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?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
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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