiny jewels, collects on the needles of a cactus, somewhere, out there, all alone.

Mia and Me

MEATGRINDER — Thu, 27 May 2010 22:47:09 +0000

I recently switched from Ana, the illegal Mexican maid who was stealing all my DVD’s and threw away all my goddamn vintage newspapers because she thought they were trash, to Mia, my new awesome Finnish house cleaner. Ok first of all, yeah, I have a fucking house cleaner. Why? Just like Disney movies brainwash girls into the Cinderella syndrome, my mom brainwashed me into not wanting to clean my own goddamn house. So yes, I have a maid. Mia is from Finland and she is tough as nails. Mia herself proclaims, “my people, the Finnish, we are a strong people.” I almost heard her say “unlike you Americans” under her breath. But she is tough and hardworking and mean. She is only about 5’ tall and skinny as hell. She’s old, in her 50’s, but her small body is tough like dried fish. She’s a burned up cigarette of a woman. Industrious, meticulous, and she is a little crazy. And when I say a little crazy I actually mean she’s a lot crazy. First of all she sorts and sets out all the loose change she finds in my house. Well, she pretty much sorts everything. Her English is a little off and she frequently mixes up adjectives and tenses where ‘I am going to clean that table’ becomes ‘I am to cleaning on this table’. She formally requests to sort all my garbage for bottles. “I recycle,” she says, “and every penny counts.” She is constantly cursing under her breath. Sometimes she curses about all my heavy wooden furniture, as she lifts it singlehandedly like a 5’ Finnish terminator, but she mostly swears about dirt and messes. Maybe because Finland is all snowy and white there that she’s never seen an actual mess before, but Mia hates ‘filth’. The thing is that it’s almost not as much upsetting to her that there exists a mess, but more that the last maid (or myself) didn’t already clean it up. I don’t fucking know. Anyway, judge for yourself;

Exhibit A:

I’m tuning a guitar in my living room while Mia cleans in the kitchen. “Look at this!” She barks. I put down my guitar and walk into the kitchen. Her arm is outstretched, a bony finger points crookedly at a splatter on the refrigerator. “Look at this FILTH! … It’s FILTHY!” Her voice is a harsh whisper, like a creature that’s been living in a cave.

Mia, “Did you do this!?”

Me, taken aback, “What? No. Of course not! Well, um, yeah. Ok, yeah, I did do that.”

Mia, “This makes me SICK!”

Me, embarrassed and a little afraid of being yelled at by my cleaning lady, “Huh?”

Mia, her voice an evil gasp, “The other cleaners, they never to clean this things. They leave messes and filth. It’s DISGUSTING!”

Me, “Oh, yeah, the other cleaning lady didn’t clean that. She was pretty lazy. I would have to go around the house and clean all the stuff that she didn’t clean after she left. She wouldn’t even clean inside my microwave. It looked like a WWII battlefield inside there. She stole my DVD’s too.”

Mia, her eyes narrow, her mind somewhere distant for just a moment, “LAZY! It makes me SICK!”

She violently scrubs the splatter off the fridge muttering in Finnish under her breath. Her face hardened into a mask of rage and disgust.

Exhibit B:

I just come back from running a few errands as well as hitting an ATM so I can pay her. As soon as I walk through the door Mia comes up to me, takes the groceries out of my hands, sets them on the kitchen counter, then takes me by the wrist into the bathroom. I am cringing, it was a horrible mess after last weekend and I actually left the house because I didn’t want to hear her cursing while she cleaned it.

Mia, “This room has made me tired. So tired.”

Me, “Yeah, it was pretty dirty.”

Mia, “This toilet, it leaks. I fixed it. I opened this and cut the chain with the pliers. This hard water stains. So much scrubbing. I cleaned it.”

Me, “Wow, yeah Mia, it looks great.” It really did look great.

Mia, pointing to my cactus, “This plant is dead. Let me get rid of this dead plant.”

Me, “That cactus was a housewarming gift from me to myself when I first moved in here.”

Mia, her eyes narrow to tiny slits, “It is dead now.”

Me, “Ok.”

Mia, “I do not want to ask for this, but I need the Tilex. I thought I could SCRUB IT, but I need the Tilex.”

Me, “Yeah, no problem, I’ll just pick some up.”

Mia, aghast, “NO! I will get. My landlord has two bottles, he only needs one. Give him three dollars maybe and he will give to us the Tilex. This is for me to get.”

Me, forking over three dollars, “Ok, here you go.”

Mia, refusing the money, “No no. You pay when I get.”

Me, “Ok, no problem, however you want to do it.”

