Took third, one minute behind second, seven minutes behind first. Not too bad for a guy who DFL'ed last month. Not much to say, first up was a 25 or-so block time trial to a German resturaunt, followed by a generally northern-european themed romp through the wilds of mipples.
Fella by the name of Brandon took first, he's setting up the next one over in STP so it'll be a lung-ripper in the cold, cold December night. I'll let you know how it goes.
One other thing, I've got a new band. Just thought you might want to know.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
an open letter to the ron paul guy
Dearest Ron Paul guy,
For, indeed within the hopelessly under-informed cavern I call my mind that is what you are called, I hope this missive finds you well. I write to express my joy that it is almost election eve and soon you will be able to go and cast your ballot for Ron Paul, hopefully bringing the era of telling everyone that you come into contact with that you are voting for Ron Paul to an end.
Ron Paul guy, please don't take this the wrong way, you seem like a nice guy even though despite superficial parallels we agree on nothing but when you ask someone that you don't know who they are voting for and they tell you that "I don't talk about politics" that is where the conversation should end. It's simply polite and pursuing the issue further could be considered overbearing or rude by the person who does not talk about politics.
Frankly, it's none of your fucking business who I might vote for. Nor is it any of mine who you support, that is wholly your province as an individual and citizen of 'murika and, as a supporter of civil liberties, I say go and vote for Ron Paul. Vote for him as you have never voted for any quasi-messianic Texan Libertarian before. Vote for him in the name of all those that you told you were going to vote for him and vote for him so that, yea, the "big boys" shall know that ye have chosen Ron Paul over their two-party canidates for thou hast found them wanting. Do all of this in the name of Ron Paul and thou shalt be filled with self-rightousness and become exalted in the light of statements of equally questionable veracity.
I will concede that Ron Paul has some valid criticisms of the political status quo but an oft overlooked detail is that Ron Paul is part of the political staus quo. No matter how conservative his voting record, no matter how strictly Constitutionalist or Constructionist his views and opinions are he is a United States Congressman and, therefore, a part of the status quo.
Quid pro quo Ron Paul guy, I find your statements and manner unearnedly condescending, a common failing of those who follow the gospel of Ron Paul. I have little patience for people who adhere to a literalist interpretation of a 227 year old legal document and even less for those who would take a 1500 year-old ecumenical compilation as literal truth. It strikes me as intellectual laziness at best and tends more towards a dangerous combination of naivete and lack of faith in humankind.
The world has changed since 1781, Ron Paul guy, and situations will arise that may not be explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, and if so what are we to do Ron Paul guy? What will Ron Paul do? Surely a man of his impeccable Constitutionalist credentials wouldn't deign to enact legislation that could be construed as unconstitutional but what a bind that leaves us in. Will we simply use our vastly increased personal revenue to solve the problems individually, unfettered by fiat currency and foreign entanglements or will we have to watch our new messiah fall from grace.
Surely a man so informed as you, Ron Paul guy, would know that the authority necessary to accomplish the goals of Ron Paul far exceeds even that of our current imperial presidency as the Constitution requires that all legislation be passed by Congress before being signed into federal law by the President and that without the support of the Legislature Ron Paul becomes yet another politician riding to office on bar-room promises only to be found impotent when it is time for action.
Perhaps, Ron Paul guy, I shall yet rue the day that I doubted Ron Paul as I finish my years toiling away in a United Nations run slave labor camp, producing brutally equitable products for the new One World Socialist state, every look in the mirror reminding me of the searing pain as my RFID microchip was implanted in my forehead but somehow I doubt it and until that unlikely day, dearest Ron Paul guy, I can only hope that your long-winded tales of when you voted for Ron Paul come like conservative legislators, infrequently and with immediate feelings of guilt and remorse.
For, indeed within the hopelessly under-informed cavern I call my mind that is what you are called, I hope this missive finds you well. I write to express my joy that it is almost election eve and soon you will be able to go and cast your ballot for Ron Paul, hopefully bringing the era of telling everyone that you come into contact with that you are voting for Ron Paul to an end.
Ron Paul guy, please don't take this the wrong way, you seem like a nice guy even though despite superficial parallels we agree on nothing but when you ask someone that you don't know who they are voting for and they tell you that "I don't talk about politics" that is where the conversation should end. It's simply polite and pursuing the issue further could be considered overbearing or rude by the person who does not talk about politics.
Frankly, it's none of your fucking business who I might vote for. Nor is it any of mine who you support, that is wholly your province as an individual and citizen of 'murika and, as a supporter of civil liberties, I say go and vote for Ron Paul. Vote for him as you have never voted for any quasi-messianic Texan Libertarian before. Vote for him in the name of all those that you told you were going to vote for him and vote for him so that, yea, the "big boys" shall know that ye have chosen Ron Paul over their two-party canidates for thou hast found them wanting. Do all of this in the name of Ron Paul and thou shalt be filled with self-rightousness and become exalted in the light of statements of equally questionable veracity.
I will concede that Ron Paul has some valid criticisms of the political status quo but an oft overlooked detail is that Ron Paul is part of the political staus quo. No matter how conservative his voting record, no matter how strictly Constitutionalist or Constructionist his views and opinions are he is a United States Congressman and, therefore, a part of the status quo.
Quid pro quo Ron Paul guy, I find your statements and manner unearnedly condescending, a common failing of those who follow the gospel of Ron Paul. I have little patience for people who adhere to a literalist interpretation of a 227 year old legal document and even less for those who would take a 1500 year-old ecumenical compilation as literal truth. It strikes me as intellectual laziness at best and tends more towards a dangerous combination of naivete and lack of faith in humankind.
The world has changed since 1781, Ron Paul guy, and situations will arise that may not be explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, and if so what are we to do Ron Paul guy? What will Ron Paul do? Surely a man of his impeccable Constitutionalist credentials wouldn't deign to enact legislation that could be construed as unconstitutional but what a bind that leaves us in. Will we simply use our vastly increased personal revenue to solve the problems individually, unfettered by fiat currency and foreign entanglements or will we have to watch our new messiah fall from grace.
Surely a man so informed as you, Ron Paul guy, would know that the authority necessary to accomplish the goals of Ron Paul far exceeds even that of our current imperial presidency as the Constitution requires that all legislation be passed by Congress before being signed into federal law by the President and that without the support of the Legislature Ron Paul becomes yet another politician riding to office on bar-room promises only to be found impotent when it is time for action.
Perhaps, Ron Paul guy, I shall yet rue the day that I doubted Ron Paul as I finish my years toiling away in a United Nations run slave labor camp, producing brutally equitable products for the new One World Socialist state, every look in the mirror reminding me of the searing pain as my RFID microchip was implanted in my forehead but somehow I doubt it and until that unlikely day, dearest Ron Paul guy, I can only hope that your long-winded tales of when you voted for Ron Paul come like conservative legislators, infrequently and with immediate feelings of guilt and remorse.
Monday, October 27, 2008
for everyone who ever told me to go play in traffic (with apologies to travis hugh culley for stealing his line)
I did this last week. Out to Osceola on Tuesday night after working for eight hours fixing bikes, back to Mipples on Thursday night after my annual "let's go out into rural Wisconsin and talk about stuff" work retreat. For a real sense of the fun check out the elevation profile.
