Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Mr. or Mrs. Sweden Is Totally Checkin Me Out - or - Having Fun Before Vacation

Part I

Someone in Uppsala Lan, Sweden loves me. Where is Uppsala Lan? Right here.

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I wish I was in Uppsala right now. I'd go to the Linnaeus' Garden, or Linnéträdgården in Swedish. It was planned and planted by Olaus Rudbeck, a professor of medicine at Uppsala University, in 1655. Rudbeck also built the house adjacent to the garden, which is where I would go and demand booze and a lawn chair to complete my garden party. I hope my new Swedish friend would join me. I'll by the first round.

Part II

I find this button to be most useful. Warning, only press in a true Emergency.

Part III

This is the funniest thing I've heard today.
"How do you spell Bear Repellent."
"Not like that."
"Well, just tell me how to spell it."
"Ok. Q, Q, Q, X."

It comes from this video. That probably means I just ruined the scene. Snape Kills Dumbledor!

Part IV

I'm going on vacation. I'm headed to New York City at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning, getting drunk with two very good friends of mine, and then driving to Vermont for a wedding this Saturday. I can't wait to see topography again. I really really really miss Vermont. I'll say hi for you.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Conversations In A Greenhouse - or - Improve Your Aim

Obsquatch - Welcome back from vacation, Bryan. Did you have a good time?

Bryan (Coworker) - It was great, I got to hang out on the farm and relax with my folks.

Obsquatch - Does your mom miss me?

Bryan - With every bullet.




--------------------------------


Bryan - I'm trying to be nice, Obsquatch.

Obsquatch - Oh, is that what that tooth grinding sound was?

Bryan - You wouldn't know nice if it was beating you upside the head with a tire iron.

Obsquatch - That's exactly what nice usually does to me.

Monday, July 27, 2009

My Favorite Mini-Chapter Betwixt Real Chapters - or - Someone Else Wrote This

""You're missing the point," she said. "What you're saying makes sense in theory, but not in practice. You're trying to compare apples and oranges."
"Why do you keep saying that?" he asked in response. "Apples and oranges aren't that different, really. I mean, they are both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. ?they both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine, I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and - while I was looking away - he replaced that apple with an orange, I doubt I'd even notice. So how is this a metaphore for difference? I could understand if you said, 'That's like comparing apples and uranium,' or 'That's like comparing apples with baby wolverines,' or 'That's like comparing apples with the early work of Raymond Carver,' or 'That's like comparing apple with hermaphroditic ground sloths.' Those would all be valid examples of profound disparity. But not apples and oranges. In every meaningful way, they're virtually identical."
"You're missing the point," she said again, this time for different reasons."

-Chuck Klosterman
Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Obstraction - or - I'm Closer To Being President, A Jedi, And Irish Than You Are

Obtuse, oblong, oblique, obese, obscene, observe, obscure, obstacles, obfuscate, obstetrician, Obama, O’Brian, Obi Wan Kenobi, obtain, obstruct, oboe, obey, obliterate, obituary, obligate, object, objection, obedient, oblige, oblivion.
Obsession.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Fear Of Death - or - If It's Gonna Be That Kinda Party...

I’ve decided to never fear death again. I wasn’t very afraid of death before making this decision, but I think it’s a note worthy addition to my existence. It seems like an important step towards being a man. So I’m going to try it. I’m going to stop fearing death. There is no mystery to it. We all die. Don’t complain, just enjoy the ride, let loose a yell, dig your nails in and try to stay on it as long as possible.

What spurred me to this decision?

1) There I fixed it dot com. Just look at how much fun these non-death fearing folk are having.



There is no doubt that they know that power strips and pools are a bad combination, but when you want to drink beer in your three foot deep inflatable pool and cook hotdogs in the middle of it on your George Forman knock-off grill, are you going to let death get in your way? Fuck no. Not as long as those flip flops float and there are still beers to eat and hot dogs to drink. Not that I think that this is a good idea, but going through life with bright orange floaties and shatter proof safety goggles on at all times means missing out on the really fun stuff, the adventures that take you outside of the world of “safe and sound” and into “breathtaking and wondrous.” A good friend of mine recently fell while rock climbing in the Grand Canyon. He was lucky, after falling fifteen feet, bouncing off a ledge, then falling an additional thirty feet, and basically landing on his feel like a cat, he realized that not only was he still alive, but he was also mostly unhurt. He tried to stand up but instantly realized that he was not quite as unhurt as he originally thought. His climbing partner took off to go get medical help, and after waiting eight hours with nothing to keep him distracted from the pain but a few quarts of water and a pack of smokes, his climbing partner came back with a first responder from the park service. Snider, that is the lucky fucker's name, was then drugged up and put into a morphine induced state of bliss until the next morning when he was heli-vac-ed to the local hospital and treated for minor cuts and two broken bones in one of his feet. Oh it could have been worse, broken neck, broken head, broken life, but his life could have been a lot more boring had he stayed safe and sound and watched Voltron and Lost and never experienced the years of fun he has had climbing, not to mention the years of fun he will have climbing once he gets back onto the rock, which he will do as soon as he is healed up. Hope you heal up soon, Snider, you lucky mother fucking mountain goat.

2) Irrational fears. I have a friend who is deathly afraid of birds. She hates them. I’ve asked why and the answer is always vague and end up along he lines of, “they make me uncomfortable with there tiny eyes and their flippy flappy wings and,” then there is a lot of shivering and flailing about with disgust, “bbbbbbbbbbbbur. I hate them.” I love birds and can’t for the life of me understand ornithophobia. They are freaking birds for Christ sake. Spiders are awesome. Snakes make me giddy. I’ve come face to face with reptiles, moose, wolves, bears, and naked drunk rednecks with shotguns and have never been afraid for my life. It seems pointless to be afraid of animals, as they mostly just want to get the hell away from you. The moose I met in the woods snorted at me as he cantered by me. I think he was saying, “duhhh, get outta my woods, jerkface.”

A person is born with only two fears, fear of falling and fear of loud noises. We obviously get over these fears quickly as every one-year-old I know loves being held upside down and tossed haphazardly into the air, and they also absolutely love banging on pots and pans and making as much noise as possible. Birds aren’t scary, it’s what makes you afraid of birds that is.



So if being afraid of harmless animals is pointless to me, being afraid of my inevitable demise seems even more pointless. I know I’m gonna die, I have no idea when, where, or how, but there is no reason to stop living as full a life as possible to avoid the inevitable. Just as it is pointless to stop going to the beach, or the park, or anywhere outside because there are seagulls and pigeons out there.
...
Wait a second. I am deathly afraid of Hippopotamuses though. Maybe this is why. Fucking hippos. Bbbbbbbbbbur I hate them!

3) Heaven Or Hell. I don’t believe in them. There are just too many loopholes. Who says if you get into heaven or not? St. Peter? No, he just has a list. God says so, but according to the last rights, if you renounce evil and take Jesus into you heart, you can be saved on your deathbed and you can head off to heaven, no matter how much of a fuckstain you've been all your life (doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of being good now?). And according to God, the consequence for adultery is being buried up to your waist and enduring a good hardy stoning, then it's off to hell with you. See, I thought a half hour of crying and shame in the shower with a brillo pad was enough. Maybe that's not funny. Maybe it's funnier than I care to admit, but in all honesty, I could use a touch more of the ol' sinful acts. The real reason that I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell is because it is eternal. Forever. And ever. And ever. Eternal damnation? Really? For not loving God, the holiest of dotted outlines with a question mark in the middle? The most divine scooby-doo puff cloud? I mean, it would be a lot easier to know that he loves me back if he would send me a friend request. I once shat in my neighbor’s lawn because they kept calling the police on me and my band while we were rehearsing at two in the afternoon, in the basement, playing jazz. It was while I was eating entirely too much fast food, so it might have been overkill, but does that mean that I am going to boil in a river of blood for eternity with the likes of Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun as penance for violence against my neighbors. According to Dante, yes, but probably only up to my ankles. On the other hand, Eternal Divinity? Sounds kinda lame after a while. So you get to fly around on the clouds and play with harps in a beautiful serene place where there the weather is always perfect and there is no trouble and no worries and everyone is happy and relaxed. Doesn't that sound a bit like a pilot retirement community Sedona? I lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world, surrounded by tranquil nature and peaceful wilderness for miles and miles and miles, and I got wanderlust and left as soon as I could. I can't imagine an eternity with all my dead family and friends (the ones who haven’t shit on their neighbor’s lawns) nagging me to clean my room, get a job worthy of an angel of my abilities, get married to some nice specter and settle down, by my own cloud, have some cherubs. Then there is the worldly possessions thing. In heaven, you can have any possession that you could possibly desire... without sinning... which is where I lose faith. I want sextuplet headed dildos and a pack of dirty women to use them on. I want heavenly orgies that last for millenniums. I want heavy metal bands, and flamethrowers, and fast cars, and chicks in leather bikinis begging to get me off, and corndogs. Lots of corn dogs. I want Olympic sized pools full of jello and oiled up porn stars in snorkles and tiny tennis outfits. I want titties everywhere I go. Big titties, small titties, round titties, soft titties, bouncy titties, firm titties, black titties, white titties, brown titties, green titties (thanks, star trek!), young titties, middle aged titties, fuck it, even old floppy wrinkled titties. I want titties titties titties. So if I get to heaven for being good while I'm here on Earth, and I can have any possession or pleasure that I can dream up when I get there, it raises the question, can you go to hell for having too much fun in heaven? "Sorry, Obsquatch. You have lusted after every woman in heaven. Time to burn." But I spent sooooo much time being soooooo good to get here so that I could get what I really really wanted! Not fair, Santa! Vice versa, can you go to heaven for doing good deeds and loving your neighbor in hell? “Hey buddy, I see that those damn demons keep chucking spears at you while we float in this river of shit. Hide behind that guy Bob Flannigan. Yeah, the guy with “Super Masochist” cape and the steel nail through his dick. No, that’s not his penance for being a pervert, he does that shit for fun. I hear he likes the pain. Oh crap, my good deeds in hell have resulted in my being saved. See ya in a few years, I’m off to get kicked out of heaven again for grabbing too many holy boobs.”

4) Karma. Ok. I believe there is some validity to karma, but not because there is come cosmic set of scales hovering in the ether, doling out rewards and punishments at random intervals to do-gooders and evil-doers. And I’m certainly not afraid that my life will be threatened by some backlash of Karmic comeuppance for not putting down the toilet seat. I believe in Karma but in a far more physically observable manner than the whole “universal balance” thang. I think you display your Karma like you display a bumper sticker. If I like being a total douche to others, I probably also like show off my “No Fear” windshield decal and my “Give War a Chance” window sign. And I will probably inspire the wrath of drivers who think that being a douche is, well, a douchebag move. If I was a total raging bitch, I might display it with my “My Other Car Is A Broom” or “Being A Crabby Bitch Is Part Of My Charm” or "I Haven't Been The Same Since That House Fell On My Sister" or, God forbid, all three bumper stickers. And if that were that case, fellow drivers might just steer clear of me because I put forth that bitch-ass-mofo mojo, but I might also rightfully give a No Fear fuckbag the verbal abuse that he truly deserves for being a total douchepump, which in the end makes the world a better place. Now, If I like giving and receiving oral pleasure with sexy girls on road trips, I might sport the “Support Road Head” magnet on my bumper, and let the chips fall where they may. As it stands, I’ve only ever put one bumper sticker on outside of any of my vehicles, bikes and skateboards included. In fact, this one bumper sticker has graced the rear bumper of all three of my autos; the first two were pick up trucks, one baby blue, one emerald green. The bumper sticker reads, “Charlie O’s – World Famous.” If you don’t know about Charlie O’s then you must be learned. My brother, never to be outdone, has slapped this lil’ beauty on his truck. “God was my co-pilot, but we crash landed in the mountains and I was forced to eat him.” What does this have to do with fearing death, or Karma for that matter? Honestly, not much. But it does prove that what you might mistake for cosmic balance is actually the world reacting to how you represent yourself. If you act a certain way only for the potential of that action benefiting you in the end, you are living your life the right way for the wrong reasons… and you should die.


5) There is so much I will miss, and so much more to see. Nah. I won’t miss anything when I’m dead. I think it just goes blank, and the energy that we use and create in life, transfers back into the Earth via decomposition, or is transferred into heat as I am cremated. The electrical impulses that once made up touch, smell, pain, fear, love, thoughts, dissipates into our surroundings, like lightning striking the ground. Whatever consciousness it was that made me aware of myself and all of my surroundings, whatever personality that made me “me”, just simply blinks out, like a film ending. There might be knowledge and memories stored in tissue of my brain, joys and fears, desires and regrets, but they will be inaccessible because the force that was driving, that one thought line that I consider to be me, has let go of the wheel and is busy transforming back into the energy from which it came. Back to the carbons, proteins, and minerals that all my parts are made of. I will become air, and water, and soil, and sugar. I will be in plants, and animals, and other people, and in the clouds, and in the rain, and in the ocean, and in the mountains. And maybe there is some molecule, some atom, some entity that is Obsquatch, some type of capsule that holds my identity and thoughts, but I won’t be sad that I’m not this person, this entity anymore. I’ll be happy to be eaten by a worm, or soaked up by a tree and turned into a blade of grass, only to be eaten by a deer, who is shot by a drunk redneck with a shotgun, and cooked up and served to friends with beer and whiskey, and then shat out on a neighbors lawn, and eaten by a worm.

For the parts of us, all the tiny tiny parts of us, there is no end when we die. There was no beginning when we were born. There is only a thought line that makes us who we are, that makes you who you are, that makes us think and love and cry and desire and laugh and feel pain and joy. And to spend any time fearing the end of the thought line is as silly as not wanting to keep reading a good book because at some point it is going to have a last chapter, a last page, a last line, and finally, a last word. But you should know, in almost every good book I've read, it is never the last word that is the most beautiful.

Gray Hairs On My Back - or - Someone Else's Sunset

This video caught my attention. It has been a long time since I've thought how long it would take to grow up. I remember dreading it as a kid. At one point, I remember having a fight with parents about taking a year off between high school and college. I remember saying to them that, "I'll never be this young again, so I want to have fun and do nothing of consequence before it's too late." I didn't take that year off and had a lot more fun going new places and meeting new people than I could have ever dreamed. Now I play in the dirt, which although might be a job and thus have a little consequence to it, is a lot more fun than doing nothing on purpose.



Some hippie girls gave me a quartz crystal for taking care of, trimming back, and fertilizing their plants in their store front. I was walking by and said to myself, I need to fix up those plants. They were happy to let me do it. Oh, hippies. You are so funny thinking that crystals are money. Now do that dance that you do, where you shake your arms and let your head flop around. Yep, that's the one. Thanks, hippie girls!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A Heart Wreching Work Of Questionable Sanity - or - A One Act Play With A Tree

Obsquatch - [whisteling Shostakovich while repotting a Arboricola tree]
Coworker #1 – You are always so happy, Obsquatch.
Coworker #2 – That’s because he doesn’t have a girlfriend crushing his spirit, soul, and savings account.
Coworker #3 – Ahhhh, the happy life of a single male.
Obsquatch - [huddles into a ball and rocks back and fourth muttering] I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Lunch Break Rambling - or - Lack Of Content Proves The Existance Of A Savings Account

I get a half hour lunch break. Unpaid. Always rushed. I am currently eating a chicken breast, drinking Orange Kool-Aid, doing my dishes, cleaning up from last night's impromptu party on my roof, and wondering when how I can justify pulling down that last post. I kinda hate it. There is a lot of garbage that flies though my head every five minutes.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Spelling Errors Are For Loveres - or - Five Minutes Alone

There was an exercise that I used to do in elementary school called “free hand writing” where for 5 minutes you just wrote and wrote and wrote, and didn’t stop, even if it meant writing “I can’t think of anything to write,” over and over and over. I haven’t done this type of thing since elementary school, and because I have about five minutes until my friends get back from seeing the Flaming Lips, I’m just going to write. I’m not going to edit or clean up mistakes, so it might get ugly. I’m not going to erase sentences that I don’t want to finish, so some ideas might just end. I’m not going to have any rules or flow or subject brainstorming, I’m just going to write. It could get ugly.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1

My name is something of a mystery. Not a big one, you could ifnd it if you really wanted ito byut that wouldn’t be much fun now would it. I might tell you beuctt but don’t get rour hopes ups. I don’t tell people my name unless I can see them in the real world. I’ve lied to people on the phone and craigslistabout by what my name is. At one point, I was getting rid of everything I own because it wouldn’t tif into my new life so I posted a :Free Crap For Sale” posting online. I got a lot of calls for sometone that wasn’t me, Rodney, but I knew exactally why that person wa s calling for Rodney, they wanted free stuff. I remember having a large balck woman and her son sifting through my assorment of pots and plants, while three college kids were pulling my huge couch out of my living room and a couple whas checking out some metal wire frame chairs that might look good on my patio. Their patio. I didn’t know the names of anyone of these people and they were the tail end of a streem of people that I had let into my apartment to take my stuff away from me on pourpose. I was left with a bunch of crappy lamps and s sense of aquired emptiness that you can only get mby giving away things that you didn’t necessarily want to give away but had to because they didn’t fit and you didn’t want to ask for help getting them down the stairs to the dumpster out back. The large black lady and er son were my favorite because they maticously gave the once over then the twice over to plants and pots that no one would think twice or three times about. They eventually just took them all and I think the kids name was Jordan. I gave him a winter hat because it was cold and he didn’t have a that hat and I figured that he needede one, since he took so much time looking at all my empty pots and then finally taking them all. I just can’t stop writing if I sopt then the walls in my head win and thay is the death of sudden creativity. I have always been fascinated by magnets, and I think that … I don’t want to think about magnests. I woneder if there is a hidden truth to typing as fast as hcayou can aiwth out editing. I wonder tha if it.. I wonder if I typed about love if I could finggure something out that I haven’t knonws I ve known all along. Fguck now my phon is rwringing byt I ‘n mot fsoting to rstopr because of the=soe damn tifieve five minute awalls. I like to think of my hands as a whirlwind right now, tiying themselves into knowts trying to keep up with my brain but obviously having a better time making sense of the world because I keep running out of thoughts and my fingers are just barley wbehind my mind. There havs got to be some kind of truth hidden in fastn thinoughts. I just and too wondu up in hitting the right keys and getting the sentences out to stop and let a an idea flow out. I don’t know much about myself, I just know how people react to me when I am how who I am and sometimes I think that tthat is me, people’s reaction to who I am, but I should know better., Peoples reaction to me is just their impringt of me against what they knowabout everyon else and how I compare to everyone else they have ever meat. That’s why no one cane be trusted, because you knowdomnt know where’ they have been. Is that truth or just dmadnees?

Five minutes.

The phone call was my friend and neighbor two doors down from my apartment. We are going up to the roof to drink in lawn chair. I love everything about what just happened for so many reasons.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

I'm Adopting The Coping Mechanism Of A Brazilian Prostitute In Love In Switzerland - or - I'm Not Dead Yet

Tomorrow is my 31st birthday. I’m not having a party and I’m not morning the death of my youth. I just want to go out for dinner. Here’s an excerpt from the book I am slowly reading.

To avoid beautiful thoughts turning into suffering, she developed a method: when something positive to do with him came into her head, she would stop what she was doing, smile up at the sky and give thanks for being alive and to be expecting nothing from the man she loved.

On the other hand, if her heart began to complain about his absence, she would say to herself:
“Oh, so you want to think about that, do you? All right, then, you do what you like, while I get on with more important things.”

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Permission Makes It Feel Better - or - Holy Crap, That Is One Dodgy Title

Recently, my world has been shook up, turned upside down, set on fire and then slowly spoon fed back to meet so that I might be able to handle all the new flavors; some hot, some sweet, and some bitter as hell. Needless to say, even if I can't handle it, and it makes me twitch with passion or rage or frustration, I'm loving every second of this.

The title of this post has to do with getting permission from the band, The Physics of Meaning, to use their music in whatever video projects I create. I was using their music before, but after a quick chat with Daniel Hart, the violinist and vocalist for the band, I can now unabashedly and legally saturate my projects with his craft.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Soul Food -or- Can I Get A Side Of Salvation, Please?

If this is the body of Christ...


Then this is the body of Christ toasted, with some Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato on it.


Yes, bacon even makes Christianity better. Tasty Jesus.