Mia, “I fixed all the broken tiles with the super glue.”

Me, “Whoa, what super glue?”

Mia, “The super glue from inside the drawer inside the closet.”

Me, wondering why the fuck she was rooting through my drawers and crap and yet thankful that my dirt Nazi actually fixed bathroom tiles, “Badass!”

Mia looks at me judgmentally then releases my arm from her grip, it is red where she was squeezing me.

Exhibit C:

I am on my computer checking out some weird youtube videos and stuff, basically just fucking around. My ipod is plugged into speakers and some badass 80’s music is playing. Mia is on all fours right next to me angrily scrubbing dried stage blood out of the carpet from last Halloween. She is cursing to herself in Finnish, as usual, the only word I can distinguish is ‘filth’. Right now I am convinced that she is actually imagining killing me, or maybe jews. I think she also hates any noise because she is also really complaining a lot about the music. I think it was the music that pushed her over the edge, but she finally snaps.

Mia, “SICK! What is this FILTH!”

Me, “Dried blood. It was from…”

Mia, cutting me off, “Blood is filth, how is blood in this carpet?”

Me, “From Halloween, I was a zombie, it was awesome.”

Mia, “What is this ‘zombie’?”

Me, imitating a zombie, shambling around my living room, “Come on Mia, you know, ‘Arrrrrr Brains! Brains Mia, BRAINS!’”

Mia, “Like the alcoholic.”

Me, laughing, “No no no, like this.”

I load up a zombie video on the internet, play it for her.

Mia, her voice a slow dry gasp, “DISGUSTING! This is the filth for a child. It makes me SICK. No more of this ‘zombies’. No more.”

Me, “Ha ha, ok, no problem Mia.”

Mia, shaking her head indignantly, “No more.”

So as you can see Mia is not your average everyday house cleaner. She is a fucking dirt Nazi and she does chastise me for leaving messes and filth, but let me tell you that she is the most industrious, hard working, and meticulous house cleaner I’ve ever had. The other day she accidentally turned on my video picture frame when she was wiping it down. You know, the kind you plug into the wall and it goes through a slideshow of all your digital photos. Well my house is pretty scary for a Finnish woman, propaganda posters and weird art, lots of heavy wooden furniture for her to complain about, basically a mega-badass bachelor pad. Anyway, my sister and parents and crap started to pop up on the screen and she stood there and watched it (without complaining) for like 5 minutes before she says to me “Family is so important. Family is not the filth. You have a good family.” Well you’re right Mia, thanks, family is not the filth. I heart you too.

Men Without Eyes Multiply Like Flies

MEATGRINDER — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:05:16 +0000

Another weekend is stalking me. I worked nights all this week. I’m not really complaining, I kind of like the schedule. Not really the hours so much, but the shake up. I like being forced to stay up and do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. I often put myself into situations where I know I will be forced into certain scenarios that will fuck with me in different ways. More than just the philosophical mumbo-jumbo though, I just like the night. I like the ocean at night, the sound of it. Empty streets, the way fog hovers over the city, the clicking of street lights, the buzz of power lines. I like an empty city, abandoned to me and my every whim. I swerve lazily all over the road. Peel out in empty parking lots, pull off the road and watch things. Appreciate things that are for the most part unseen. I walk through an empty golf course; I sit and think in an empty schoolyard, I wander through a desolate shopping mall window shopping at everybody else’s life.

These nights remind me of when I was back in high school. There were no bars to go to, no job to get sleep for, no bullshit to worry about. My friends and I, the only escape we had from the drudgery of the banal world was to sneak out at night. Explore the abandoned places, the night our companion, showing us things that the sleeping world didn’t know existed. I think this later became adulterated with alcohol and partying and hooking up, but the fascination with the night has never left me. In the military I always loved the night. Learned new ways to appreciate it. The sound of the woods, the way the stars move, the stillness that tells you so much. Being silent and alert means being plugged into this great dark mystery. It will reveal everything to you if you are patient enough to listen. So I listened. And I keep on listening.

But it’s only temporary. Eventually night turns into morning. Things start to come alive and go about their initial programming. People driving to work, dogs walking, lawns watering, coffee brewing. I try not to hate the rest of the world as it goes about its business. I remind myself that it is me that is the freak. The human race. Fuck. The farther away I am from the human race the better I feel. The more human I feel. I guess everything is temporary. Samurai, mercenary, hit man – you can’t live the life of a pro forever. I’ve had long runs in the past, but something always comes along to break my streak. I am not simply a machine. The curse of the brain stem. I want to blame it on the world, say that it is what’s flawed, but it’s just me. At this exact moment in my life I lack the discipline to follow the rabbit hole all the way down. Booze and women kill a killer. I need to push myself into a corner, make shit happen. Ah fuck it man, I used to lay drunk in alleys and I probably will again.