And yes, by the way, that WAS a totally shameless plug for my shop.
And yes, by the way, that WAS a totally shameless plug for my shop.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
celebrity parties here i come!
Despite my lackluster performance at the no name alleycat last sunday there is a silver lining. Apparently my bike is now an internet celebrity and I'll just bet I can "Kato Kaelin" my way to notoriety as my bike gets a-listed and becomes the hit of the blogosphere and the talk of the internet.I promise I'll try to "keep it real" though and not let the scintillating stars, wild parties and rampant drug use of the internet cycling community change me.
one of many reasons that john cleese is inspiring
I'm not likely to do this very often but this is a video that I ran across that I had to re-post here. Enjoy.
Monday, October 13, 2008
no name, no win, no problem...
I ran my first alleycat in over a year last night and sucked it up like I tend to do. There's a thousand lame excuses I could throw out; my flat bars kept me from really digging in, I had worked all day, I was dehydrated and hungry, bottom line is that I couldn't pull it out. DFL. 28 minutes behind first place, 14 behind second, third and fourth and 4 minutes behind fifth. I "beat" the two DNFs and one guy who was far enough behind me that his finish was at the bar we went to afterward.
I can't say that I'm not bummed out about it but I did make a few DUMB mistakes including messing up the furthest stop from where I needed to drop manifest #1 which caused me to have to go back and do that whole stop over again and then misreading manifest#2 and looking for the wrong building, both of these together probably cost me at least 20 minutes and by the time I dropped manifest #2 and had to sprint to my former JJ delivery job or a to-go menu I was fucking cooked and just didn't have the legs to sprint 30 or so blocks, 7 of it uphill.
So, lessons learned;
-bring water dumbass (I usually do, but I forgot my water bottle on the bench at work)
-make sure I have the right address (I pulled a classic "right number, wrong street")
-having the "Doctor Who" theme stuck in your head makes racing surreal
Oh well, maybe next time
I can't say that I'm not bummed out about it but I did make a few DUMB mistakes including messing up the furthest stop from where I needed to drop manifest #1 which caused me to have to go back and do that whole stop over again and then misreading manifest#2 and looking for the wrong building, both of these together probably cost me at least 20 minutes and by the time I dropped manifest #2 and had to sprint to my former JJ delivery job or a to-go menu I was fucking cooked and just didn't have the legs to sprint 30 or so blocks, 7 of it uphill.
So, lessons learned;
-bring water dumbass (I usually do, but I forgot my water bottle on the bench at work)
-make sure I have the right address (I pulled a classic "right number, wrong street")
-having the "Doctor Who" theme stuck in your head makes racing surreal
Oh well, maybe next time
Thursday, October 9, 2008
...and if you like this you'll love...
This pertains to the ten or so of you that have actually read this so if you don't read my random brain-spurts feel free to go back to your macrame or World of Warcraft. For anyone who actually reads this stuff I am going to be a regular contributor to the Hub Bike Coop's blog, most of this stuff will probably have to with cycling and the care and feeding of the bicycle so if that's not your thing it's cool, i'll get over it.
Monday, October 6, 2008
quickly nigel, to the ancillarium!
Born august 11th 1879 in Budapest to Vladislaw and Erzebet Kaltenfuss, Sebastien was an unusual child almost from birth, as the weeks preceding had been filled with strange occurrences and portents of the oddest sort.
A city wide night-soil haulers strike, coinciding with the distribution of a particularly bad shipment of Venetian tea cakes set the stage for a hygienic crisis of epic proportions. An incremental, or perhaps excremental, increase in methane resulted in a thermal inversion blanketing the region in a miasmic fog which, in turn, caused a remarkable spike in frog and toad population transforming the district into a cacophony of croaking and chirping from sundown to sunup bringing about the world's only recorded epidemic of insomnia.
Driven half-mad by sleep deprivation Erzebet took to the study of Icelandic runes, Scottish music and Chinese topiary to calm her nerves. Understandably Vladislaw was at a loss to rectify these new found pastimes with his provincial upbringing and sought to provide a wholesome environment for his firstborn by embarking on a woodworking binge of the sort that has only been seen since in the nightmares of amphetamine-addled beavers.
Sebastien's early childhood is a sticky morass of half-truths, unsubstantiated allegations and outright fabrication but what is known is that at age 9 he was sold to a consortium of Finnish merchants in the employ of a shadowy Persian financier known only as the "Mahdi al Muhqti Muhq" who, in turn, sent him to be raised in a Prussian military academy with the intention to have him lead a division of Pashtun Zouaves against the British Raj in a bizarre plot to destabilize the world's tea market and supplant the Russian royal family with a cabal of Viennese coffee house intellectuals. Ironically this was almost literally what came to pass 29 years later without any help whatsoever from the Mahdi.
Upon graduation from the Gemmutlischen-Fahrrad Akademy in 1897 Sebastien once again disappeared from public view, though reports place him in Tibet in 1904, the Yukon in 1909, Patagonia in 1913, and with a traveling preacher in the American south in 1925. Less reliable, though compelling, accounts place him in the company of Hindu mystics, Australian aboriginal shamans, the "practical occultists" of the English midlands and a mysterious Kabbalist of Trans-Jordanian extraction alleged to be an alchemical "secret master" from the Middle Ages.
Reappearing in Berlin in 1929 Kaltenfuss made a small name for himself as the manager of an all-hermaphrodite cabaret and attempted a career as a jazz bassoonist but soon found that the mournful, nasal tone of the instrument was particularly ill-suited to his chosen medium. He soon abandoned the hedonism of the Weimar Republic for a 17 year contemplative hermitage among the fishermen of Fiji during which he spoke only 9 words, none of them in Fijian, much to the confusion of the neighboring villagers who had taken to watching the strange European who dwelt silently on their island.
After completely ignoring worldwide strife, excluding a possibly apocryphal incident where he single-handedly defeated a platoon of Chindits in a brawl over a plate of mohinga in a bar in Myitkyina in 1944, Sebastien moved to Gatineau, Quebec to join the Canadian merchant marine after briefly experimenting with free-verse poetry in New York's East Village beat coffeehouses. No less a personage than Allen Ginsberg was alleged to have called him "a hack, a total failure of art, so square that you can almost cut yourself on the corners" though in later years both men denied the incident ever having occurred.
Following an uneventful career as a deckhand on a taconite freighter Sebastien joined a Mossad-led mission into Argentina to hunt for fugitive Nazis having been selected for the unlikely combination of his fluency in German, ropeworking skills and knowledge of the Fijian sovreignity movement, making him the perfect infiltration agent in the eyes of his handlers. Espionage seemed to be a promising field for Kaltenfuss until his superiors transferred him from Beunos Aires to a small village on the Pampas after a confidential source claimed knowledge of an ODESSA-run cattle rustling operation. The information was proven to be false after the source was discovered to have been compromised by a Soviet "honey pot" agent working under diplomatic cover in the East German consulate making Sebastien's posting totally irrelevant to the operation. He was discharged at the rank of corporal.
Once again as the world was gripped by warfare and civil unrest Mr. Kaltenfuss seems to drop off the face of the planet though confidential sources speaking only on condition of anonymity place him in Paris in 1968, Madrid and Prague in 1969, Berlin in 1970, and Northern Ireland and South Dakota in 1973 despite strenuous objections on Kaltenfuss' part as to any alleged involvement in social or political radicalism.
Resurfacing in Rhodesia in 1978 in an ill-timed bid to become a safari outfitter Sebastien attempted to join the ZIPRA but was turned away due to a violation of Ndebele cultural taboos which neither party has spoken of to this day except to agree that it "wasn't a big deal but we couldn't just let it go". Leaving central Africa Sebastien moved steadily eastwards across the Arabian peninsula into south Asia where he worked for number of years as a Phat-A-Phat driver in Mumbai and as a curry chef in a respectable, but by no means luxurious hotel in Dhaka.
1989 saw unprecedented success for Kaltenfuss in the financial markets of Hong Kong with an unnamed financial backer described by rivals as a "Middle Eastern muckity-muck". Despite the lucrative business arrangement between them Sebastien claimed to have no idea who his backer was and had, in fact, never met him in a telephone interview given to the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1997, just before his fortune and credibility as a financial guru were erased simultaneously after he heavily invested in the Thai, Indonesian, and South Korean money markets that June.
With both his personal and business finances in smoking ruin Sebastien once again turned to the sea, working primarily as a pearl diver in Palawan and a paua fisherman in New Zealand though proving a surprisingly adept emu rancher during a brief sojourn in Alice Springs, Australia and a gifted though regrettably briefly appointed Minister of Tourism in Vanatu.
Sebastien Kaltenfuss' current whereabouts and activities are unknown though sources place him variously in Tadjikstan as a smuggler, Ireland as a hurling coach, Hokkaido as a zen monk and as a barkeep in Elephant and Castle, UK.
-Leftenant Archibald Ponceybonce, Royal Highland Fusileers, Ret.
A city wide night-soil haulers strike, coinciding with the distribution of a particularly bad shipment of Venetian tea cakes set the stage for a hygienic crisis of epic proportions. An incremental, or perhaps excremental, increase in methane resulted in a thermal inversion blanketing the region in a miasmic fog which, in turn, caused a remarkable spike in frog and toad population transforming the district into a cacophony of croaking and chirping from sundown to sunup bringing about the world's only recorded epidemic of insomnia.
Driven half-mad by sleep deprivation Erzebet took to the study of Icelandic runes, Scottish music and Chinese topiary to calm her nerves. Understandably Vladislaw was at a loss to rectify these new found pastimes with his provincial upbringing and sought to provide a wholesome environment for his firstborn by embarking on a woodworking binge of the sort that has only been seen since in the nightmares of amphetamine-addled beavers.
Sebastien's early childhood is a sticky morass of half-truths, unsubstantiated allegations and outright fabrication but what is known is that at age 9 he was sold to a consortium of Finnish merchants in the employ of a shadowy Persian financier known only as the "Mahdi al Muhqti Muhq" who, in turn, sent him to be raised in a Prussian military academy with the intention to have him lead a division of Pashtun Zouaves against the British Raj in a bizarre plot to destabilize the world's tea market and supplant the Russian royal family with a cabal of Viennese coffee house intellectuals. Ironically this was almost literally what came to pass 29 years later without any help whatsoever from the Mahdi.
Upon graduation from the Gemmutlischen-Fahrrad Akademy in 1897 Sebastien once again disappeared from public view, though reports place him in Tibet in 1904, the Yukon in 1909, Patagonia in 1913, and with a traveling preacher in the American south in 1925. Less reliable, though compelling, accounts place him in the company of Hindu mystics, Australian aboriginal shamans, the "practical occultists" of the English midlands and a mysterious Kabbalist of Trans-Jordanian extraction alleged to be an alchemical "secret master" from the Middle Ages.
Reappearing in Berlin in 1929 Kaltenfuss made a small name for himself as the manager of an all-hermaphrodite cabaret and attempted a career as a jazz bassoonist but soon found that the mournful, nasal tone of the instrument was particularly ill-suited to his chosen medium. He soon abandoned the hedonism of the Weimar Republic for a 17 year contemplative hermitage among the fishermen of Fiji during which he spoke only 9 words, none of them in Fijian, much to the confusion of the neighboring villagers who had taken to watching the strange European who dwelt silently on their island.
After completely ignoring worldwide strife, excluding a possibly apocryphal incident where he single-handedly defeated a platoon of Chindits in a brawl over a plate of mohinga in a bar in Myitkyina in 1944, Sebastien moved to Gatineau, Quebec to join the Canadian merchant marine after briefly experimenting with free-verse poetry in New York's East Village beat coffeehouses. No less a personage than Allen Ginsberg was alleged to have called him "a hack, a total failure of art, so square that you can almost cut yourself on the corners" though in later years both men denied the incident ever having occurred.
Following an uneventful career as a deckhand on a taconite freighter Sebastien joined a Mossad-led mission into Argentina to hunt for fugitive Nazis having been selected for the unlikely combination of his fluency in German, ropeworking skills and knowledge of the Fijian sovreignity movement, making him the perfect infiltration agent in the eyes of his handlers. Espionage seemed to be a promising field for Kaltenfuss until his superiors transferred him from Beunos Aires to a small village on the Pampas after a confidential source claimed knowledge of an ODESSA-run cattle rustling operation. The information was proven to be false after the source was discovered to have been compromised by a Soviet "honey pot" agent working under diplomatic cover in the East German consulate making Sebastien's posting totally irrelevant to the operation. He was discharged at the rank of corporal.
Once again as the world was gripped by warfare and civil unrest Mr. Kaltenfuss seems to drop off the face of the planet though confidential sources speaking only on condition of anonymity place him in Paris in 1968, Madrid and Prague in 1969, Berlin in 1970, and Northern Ireland and South Dakota in 1973 despite strenuous objections on Kaltenfuss' part as to any alleged involvement in social or political radicalism.
Resurfacing in Rhodesia in 1978 in an ill-timed bid to become a safari outfitter Sebastien attempted to join the ZIPRA but was turned away due to a violation of Ndebele cultural taboos which neither party has spoken of to this day except to agree that it "wasn't a big deal but we couldn't just let it go". Leaving central Africa Sebastien moved steadily eastwards across the Arabian peninsula into south Asia where he worked for number of years as a Phat-A-Phat driver in Mumbai and as a curry chef in a respectable, but by no means luxurious hotel in Dhaka.
1989 saw unprecedented success for Kaltenfuss in the financial markets of Hong Kong with an unnamed financial backer described by rivals as a "Middle Eastern muckity-muck". Despite the lucrative business arrangement between them Sebastien claimed to have no idea who his backer was and had, in fact, never met him in a telephone interview given to the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1997, just before his fortune and credibility as a financial guru were erased simultaneously after he heavily invested in the Thai, Indonesian, and South Korean money markets that June.
With both his personal and business finances in smoking ruin Sebastien once again turned to the sea, working primarily as a pearl diver in Palawan and a paua fisherman in New Zealand though proving a surprisingly adept emu rancher during a brief sojourn in Alice Springs, Australia and a gifted though regrettably briefly appointed Minister of Tourism in Vanatu.
Sebastien Kaltenfuss' current whereabouts and activities are unknown though sources place him variously in Tadjikstan as a smuggler, Ireland as a hurling coach, Hokkaido as a zen monk and as a barkeep in Elephant and Castle, UK.
-Leftenant Archibald Ponceybonce, Royal Highland Fusileers, Ret.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
brutalism, it's not just for architecture students any more
thursday night someone threw a brick through the front door of the bike shop that i work at, a month ago a college student was shot to death in front of a community center while standing with a group of people, but no one saw anything and to top it all off i got to watch six squads worth of cops cordon off a basketball court sized area with police tape while an ambulance came and took someone away across the street yesterday.
welcome to the west bank.
not the one in palestine, the one in minneapolis. city council calls it "cedar-riverside", rednecks call it "little mogadishu" and about 8,000 people call it home.
about a block from my shop's front door is the largest public housing complex in minneapolis "riverside plaza" aka "the crack stacks" or "the ghetto in the sky", a multi-building highrise mostly housing east african immigrants and refugees these days, a block away in the opposite direction is the university of minnesota's west bank campus, head south down cedar ave and you've got a mixture of halal markets (think muslim east african bodegas), restaurants, small businesses and bars, east on riverside you've got the hard times cafe, the former viking bar and north country coop and eventually fairview riverside hospital and augsburg college.
not surprisingly you get a weird mix of folks on the west bank. clean cut folks attending the carlson school of management at the u buy coffee drinks from the president of the black label bike club at the hard times, east african elders and street-punk fashionistas from the triple rock social club could compare notes on mohawk tinting vs. beard henna-ing, old hippies kick it with credit card bikers at the joint and the cabooze...you get the point, it can be a little surreal.
that was a long and slightly pretentious tangent so i'll get back to my point.
shit can get kind of gnarly over here and the local news stations don't help. every time that something happens it seems like it becomes a chance for some local pundit to opine about the shortcomings of the "somali community" or some smug d-bag to propose that the neighborhood be burned to the ground. go read the comments on any of the local news outlets after some kid gets killed here and you'll see some cold, cold shit. it's like "full metal jacket", some ignorant jerkoff with a charles bronson take on community policing shooting their mouth off about a neighborhood they've never been to and a community they know nothing about from the safety and anonymity of the internet.
i call bullshit.
i bike through or past the crackstacks almost every day and don't get me wrong, it can be hairy but find me a neighborhood ANYWHERE that doesn't have it's share of hooligans, drunks, hoodlums and juvenile delinquents. i do mean anywhere by the way, even in the lily white suburbs and small towns of america, it's just that there it may be dismissed as "good ol' boys" or "white trash" depending on which way the wind is blowing at the moment. rich kids pick on poorer kids in suburban high schools, the locals hate the townies, and jets and sharks have viciously choreographed, finger snapping rumbles in the streets of our fair cities.
violence happens, it's in our national blood. you can argue that we descend from a group of religious fundamentalists so rabid that they killed people for "witchcraft" on one side and from cutthroat capitalists so single minded that they displaced, killed and enslaved millions on the other. the story of our civilization is the same as many others, it's just that we killed more people, more recently than most. we treat issues of class as issues of race, issues of gender as academia and poverty as a law enforcement problem and none of these approaches have done much to solve anything.
the problems on the west bank are huge and require context that most people don't have, put together a huge immigrant community from a region that has been plagued with government instability and corruption along with near ceaseless warfare for most of the last 30 years, a widening culture/generation gap between non-english speaking african expatriate elders and a westernized, american born youth couple that with a neighborhood whose median income drops by about $26,000 when the sun goes down everyday and you get get a lot of room to fuck up.
all that said, i love this neighborhood. i've been working here for the last 7 years and hanging out since i was a teenager. yeah there are thugs, drunks and crime but there's also families, churches (ok...mosques, but that's still a church!) and people working at making their neighborhood better and all the internet vigilantes and "safe-city" pundits would do well to keep that in mind.
p.s. i just figured out how to do that whole "links in the blog" thing. sweet eh?
welcome to the west bank.
not the one in palestine, the one in minneapolis. city council calls it "cedar-riverside", rednecks call it "little mogadishu" and about 8,000 people call it home.
about a block from my shop's front door is the largest public housing complex in minneapolis "riverside plaza" aka "the crack stacks" or "the ghetto in the sky", a multi-building highrise mostly housing east african immigrants and refugees these days, a block away in the opposite direction is the university of minnesota's west bank campus, head south down cedar ave and you've got a mixture of halal markets (think muslim east african bodegas), restaurants, small businesses and bars, east on riverside you've got the hard times cafe, the former viking bar and north country coop and eventually fairview riverside hospital and augsburg college.
not surprisingly you get a weird mix of folks on the west bank. clean cut folks attending the carlson school of management at the u buy coffee drinks from the president of the black label bike club at the hard times, east african elders and street-punk fashionistas from the triple rock social club could compare notes on mohawk tinting vs. beard henna-ing, old hippies kick it with credit card bikers at the joint and the cabooze...you get the point, it can be a little surreal.
that was a long and slightly pretentious tangent so i'll get back to my point.
shit can get kind of gnarly over here and the local news stations don't help. every time that something happens it seems like it becomes a chance for some local pundit to opine about the shortcomings of the "somali community" or some smug d-bag to propose that the neighborhood be burned to the ground. go read the comments on any of the local news outlets after some kid gets killed here and you'll see some cold, cold shit. it's like "full metal jacket", some ignorant jerkoff with a charles bronson take on community policing shooting their mouth off about a neighborhood they've never been to and a community they know nothing about from the safety and anonymity of the internet.
i call bullshit.
i bike through or past the crackstacks almost every day and don't get me wrong, it can be hairy but find me a neighborhood ANYWHERE that doesn't have it's share of hooligans, drunks, hoodlums and juvenile delinquents. i do mean anywhere by the way, even in the lily white suburbs and small towns of america, it's just that there it may be dismissed as "good ol' boys" or "white trash" depending on which way the wind is blowing at the moment. rich kids pick on poorer kids in suburban high schools, the locals hate the townies, and jets and sharks have viciously choreographed, finger snapping rumbles in the streets of our fair cities.
violence happens, it's in our national blood. you can argue that we descend from a group of religious fundamentalists so rabid that they killed people for "witchcraft" on one side and from cutthroat capitalists so single minded that they displaced, killed and enslaved millions on the other. the story of our civilization is the same as many others, it's just that we killed more people, more recently than most. we treat issues of class as issues of race, issues of gender as academia and poverty as a law enforcement problem and none of these approaches have done much to solve anything.
the problems on the west bank are huge and require context that most people don't have, put together a huge immigrant community from a region that has been plagued with government instability and corruption along with near ceaseless warfare for most of the last 30 years, a widening culture/generation gap between non-english speaking african expatriate elders and a westernized, american born youth couple that with a neighborhood whose median income drops by about $26,000 when the sun goes down everyday and you get get a lot of room to fuck up.
all that said, i love this neighborhood. i've been working here for the last 7 years and hanging out since i was a teenager. yeah there are thugs, drunks and crime but there's also families, churches (ok...mosques, but that's still a church!) and people working at making their neighborhood better and all the internet vigilantes and "safe-city" pundits would do well to keep that in mind.
p.s. i just figured out how to do that whole "links in the blog" thing. sweet eh?
