This year I'll live like I've never lived before

Brendan Kelly, I love you, but your year end list was disappointing. So, in the spirit of that, I'll be making my own year end list. I mean, I haven't thought this out too well, and I feel like posting right now as opposed to getting the rest of my life in order, so here goes nothing?

All the Heroin on Tamarind-The best and worst of 2008

Best discovery (overall discoveries category)-Hot Dog Heaven
To say that Hot Dog Heaven has changed my life would be a dire understatement. Never before have I been so affected by what should be such a pedestrian food. But the difference is that HDH is pedestrian food as art form. For me, someone who hates raw tomatoes, to be able to enjoy a hot dog with them, much more consider this hot dog to be the greatest culinary innovation on the planet, is a statement in itself. I don't know where I will be moving after college, but I do know that the presence of a place where I can get a good chicago hot dog is going to be a factor in this.

Worst discovery-Joose
This will one day be the death of me. For those unaware, Joose is a caffeinated malt liquor with 10 percent alcohol. It comes in a 24 ounce can, and it's $2.50 a can from 7-11. I think you'd be better off drinking a 12 pack while snorting an 8-ball of coke. Oh, and did I mention it tastes like paint thinner?

Best show-The Fest 7
This is an absolute no brainer. In fact, it'll probably never change for as long as I'm alive and the Fest is around. Being with good friends that I don't get to see very often, and drinking metric fucktons of Pabst Blue Ribbon, while seeing some of my absolute favorite bands play to probably the best crowds on the planet--I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing on the last weekend of October. Highlight-The Lawrence Arms playing The Raw and Searing Flesh/The Disaster March and Paint it Black playing a rogue show in the back of a uhual in a parking lot.

Worst show-Streetlight Manifesto in the spring
Now, while this wasn't the worst show I've ever seen, in terms of the high caliber of shows I've seen this year, it ranked near the very bottom. In fact, this show was actually pretty good. Streetlight played solidly, even though their support (Zox and Dan Potthast) were pretty bad. The worst part about this show was how predictable Streetlight has gotten live. I've seen them 5 times now, seen many of the songs off Everything Goes Numb at least 5 times, and still, I'm missing out on some of the best of their new stuff. Of course, the fact that most of Streetlight's fans are ignorant little teeny boppers who probably still tattoo shit like "rap sux" on their Trapper Binders probably didn't help either.

Best book I read-Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
I've passed this book around to a lot of my friends, and gotten mixed reactions. In terms of overall continuity and plot-line, there really isn't one. In fact, it's a book of collected pop-culture essays, so it tends to be very scatterbrained. However, it's a great read. Klosterman has a great way of boiling down lofty academia into happy hour banter and applying it to pop-culture. It's pretty great. Honorable mentions: Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski and Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.

Gayest music I started listening to this year-Kate Nash
Yeah, hard to deny the extreme overarching gayness of a heterosexual male enjoying a Cockney Pop Songstress. But everything she does is just so catchy!

Bands/groups that put out good albums that I don't really care to elaborate on, just listen if you're not gay:
The Gaslight Anthem, Girl Talk, The Mars Volta, Paint it Black, The Hold Steady, Kanye West, Subtle, Sun Kil Moon, Dillinger Four, Murder by Death, Pg.lost, Nada Surf, Polar Bear Club

Hero of the year (not sports category)-Barack Obama
I'm Just putting this because honestly, he's the first presidential candidate I've ever been really excited over, and I'm really eagerly anticipating some of the things he's going to do. Honorable mention: Brad Newton, for creating Rocket Fuel as an alcoholic drink.

Dickhead of the year (not sports category)-Bernie Maddoff
50 Billion dollars. Although I do give him props for keeping his retard circus going for so long. Honorable mention: Brad Newton, for having the worst opening podcast in the history of opening podcasts.

Hero of the year (sports category)-Mike Singleterry
49ers are going to the playoffs next year, I can already feel it.
Chase Daniels-Because god, your mom and two sisters are ridiculously gorgeous. Hook a brother up.

Dickhead(s) of the year (sports category)-Nick Saban, Tim Tebow, Andre Smith, Lou Holtz
1. Nick Saban-Good Fucking game, suspending Fat Albert from the Sugar Bowl. It's cool, it's not like Utah is even kinda good.
2. Tim Tebow-Shove your fist pumps up your goddamn ass. I hope someone finds a bunch of Thai boys strung up in your closet. Oh, and you misspelled He15man by the by. It's actually spelled He14man. Suck that you creepy motherfucker. Also, posing with a small child in the heisman pose, while wearing fucking CROCS. Nice fail. Tim Tebow, I can't even put it into words how much I hate you. Go die.
3. Andre Smith-Your tits are bigger than Lendale White's. What team rule did you break now? Eating twinkies on the sidelines?
4. Lou Holtz-I've just never liked Lou Holtz. Fuck you. You aren't funny you senile old bastard.

Beer of the year-Pabst Blue Ribbon
No need to elaborate. Great fucking beer. I didn't really try any new beers this year that blew my mind. Mostly, I had tried most of them last year. This is why Cable Car Lager didn't win this category.

Worst Beer of the Year-Natty Light
Again, this is like claiming Nickleback is the worst music ever. It's an easy target, but it's absolutely true. I had never tried natty light prior to this year, and I think I'd like to stay away from ever drinking it, ever again. Ugh.

Best Quote(s) of the year:
"Sup Gorgeous Body?"-Christopher Aristotle Onassis Gerecke
"If cheating on you involves me eating a waffle that you didn't cook ten times, then yes, I am currently fucking the shit out of that waffle"-John Jennings
"Sex to me is like death to Harry Potter: Almost, but not quite, multiple times"-Jonathan Wesley Hussein Swick

Best AIM transaction of the year:
Channing Custis Monkeyhustle HepKat Freeman: "I love ice water so much, because just when you are like 'aw shit, I'm out of water', it's like 'no, there is still the ice cubes'"
John Arturo Macarena Hanson: "I see"
CCMHF: "I hate you so much"
JAMH: "What do you want me to say?"
JAMH: "Yes this is why I love ice water as well my friend"

Overall Best thing of 2008:
Joe Costa.

hugs and cumshots,

Joe

Misery loves company

Well again, a little break and I'm back to the nether regions of the blogosphere to crank out some dumb shit for everyone to read. This time, the break was the function of a surprise visit home for Christmas and what not. I'm not really a big fan of Christmas really. It's such an awful corporate holiday, and I always hate not knowing who I'm indebted to buy presents for. Each year it seems I end up with more people who buy me something, and thus I kinda feel required to get something for them. It's a tough little situation to try and predict, especially on a budget. Plus I hate the fact that no matter where I go, from Halloween until New Years, there is nothing but Christmas music playing everywhere. The only upside to this is that I know my life would be worth taking if I heard anything from the Sufjan Stevens Christmas album being played in public. Thankfully the public has not gone THAT tone deaf.

With Christmas though, comes possibly the worst part of the holiday season. Re-reading that sentence makes me sound like a bit of a Grinch, but it's really true. The things I look forward to most on Christmas are getting cool gifts from predictable people, because I've already budgeted for them, and the fact that business and tips always get better in the service industry. However, for all of that goodness, there is the sheer misery of travel anywhere around Christmas. Totally cliche thing to bitch about, but I've never been so infuriated in my life, until I was stuck in an hour long traffic jam on the Florida Turnpike heading back up to Orlando. I mean, I wasn't even that infuriated about that. What got me was that this hour-long traffic jam was caused by people slowing down to see the accident on the side of the road.

Really? Fucking hell, rubbernecking is possibly the biggest display of idiocy I think I've ever seen, and mind you, I've been to a concert with both Kiss and POISON on the same bill. Other retarded things that I've witnessed in person also include: old people ordering food, a Pat Benatar concert, a GEORGE THUROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS CONCERT, people trying to put a washer and dryer on a stolen credit card, my younger brother making a bong out of a Darth Vader toy lightsaber, etc. Needless to say, Rubbernecking is pretty unbelievable. What most American's fascination with car accidents and misery is, I'm not really sure.

For those who aren't really aware of the term (I'm not really sure what level of colloquialism it falls under), rubbernecking is when a bunch of supremely intelligent people see an accident on the side of the road, and, no matter what the location (highway, city, race track, corn field, etc), slow down to about five miles an hour to gawk at the carnage. This, in turn, causes everyone behind them to do the same thing, and thus causes a veritable clusterfuck of assfoolery and what not.

Maybe it has something to do with Maury Povich. As a culture, we're way too fascinated with other people's misery. It's pretty disgusting that they even throw this shit on basic cable. Yes, Party Heat is an unbelievably funny show, but I refuse to not feel guilty when I watch it.

hugs and cumshots,

Joe

Your face look Ed Zachary like your ass

Working in a restaurant, you see some pretty interesting things. The requests that someone has about the preparation of their food can be very telling of many of their personality aspects. I mean, one of my good friends I know personally enjoys honey mustard on his french fries. Personally, I think that's kinda weird, and to be honest, I don't really taste anything extraordinarily different. It's not like the honey mustard morphs the taste of the french fries, other than the very cosmetic fact that, yes, these french fries taste like they are coated in honey mustard. Maybe I'm weird though, because I generally enjoy fries with any sort of seasoning on them, to have a side of ranch. Anyway, this isn't all about french fries and dipping sauces. This is about getting meat cooked, and I mean that without any sexual connotations involved.

The way you get your meat cooked, particularly on steaks, can be really telling. For my money, the only way to get steak cooked is medium rare (warm red center, for those not in the know). Personally, I think this is just about the perfect temperature to get steak done. It gets it warm so it's actually like it's cooked, but preserves a lot of the juices and keeps the steak very tender. Now, if it's kind of cheap, sometimes I'll cook it up to medium, just to be on the safe side. Medium loses a bit of the juices and a little bit of the flavor, but still keeps it warm and reddish pink on this inside, and still pretty good. But, for the most part, medium rare is the way to go.

What really bugs me is when people get steaks (and good steaks mind you, from my work) cooked well done. If you're not too well versed in steak temperatures, or what effect cooking has on steak, here's a rule of thumb: the more you cook steak, the less flavor it ultimately has. Getting a steak well done is ultimately asking for a 10-20 dollar sneaker. It's chewy, has no flavor, and isn't enjoyable at all. I can understand getting a steak well done for your child, because mostly, they don't know any better, and are apt to cover it in all sorts of shit anyway (more on this later). But if you're an adult, and getting a steak well done, really, re-evaluate your life immediately. You are essentially paying for an expensive piece of meat to taste like outside seasonings. Hell, if you get a steak well done like that, you might as well go to fucking Cracker Barrel, and not Outback motherfucking STEAKHOUSE. I'm sorry, but the fact of the matter is, if you get a steak well done, you've already lost my respect. I don't respect anyone with such a gross absence of taste.