I drive past a Red Lobster. This recession is insane. How the fuck does Red Lobster stay in business!? What the fuck about Sizzler? I mean, yeah, white trash fancy up their Friday night with a little Applebee’s. Old ladies love the shit out of some Marie Caladers (you know, for the soups). Outback and Lone Star can pretty much take care of themselves. But who the fuck eats at a Red fucking Lobster? Who are these people? Aliens.

I guess the world is changing. They are changing it. Them. I’m not some crack-pot conspiracy theorist but when Monopoly stops printing money something is wrong. Yeah… Monopoly! The paragon of good ‘ole fashioned board game fun. Well the “old fashioned” part had to go. Parker Brothers is phasing out the cash-based version’s funny money and replacing it with an “Electronic Banking” flavor that could leave Mr. Moneybags turning his pockets inside out as his stash is replaced by a magnetic strip. New kits are completely devoid of the famous multi-colored bills; instead, you’ll find phony Visa debit cards and a calculator / reader which keeps a running tabulation of your riches – or lack thereof. A deal was struck with Visa to design the mock cards and readers, presumably after surveys showed that 70% of adults used cash less often now than they did a decade ago (no surprise there). When asked about the dramatic change, Parker said replacing cash with plastic “showed the game was moving with the times.”

Spokesman Chris Weatherhead said: “The new electronic Monopoly reflects the changing nature of society and the advancement of technology.” This game is atrocious. They’ve bastardized the only thing a family can possibly do together during a modern holiday, besides stuff their faces to avoid conversation. They might as well call it New World Order Monopoly!? Cashless society, one world banking system, even the prices are ‘updated’ by multiplying everything by 10,000. I guess that is just taking into account the hyperinflation we are about to have in the US. The credit cards can’t show you your balance and you’re left guessing what you can afford or how much you are actually being charged. By the way, everything is sponsored. Visa branded the cards and the machine. The properties are sponsored by sports arenas and tourist attractions, etc. For my money this is blatant brainwashing. Hey kid, try this credit card. First swipe is free – but you’re gonna pay for the rest of your life after that. Fuck. So for those anxious to get their swipe on, or if you’ve simply forgotten how to use bills, the new version will set you back around $50, while the now “antiquated” cash version can be had for around $20, but only while supplies last.

Pop culture… fuck me Jesus. I would say that Mickey Mouse has a greater influence on the American imagination than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovich, Lenin, and/or Van Gogh. Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality. Yeah, I’m a tortured outsider, but it’s not rocket surgery. Imagination is prey. It is bullied and cut down. Hunted until it lays down, a tired animal, a surrendering virgin.

I know this girl who worked for Disney. Let’s just call her “Wendy Jones”. She was working in the call center where people ask about the hotel rooms and the amusement park and basically stuff like that. She like would describe the rooms and how ‘disneytastic’ they were to people from all around the world, basically she was a human agent of Disney propaganda endlessly chattering away on the headset all day about amenities and scenery. She worked there with a blind man who she described as going into great length as to the beauty of the hotel rooms and scenic attractions. Madness. Wendy would call me up and say things like “I’m starting to believe in Walt’s vision.” This from the girl who would call anybody out on everything in the most embarrassing way. Her mouth was a bomb waiting to explode. Tell her no secret, confess no personal feeling, or it would be dangled naked and awkward in front of everyone at the next gathering. So you need to understand that Wendy was not the kind of person to try and force herself to believe in the candy-coated plastic Prozac insanity of mainstream culture.

Wendy tried to kill herself. Slashed her wrists wide open. Suicide. After I found out I drove up to Orange County and visited her. She seemed ok, but just completely sick of living. Why suicide? Because its the only way out. Because the world is better off without you. Because now they’ll listen. !? I mean, yeah, life is miserable and you die at the end no matter what but why hurry things along? Wendy was the girl who you would hang out with in the cemetery, read poetry and drink red wine with at midnight. She was no stranger to death, but maybe working at Disney did something to her soul that it couldn’t continue to tolerate. What the fuck is this world doing to us? Men without eyes multiply like flies.