Thursday, September 11, 2008
new soapbox, same old shit
i'm in the process of commiting "myspace suicide". i've had the unfortunate realization that myspace is like a giant high school full of marketing people and that is, coincidentally, a great description of the last exit before you get to judas if you take the dante 616 south through the inferno. semi-obscure literary references aside this is where i'm going to post things that i write, i've cherry-picked a few of my favorites from the myspace days but everything else is going to be new.
these are my opinions and stories, if they offend your sensibilities please go find something you actually enjoy reading. i'd write this even if no one read it.
these are my opinions and stories, if they offend your sensibilities please go find something you actually enjoy reading. i'd write this even if no one read it.
the circus leaves town
no matter what the title might imply this has nothing to do with the rnc. there's a thousand places that you can go read about it. this isn't one of them.
i've mostly used this to keep in touch with folks who live a long way away but i have been feeling less and less like participating in "social networking", it's just become part of the hundreds of decibels of static that seems to surround living in america these days.
i don't watch television or listen to commercial radio because advertisements make me sick, i hate that everything has become a corporate advertisement, i hate being constantly told to consume. it has become a shrill, howling fog obscuring the emptiness of our way of life. the grey march of years into obscurity and regret, the loss and lack of purpose outside of accumulation.
i want no part of this so i will take no part in it, i'm leaving.
i'd much rather spend time with people, even talk to them on the phone or get a letter from them than recieve a pre-formatted update of what they've been doing especially as it pertains to myspace.
so get in touch.
cosby sweaters
i went mountain biking for the first time today.
ok, so the term mountain is used a bit loosely here in the north woods due to our almost complete lack of anything even remotely resembling a mountain or mountains but i am priveleged to live in a city that has a huge park with a couple miles of singletrack. but i digress...
fucking hell! seriously...holy shit.
i haven't had so much fun in years.
i can be kind of a grim guy sometimes, kind of caustic and cynical with a side of gruff but i think i was grinning like a doof-ball all the way back to my house, and that's after working all day with nothing but a banana and a ton of coffee to eat and then making a largely unsucessful attempt at biking some of the trails down by the river, being repulsed first by loose dirt and rocks on all of the climbs and then by a remarkably unattractive couple doing something that looked an awful (and i really do mean AWFUL) lot like fucking in the middle of the trail. i can't be sure because i whipped a quick 180 and rode off to find my eye-bleach and mental rewind/erase button but it very much resembled a weedy looking guy in a leather jacket humping a rather heavyset blonde from behind while she was bent over what appeared to be a double-wide stroller. a fucking baby carriage.
let me repeat that because you might not have caught it the first time, a fucking stroller.
i don't feel like i should have to explain any of the thousands of things that are wrong with that so i'll let you, dear friends, come up with your own lists.
that should give you a fairly good idea of my mindset as i trucked off towards the far side of town to try to hit theo wirth park before the sun went down. let's call it tired and baffled with a hefty dose of "what the fuck is wrong with people?!". finally after much spinning in my eeny beeny little single speed mountain bike gear i crossed highway 55 and saw it. el dorado, shangri la, valhalla...the trailhead.
i cinched in the straps on my de rigeur messenger bag with 20 lbs of crap in in it and rolled into the woods. fucking beautiful. less than 100 yards from a highway, less than 20 minutes biking distance from the center of downtown i had hardpacked dirt rolling and twisting out ahead of me as i rolled deeper and deeper into the trees. i get most of the way through the loop and bite it trying to clean a step-up at the top of a little rise and i don't even care. i start laughing, grab my bike off the ground and ride off to finish the loop. i go back for another lap, and another, and both times the little step up fucks me up and i have to put a foot down so i don't bail again but i don't care. i'm having way too much fun. finally on lap 4 i clear it and i feel totally invincible as i tear through the rest of the lap into the "most difficult" section of the trail, i zip over the catwalk and down through the rock garden with no problems and then fall over like a tree after just barely kissing a medium sized rock with my front tire after deciding to stop instead of dodging it on my way out of the trail.
to answer the age old question i think trees say something like "oh crap" and start laughing when they fall in the forest and no one is around.
about this time i figure i've probably had enough fun dehydrating myself for one day and it's starting to get dark besides. i roll off towards the quaking bog where i know that there's a water pump and drink about a quart of nice cold pump water before i fill up my bottle and head out to go grab some groceries on my way home.
it's just like my man ice cube says: "today was a good day", i'm flithy fucking dirty and so exhausted that i keep zoning out all the way back to the southside. my shirt is stuck to my chest, shoulders and back, my hat is completely soaked underneath my helmet, and the palms of my gloves are starting to feel kind of slimy and it doesn't even register that i probably look like i got run over by a tractor as i grab some random foodstuffs at the grocery after an impulse stop at cheapo that scores me a jesus lizard tape and the full original, un-fucked-with star wars trilogy where han solo shoots first and there's no CGI crap for under 10 bucks. all i'm saying is this is the part where the smoky sounding voice-over guy would do a quick recap and then tell us all that it's miller time if my life was a beer commercial and it feels pretty damn good.
so if you see even less of me than usual and i'm even dirtier than usual when you do see me, that's why.
ok, so the term mountain is used a bit loosely here in the north woods due to our almost complete lack of anything even remotely resembling a mountain or mountains but i am priveleged to live in a city that has a huge park with a couple miles of singletrack. but i digress...
fucking hell! seriously...holy shit.
i haven't had so much fun in years.
i can be kind of a grim guy sometimes, kind of caustic and cynical with a side of gruff but i think i was grinning like a doof-ball all the way back to my house, and that's after working all day with nothing but a banana and a ton of coffee to eat and then making a largely unsucessful attempt at biking some of the trails down by the river, being repulsed first by loose dirt and rocks on all of the climbs and then by a remarkably unattractive couple doing something that looked an awful (and i really do mean AWFUL) lot like fucking in the middle of the trail. i can't be sure because i whipped a quick 180 and rode off to find my eye-bleach and mental rewind/erase button but it very much resembled a weedy looking guy in a leather jacket humping a rather heavyset blonde from behind while she was bent over what appeared to be a double-wide stroller. a fucking baby carriage.
let me repeat that because you might not have caught it the first time, a fucking stroller.
i don't feel like i should have to explain any of the thousands of things that are wrong with that so i'll let you, dear friends, come up with your own lists.
that should give you a fairly good idea of my mindset as i trucked off towards the far side of town to try to hit theo wirth park before the sun went down. let's call it tired and baffled with a hefty dose of "what the fuck is wrong with people?!". finally after much spinning in my eeny beeny little single speed mountain bike gear i crossed highway 55 and saw it. el dorado, shangri la, valhalla...the trailhead.
i cinched in the straps on my de rigeur messenger bag with 20 lbs of crap in in it and rolled into the woods. fucking beautiful. less than 100 yards from a highway, less than 20 minutes biking distance from the center of downtown i had hardpacked dirt rolling and twisting out ahead of me as i rolled deeper and deeper into the trees. i get most of the way through the loop and bite it trying to clean a step-up at the top of a little rise and i don't even care. i start laughing, grab my bike off the ground and ride off to finish the loop. i go back for another lap, and another, and both times the little step up fucks me up and i have to put a foot down so i don't bail again but i don't care. i'm having way too much fun. finally on lap 4 i clear it and i feel totally invincible as i tear through the rest of the lap into the "most difficult" section of the trail, i zip over the catwalk and down through the rock garden with no problems and then fall over like a tree after just barely kissing a medium sized rock with my front tire after deciding to stop instead of dodging it on my way out of the trail.
to answer the age old question i think trees say something like "oh crap" and start laughing when they fall in the forest and no one is around.
about this time i figure i've probably had enough fun dehydrating myself for one day and it's starting to get dark besides. i roll off towards the quaking bog where i know that there's a water pump and drink about a quart of nice cold pump water before i fill up my bottle and head out to go grab some groceries on my way home.
it's just like my man ice cube says: "today was a good day", i'm flithy fucking dirty and so exhausted that i keep zoning out all the way back to the southside. my shirt is stuck to my chest, shoulders and back, my hat is completely soaked underneath my helmet, and the palms of my gloves are starting to feel kind of slimy and it doesn't even register that i probably look like i got run over by a tractor as i grab some random foodstuffs at the grocery after an impulse stop at cheapo that scores me a jesus lizard tape and the full original, un-fucked-with star wars trilogy where han solo shoots first and there's no CGI crap for under 10 bucks. all i'm saying is this is the part where the smoky sounding voice-over guy would do a quick recap and then tell us all that it's miller time if my life was a beer commercial and it feels pretty damn good.
so if you see even less of me than usual and i'm even dirtier than usual when you do see me, that's why.
snowpants make anyone look like a little kid
this'll probably be a bit disjointed and it's not like anyone isn't used to my disjointed ass reads these anyway, but my apologies in advance.
at the risk of sounding like some irrelevant "scenester fuck" i realized a little while back that i've spent more than half of my life in hardcore punk, with about what you'd expect to show for it; quite a few scars, a shit-ton of memories, some great, some awful, the ability to drive a van hundreds of miles overnight after playing myself to the point that my vision is tunneling, a long list of people (some of whose names i can't remember) who have offered up floor space, food and showers to a bunch of crazed strangers, and generally just a whole life that very few people can understand.
it's still funny to me to watch "normal" people's faces while i tell them that, no, we don't make a bunch of money playing in our band and, no, we don't have a "real" record label doing anything for us but somehow we manage to tour the country and put out records despite it all. the older i get the less likely people are to get that i do this because there's nothing else i'd rather do and maybe because i can't do anything else and no matter which it is, that i'd rather be going nuts at a show than navel-gazing trying to figure out if something went drastically wrong with me at some crucial developmental stage. i prefer to think that i knew EXACTLY who the fuck i was at an early age and that when i tried to "figure out who i was" it always ended badly because i wasn't being myself, i was trying to be other people because i had a near-constant onslaught of people telling me that there was NO WAY that this is really who i am or that i've known it since i was 14.
so i have played my "last" shows with IN DEFENCE, the hardcore band i've been writing for and playing in for the last year and a half or so, as of last weekend and it's kind of a wierd feeling. i didn't quit the band because i was going to school or getting hitched or trying to "make something of myself" or anything, i just can't commit to the ambitious touring schedule ben and company are trying to do in the next 12 months. it's that simple. no "i'm too old for this shit" bitterness although, in all fairness, hardcore isn't a positive, uplifting, feelgood experience for me. i write and play from a place of extreme negativity, all of the shit that goes on in my head, all of the stress, frustration, alienation, depression, anger, isolation, and disillusionment with the world and the people in it is where what i do comes from and i'm not a "performer", i dredge that shit out of all the dark places inside of myself in order to play. it starts to take a "psychic toll" on me, as i heard scott and steve from NEUROSIS put it, in addition to the physical punishment of drumming as hard and fast as i can for 25 minutes at a time after driving a few hundred miles and loading gear every day for a couple of weeks on end. don't get me wrong, i love it, but it wears me out and i start feeling like an entertainer instead of an artist if i can be that pretentious for a minute.
now that i'm "done" for a while i realize how much this is a part of me, like a girlfriend or an addiction. it's a kind of loss that doesn't so much hurt as it just feels gone, an empty place where something used to be like when you lose a tooth or the place you used to live gets torn down.
it just makes me think about when i used to paint graffiti, it wasn't because i was a vandal and wanted to deface shit, i was just trying to scream "i'm here" because i wasn't ok with just being some faceless person in a city full of them. it was about making an impact, leaving a mark. i wonder if the douchebag who grabbed me by the throat after throwing me into the floor on my previous trip around the moshpit knows how close he came to getting his ass fucking kicked, not because i'm a big tough guy, but because that's not how you act at a show. i wonder if anyone had ever seen a band say "fuck gang vocals man, it's all about the gang stagedive!". i can pretty much guarantee that no one had ever seen ben in a pink gorilla suit try to crowd surf through an entire D4 set. same goes for a pizza vs. tacos wall of death, you're welcome hardcore that's MY fucking song, now go have fun in the pit with it. i mean it.
for all the lame people who decide to act like shitheads at shows because they think that shit's "punk as fuck" there were a couple of hundred kids who just wanted to go off and have fun and all i can think of is this is why i do this, this is where i belong, that "normal people" are never going to understand it and that this has been a crazy 14 years and i'm not gonna stop.
one last thing, go check out GET RAD's page. they are a great fucking band and the last show i played with IN DEFENCE was for dave from GET RAD's 30th birthday. dave's a great guy and has made some awesome hardcore over the years with various bands and we were stoked as fuck and priveleged to play such an amazing show with so many great bands.
at the risk of sounding like some irrelevant "scenester fuck" i realized a little while back that i've spent more than half of my life in hardcore punk, with about what you'd expect to show for it; quite a few scars, a shit-ton of memories, some great, some awful, the ability to drive a van hundreds of miles overnight after playing myself to the point that my vision is tunneling, a long list of people (some of whose names i can't remember) who have offered up floor space, food and showers to a bunch of crazed strangers, and generally just a whole life that very few people can understand.
it's still funny to me to watch "normal" people's faces while i tell them that, no, we don't make a bunch of money playing in our band and, no, we don't have a "real" record label doing anything for us but somehow we manage to tour the country and put out records despite it all. the older i get the less likely people are to get that i do this because there's nothing else i'd rather do and maybe because i can't do anything else and no matter which it is, that i'd rather be going nuts at a show than navel-gazing trying to figure out if something went drastically wrong with me at some crucial developmental stage. i prefer to think that i knew EXACTLY who the fuck i was at an early age and that when i tried to "figure out who i was" it always ended badly because i wasn't being myself, i was trying to be other people because i had a near-constant onslaught of people telling me that there was NO WAY that this is really who i am or that i've known it since i was 14.
so i have played my "last" shows with IN DEFENCE, the hardcore band i've been writing for and playing in for the last year and a half or so, as of last weekend and it's kind of a wierd feeling. i didn't quit the band because i was going to school or getting hitched or trying to "make something of myself" or anything, i just can't commit to the ambitious touring schedule ben and company are trying to do in the next 12 months. it's that simple. no "i'm too old for this shit" bitterness although, in all fairness, hardcore isn't a positive, uplifting, feelgood experience for me. i write and play from a place of extreme negativity, all of the shit that goes on in my head, all of the stress, frustration, alienation, depression, anger, isolation, and disillusionment with the world and the people in it is where what i do comes from and i'm not a "performer", i dredge that shit out of all the dark places inside of myself in order to play. it starts to take a "psychic toll" on me, as i heard scott and steve from NEUROSIS put it, in addition to the physical punishment of drumming as hard and fast as i can for 25 minutes at a time after driving a few hundred miles and loading gear every day for a couple of weeks on end. don't get me wrong, i love it, but it wears me out and i start feeling like an entertainer instead of an artist if i can be that pretentious for a minute.
now that i'm "done" for a while i realize how much this is a part of me, like a girlfriend or an addiction. it's a kind of loss that doesn't so much hurt as it just feels gone, an empty place where something used to be like when you lose a tooth or the place you used to live gets torn down.
it just makes me think about when i used to paint graffiti, it wasn't because i was a vandal and wanted to deface shit, i was just trying to scream "i'm here" because i wasn't ok with just being some faceless person in a city full of them. it was about making an impact, leaving a mark. i wonder if the douchebag who grabbed me by the throat after throwing me into the floor on my previous trip around the moshpit knows how close he came to getting his ass fucking kicked, not because i'm a big tough guy, but because that's not how you act at a show. i wonder if anyone had ever seen a band say "fuck gang vocals man, it's all about the gang stagedive!". i can pretty much guarantee that no one had ever seen ben in a pink gorilla suit try to crowd surf through an entire D4 set. same goes for a pizza vs. tacos wall of death, you're welcome hardcore that's MY fucking song, now go have fun in the pit with it. i mean it.
for all the lame people who decide to act like shitheads at shows because they think that shit's "punk as fuck" there were a couple of hundred kids who just wanted to go off and have fun and all i can think of is this is why i do this, this is where i belong, that "normal people" are never going to understand it and that this has been a crazy 14 years and i'm not gonna stop.
one last thing, go check out GET RAD's page. they are a great fucking band and the last show i played with IN DEFENCE was for dave from GET RAD's 30th birthday. dave's a great guy and has made some awesome hardcore over the years with various bands and we were stoked as fuck and priveleged to play such an amazing show with so many great bands.
the breakup
over the past few days i've finally realized that it is time for me and a certain cracked molar to part ways. when it got broken about two years ago i thought things might get weird between us but our relationship was stronger than that and i guess i thought things would always be cool. i mean, we've had our rough spots, the occasional discomfort or food particulates getting lodged up in there, but we were always able to work through it and i figured that was how it was going to be.
lately though it's just been all pain and no gain, we can't even talk to each other, much less enjoy the things we've always done together. i mean , like, things i guess i had come to take for granted. y'know, chewing, talking, the occasional grin, just the stuff that made it always seem like we were a part of each other.
but i guess all things must come to an end, when a relationship like this becomes nothing but painful it's time to just let it go.
lately though it's just been all pain and no gain, we can't even talk to each other, much less enjoy the things we've always done together. i mean , like, things i guess i had come to take for granted. y'know, chewing, talking, the occasional grin, just the stuff that made it always seem like we were a part of each other.
but i guess all things must come to an end, when a relationship like this becomes nothing but painful it's time to just let it go.
a foolproof plan to eliminate emo in our lifetime
recently a buddy of mine emailed for advice about his break up, this happens to be a specialty of my as i have been dumped by/dumped a lot of people in my time. it got me to thinking, what if there was a list for the recently broken up going over things they might need to know. i decided to write one in order to further the cause of eradicating emo in our lifetime.
1. you will not like the first person that sleeps with your ex. this is ok, perfectly natural. this person is a vulture, probably planning this for months while they quietly brought about the end of your relationship. they are a fat, ugly, stupid, poser in addition to being an all around worthless person. they are the scum of the earth, lower than a snakes belly, and probably carrying some horrible venereal disease on their filthy genitals. however, i do not recomend harassing/assaulting this person, as that can lead to all sort of legal entanglements and even more grief from your ex. just keep your undying hatred under wraps until you can go all "count of monte cristo" on their useless ass.
2. your ex will not like the first person who sleeps with you. (see above)
3. you will probably sleep with your ex at least once in the next few months. again, perfectly normal. after all, its a really nice thing to do for them as anyone else that they could be sleeping with would be woefully inadequate, and any sex they could be having would, of course, be terrible. whatever you do, dont fall into the john cusack-esque trap of lying in bed alone, thinking of the amazing sex your ex must be have right now. just dont.
4. you will most likely get depressed. at all costs avoid any urges to write poetry, bittersweet songs about your loss or listen to the get up kids. this may be difficult but it will make you a better person in the long run. it is important to let yourself be bummed out, but not to the point that you become a simpering wiener.
5. you will feel the urge to get out more. especially after your ex's sinister plan to destroy your social life. this requires a little planning because you will want to avoid your ex, unless of course you are showing off how totally and completely over them you are. going out is good, being that person who sits at home and drinks alone makes your friends feel wierd about you. they may attempt an intervention or put you on suicide watch, especially if the cure is involved. so go out, drink up, and party. after all, out is where all the boys/girls who have been lining up to do you while you were trapped in that sham of a relationship are.
6. you will call your ex in the middle of the night, wasted. we all know youre going to do it, just please try not to. you will say dumb shit, you will threaten them, you will ask them to come back, you will cry, probably all in the same sentence. this a bad thing, it shows that you are weak, your ex will exploit this in their evil scheme to destroy your life, you must not let them gain the upper hand, you must destroy them first.
7. your ex will call you in the middle of the night, wasted. its a really annoying phone call to get at 4:15 in the morning, no they cant come over, no you dont want to talk, yes you are ok, you will call them sometime, hang up. you have prevailed, victory is yours. now get back to making out with that hottie from the bar.
8. you will probably see your ex somewhere with someone new. be cool, dont stare daggers at them, if they spot you and decide to say hi with their sleazebag in tow, be civil and try to extricate yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. do not fly into full viking berzerker mode and attempt to disassemble the new thing to their component atoms. do not talk shit to them, act casual, if they can get you to freak out in public, they have won. also, do not use this as an opportunity to prove how amazingly over them you are and just hang out with them, even if you are invited. especially do not do this if you are in a bar, alcohol weakens resolve and you may expose your ingenius plot to bring about their ultimate destruction. just smile, say it was nice to see them and bask in the glow of how much better of a person you are than their new thing. even if they look attractive, successful and intelligent, remember that they are probably a child molester or a junkie and are obviously terrible in bed. victory is still yours.
9. your ex will probably see you somewhere with someone new. be cool. just catch them staring daggers at you and then walk up with your hot, amazing new thing in tow, smile and say hi, how theyve been, its nice to see them. then walk away secure in the knowledge that you have just ruined their entire day, if not their entire week.
this is not a complete list, there are other situations that may arise, and you will have to deal with them. just keep in mind that you are a better person than they are and that ultimately you will prevail. just dont let yourself get all emo about it.
1. you will not like the first person that sleeps with your ex. this is ok, perfectly natural. this person is a vulture, probably planning this for months while they quietly brought about the end of your relationship. they are a fat, ugly, stupid, poser in addition to being an all around worthless person. they are the scum of the earth, lower than a snakes belly, and probably carrying some horrible venereal disease on their filthy genitals. however, i do not recomend harassing/assaulting this person, as that can lead to all sort of legal entanglements and even more grief from your ex. just keep your undying hatred under wraps until you can go all "count of monte cristo" on their useless ass.
2. your ex will not like the first person who sleeps with you. (see above)
3. you will probably sleep with your ex at least once in the next few months. again, perfectly normal. after all, its a really nice thing to do for them as anyone else that they could be sleeping with would be woefully inadequate, and any sex they could be having would, of course, be terrible. whatever you do, dont fall into the john cusack-esque trap of lying in bed alone, thinking of the amazing sex your ex must be have right now. just dont.
4. you will most likely get depressed. at all costs avoid any urges to write poetry, bittersweet songs about your loss or listen to the get up kids. this may be difficult but it will make you a better person in the long run. it is important to let yourself be bummed out, but not to the point that you become a simpering wiener.
5. you will feel the urge to get out more. especially after your ex's sinister plan to destroy your social life. this requires a little planning because you will want to avoid your ex, unless of course you are showing off how totally and completely over them you are. going out is good, being that person who sits at home and drinks alone makes your friends feel wierd about you. they may attempt an intervention or put you on suicide watch, especially if the cure is involved. so go out, drink up, and party. after all, out is where all the boys/girls who have been lining up to do you while you were trapped in that sham of a relationship are.
6. you will call your ex in the middle of the night, wasted. we all know youre going to do it, just please try not to. you will say dumb shit, you will threaten them, you will ask them to come back, you will cry, probably all in the same sentence. this a bad thing, it shows that you are weak, your ex will exploit this in their evil scheme to destroy your life, you must not let them gain the upper hand, you must destroy them first.
7. your ex will call you in the middle of the night, wasted. its a really annoying phone call to get at 4:15 in the morning, no they cant come over, no you dont want to talk, yes you are ok, you will call them sometime, hang up. you have prevailed, victory is yours. now get back to making out with that hottie from the bar.
8. you will probably see your ex somewhere with someone new. be cool, dont stare daggers at them, if they spot you and decide to say hi with their sleazebag in tow, be civil and try to extricate yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. do not fly into full viking berzerker mode and attempt to disassemble the new thing to their component atoms. do not talk shit to them, act casual, if they can get you to freak out in public, they have won. also, do not use this as an opportunity to prove how amazingly over them you are and just hang out with them, even if you are invited. especially do not do this if you are in a bar, alcohol weakens resolve and you may expose your ingenius plot to bring about their ultimate destruction. just smile, say it was nice to see them and bask in the glow of how much better of a person you are than their new thing. even if they look attractive, successful and intelligent, remember that they are probably a child molester or a junkie and are obviously terrible in bed. victory is still yours.
9. your ex will probably see you somewhere with someone new. be cool. just catch them staring daggers at you and then walk up with your hot, amazing new thing in tow, smile and say hi, how theyve been, its nice to see them. then walk away secure in the knowledge that you have just ruined their entire day, if not their entire week.
this is not a complete list, there are other situations that may arise, and you will have to deal with them. just keep in mind that you are a better person than they are and that ultimately you will prevail. just dont let yourself get all emo about it.
songs about whats killing hardcore are killing hardcore
i had a really interesting conversation at work the other day with an acquaintance of mine who is from the
my basic beef was that during the early 90s a lot of "hardcore" punk rockers got so upset about things like bad religion signing to a major
the whole thing just kills me, bands like the casualties sell out large halls, its totally ok to be an openly christian band (weren't the krishnas bad enough?!) and we end up with bullshit like conservativepunk.com. how the fuck did that come about? now i will be the first to agree that there has always been a creepy right-wing element, especially in hardcore and oi!, but shit has gotten way out of hand. what the fuck have conservative politics ever had to do with punk, granted, its all about thinking for yourself but how do you even reconcile that. hmm...lets see, i support the republican party, i'm way into jesus, and i firmly believe that preemptive military action is totally justified as long as it is against "terrorists", yep, sounds like hc/punk is the place for me.
before anyone gets their skivvies in bunch i'll say this. if you are a christian and you keep it to yourself and don't get preachy, its just what you happen to believe to get you through the day, fine, i don't care. its just these fucking jesus surfer bands and their fucking brainwashed fans that get up my ass (and not even in a fun way!). "hey , jesus was a gnarly dude who was way into jump kicks, punching the floor and having feelings", whatever gets you through the day. the thing is that there are all christian venues where your lame ass metalcore bands can do their chugga chugga brand of youth ministry where the rest of us don't have to hear it. the last thing i need at a show is some straight, white, christian dude espousing his archconservative views on anything, especially not women's rights, gay rights, contraception, sex, public schools, his personal faith, pretty much anything actually. i am officially fed up, you want to evangelize so fucking bad, go to fucking seminary and become a priest. by the way, this applies to all religions, faith is (or should be) some thing personal so lets keep it to ourselves. i dont want to hear that yahweh, allah, buddha, gaia or cthulhu save anymore than i want to hear that jesus does.
another thing, this whole "love my country fear my government", all american, "try burning this one" thing has got to go. seriously. what the fuck do you have to be proud of? do you do anything to make this country a better place to be? no. you were just born here. your parents fucked here and you happened. end of story, shut up.
now i might be screaming in the wilderness on all of this, really, i might, but i'm pretty sure that i have a point. i know that the whole country has taken a swing to the right (you would think that would spawn a shitload of good political hc/punk) and everything has gotten more commercial and mass marketed...i'm posting this on myspace for fuck sake. i just wonder sometimes if we aren't all missing a great chance to use myspace and other shit that wasn't around 10 or 15 or 20 years ago to build a nationwide (or maybe international) network of cool houses, squats, all ages spaces and venues, and to promote the shows at them. maybe even use it to hip younger kids to bands from the underground that laid the groundwork for all of this, to let kids know about cool bookshops, collectives, coffeehouses and spaces that they can support and/or get involved with and that there is an alternative to warped tour and shitty clubs.
then again maybe i'm just an asshole.
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