What is even more infuriating though, is hearing this: "I want that steak well done, and can I get a LARGE side of A1/Ketchup/monkey semen/etc". Why would you want A1/ketchup/monkey semen/etc? Oh, is it because your steak is too dry? Really? Well that happens when you get it cooked well done, where it has almost no juices, btw. You know, if you hadn't been such a flaming fucking idiot, you could have just gotten it medium rare to medium, and it would have had all of its own juices. It's a really cool thing that steak does actually. It stays moist itself, so you don't have to slather it in fucking A1 sauce. On that note, why would anyone enjoy A1 sauce anyway? It really tastes like oxen diarrhea.

In conclusion, I think enjoying well done meat, with whatever horrible sauce you guys put on it, is equivalent to drinking Bud Light. You're a wimp. You can't handle something that is clearly better than what you're consuming, because you are a bastion of accepting mediocrity and being unexceptional. Go worship Tim Tebow, and drink your goddamn bud light, and eat your chewy fucking dried out black stripper vag steak, you bastion of neo-Americanism.

xoxo

-Joe

So love what you are, not what you would like to be

I realize that almost every time I sit down and try and write something lately, I end up drawing a blank. I mean, I was able to write some pretty great lyrics and stuff last night that had been stewing for a while, but even then, before that, I hadn't been legitimately able to come up with anything since my 14 pages of ass painting almost a month ago. In essence, writers block is no fun at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd rather pass a kidney stone than sit here and fucking stare at a blank screen/piece of paper/etc for another moment of my life. Yes, this long paragraph was essentially to preface the fact that I have nothing light-hearted and interesting enough to post here. And since no one wants to hear me bitch about trivial personal issues, I'm just going to share a bit of a vision I have for my future.

I've decided that once I become moderately successful, I want to open my own bar/restaurant/venue. And no, I don't mean some gigantic fucking monolith like the House of Blues with it's 5 dollar beers, Disney appeal, and overpriced food. No, I'm looking for more of the classic dive bar appeal. Not so dirty though. In fact, if anyone has ever been to Market Street Pub in Gainesville, the layout would probably be very similar to that. I want to make it a bit different than most of the other bars around here.

Instead of focusing on just having free shitty beer, free gutrot well drinks, etc. I want to focus on having interesting and quality beers. Obviously there would be all of the typical American staples like Bud/Bud Light, Miller Lite, etc, but I also want to have a big selection of beers that are both cheap and great. Pabst Blue Ribbon is pretty readily available in a lot of bars, but I want to have stuff like Stroh's, Old Style, Yuengling, National Bohemian, Lone Star, Carling's Black Label, etc. Oh, and I'm going to make sure that Yuengling does NOT cost more than Bud or Miller, because it really doesn't, and it's total bullshit that every bar does that. No excuse for it.

And while my bar will have plenty of things, there are a few things that we won't have. Number one is blenders. Fuck blenders. Fuck frozen drinks. They don't even get you drunk that quickly. I'll make anything that you would normally get frozen on the rocks, no problem. But no fucking blenders. Also, there will never, ever, be any Natty Light/Natty Ice/Keystone/Busch/etc inside my bar. Cheap beer doesn't mean that it needs to taste like ox piss too. And, although I don't think I'll kick out anyone who is actually paying, there will be a Guido-free policy inside this bar.

Food-wise, my bar is going to stand out a lot. So many bars who serve food, unless it's inside of a restaurant already, have some shitty food. My plan is to have a good variety of quality, bar style food. I want to have burgers with a wide variety of usual and unusual toppings, Vienna beef hot dogs which you can get with a myriad of toppings (including genuine Chicago style), fully-loaded quesadillas, fresh made spinach/artichoke dip, loaded cheese fries with ranch, breaded or naked chicken wings with a myriad of sauces (mild, medium, hot, nuclear, teriyaki, cajun--the list is limitless), and other such excellent things. I'm still working on the menu.

There will definitely be drink specials, but no way will it be like the shit around here. Cheap beer and two-for-ones on decent stuff. However, my main attraction will be the Wednesday special. Free BLT Wednesday's! Originally, I was going to make it just free bacon wednesdays, but free BLT works better. By coming in and ordering at least one drink, you get a free small BLT. The best part is that bacon is so salty that it will make people thistier, and it's not going to be big enough to suffice for an entire meal.

The best part about this is that I won't just hire dumb frat guys or people with 2+ years of high volume experience. Anyone who has a great personality, works hard, and is willing to learn has the same opportunity to become a successful bartender. Oh, and because I rule, there will be good music all the time. Furreal.

So that's the basic outline of how awesome my bar will be. I don't know when it will happen, but I am determined to make it happen before I die.

-Joe

Dream wild in ways of confidence and hope

So after a weekish of being a lameass and not posting at all, I've returned to the confines of this blog to talk about all sorts of stuff. It's been quite a busy week for me in particular. Last week was finals week, and even though I only had one final and a presentation, I was still busy finishing up a lot of shit that I hadn't bothered to finish on time. I edited my fiction piece a little bit, but of course I didn't do that until the absolute last moment. I also didn't bother to finish cleaning anything until the absolute last moment for my belated birthday party. However, my apartment ended up being reasonably clean by the end of everything, and I guess that's what matters. That, and after the party while I was at work, my sister and everyone else cleaned my apartment from top to bottom.

Anyway, I guess football is kind of important to talk about, especially given the goings on recently. Florida and Oklahoma are playing in the BCS game, which I'm wagering should be a great game. Sam Bradford won the Heisman over Tim Tebow (UF) and Colt McCoy (Texas), which was probably a mostly political pick just so it could be the national championship between the two sophomores who have won the Heisman. But whatever, I don't really care. I just hate as all of the hype about Tim Tebow because while he is a great college quarterback, he is not going to be a great NFL quarterback. That, and there is no way that anyone is that seemingly perfect. I really honestly hope that there is a raid on the Tebow/Cooper residence and that there are corpses of 11 year old Thai boys hanging in their closets. Yeah, call me a cynic. Whatever fuck you guys.

So I got tagged in one of these goofy "write 7 things about yourself" things. However, I just recently did one of these on facebook. This proves a problem as I used many of the most interesting facts about me on that. But, I'm gonna try and pull something together, so alas, here it goes?

1. I like tattoos. Alot. The only reason I don't have any yet is because I am poor =(
2. I want to write a play about a modern day Winston Churchill as a cokehead.
3. I'm commitophobic from some pretty terrible relationships.
4. Cheesecake is almost assuredly one of the greatest things on the planet.
5. I was drunk at the Fest during the Lawrence Arms set and pretty much cried with joy.
6. I consider myself a definite beer aficionado. For the most part, I don't enjoy the really frou frou microbrewed beers, but there is always an exception to the rule. The one thing I generally can't stand is fruity flavored beers, or beers that require a fruit for you to fully enjoy. I don't think beers should need a crutch. My favorite beers are cheap, local, American lagers. Yeah, I'm a gigantic douche. Suck it.
7. I think my naked Sarah Palin shirt is the single greatest thing I've ever bought, and if you don't think so, I don't care. Kthx.

K, so that's all for now. Make babies and shit. I'm gonna go have writers block elsewhere.

-Joe

Sippin' on Gin and Juice

Hello vermin,

So in the spirit of ensuring that I keep posts regular on here (one could refer to the forthcoming style of filler post as "granola posts"), I've decided that I'm going to officially start using entries and days where I have nothing interesting to say as bucket list entries. This gives me a little bit of accountability, because after saying that I'm going to do this before I die, I automatically put that expectation in people's heads. Well, the 5 people that read this blog regularly. Ya dig? Anyway, I've gotta clean my apartment because it smells like shit. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sublease soon though and get a house with one of my friends. It's expensive here, and none of my roommates ever pick up after themselves to the point where I just don't bother because they never bother cleaning anything themselves. I'm no one's mother. But this is a bucketlist entry, not a "Joe bitches at the world" entry.

Publish Novel-
Here's one of the big ones. This is what I'm realistically considering to be my career goal. I want to publish a full-length fictional novel. Hell, how popular it gets doesn't really matter much to me. I just want to be able to say that I was able to put out a novel of vulgar fiction and say that "I did it, and that you can go find it at any Barnes and Nobel" or whatever. Ideally, I'd like to put out a lot of novels and use that as my primary source of income throughout my career. Even more ideally, I'd like to become a touring musician, but I'm not so sure how realistic this is, so I'll settle for this.

-Joe

I read "monkey vaginas" and thought you were going back to the strip club

Hello all,

I have returned from the cesspool of geriatrics that is Lake Worth, FL ( the town where my parents live) and needless to say it was marginally unbearable for the most part. I did have some fun involving drinking quarties of Budweiser in a park while writing music. Also, I discovered that mixing about 18 ounces of vodka with an rt44 Cherry Limeade from Sonic is pretty much one of the best cocktails ever. Oh, and I guess on the most interesting note, I went to a strip club for the first time on Thanksgiving night.

I guess this was pretty interesting. I mean, it certainly wasn't the ideal strip club. I mean this in the sense that it was pretty much the b-squad on, and 70 percent of the naked people there really should just never get naked outside of the comfort of their own trailer. It was a little unnerving, but at least I went mostly just to say that I had, and not to actually enjoy myself as some of these troglodytes were doing. One thing I did notice was how horrible of a smell I had caked to me after I left. I wasn't alive for the Great Depression (although I might soon be), but I have a feeling if it had a smell, that strip club probably came as close as possible to achieving it.

In other news, today is my 20th birthday. So far, it's had it's ups and downs I suppose. Mostly downs actually. I was stuck staying up all night doing two papers that I thought were due, when in reality, only one of them was. However, I'm not too worried about this. I ingested enough coffee last night to roughly equate to an 8-ball of coke, so today was at least marginally possible in that I was able to stay awake. Just as I started an energy crash, I was about to head home. Then, I ran into someone from my class. Who told me that apparently our class was not canceled. Yeah. I think the last time I was this broken hearted was when Jerry Rice got traded from the 49ers. That was a disappointing day in my 5th grade life. Sigh.

Anyway, Cynic put out the best metal album of the year. It's called Traced in Air. Get it now. It's my birthday. I'm going to Hooters and getting drunk. TESTOSTERONE FUCK YES.

-Joe

I just crossed everything out and wrote "Sarah Palin"

I'm too easy going.

I'm absolutely convinced of this following everything that I've ever done. Well, not ever done, but following most of the things I've done. Of all the people I know, I tend to be one of the one's who will never really get offended by anything people say. I dunno, I guess I was just raised with pretty thick skin for the most part. So, I should make it abundantly clear that when I say "I only dish out what I can take", I can really take a whole lot and just shrug it off.

This is why overly sensitive people absolutely fucking infuriate me. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't take a joke that makes fun of you, you really need to grow up and become more confident. Hell, I make more jokes about MYSELF than other people. And I'm not even the most confident asshole on the planet.

So pretty much, all I have to say is please, fucking grow up people. I wouldn't talk to you if I completely meant everything that came out of my retarded mouth. Now let's go have a beer at 10 am. That's what college is for. Beer drinking, not drama starting. Anyway, I'm cooking up a Tostinos Pizza in the oven, and then going to begin the long, arduous process of packing. Yes, it's thanksgiving this week, and I'm going to actually visit home for the first time in months. Awesome huh? See you shitheads when I get back!

-Joe

Albucrazy!i!i!i!

So, sometimes I sit down in front of my computer, and open up blogspot to post, and I'm just at a loss for words. It happens. I mean, let's face it, I've cranked out some pretty good entries, but also a couple of real stinkers. Now normally, I end up writing a pretty good entry to bounce back from the shitty, inspirationless ones. Tonight, I sat down and honestly believe that the blog I was about to crank out was going to be a stinker. And then god, for once in my life, threw me a bone. And this bone is called Brokencyde.

Now, the word itself (consequently, the name for what is inarguably the shittiest group of human beings attempting to make sounds and record them), didn't mean anything to me. That was, until I saw this video, which you all must watch too, or the rest of what I have to say will make no sense, and our common perception of what is "terrible" will not ever jive:



Now, are you done watching that? Good.

Wow. That is my only sensical reaction to that. I can't possibly put into words what I'm feeling, nor can I adequately describe what my facial expression was upon hearing a chunk of their discography. I mean. I really have thought many a time that I've heard some of the worst music ever. I really really thought that there could not be much worse than Four Letter Lie, or Hinder, or fuck, any number of horribly shitty bands that I've been subjected to throughout the years. But no. Apparently, I was very fucking wrong.

I mean, I could sit here and senselessly rant, but why rant when I can just use unbiased descriptions to show how bad they are, and hopefully convince everyone to listen to them? I mean, the first song I heard was the video that I posted above, a particularly difficult turd to swallow known as "Freaxxx". I mean, the chorus is literally "Let's get freaky/let's get fucking freaky now". But also, add in some awesome screeches of "LIAR" by some guy who sounds like an 8 year old throwing a temper tantrum. For anyone who has ever seen that video where that kid's older siblings were giving him shit over his myspace and he was freaking out and screeching, that is pretty much what this dude sounds like. Unfortunately, I don't have that video, mostly because I'm a total dickhead, and well, you know. Whatever.

Anyway, some of the other gems include a cover of the Flo-Rida song "Low". You know, the apple bottom jeans song or something like that. Yeah, imagine the shittiness of that song, but instead of the marginally catchy melody, it's replaced with the same screeching. Yeah. And it only gets worse. I mean. Fuck. They even named a song "BREE BREE" (Bree, for those unaware, is the "screamo" style of screaming that is pretty much incoherant and unhealthy screaming). I mean, I'm really at a loss. I can't tell if this is the best, funniest, and most self-aware joke band to ever exist, or just the absolute worst group of musicians on the entire planet. I'm really vexed as to if this group is actually trying to be good or not. I just can't believe that anyone could try to be this bad.

I mean, okay. There are certain things that kinda signal to me that it has to be a joke. I mean, look at their genres on myspace. Crunk/screamo/techno. And I mean, that sounds like a funny combination, but it's actually semi-accurate in this case, and it scares me to think that a band actually makes music with this sound as a target. So I mean, maybe it isn't a joke. What if they are actually serious? I mean, we elected a black president in 2008. Not much is honestly far out of the question anymore. I'm suddenly confronted with the thought of the possibility of something so absolutely terrible existing that maybe the republicans were right and Obama is actually the anti-christ rising.

But, just so I can sleep, I'm going to believe that this band is just meant to be funny. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, tomorrow I'm getting new tires, which excites me quite a bit. I'm ready to not be squealing everywhere I drive.

-Joe

Cocoa Pebbles

So have you ever felt like you're wasting your life?

I don't mean the "I sit around with my thumb jammed in my ass picking belly button lint" kind of wasting your life. I mean the "what the fuck am I doing with myself, the best nights of my life I'll never remember" kind of wasting your life. It seems dumb really; why drink to the point where the details of the night before start rolling in throughout the next day as opposed to just waking up and remembering everything. But for some reason, there is nothing like alcohol to make you do some pretty hilariously amazing things, and have a fucking unrestricted good time.

I'm not trying to advocate alcoholism. In fact I think that people who can't handle their liquor and get hammered and get behind the wheel of a car with no seatbelt and drive at a thousand miles an hour shouldn't be allowed to touch the shit. But for those of us who can control ourselves to not do something completely retarded, drinking shouldn't be looked down upon. It's not cowardice to go out and get drunk and have a good time. People who are straight-edge and judge people by this are just petty dicks.

So go out, get fucked, and give up the keys. Be safe and be dangerous, just be dangerous in the safe ways.

-Joe

Jesus: "Suck My Taint"

I spend far too much time binging on caffeine lately.

It's true. I mean, I guess the idea of needing an IV drip of caffeine kinda goes hand in hand with being a college student. Papers must be done at the absolute last minute after days of procrastination and nearly constant facebooking. Readings must be all but forgotten until 2 am right before trying to go to sleep. Parties always take precedence over sleep (at least on my list of priorities). It's pretty funny to be so completely reliant on coffee to even be able to act someone enthused about the prospect of going to the same shitty classes with the same mostly-shitty people every few days.

But it's shit like staying up late and cranking out a story like I did the other night, that makes it all worth it. Honestly, I've never written something that I had such a blast writing, even though it meant sacrificing all sleep for days on end. Anyway, I guess I really don't have much to say today. Isn't that boring? Oh well. I'm just gonna post a link to my story, since I'm a self-indulgent mother fucker.

Fiction paper what?

PS: It's 16 pages, have fun with that mess.

-Joe

The shape of drunks to come

Howdy,

So after a slew of serious entries, my brain has started to hurt from all of the pseudo-intellectual rebellion taking place inside the 4 cozy walls of AtHoT. While it's fun to write about intelligent things once in a while, sometimes, one just needs to embrace their inner dude and rant about the grossest/most douchefest beers ever (the eventual point of this entry). So, to put myself into the right frame of mind for such an foray, I've got Guns 'n' Roses "Appetite For Destruction" blasting in my room, and I'm at home right now prepping some homemade chicken wings. Unfortunately, I'm out of beer, and as much as wings and beer sounds pretty amazing, I've got no way of getting ahold of the latter at the moment. This sucks, but I guess it's unavoidable at times being underage and all.

Speaking of underage though, 3 weeks from now is my 20th birthday. I know, this is a pretty uneventful birthday in all regards, and especially so because mine is on a Tuesday this year, but I figure that this birthday cannot possibly be any worse than my last birthday (which I spent driving back up to Orlando from being home for the weekend [Sunday night birthdays are even lamer than Tuesday night birthdays]). So, for all you dedicated readers, I'll be accepting gifts in the form of sexual favors, alcohol, money, hugs, and a coffee maker (because god knows with the amount of sleep I get recently, I need that shit badly). Or, you can come over and clean my apartment, but the EPA already decided against that.

Anyway so, bad beers. A lot of people I know claim that bad beer can't exist. To me, this is just a poor excuse for lack of taste and early alcoholism. Yes, things that get you drunk are mostly preferable over things that don't, but this doesn't mean that some sort of quality control shouldn't be implemented. In fact, it's absolutely necessary to not look like a dumb douche. So, here we go, and yes, this list is absolutely universal and definitive:

Natty Light
Okay, this one is obvious. So obvious in fact, it's almost like making a list of bad music and including Toby Keith and Nickleback or James Blunt or something. It almost goes without saying, but Natty Light is pretty stupendously bad. I mean, firstly over anything, it breaks the man-beer rule by being a light beer. What does this mean? Not only does it have less flavor, but it also has significantly less alcohol than it's slightly more acceptable partner in crime, Natty Ice. Yeah, it's cheap, but so are toothless hookers, and you wouldn't want to fuck one of those in front of your friends, would you?

Bud Light
This is possibly my most despised beer ever for a number of reasons. Again, not only is it a light beer, so it has less alcohol than Budweiser, but it tastes absolutely terrible, and it's no easier to drink than Budweiser is. And it's the EXACT SAME PRICE as Budweiser. So I don't want to hear any of this "oh well we just wanted something cheap so we went for Bud Light". No, just come clean. You wanted something gross, that costs the same as it's manlier and better older brother, because you're watching your waist. Either that, or you're just retarded and think it tastes good. At which point, I already hate you.

Michelob Ultra
Wow so, when did someone decide to make carbonated water alcoholic? This shit is the most worthless beer ever. Again, like most other things on this list, it falls into the light beer category, but unlike some of these light beers, regardless of how bad their taste may be, it actually doesn't taste like anything. I've tasted Orlando tapwater with more of a kick than this shit.

Blue Moon
Okay, so I have to go against popular consensus here. Yeah, I used to enjoy Blue Moon, but recently, I've begun to realize how really not that great it is, and especially for the price. Something about it has just recently become incredibly off putting. In fact, I kinda look back at myself, the douche who used to enjoy Blue Moon, and shudder for being so pretentious. I shouldn't need an orange, or any other fruit for that matter, to enjoy my beer. Which leads me into my next one...

Corona
Wow, Corona is patently horrible. And don't even start in on the whole "oh you need to have it with a lime..." malarky. Why would I drink a beer that needs a crutch. That's like saying "hey natty light is great, you just have to coat your tongue with a anesthetic first". No. This logic does not fly. Take your shitty douchefag beer far away from me please.

Coors Light
Have you taken large amounts of steroids and require an undetectable diuretic? Well, that's about the only thing that Coors Light is good for.

Schlitz
Schlitz is a beer that can only best be summed up by a line in Super Troopers:

"Let me get 6 Schlitz"
"We don't have Schlitz"
"Fuck it, then whatever is free"

Busch/Busch Light
The official beer of being homeless. Even though it's the same price as High Life, most homeless people have gotten to where they are because they made bad decisions, and this one is no different.

Miller Genuine Draft
Typical American garbage. No, it's not a very unique or cool beer to drink, and it tastes like you just got off a shift at Moe's. Don't even bother

So tomorrow I'm spending my day writing a fiction manuscript that is due sometime soon. It's about a guy who graduates from a prestigious school at the top of his class and is forced to take a job writing obituaries for a small town paper. So he does lots of pills and has a secret fetish for enemart. If only I was kidding. Anyway.

-Joe

Yes this is why I love ice water as well my friend

I've realized that I'm different.

And no, I don't really mean this in the shallow way that most people who claim to be different do. I have similar interests to enough people, and my mannerisms aren't really foreign to anyone (at least I'd hope not), and really, my routines aren't all that different from most people my age either (school, drink, sleep, hangover, repeat!). But what is different is my destination and everyone else's. Actually, I take part of that back. Everyone is far too general to make much sense out of it. Mostly everyone else's. I think that's at least a little more fair. And it all leads back to the American dream.

The American dream. It's a funny concept to me, and I've never really quite gotten it. The white picket fence, the golden retriever/dalmatian/whatever super Americana pet you can think of, the wife and two kids, the car in the drive way, a comfortable mortgage, and health insurance for the whole family. Maybe I'm just commitaphobic, but there is something about all of that responsibility and safety that makes me shout a resounding "fuck that".

Hell, I don't care if it sounds somewhat immature or borderline ridiculous. My thoughts right now are etched on the internet, and in my brain, neither of which are permanent fixtures of history. And who knows? Maybe in time I'll want a wife and kids and house and neighbors and responsibilities, but for right now, I'm down for just being a starving 20 something artist and college student, hoping to break into either music or writing sooner or later, getting piss ass wasted most weekends, and wanting to see all of the corners of the world.

-Joe

Colt 45's and Pall Malls?

So it's 9:15 am right now. Last night I went out to a place called I-Bar (I think it's actually called the Independent, but local colloquialisms rule over all as far as I'm concerned), and it was generally a pretty good/drunk time. I talked to some really cute 26 year old conference coordinator from Jacksonville, and things were going well until she "realized" that I was only 21, about to turn 21. And by "realized", what I really meant was that I apparently told her that when confronted with such a question. It's cool though, she was still really sociable and not weirded out at all that she clearly wanted to sleep with someone underage, heh. I had like four or five beers and then a Joose, which is an 24oz can filled with 10% alcohol and caffeine, taurine, and guarana. It's actually the weirdest thing ever, because it only took until like a quarter of the way through the Joose to feel pretty drunk, and by the time I had finished it, I felt really intoxicated and just loose as hell.

Anyway, my main point of all of this was not to toot my own good looking horn, but to illustrate the disconnect between the levels of intoxication faced last night, and the fact that I'm up right now, at not even ten o'clock, having a single person dance party in my bedroom to Atom and His Package. I mean, I know it sounds really goofy as fuck, but for some reason, I feel absolutely no hangover whatsoever. In fact, I feel like I'm really ready to take on the world this morning. Normally, this only happens after I wake up with a can of Sparks and some really gross food that, for the sake of my colon's general health, I shouldn't eat. But hey, I'm not complaining at all.

So the other day, I'm sitting in creative writing (the geographic center of funny in my life, or so it seems), and we have an excercise where we were supposed to make two quick character sketches, exchange them with other people, and then make a ten line dialogue. Of course, the one girl who trades with me is a really straight laced Christian girl, so she gives me a character sketch that she prefaced with "don't judge me if this is really weird". The characters were like an old man who was a retired exorcist who loved his 6 year old grand daughter who liked Peter fucking Pan and was bright and cheery. So needless to say, because it was so happy and cheery, there was absolutely no way to inject profanity into my dialogue, it was patently terrible. However, my friend Alex got two characters which were actually workable, a dorky and sensitive theater major and a jacked up bro who relates everything to football, which he immediately turned into the most side-splittingly funny rape scene ever. See guys, rape can be funny. In fact, totally faux pas shit can always be funny in literature because it's just that--literature. How the hell do you think Dave Barry makes a living?

People need to sack up and take music, and art in general with a grain of salt. It's not shit to get offended over. It's culture, and even the "worst" parts of culture still shape the "best" parts of it.

-Joe

I want to choke that bitch called rockstars

I met Russ Rankin once, and he was the weirdest person on the planet.

Don't get me wrong, I love his bands (Only Crime/Good Riddance), but the man has less tact than I do, and that's a pretty big accomplishment. I remember this one time, I made some friends of mine who were on a tour a big pan of spaghetti and a huge pan of house salad because I knew that the venue they were playing at was shady as hell and probably wouldn't have given them money for dinner. So, being a nice (and poor) college student, I made like 5 dollars worth of dinner and got into the show for free. And here, I met Russ Rankin. I went up to him to tell him that he and whoever else was playing with him, was welcome to eat whatever they like. And his reaction was pretty ridiculous. He literally sat there and stared and then said "okay" and then went right back to Sidekicking away. Not a thanks, nothing. That's just weird. Like really, someone comes up to you and is all like "hey I did something cool for you" and that kinda response. I mean, not that I'm all butthurt or anything (this actually came up as a result of talking with my friends who were on tour with him at the time), but I just think it leads nicely into the main point of this

I'll never take some of the best bands on the planet seriously.

For all of the talent that some bands have, I'll just never be able to take them seriously. Inflated rock star attitudes are just so difficult to comprehend. The only thing that separates us from them is a stage. Sure, some assholes have money, and cocaine, and lots of vaginas that you could probably go spalunking in, but aside from that, we are all the same. Hell, some dudes in bands that no one cares about even have this attitude, and it makes no sense.

How can we stop this? Stop the idolatry of dudes/chicks in bands. For real, they are just people who play music for money (or, in some cases, for no money). I know plenty of them (and I'm not just saying that to sound cool), and they are all fairly normal people. The mundane aspects of their life are no more exciting than the mundane aspects of our lives. There is no reason that musicians should be put up on a pedastle. Treat them like regular human beings and not animals, and there is a good chance they will be nice back. And if they aren't, and they do succumb to acting like some dick rockstar, they'll wash out in due time.

Anyway, here's some stuff I like:

Falaffle and Hummus Gyro
I had one of these for the first time in Gainesville this past weekend, and it was shockingly good. I thought all vegetarian food was supposed to be really not very good, but after trying one of these, I'm shocked how tasty and filling it was. Granted, I don't think I could ever become a vegetarian, but it's good to push your food boundaries and try new stuff. I would have never thought that I would have enjoyed it, but it was honestly one of the best new discoveries I've made recently.

Pabst Blue Ribbon
Old, but I just have to reiterate what an awesome beer this is. Really, for partying, it's hard to go wrong with PBR. Great for just drinking, or shotgunning, or chugging, or whatever.

Central Florida Future
It's UCF's school paper for those not in the know. And the only reason this is on here, is because the day after the election, there was absolutely no coverage of the election. However, there was a piece that came up with the observation that 2-6 UCF's hopes for winning the Eastern Division of C-USA was becoming slimmer.

Traveling
This reminds me. I'm going to a big party in Michigan this summer called Short Shorts/No Sleeves. Now, I'm not obviously going just for a party, but I also want to travel, and this at least gives me a good destination. My car can fit 7 people total, meaning I'm willing to take 6 others. Gas will be fairly cheap for a road trip if I get the car packed. Hell, even with 4 other people, it would be really easy. So, let's do it. I want to hit up Chicago and Cleveland along the way too. July 3rd. Let's do it.

-Joe

Welcome to the Black House

So after about a week off and no really good entries, I am back to entertain you retards in what can only be described as the nether regions of the internet (I'm the balls, Monday Morning Hangover is the asshole, and Perez Hilton would fit somewhere around the grundle I think).

So the silly election is finally over and hopefully people will go back to being blissfully apathetic for the next four years until Barack Obama rises at the inauguration as the black anti-Christ or some shit that I read on a myspace bulletin. And this, hopefully, will be the last time I have to talk about politics ever again. I'm excited. I think we're setting ourselves up for a better place than we've been in the past 8 years, although I'm fully aware that it's going to take a lot of work. Anyway, end politics. Now

So let's play the list awesome things that Joe did this weekend game:
Shotgunned beers
Ate pizza, calzones, and burritos almost exclusively.
Shotgunned beer inside of a portapotta
Tried a falaffel and hummus gyro for the firs time
Saw Rehasher
Saw Ann Berretta but don't remember it
Warehouse shows
Shotgunned two beers inside of a Cheveron
SAW LEATHERFACE
Frankie Stubbs=voldemort
Almost drunken tattoo
Paint it Black in the back of a fucking uhaul
Horse cops
shotgunning beers in front of The Venue
Municipal Waste is gonna FUCK YOU UP
Atom and His Package
Crust-punk sorority cutie
New Lawrence Arms and Swellers songs!
Essentially the best weekend ever.

I won't go into more details than that, but this weekend was pretty much unbelievable. The Fest is always a great time (and I say this after two times of going). It's kinda funny to see the crowd there though, especially some of the Plan-It-X kids.

For those not in the know, Plan-it-X is a record label notorious for recording and signing really like anarchist folksy bands like Defiance, OH and stuff like that. And their fans are all pretty goofy I guess you could say. None of their fans really bother to shower, wear deodorant, or brush their teeth. I guess they are trying to not support the idea of corporations and what not. So they bike everywhere (I guess because Shwinn is alright!), and like to live in abandoned houses and what not and usually are strict vegan and probably smoke Skydancers. I mean I dunno, do what you want, but I just think it's pretty goofy to be upping the punx by not maintaining hygeine. I mean, if we measure how punk rock things are by how much they piss off your grandmother, which I like to do, then not showering or adhereing to basic hygeine would probably be the most punxxx thing you could ever do. But I mean, that shits just kinda gross. In fact, here's a fun little list. How about best ways to still "fuck the man, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan" and still maintain hygeine.

Vote
Easy way. Yes, I just mentioned that politics suck, but voting for a third party candidate that you agree with is the best way to eventually (and hopefully) morph this country into a 3-4 major party system. Go out there and do it!

Take the bus, or ride a bike
Save money, and don't buy gas all at the same time. Brilliant.

Shop at local grocery stores or farmers markets
You can find a lot of good stuff here generally, and it is also from all local places, so you aren't helping out the conglomerates.

Run for office
Hey, it's getting more shit done than not showering is.

Shop at thrift stores
That way you are only supporting the MAN indirectly.

Hell, I can't think of any others. I guess I'm not org enough. Well fuck my life wholly. I'm gonna go not take a shower and then go get my cellphone fixed.

-Joe

God I fucking hate this

I hate writing about politics. Honestly, I hate politics in general. To me, politics and elections are about the equivalent of getting some major dental work done. It's not fun, it's almost downright painful, and it happens about once every couple of years. Hell, people get so fucking wound up about shit when normally they wouldn't give two shits.

Presidential elections like this one turn every asshole into a Tampa Bay Rays fan. The parallels are uncanny when you think about it, and it stems from both parties. Rays start getting popular to love, and it starts becoming popular to call Obama anything from a terrorist to a socialist. I dunno man, I just think it's really retarded to attack someone for being inexperienced, and then automatically assume that he's going to be a terrible president. I mean, if he's inexperienced, then it should be pretty obvious that you don't really know what living under him is going to be like, so why not just give him a chance?

After George Bush illegitimately won the election in 2000, and after the month or so of shitty boring recounts and uncertainty, even I was ready to move on. Yelling and screaming and pitching a fit over a president being elected that you really didn't even give a shit about even 6 months ago is pretty futile, especially after the election. So really, why doesn't everyone just give the man a chance? The election is over, and all your goddamn facebook statuses are not going to change the results.

I'm gonna go sleep off my fest aids.

Peace,

-Joe

All my friends are going out tonight

So, I haven't made a really good entry all week. Consider it a bit of a "I have too much other shit going on" hiatus. Anyway, this'll be short. Today starts my favorite weekend of every year. I'm gonna go get drunk and watch bands with a bunch of grumpy dudes in beards pretty much all weekend. Yay for traveling, even if its only two hours. I'm pretty excited, if you can't tell. So uh, try and fare without me. On the real.

-Joe

He holds his tongue like he holds his liquor

Well weekends are a lot of fun.

Since I've already told the story a thousand times, and that would make for way too interesting of a blog anyway, I'll sum all up in singular words and fragments. Good friend visiting. No PBR. SPARKS. Condom costumes made out of garbage bags. Sexy Sarah Palin. Being too drunk for common sense. Running around Northgate Lakes. Rejoicing. Breaking down. Throwing keys. Blackout.

Wake up. Too much energy. Walk around neighborhood. Work. Out of work. Storytime! Drinking "Four". Wormwood oil. "Harry Dies" spoiler note. Sparks. The Gatherings. Holy Cow. Beer pong. Retards in game stop shirts. Whataburger. Everything in it's Right Place. Northgate? Blink/Blackout.

Drive to Turkey Lake. "Harry doesn't die but thanks for the note anyway ;)". Fin.

Yeah, so glad that you just caught up on my weekend. It was probably a lot more interesting than I will give it credit for in this blog, but it's one of those things that I will just end up appreciating writing about in here a lot more in 6 months or so. Anyway, I feel like this blog has kinda lost a lot of it's fun lightheartedness. So maybe I should bring that back a bit. This week has just been working to test my patience prior to the Fest. I mean, at this point, I'm not even too upset about anything that happens, merely because I know how excellent this weekend is going to be. Tomorrow, after Hot Dog Heaven, I'm picking up 4-12 packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. This might spell my demise, but I'll be goddamned if I'm not completely prepared to have the best time of my life.

So I mean. I dunno. I've had a really interesting last two days. For one, last night I pretty much had to do 13 journals based on random lit readings that I had all but forgot about, so I went to Dunkin Donuts and got an extra large coffee or two and burned through the night getting that done. At one point, it was such blantant bullshit that I just called myself out mid paragraph. I was like "yo Cato, on the real, I'm pulling all of this out of my keeshka. Let's just quit pretending and let me finish this woefully insufficient entry on a slightly funny side". Speaking of though, I think I've picked up an addiction to coffee lately. Granted, I still need at least 10 creams and sugars to enjoy it at all, and I think I mostly enjoy the fact that I get wired like a crackhead and end up having even less tact than usual.

So I miss doing these retarded lists of stuff that I am enjoying. So, pretend coffee was number one on this, for the reasons listed above.

Getting Paid
This is a great feeling. I like having money. Now all you fuckers come into to Outback take away and order a bunch of food, so I can get more money

Homemade condom costumes
Yeah, pretty much the best college Halloween costume. Gets all the right attention, plus people know that you didn't show up to the party to find a snugglebuddy. Beliedat. Maybe I'll post a picture when it's not you know like 4:10 am.

Rice
I used to not like rice at all, but I'll be damned, I guess I have grown up. I mean, white rice is still wholly worthless, but flavored rice is probably my favorite starchy food. I really like broccoli and cheese flavored rice. Talk about delicious. Chicken fried rice with the little bits of scrambled eggs is also pretty great as well.

Sparks
Man, so I never really partied too much with sparks until recently. However, this weekend, my drunkeness was dominated by the abuse of alcoholic energy drinks. I do have to thank Sparks though, because even after drinking quite a bit on Friday night, I woke up on 5 hours of sleep on Saturday morning ready to take on the world. Also, I tried this stuff called Four the other day, which is essentially Sparks, but with 10 percent alcohol, and wormwood oil (the crazy shit that they make absinthe out of) in it. Talk about some crazy shit right there.

Sleep
This is what I need right now. No energy=peace out from Joe land.

-Joe

Crowdsurfing from epileptics.

Phew.

I am tired, or so it seems. I just got back from seeing that band I was telling you about, about an hour ago. Apparently they are called Rise Against btw. Whatever, I was close. Show was pretty great. I ended up with an all-access pass which was pretty excellent. Talk about feeling pretty boss. The only gripe I really had was that some of Rise Against's fans are really horribly lame. It's pretty much bro central. I can't count the amount of times I heard "dude I'm getting so fucked up after this" or "They don't drink? What faggots". Normally, I think it's pretty incessant to complain about bros, but there were just so many, and they were all so fucking obnoxious during the show. That, and I can't even count the amount of retarded high school underclassmen who apparently have never figured out a decent way to crowd surf, and as such, feel the need to kick and flail constantly.

Anyway, so I think it's really prudent to inform the five (and that's wishful thinking) readers of this blog that I am currently sitting in the most cliche example of a college apartment bedroom ever. Currently, I'm surrounded by a veritable cesspool of inactivity and developing alcoholism including, but not limited to:

An empty can of PBR that is at least three days old, wrapped in a free Smokey Bones BBQ beer cozy
A half empty bottle of Budweiser American Ale (which shouldn't really be a college cliche, because it's way too expensive for most college students)
A McDonalds cup that, a few days ago, actually contained a chocolate milkshake.
Both guitars, sitting here, and probably out of tune
A plate that at one point contained one of those Tostinos mini pizzas
Assorted completely irreverent acutrima scattered all over the floor
About a key chain bottle openers
Decks of cards, stained with beer, and almost assuredly missing several cards
Books. Somewhere. Probably buried under stuff.
A coffee cup full of bottle caps
My non-working cellphone

You get the idea. My room radiates a cesspool of apathy at the moment. After going through all of this, I feel like it's almost necessary to clean it up. But then again, I could not an be just as functional. Anyway, that's not very interesting, so fuck talking about the current level of dishevelment in my room.

So we're back to workshopping in creative writing, and god is it just as bad as it's ever been. The retard who wrote the poem about Weezer or whatever last time, decided to do his non-fiction piece as a script. Like a movie script. Yeah. He's got essentially five pages of dialogue with no action. In fact, I bet that if it was widdled down to an actual non-fiction manuscript, it would have made MAYBE a page and a half. Not for nothing, but it was one of those typical "pity me, I'm the nice guy" stories. To any idiots who honestly think that the unassertive nice guy ever REALLY gets what they want, I hate to inform you that you are completely mistaken.

Sure, are a few guys who will say "well I have a girlfriend and we go great together". I'm sure that's true, at least partially. However, was she your first choice? And honestly, aside from the fact that she clearly accepts you for you, chances are that she was not someone that you would have qualified as your dream girl. No, you got stuck with the leftovers after the assertive guys had their way. I'm by no means saying that the assertive male will ALWAYS get what he want, but he'll get it much more often than the unassertive, nice guy will. And don't just take my words as empty, trust me, I've been there. I've learned the hard way that being unassertive will get the girl that you are in love with blowing the black guy in the bathroom.

There is nothing attractive about a lack of confidence, and being unassertive is directly correllated to this. Typical gender roles are the way they are for a reason, and one person, or even a thousand people won't change this. You're only as worthless as you let yourself be. No one cannot change for the better, unless they convince themselves that what they are is what people find attractive (when it clearly isn't). Hell, the only thing you have to change is how you view yourself. I'm not trying to cast stones, because even I have issues with this sometimes, but nonetheless. If you carry yourself with confidence in all that you do, people will gravitate toward you.

There is the basic message of all of those alpha-male books summed up in like three paragraphs. Now all of you self pitying dicks and chicks, go out and make me proud. You're all beautiful. Just not as much as me.

-Joe

Women and the children first

Fast food sucks.

Seriously, every time I eat that shit, I am reminded within ten minutes of why I should never eat that shit. Yeah, I understand that sometimes fast food does taste really good, and that it's a quick alternative to having to cook dinner and all, but for fucks sake, I think I'm going to try and swear off fast food for the rest of my life. Nothing good comes from it seemingly. In fact, I'm going to make a strong attempt to not eat any fast food aside from Hot Dog Heaven (which hardly qualifies), for the next three months. Not even taco bell. Fuck how expensive it is, and fuck how it makes you feel afterwards. After I eat fast food, I feel the same way that I do after I drug a hooker that I haven't yet paid and walk out on her, after skeeting in her hair. Just guilty.

But on to topics that aren't burning a hole through the bottom of my toilet bowl right now. Life for me is a giant balancing act. I care a lot about music and literature, and have a very high level of quality control for both, which is why you won't catch me reading any limp-dicked Chuck Palahniuk book any time soon or listening to a Forever the Sickest Kids album. Unbeknownst to a lot of people, I do also like visual art quite a bit, and while I'm not a complete art nerd, I do enjoy art a lot. But for all of the energy I invest into music and literature and art, I seem to have completely overlooked movies. Which sucks, I feel like I have really underdeveloped taste in movies.

Yeah, it's weird like that. You'd think that someone who is pretty cultured such as myself would really have pretty awesome taste in movies, but no. It takes very little to keep me entertained. Maybe that's why my three favorite movies are Ocean's 11, Legally Blonde (and I can still quote the majority of the lines from it), and Pan's Labryrinth (probably the only movie on this list that has any sort of higher level credibility). Other than that, I am mostly entertained by typical comedy stuff like Zoolander, and Superbad, and other garbage comedies. It's pretty sad. People talk about how their life was like affected by movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Requiem for a Dream or something, and I just can't get into stuff like that. But I mean, I guess that the opposite applies for the girl who considers both The Garden State and the first Senses Fail album to be masterpieces of our time.

So reccommend me some movies that will make me feel like less of a navel picking retard for liking. And no, don't reccommend The Notebook. The last thing I need is some vapid and hopelessly cliche love story. Kthx.

In other news, I'm interviewing this little band that you guys have never heard of tomorrow. They just put out a new album called Appeal to Reason which is actually really good. They had some crappy acoustic ballad a couple of years ago, and then got on Guitar Hero somehow. Not with that song. Some other song. I dunno. They are called like Rage Against, or Rise Against the Machine, or something like that. Plus they are straight-edge. What weirdos. Ah well, I'm sure it'll be fun. I heard they're playing with a bunch of hot topic bands though which is a bummer. So I'm going to the House of Blues for that tomorrow. Should be interesting.

Anyway, it's time for bed and time to hope that this horrendous emphyzema-esque cough will go away soon. Then maybe I can get rid of the case of the mudkips that have been plaguing me since the first bite of that Big Mac after work.

Peace,

-Joe

If I could only be half the things you write about in your songs

So class has been nothing but unnecessary stress. Being surrounded by retards almost guarantees that it will cause stress because no one has their shit together. Like for instance, Lit class, class got canceled last Thursday, meaning that the in class discussion for Thursday is being combined with the in-class discussion for Tuesday, and is now also being combined with the Thursday discussion because this pale dicked motherfucker cannot make it to class then. Awesome, so instead of having to read two of these readings, I have to read three, and understand them enough to figure out what's going on and discuss it. There is no doubt in my mind that the class part of college is the worst part. I love the partying, the meeting new people, the football, everything else. Hell, I even like working my job because at least I'm getting paid, but class is just unnecessary stress and a total financial burden. And don't even get me started on some of the speds in my creative writing class (file under "more workshopping? fuck yes!).

So I like traveling. What sucks is that being an employed college student with rent to pay makes this incredibly difficult to do. However, if I had a choice of careers in an ideal world where such a ridiculously ludicrous career did exist, I would love to get paid to just travel everywhere, all expenses paid. I know, it's totally unrealistic, but I can dream right? So, here is a list of places that I am going to try to travel to, ASAP.

Australia
Yeah, I know that I've already been here. But I fell so hard in love with this place when I went that I've been trying to find an excuse to go here ever since. The people there are all gorgeous (for the most part) and extremely friendly. No idea where we went wrong.

Amsterdam
This is pretty much self explanatory. The debauchery capital of the world? I'm so there.

England
Mostly because the 2012 Olympics are here, and I think that going to the Olympics during a trip to Europe would be pretty amazing. Plus, this is where I plan to propose to Stephanie Rice. So, gotta be in the same place she is.

Italy
I surmise that there are probably very few places on this planet with better food than Italy. Plus I hear that it's just a nice place in general.

Japan
One thing. Osaka Jail. Haven't heard of it? Go look it up. Not for nothing, despite how expensive it is, I guarantee that very few people party harder than the Japanese after a long day of crunching numbers and shit.

Thailand
Because really, how can you say that you lived without getting some really weird STD from a Thai hooker while riding the green dragon?

France
Eh, I mean, I dunno. Maybe France sucks and I just have no idea. Everyone there seems rude. But I guess it's one of those "you'll never know until you experience it" kinda deals.

Canada
This is happening soon. Why? Because getting hammered completely legally at 19 sounds pretty excellent to me. Plus I want actual maple syrup. And I still don't entirely believe that they have those goofy fucking accents. Talk about filler.

Ireland
I hear Ireland is really pretty. Plus I want to steal a ginger and bring her back to wherever I happen to be living. Partially because how much more interesting would I be if I had a natural born Irish wife? We could have pasty freckled children.

Chicago
This is one place I've never been, but I really feel the urge to go here for a number of reasons. One, I want to see a Cubs/Chisox game at Wrigley (because who gives a shit about the White Sox stadium). Secondly, The Lawrence Arms are from there, and Brendan Kelly bartends at the L&L often enough. Getting wasted off either PBR or Old Style while being served by one of my favorite singers ever? I think that would be pretty amazing.

San Francisco
The last time I went here I was in the womb. But I think it's a pretty necessary place to visit. Dunno why really, just have the urge.

So, I've dicked around enough doing this. I need water, and need to clean the random acutrima scattered throughout my room while listening to the Lawrence Arms live set. 9 Days until the Fest!

-Joe

A Peter North money shot for a case of PBR. Come on man, I'm desperate!

Minions-

So it's 2:34 am as I write this. Tonight was our final night of dumb Outback classroom training, and thank god for that. I was just about ready to spoon my eyes out and make a casserole from their jelly if I had to sit through more of the same tedious, repetitive bullshit any longer. However, I passed, I'm employed, etc, so all is good. What isn't good is how much of a horrible procrastinator I am. I have yet to really even start on my non-fiction manuscript, although I feel like it's one of those that I will be able to shit out a half decent manuscript pretty quickly. I'm actually writing about a highly exaggerated version of the first time I ever bartended. This was also the first wedding I ever attended, so it was pretty entertaining. I think it could make for a good "being out of your element" story. So tomorrow, I am spending most of the day doing that, and then hopefully getting ridiculous later.

It seems that the more I am forced to write creatively, the less I turn my attention to some of my creative projects that I feel have much more potential than the assignments that I'm forced to write. However, I do feel like maybe these little throw away projects are a good way to exonerate some of the crap that I have built up inside me. Sure, it might seem silly to some to put less effort into the work that is actually getting graded, but I feel as if grades matter so little in the field that I'm planning on entering in. I mean, I used to be really gung-ho about going into journalism, but as of now, I just don't have any sort of interest in it. It's just not fun for me. Being forced to do anything will never be fun for me. I feel like I'm a little too independent for that.

It's kinda sad that I can see myself as the complete cliche of an artist in a few years. All of a sudden it feels like I would enjoy spending my evenings bartending, while spending my days working on more creative projects, whether it be writing, or music. Maybe it's the fact that I just hate to be such a slave to convention, and that is all journalistic writing is. That's why I like to keep this blog pretty variable and avoid sticking to just one subject. I mean, we all know my one true love is transvestites, but how uninteresting would a blog about my exploits with transvestites be? The answer? More interesting than you could handle.

So currently, here's some shit that I'm liking a lot, just so I don't sound so completely miserable (when in reality, I'm actually pretty happy most of the time now).

Black and Tans
And no, I don't actually mean the kind that Yuengling bottles (although those are very good too). I mean the homemade black and tan. My personal favorite combo? I do Harp Lager on the bottom half of the mug, and then slowly pour Guinness Extra Stout over the back of a spoon. Shit is absolutely delicious. I feel like Hagrid when I drink them.

Yuengling
Speaking of beer, I forgot how absolutely extraordinary Yuengling was. For the same price as Budweiser, and Miller Lite, and all of that stuff, Yuengling is the best beer for it's price range. Great drinkability, and awesome taste. Plus, it has the unique beer appeal as well (although as it becomes more popular, it's slowly becoming less unique, duh). Probably tied for my favorite beer with Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Hamburger Helper
Yeah, I fell into the total college kid trap. But I can't lie, Hamburger Helper rules a lot. The lasagna one is great because it ends up being like three meals for me. Hate on it.

Working cell phones
Mine doesn't. Stupid fucking battery. Blegh. Once it does again though, I will be very happy!

Anyway, I'm going to call it a day on writing. I need to shower. And still need a haircut. Soon!

-Joe

Dedicated to all human beings

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

So it's officially 16 days until the best weekend of my entire year. Yes, that's right folks, the Fest is on us again, and this lineup seems stronger than ever. Sure, I'm poor as fuck right now, but I do have a job, and I should have financial aid very soon (starting to sound like a broken record right?). So, I'm officially completely excited for life again.

For the uninitiated, The Fest (yes, that is what it's called), is a big independent music festival that has (this year, at least) upwards of 250 bands at 8 different venues between Halloween and November 2nd (although this is the first Fest Halloween, which gives my favorite week of the year a whole new connotation). Last year was my first time, and granted, I made a lot of rookie mistakes. However, I had the most fun of my entire life on Fest 6 weekend last year, and I expect that having been once and knowing what to expect, that this year will be even better.

Some of my very favorite bands on the entire planet are playing this year, and I couldn't be more stoked to get completely faded and listen to some of the best music in the world. Namely, The Lawrence Arms, and my buddies in A Wilhelm Scream and the Swellers. Not for nothing though, I always love to find new bands to randomly get into while waiting for other bands to start, like what happened last year with the band Shook Ones. It's just such a great cultural experience, knowing that 90 percent of the people there are really awesome, and that everyone is there for the same reason: enjoying some of the best music the worst bands have to offer.


So right now, I just found out that my first two classes tomorrow are both cancelled. This is pretty stellar, mostly because it means I don't have class until noon. So, in celebration of such an event, I'm drinking a traditional black and tan. Yeah, I'm aware that it's a total yuppie drink, but I did a few favors for my friend, he got me a nice little homemade variety pack of good beer (as well as a betta fish, who I've officially christened as "Lennox"), so I figured that there would be no better way to drink Guinness Extra Stout and Harp Lager. So, there is that.


So, I haven't done a good list in a while, and having alcoholics as friends, I thought I would try and document the 5 worst liquors ever. Granted, there are some things I haven't tried that I am absolutely sure are gutrot, but alas, this is all from experience.


Rum
Of any kind. Gold, silver, 151, doesn't matter. Rum is what high schoolers with an overactive libido drink. In fact, rum is probably the dumbest alcohol to drink in excess (trust me, I know). I was not always the seasoned drinking professional that I appear to be, and when I was in 10th grade, I used to drink rum too. That is, until I grew a brain and realized how horrible of a hangover that sugary drinks give you. I mean man, you have not experienced a hang-over until you've experienced a rum and coke hangover. It's got enough sugar to put a hummingbird into a diabetic coma. Rum is for middle schoolers, old men who listen to too much Jimmy Buffett, and sorority girls exclusively. Some people champion it's use as a hangover remedy after partying with too many synthetic drugs (although this begs the question, can you ever party with too many synthetic drugs?), but honestly, drink sparks instead. It is at least tolerable in taste.


ABC Vodka
This is kinda like saying shit from Walmart sucks, but honestly, this is the most gutwrenching vodka ever that it can't not get a spot on this list. Yeah, so it's 100 proof. Yeah, so it's 7 dollars a bottle. Yeah so, it will without a doubt get you completely faded. But honestly, how could you justify something that will make you vomit even when drinking weak cran-vodkas. I don't even want to know what this garbage tastes like straight up.


Gin
If you are capable of stomaching gin, more power to you. I personally think it's straight up bottled acid, but I guess if you are capable of downing that as fast as my parents do while watching Grateful Dead tribute bands, then you should probably do this. Gin drinkers are generally either classy, or dangerous in appeal due to drinking gin. This, of course refers to "good" gin like Tanqueray and not the ghetto swill that bums drink

Honest to God bad beer
And yes minions, it does exist out there, and chances are, you have probably drank a lot of it. Bad beer can kind of be a fuzzy area, but really, there are some that are so undisputably terrible that are worth noting. Most clear-cut offenders include: Natty Light/Ice, Busch/Busch Light, Keystone/Keystone Light, Coors Light, Miller Genuine Draft. Now a beer like Schlitz kinda sits on the fence on this one. For one, it's super cheap, and that is absolutely apparent in it's taste. However, Schlitz does have the upside of having really cool/unique packaging, and as such, makes you look a little less douchey. But it's a toss up on that one.

Scotch
Okay so while I do find Jim Beam drinkable, and Jack Daniels marginally okay, Scotch and most other types of whisky are possibly the grossest shit ever. It completely baffles me how anyone can drink this shit and not want to throw up completely. I know I did back when I was going through Kindergarten for the second time.

Anyway, so I really need to eat breakfast and finish up a journal for my advanced expository class like asap, because I have class starting at 1:30.

-Joe

It's nothing but ruffage for lunch and punchlines for dinner

Heyo.

I could sit here and spend the first paragraph of this jumbled mess of a blog by noting some semi-noteworthy minutia of my life, but really, my life has slipped into a little bit of a routine, which I'm not a fan of. However, I did hang out at a bar downtown that I've never been to (Mako's, for any of you who happen to care), which was probably one of the most entertaining places I've ever been. But, like I said, minutia is pretty much never interesting if you aren't a fucking celebrity or some ridiculously eccentric person. Granted, I am eccentric to a certain extent, but nowhere near eccentric enough to make anything aside from an obsession with Chicago Dogs, cheap beer, and sloppy music engaging.


I hate censorship pretty much wholly. Honestly, I really try to at least marginally grasp why so many people are so for it, but I just don't get it. Personally, censorship seems like a sorry cop-out on being a proactive parent. If you don't want your kids to play violent videogames, then get a clue and take the damn things away from them. If you don't want your kids watching violent movies, then don't let them. If you don't want your kids doing drugs, you better damn well make sure they aren't hanging out with the kids doing them. It's not anyone else's responsibility to shield your kids from things you don't want them to see, it's yours. I know my parents would make sure that if there was really something they didn't believe I should see, they would make sure I wasn't going to find another way of seeing it (although this might be a bad example, as my parents didn't try and shelter me from any of that really, but more on this in a minute). As far as I'm concerned, if you feel the urge to have kids, then be proactive in their lives. By not being proactive, you can't possibly expect your children to understand any sense of boundaries. I know, it seems retarded that I (the man who really does not like kids at all, in case anyone needed a clue) would be giving parenting advice from anyone, but I feel slightly urged to project my almost assuredly superior intellect over anyone who raises shithead kids.


But honestly, sheltering your children isn't going to save them any trouble in life. Trust me, I've seen it happen, and I am damn glad that I did not grow up in a sheltered household or I would have pretty much gone Ted Kaczynski on someone at this point. I'll use myself as an example, since I'd like to think (although I'm never entirely sure) that I know myself better than I know other people. I grew up in an open household. I was always encouraged to ask questions about things I was curious about. I was persuaded to live for myself, and not up to everyone else's standards (although my parents did hold me to pretty strict academic standards and made sure they taught me proper manners and an open mind).


But I fucked up a lot in high school. I did drugs. I drank myself into oblivion on more than one occassion. I screwed off in school. Didn't take work seriously at all (trust me, I know this is pretty difficult to believe, but ask anyone that used to work with me at the Smoothie Cafe; until the recent procession of retards that have apparently rolled in, I was notorious for being the third worst employee to ever last longer than 6 months). I screwed off in school and massively underachieved all four years. I pissed a lot of people off by being very outspoken and blunt. Etc etc etc.


But through all of this, I got to college and knew my limits immediately. I knew how much time I had to devote to studying to get good grades, and I knew how much time during the week I could go out and get completely destroyed without being too dysfunctional in the morning. I had done my time with drugs, and honestly knew what I was (or wasn't, in this case) missing. Yeah, as a few of my detractors will point out, I didn't have a flawless year, but for the most part, I felt like I was better off altogether by knowing my limits by not having lived a completely sheltered adolescence.


Now, I'm not advocating that you let your children run around with no boundaries or any of that shit. Let's face it, kids are mostly stupid (even if they do have an IQ of 167, they still could end up with their thumb up their ass mailing bombs to random people from a shack in Montana if you don't watch them), and definitely need some sort of structured system of household reward and punishment. However, look at me for one, someone who is very infrequently hurt by words or perturbed by anything considered generally disturbing, and look at European culture, where naked women are not considered so horribly taboo, drinking isn't considered a bad thing, and cursing is just the language that they speak. If you take away the taboo element of drinking, sex, and profane language, there is nothing left to get offended by. It's merely a word, an image, a substance that has plenty of positive effects (as well as some negative ones, if you're a dribble-chin, navel-picking fuckwit who doesn't understand how to carry themselves), and something that everyone else has been able to cope with.

Hasn't anyone come to understand that we are the only one's making anything obscene? Obscenity is completely created by humans alone, and, if nothing else, I think it's a tad ridiculous to worry about the obscenity of certain words and images when we have one of the most obscene histories in the history of the world.

Speaking of obscene things, I think most people who take a glance at this jumbled incoherancy heretohenceforth known as AHT (because seriously, who really cares about the "the" and the "on", they only completely make the name coherant!), know that I like to ramble about dumb things. Today's dumb topic is Youtube videos. There is nothing that is more upsetting than watching a really entertaining youtube video become the victim of too many Sarah Palin lovers enjoying it. Don't believe it? You are probably one of these idiots then that overquotes the My New Haircut video to this day. Yes, Jagahbombsx3 etc. Okay, we got it. You thought it was funny. But I mean really, I actually enjoyed that video until I watched every asshole Seether fan beating it to death like a Pussy Cat Dolls single. So, here's a list of Youtube videos that are never to be quoted again.


My New Haircut
For reasons stated above. That, and it's a little too true to be funny anymore.

Charley the Unicorn
Maybe it was the fact that this was literally the first thing I pretty much did on college campus after my parents left, was get kidnapped by two girls (one who would turn out to be possibly the dumbest person I've ever met, and the other happened to be pretty okay), and watch this. And yeah, it was funny. Until I couldn't even use the urinal without hearing "chaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrleeeyyy".



Salad Fingers
Okay. Salad Fingers is the most terminally unfunny thing to ever happen to youtube. It's just not even slightly funny. Yes, he's creepy. So is John Wayne Gacy, but that doesn't make him a comedic revolution either


Good youtube videos. And yes, this list is inarguable: Phantom of the Office. The whole series. And the mail order comedy bangbus video. That's about it. Sometimes those lyrical interpretation videos are funny too.


Listen, I just really hate sitting on these entries for multiple days. So instead of sitting on this rotten egg for any longer, I just make up some horribly forced bullshit ending like this. And with that, I conclude thee blog.

-Joe

Toby Keith's horses and Toby Keith's men

Hello.

I know it seems as if this is too soon for a new entry, but I was literally sitting on that other entry since late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. So. I feel like I've been more than a little neglectful. However, this will all change. I knocked out a good amount of the things I've needed to do lately, and even though I still have a lot more to do (memorizing a six page menu, applying for a loan that I've been delaying until the last possible moment, finishing the whole "cleaning the room" thing, getting new tires on my bike, etc), I feel like I've hit a plateau of effectiveness, and as such, need to slack off for a bit.

Being sick is never any fun I've come to realize. Lately, since I've come down with this weird chest congestion thing, I've been totally drained of energy. For real. I can't remember the last time I was up until 4 am. It's been a struggle to stay up until 2, which is really weird for me, because that is usually my peak hours of operation. Funny story actually, I hacked a loogie into my sink the other day under running water (which usually just shoots the little fucker right down the drain), and apparently, unbeknownst to me, most of the loogie just sat there, becoming one with my sink basin. Now, this isn't particularly harmful to me, but I mean, it just sort of shouts "this kid does not have his shit together". I actually prefer to appear as though I do have my shit together (however infrequently that may be), and this crusted loogie that just will not give way to neither Kaboom nor flamethrower is just ruining my whole vibe. Maybe that's why I've been feeling a tad under the weather: this crusted loogie is just throwing off my whole sense of orientation.

There is nothing fun about being around unexceptional people. Sure, I mean, I have plenty of people that I have absolutely no beef with who are unexceptional. But these are the people that I honestly could not see myself being anything more than an aquaintence with in a few years out. However, most of my close friends I believe fall into the category of being exceptional, and this is why they are my close friends. I think that one of the most important qualities that anyone can bring to the table with me is being a challenging and intriguing individual. I find the most interesting thing about people is security in their imperfection, and as such, I try to surround myself with similar people, regardless of what interests we happen to share or not share.

Being boring is no way to live life, and honestly, I find security to be a little overrated. If you never put yourself outside of your element, you'll never grow. It's very much like the risk-reward relationship. The bigger risk you take, the greater the reward will be. And if you fail, why should it even bother you? I've come to realize that fear of rejection is one of the most pathetic and inconsequential fears ever, and if you don't learn to conquer it while the consequences are menial, you'll fall the hardest when it actually matters.

I look at some of the people around me and almost feel badly that they aren't living as vivaciously as they could be. Obviously, this is only my opinion and I hope no one views this as an attack on themselves, but as a general statement. I mean, to me, it seems pretty boring to never push your boundaries and fail to do things that you might later regret. Yes, you might regret going out and getting completely shitty before a 9 am Spanish class, but how many times in your golden years are you going to look back at college life and go "man, that one night I spent studying for my western civilization test was so much fun, I'm glad I really took advantage of the time I had left as a youth before I had to succumb to being completely independent and couldn't go out even on the weekends".

Obviously, there is a time and a place for everything, and yeah, sometimes you have to give up a night of fun to make sure you're not going to fail a class or anything, but most of the time, being conscious in class is pretty unnecessary. And at that point, you have to ask yourself, "what is more important, living life and having a great time, or doing good in this class so I can hopefully get a good job, so I can make it through life?" If you spend your time worrying more about the latter than the former, I pity your situation and your outlook on life. And I don't doubt that a bunch of you are like "god Joe's an asshole, don't you know you don't have to get drunk to have fun?", but I'm pretty sure I didn't make drunkeness as a stipulation of having fun anywhere in here. I happen to have a lot more fun getting drunk and doing dumb things (and I'm also not bothered by the consequences of the morning after), but if being sober is your thing, then more power to you. But don't let my whole point be lost by that. Get out and live, or you'll have already died far too young.

I'm big on these lists, or so it seems. So to follow in the tradition of such lists, I think I'll start my own bucket list. As per usual, some shit is probably really cliche, but eh. Bite me.

Visit every continent
Visit all 50 states
Drive from one end of the country to the other
Live in Australia and Amsterdam
Drop mushrooms at a planetarium during a meteor shower
Skydive
Dive reefs all over the world before they are all gone
Dive an authentic shipwreck
Write a novel and have it published
Put out an album of original music
Make amends with the people I've hurt with no provocation
Never miss another NOFX, Against Me!, A Wilhelm Scream, The Lawrence Arms, or Radiohead show again
See the Mars Volta live
Go a month without using a car
Buy a sports car
Go to the Olympics
Eat a Chicago Dog in Chicago
Grow a beard for 6 months
Learn how to make sushi
Open a restaurant
Become a legitimate bartender
Get tattooed
Scratch out everything on this list (and any future additions) by the time I die

To be continued.

Anyway, I'm gonna go make dinner with a buddy of mine. Maybe we'll bone later? I'm not sure.

Peace,

-Joe

I'm wasted as my time spent sitting idly by

G'day.


Yeah, I fucking used it. That's how us Outback employees work. God, I can't imagine how much fun I'm going to be having sounding like some wage-slave jackass like "g'day lake nona outback my name is Joe how can I help you". Really guys? G'day? I mean, yeah okay, I get it. You're trying to be a pseudo Australian themed restaurant, it's cute. We have to wear safari shirts too like a bunch of touristy jackasses. Isn't the G'day thing just taking it a touch far?


Anyway, I spent last evening pondering a lot of things while reading some fucking horribly contrived and wordy epic poem that makes no sense that I care to actually try and figure out. This was one of those poems (or so they are called. I've never figured out why the fuck anyone would classify 5 quintillion pages of garbage as poetry) where I honestly read the whole thing and completely forgot what I read less than 10 seconds after I finished. Isn't that just the most frustrating thing ever?


No. But I have determined what is. Missing class is practically a requirement of college, but the most frustrating thing ever is actually trying to catch up on what you missed in class from a fellow classmate. I mean, it really shouldn't be that bad, provided you aren't a total recluse in class, but the worst is asking someone what you missed and getting the standard lazy response: "you didn't really miss anything, he just went over some notes, and did a power point, and told us everything that would eventually be on the test, and then stripped in front of the whole class while masturbating to a blown up picture of Bob Barr". Great job. In the words of Matt Leinart's beer bong, you just suceeded at being less informative than Sarah Palin. I didn't ask for a general summary of the goings on of the class, I actually wanted to know what was taught while my drunk ass was busy passed out and shitting his pants with a non-working air conditioner.


Music rules. For the most part. There are some really awesome bands and groups doing really creative and/or fun and/or exciting shit out there, and those are the bands that I love to talk to people about, and introduce people to. But, the bad has to come with the good, and like all bad things, boy do I enjoy making fun of the prodigiously bad shit that people are attempting to pass off as art. I mean, there are some really easy bands to pick on, but that's kinda like trying to beat up a little kid; there is no fun in the lack of challenge. So I'd rather pick on some of the slightly more credible bands, and specifically, how bad lyrics can really ruin a song. I'm an english major, and as such, a total lyric nerd, so lyrics actually do mean quite a bit to me when I'm deciding if I like a song or not. So, here is a completely not complete list of exceptionally bad lyrics I've heard from all bands, big and small.


"Alone in my room with a bucket full of phlegm/I don't need a music scene to tell me who I am"
Wow so. This first one is a doozie. On top of being the most criminally-overrated ska band ever, Tom Kalnoky was so woefully inefficient at writing anything that was supposed to convey some sort of complex emotion of any kind when he wrote the lyrics to "Day In, Day Out". I mean. Fuck man, chill out with the Nirvana-esque teen-angst thing. I mean, okay, you're trying to be rebellious. I get it. But fuck man, plenty of bands are capable of writing even marginally passable angsty lyrics; this is just Alanis Morrisette bad. At least Tom would redeem himself with his work in Streetlight Manifesto.

"Your apathy comes with a price tag after all it seems."
"No one flag flies over the multi-national company/No allegiance to the board's homeland, fellow citizens, the flag born of their country/As the brainwashed nationalists move/To shed their blood on battle fields/War profiteering rich watch their stocks reap high yields."
Anti-Flag is one of those bands that could concievably be seen as an easy target for making fun of bands lyrically. But. They are just way too proud of their ignorance for me to ignore this shit. Really guys, come up with something that doesn't sound like you are desperately trying (and failing) to achieve middle school levels of song writing.

Anyway, I'm going to reheat some fried rice and watch college football today. Going to get stomped by Miami this weekend, fuck yes.

Tata,

-Joe

Minimum wage is a gateway drug

Hi everyone-

Cutting your finger with a pearing knife seriously sucks. After a couple of beers last night watching the debate, I decided it was a smart idea to cut up my temporary debit card with a steak knife. Smart Joe, smart. So of course, I ended up cutting right through my finger. No fun at all, but I guess it's to be expected. In other news, today is pretty exciting for a couple of reasons. One, I'm finally getting around to cleaning my room like I mentioned a few blogs ago. Something about baked fish fillets caked to a plate on top of my printer that really lit a fire under my ass. B, today is our official Hot Dog Heaven journey of the week, which always puts me in a particularly good mood. Nothing like the glory of processed beef and random vegetables to make me a happy little man. Three, today starts my first day of orientation for my job at Outback, which should be a pretty fun time I'm thinking. Probably a bunch of those dumb icebreaker games, but at least that permits me to spend the better part of the night bullshitting, flirting wrecklessly, and being charming and witty. That's just how I roll in this town.

So, 99 percent of bartenders are total dildos. Call me a perfectionist, know-it-all, what have you, but there are some really outwardly bad and lazy bartenders out there. Not for nothing, but the people that hire bartenders are probably even stupider. And this is not me attempting to speak out as some kind of jaded asshole (or maybe it is, and I just don't feel like admitting to it), but there are definitely some bar managers that make terrible hiring decisions all the time. Especially around here. The only way to get a job in a bar around my school is to a. be in a frat, and a decent sized, reputable frat at that, or b. be a hot, slutty girl. Of course, most bars just look at the basics: yeah, being in a frat ensures most of your fraternity coming through the door the night you are working; yeah, being a hot slutty girl means you have guys coming in to drool over you and rail you harder than the basketball team did in high school. However, did anyone ever look at the fact that frat dudes are practically obligated to take care of their brothers with free drinks all the time? Did anyone ever look at the fact that the aforementioned hot, slutty girl is more likely to call out of work because she doesn't feel like standing up after the fact that she just got torn up like it was getting thrown on the internet by a bunch of 300 pound Samoan dudes on a website like Facialsofdeath.com??

Maybe I'm crazy, but for as ridiculous and out-there as a lot of aspiring bartenders are (myself included), we're definitely more reliable, personable, and better at building clientele than these kids who will only continually bring in the same people over and over. Not for nothing, but hiring people with not even a lick of training just for their ability to bring in customers seems pretty ridiculous. You wonder why you have a bunch of dildos coming in and drinking underage (again, myself included)? It's because you train shitty fucking bartenders who don't give a shit about their job and do a mediocre job at mixing together a grand total of 10 drinks, and don't even know the actual names for them. Maybe I just like trying to rock the establishment too much. I dunno. What I do know is that I could do twice as good of a job as any of the fucking clowns behind the bars at any of the local places. But I guess it's my loss, at least until I move up to bartending at Outback in a few months.

Regardless. I'm riled up now. Not that I wasn't when I woke up. I love it when I sign onto myspace and see some mother-at-19 blurting out about how Barack Obama is clearly the antichrist and how he didn't vote for the PATRIOT ACT. I bet 98 percent of the people who think that's a bad thing probably have no idea what the Bill of Rights or the Patriot Act contain. It shocks me how a nation like ours, "the best country in the world", can be so legitimately retarded when it comes to some of the most devastating legislation in the history of our country.

Fuck that. America is not number one; we're in the teens at least. Maybe 12 or 13 tops. Call me an unpatriotic asshole (it's not like I spent 4 years in ROTC or anything). We're so ignorant of our place in the grand scheme of the world. We're a joke. We've fucked up two elections and counting now. Our economy is in the worst shape it's been since the Great Depression. We were sure that North Korea was one of the most evil powers to ever grace the planet. We were positive that it was time to attack them like we attacked Iraq (who was in the same place as North Korea when the war over there started), and in the end, it turned out that they were really telling the truth and only wanted nuclear power. I'm even willing to wager that Iran wants the same thing, and that no one likes the country who clearly doesn't have it's shit together, to tell them to get their shit together.

So let's forget about everyone elses problems for a little while. I hate that this is what it's come down to, but let's fix America. Send the vice president over to try and negiotiate some sort of a temporary armistice between all of the middle east countries for long enough that we can fix our economy, get back into the black, and get our shit taken care of. Then, since America is a perennial gossipy-bitch-with-its-nose-up-everyone's-ass, we can worry about everyone else. But instead of worrying about the middle east (where there is always going to be a fucking war between rogue states who hate Israel), let's worry about the real issues, like Darfur. If we had known the scope of the Holocaust at the time it happened, we would have immediately intervened. Why is this any different?

Okay, well know that I've thoroughly fumed enough, I'm down to end this on a positive note.

Good, good things:

Tom Petty
Awesome songwriter. Sorry, I know I throw all my cred points out of the window, but Tom Petty fucking rules. Seriously, American Girl is 10 times better than anything Springsteen put out aside from maybe Born to Run. Definitely the more consistent of the two, and wasn't the precursor to fucking Bon Jovi. Now that's an accomplishment worth noting.

Neckties
As long as they aren't clip on, and you aren't wearing them with a tshirt, a good, ridiculously cool looking necktie is always a good thing. I have a metallic-looking purple/pink/black one that has interesting geometric steps on it that looks cool as hell. Downside? They are expensive. How I hate being poor.

Aloe
Let me tell you, when dozing on the beach after a couple of high lifes, sunburn sucks. A lot. Florida sucks mostly because you can get sunburn even if it's cloudy as hell out. That was the story of my weekend: sunburn. But with aloe, all the obnoxious stinging is temporarily relieved by this horrible smelling substance. I don't care if it makes me smell like an old man who uses aerosol shampoo and shits his pants daily, at least the fucking burning doesn't burn so badly.

Fried rice
What a great starch. I mean, I think fried rice is really terminally underrated. No doubt better than ramen, although it is more expensive. I just don't understand how people prefer white rice. Ramen has like. Vegetables and shit. And chicken. People, chicken is the best thing ever. When you learn this finally, you will grow. Cope with it. Chicken is the future.

I've totally fried my brain on this one. Still need a haircut. Fuck.

Bye.

Joe

Oh PS I'm shaving my beard into a Fu Manchu moustache later today. Let you know how that turns out.