My Armpits

MEATGRINDER — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:19:21 +0000

“So like what the fuck is going on with my armpits?” I thought to myself in the shower this morning. My deodorant must be fucking me up or something. It’s that antiperspirant kind, you know, so you don’t look like a 70’s tennis player in the middle of your board meeting. I don’t know why I even have that kind – I usually go for the mark-1 mod-0 deodorant but I must have had a big interview or was traveling and forgot to pack some and this shit was the only thing I could get on short notice. It says “extreme sport” real big on it so I can see why I probably got hypnotized by their marketing gimmick. I’m not a huge deodorant connoisseur or anything, I mean, if the supermarket has a sale on the kind that makes your armpit reek like rosebuds and sprays pheromones all over women to make them fall in love with you then I’ll jump all over it, but this shit is really bad. So like, yeah, I don’t smell like a fat Turkish taxi-cab driver, but when I’m washing my crap the next morning my armpits are all dry and hurty and weird.

...? Really!?

I multitask in the bathroom. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends and they’ll tell you about the hundred times they walked in on me brushing my teeth and taking a piss, or trimming my toenails while I’m crapping, or cleaning my ears while I squirt Rogaine into my hair. I’m a soldier goddamn it. I maximize efficiency when it comes to routine tasks. I mean would you rather date some dude with nasty yellow toenails and nose-hair dreadlocks!? I didn’t think so, and shut the fuck up hippies. If you had your way we’d all be punching our pits with fistfulls of geraniums. Anyway, I digress.

Where was I? Oh yeah, “so like what the fuck is going on with my armpits?” I thought to myself in the shower this morning. I was dry heaving at the time. I was brushing my tongue off so I don’t have donkey breath all day. I had a few drinks last night and a cup of coffee on an empty stomach first thing this morning. Plus my stomach is pretty much fucked after that summer when Thompson and I tried to drink ourselves to death ‘Leaving Las Vegas style’. Quick side note, you can’t actually drink yourself to death – you just really fuck yourself up permanently and then have to deal with that from then on. Like dry heaves every morning. So that’s what I was doing when I noticed that I needed a mega-handful of liquid soap to get the funky weirdness out of my pits. Maybe its the aluminum or maybe my primitive armpits are just not evolved enough for the latest discoveries in deodorant technology. Why the hell would they even make this crap, I mean, I don’t really want to smell like baby powder and lilacs. Maybe if they had some more badass scents like diesel fuel or hickory bar-b-cue I could get behind it a little more. It’s not like ancient times when people were afraid to take baths for fear that water spirits would give them the black plague, but at the same time I don’t want to rock out with Old Spice and have every girl with daddy issues tackling me at the mall. There’s a place for tearful lap dances, it’s called a confessional. What the fuck!?

Nice polka dot shirt you unibrowed douchebag!

Fucking deodorant… Really!? You know, I was just at Costco the other day but the fucking place is like a Greek labyrinth and I can never find what I’m looking for in the right section. Like I’m looking for unsalted almonds and the aisle goes salted peanuts, unsalted peanuts, salted mixed nuts, unsalted mixed nuts, salted almonds, honey roasted almonds… gym socks. Gym socks!? Fuck me! I had to go all the way across the whole fucking store just to find the unsalted almonds next to the goddamn cat food. What the fuck people!? I bought the gym socks, incidentally, which makes me suspicious that there is something more sinister at play here.

Anyway, I didn’t get the deodorant and now my fucking pits are going to continue to be fucked up. Am I going crazy or is this the same shit that every age of humanity has had to deal with in one form or another. I mean, yeah, you stare into the window of a washing machine at the soapy maelstrom long enough and you’ll see Jean Paul Sartre, but I can’t be the only person wrought with the daily strife of this modern life. Jesus shit! Anyway, I’m off to the store – had to cut time out of my busy day to get my goddamn armpits squared away. Fuck my life.

Scarborough Fair

MEATGRINDER — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:08:59 +0000

I wanted to knock the rust off my video editing skills so I put this little video together. I had a pretty rough breakup not too long ago and I’ve been reflecting heavily about it. The impossibility and paradox of this song coupled with the violence of war seemed an appropriate tribute to lost love.

Traditionally the song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished. The Simon & Garfunkel version was a reworking to include anti-war lyrics. I think slomo explosions are the perfect compliment to this song. I also slapped up the lyrics here so you can read the exact refrain.

Are you goin’ to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt (On the side of a hill in the deep forest green).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground).
Without no seams nor needlework (Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain).
Then she’ll be a true love of mine (Sleeps unaware of the clarion call).

Tell her to find me an acre of land (On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Washes the grave with silvery tears).
Between the salt water and the sea strands (A soldier cleans and polishes a gun).
Then she’ll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather (War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions).
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Generals order their soldiers to kill).
And gather it all in a bunch of heather (And to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten).
Then she’ll be a true love of mine.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine.