How To Lose A Job In One Stupid Question - OR - I Know Why The Caged Housewife Sings

The things that have happened to me that I like out way the needs of the many. My life continues to be good while your life only gets worse and worse.

I started my new job at Gethsemane Garden Center on the north side of Chicago a few weeks ago. Today, they gave me a Gethsemane T-shirt, which means that I was worth hiring. They also gave me a book about plants and a little bag full of plant clippings that I have planted and will have to keep alive in order to become a full time employee. I honestly live about 100 feet away from this place yet it is a whole different world within its walls. I wear an apron (which I fold in half to make it seem more like a utility belt; complete with bat-pruning-sheers, bat-sharpie-pen, bat-price-tags, and exploding-shark-repellent-bat-spray), and I answer questions about plants, sunlight and dirt.

I now have more houseplants than you can shake a goat at. The newest ones include, but are not limited to: Silver dollar Jade (carjacking, crack head, deadbeat-dad asshole), Purple Passion (total slut with endearing eyes and a taste for the tasteless), White Ice Begonia (investment banker that has missed out on his youth and is making up for it by wearing punk band T-shirts to the office), goldfish plant (Miss misunderstood, prom queen, republican, close talker, scary driver, jaded single mother of a seven year old rubix cube champion), Mass Cane (Siberian taxi driver with no eyebrows, a fake leg and a two hour story about the invention of shoelaces), and Jasmine Belle-of-India (cross-eyed and single-toothed harbinger of the apocalypse, drives a '72 Brat and plays harmonica at other peoples concerts between yelling requests for more pickles), just to name a few. They waste away all day and keep me up at night. While I toil and work my fingers to the bone to keep their little plant stomachs full and their little plant attentions occupied with soccer games, ballet class and piano lessons, their voices in my head get louder and louder. It’s enough for me to want to go crazy, give them all away, buy a mini-van, a leather studded thong, earphones with radio antenna on each side and walk around town with a goldfish in a huge martini glass, reciting Mother Goose and Kafka while eating raw hot dogs and drinking mayonnaise and prune juice. I’m not sure if you want to hear more about these guys or not, but don’t worry, there will be a lot more talk about plants in my future.

I, surprisingly, was offered three other jobs this week, all of which would have paid more money than the garden center. The most interesting of which was an interview for a $48K + benefits position doing tech support for a company that designed user-unfriendly bankruptcy assistance software for bankruptcy lawyers (Grace, wanna team up and make the world dept free and full of bad credit?). I asked if I could bring my flamethrower to work. They asked me how I got the interview in the first place. I shrugged, said I wasn’t sure, stood up and walked out. I’ll never get a good paying job with benefits, and I just don’t know why.

My Buddy The House Plant; The Voices In My Head

I’ve posted a few notes about my plants and how they take on a bit of personality once I get them into my apartment. Either they wanna wrap you up side the head with a tire iron or sacrifice you to the Fire God, Zamphinod, my plants seem to have developed rather strong opinions and almost dangerous behavior quirks. Let me introduce you to a one more member of my secret society of the plantish.


This on is my favorite

Latin Name: Haworthia Attenuata
Common Name: “Zebra Plant”
Star Wars Name: Hawat Sucafri - Atascion of Fariptu

Oh, Haworthia. You are the one that started this crazy love affair. The madness of falling in love with lower life forms started with you, ya little spiky bastard. I saw you in a succulent wreath over a year ago and made the people at the store remove you from your cacti brothers and sisters and put you in a tiny plastic pot so I could take you home with me. I made the people mix you some soil and sand and I got instructions on how to take care of you, even though the instructions were to “basically leave it alone.” I took you home, put you in a bigger pot against the instructions that were given to me and put you in my window. There you sat, in my bedroom window, for weeks and weeks while I pretended to ignore you. I was only pretending, though. I couldn’t stop thinking about you; how tough you are, how bumpy your little white ridges feel, how cool your leaf spikes grow in circular patterns. I would come home from work and pick you up and play with you, feel your texture and give you succulent food. And how you grew! No one loves you as much as I do. Just stay with me tonight, just be near me while I dream, just make me smile that crazy smile and you and I can trip the life fantastic together! What? Don’t talk to me like that? Stop yelling at me! Why do I always have to be the bad guy? Can’t, for just once in my life, I come home from a long day of work and have dinner waiting for me? Yeah, well, your mother is a complete idiot, and I never liked her. That planter makes your butt look big. What a nightmare you turned out to be. I want my Jefferson Starship collection back.

One of the Girls Invades The Northside - OR - Terror Level Green, With A Chance Of Song, Dance And Vomit

As the storms of fortune shower each of us with a deluge of riches, power, women and small porcelain clown dolls, One of the Girls wants to share our copious success with you. As Chicago’s only Blue-Irish-Folk-Grass band and the owners of a vastly successful men’s lingerie chain, One of the Girls invite you to join us in celebration of St Patrick’s Day with a weeklong series of shows, smattered across the north side of Chicago. The "Girls" have been working out and doing Pilates to strengthen our core and to finally get that hourglass figure we’ve been dreaming of. We are primed and ready to conquer even the most sober St. Patties Day non-enthusiast, and dare I say, even the most English. I recommend starting the celebration early and joining us and our toned, sexy bodies at the RedlineTap on Tuesday, tomorrow. We will be performing with Sexfist (Chicago’s premier Bluegrass authority), and might possibly even do a tune or two with them, starting at 9pm. Bring a friend, bring a lover, bring a goat, but leave your morals at home because when “One of the Girls is opening for Sexfist at the Redline,” you don’t want your morals to get in the way of having a good time.

Here is a list of all of our up coming shows this week. We demand that you attend all of them.

Cheers!

When A 5 Year Relationship Go Down In Flames, Every One Is A Winner

Dr. Potty Mouth – or – A Funny Thing Happened To Me At My Prostate Examination.

Due to an $800 health insurance billing screw up, I needed to find a new doctor. After almost four hours of searching the web, flipping through packets, calling Blue Cross, calling doctors, becoming depressed and giving up, eating a sandwich, reading some Kafka, becoming confused, cleaning my room, becoming motivated, resuming my search, adjusting my benefits, increasing my deductible, joining the Blue Choice Select Health Care Network, then disowning the Blue Choice Select Health Care Network, finding Jesus (he was wedged under my couch next to some old socks and a neck tie I’ve been looking for for months), and contemplating the “oxford comma” argument, it turns out that I live across the street from a doctor who is part of my network. You’d think that pissing in the alley behind your house is not a good way to find a health care provider, but in my case the relief was doubled.

The Rev. Tripp Hudgins has a blog. He recently posted a video about taking part in a panel discussion about communication. He touches upon the fact that there is a lack of a sign language “word” for poverty. During this panel discussion, the Rev admits to tossing F-bombs around with reckless abandon. As I have pointed out in previous posts, a dirty mouth usually deteriorates the validity of a point, but when it’s a Southern Baptist minister on a panel of def lesbians telling a room full of college students that there is a community of people based around the use of cuss words, then the point is happily taken. Preachers can say “Mother Fucker” in public without consequence; in fact people will take them more seriously in some contexts. “The rewards of the collar,” as Tripp would say.

I started working out a lot this year, not quite a New Year’s resolution but close enough so that I feel like I’m letting myself down if I don’t go do something active at least twice a week. I run along the lake, do push-ups before bed, I’ve joined a gym, I lift weights and I even can touch my toes for the first time since high school since I’ve started doing Yoga on Wednesdays. I’ve started eating better also; less pasta, more veggies and things that need peeling rather than icing. Regardless, I regularly slip up and get some White Castle at 3am after a long night working for rich douche bags at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. But, honestly, who cares; I can enjoy a slider or 6 now and again. I also have a soft spot for breakfast burritos. Either way, early in the morning or late at night, these fast food binges take a toll on my innards. I get heart burn from Coke, the farts from White Castle and the runs from anything made at McD’s.

I have recently wanted to get my cholesterol checked as part of my “I’m Too Lazy To Think Up A Better Slogan For Losing The Weight I Gained After Quitting Smoking” campaign, so I scheduled an appointment at the doctors office that I had recently pee-ed on. He asked about my health. I told him I was healthy. He seemed up tight. He asked about my job. I told him I was a musician and a sound engineer. He seemed to relax and told me he was a singer. I was on my best behavior. He asked about my eating habits. I told him about my inner turmoil after fast food. He asked about my asshole, more specifically if I have ever had someone jam anything up there to check on my prostate. I said “no.” I seemed up tight. He suggested I think about getting an exam. He started freely swearing shortly after that in very odd places. “Holy shit, your heart is in great health. It is pumping twice as much fucking blood as a normal person’s heart with each fucking pump,” and “You mother fucking badass, your blood pressure is low as shit, bitch,” and “fuck yeah, player, you are a healthy-ass mother fucker.” Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite like that, but the f-bomb made it’s way into conversation a few times shortly after he recommended that I get my asshole invaded. I guess if it’s your job to tell people that you need to stick your finger in their butt, then you’d better be able to say “shit” and “fuck” to the people who own those butts. I don’t think anyone would say that examining prostates is one of the “rewards of ten years of medical school.” Turn your head to the left, and fucking cough.

monday videoblog: talking about talking

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How To Turn A Crappy Song Into A Smash Hit

Just add Manic Depressive Muppets.

Luck of the Blogish

A Post With Very Little Thought Put Into It - Or - I Like Hubcaps And Corn

I hate Donald Trump. I think that he should be kicked in the teeth. He has his own bottled water that should also be kicked in the teeth. If you drink this water, you should be kicked in the teeth as well.



I like granola. Clumps of oats, almonds, brown sugar and sunflower seeds in milk make for a good morning. I keep my granola in a tin cylinder.



I hate hearing people’s drug stories. They are almost always pointless; and if there is a point to the story, it’s that they got really fucked up once. That’s not a good story no matter how cool you think talking to a clump of hair on the carpet for hours is. Chainsaw art, now that is cool.



I like making mix Cds. I like trying to figure out what song will blend into the next. If you ask me nicely, I’ll make you a mix Cd that you might like. You should do the same for me.



I hate going to big concerts. I recently went to Wilco and was less impressed with the band than I was depressed by the people surrounding me. I ending up leaving early with Tripp and catching the equally, if not more so, talented band Sexfist. I recommend that you see Sexfist as a first date, without telling your date what Sexfist is.



I like publicly making a fool of myself in Target. I recently got into a throw-pillow fight with a cute girl in the bedding isle. I bought a large Tupperware container for audio cables. She bought a trashcan. People were amused by our antics. So was I.



I hate parking tickets. I have somehow become a prime target for the bright orange envelope ammo of the meter-people’s wrath, I swear they have it out for me and my zippy black Scion. Since Jan 1st, 2008, I’ve been ticketed seven times for everything from with 20 feet of a crosswalk to obstruction of traffic. If I hadn’t contested these tickets, I would currently owe the city around $500. I’ve gotten out of four of them so far, but I’ve also been pulled over for speeding. I wonder what would happen if I was as good at quantum mechanics as I am at getting parking tickets.



I like having a hard drive on my keychain. It’s not a big one, just a 512mb flash drive keychain, but it makes my pocket feel like it is from the future.



I hate Telemarketers.



I love bourbon. I always will. Cheers.

I Am America's Next Top Modle – OR – How Getting Fired Was My First Step Towards Being In The Band Of My Dreams

Here is a short list of facts:

1) Goner is a band of badasses.
2) I got fired from bong.
3) I’ve gotten more sympathy from strangers and strange friends for losing a crappy bartending job then I did when my grandmother died.
4) Everyone’s grandmother dies.
5) My life has gotten noticeably better since my Wednesday nights have been spent doing yoga rather than bar tending at a dive bar.
6) I do yoga and I make fun of people who do yoga.
7) I make fun of myself for many reasons.
8) My friend Swampthing and I had a great conversation about music. It was such a good conversation that (now) we both have written about it. He wrote a lot more about it than I did.
9) I got a ticket after blowing donuts in a Home Depot parking lot, during a snow storm, after going bowling with Bearhead. I won at bowling.
10) Proof was playing in my CD player when I got pulled over, which is probably why I was speeding in the first place. I didn’t turn it down when the cop asked for my ID and insurance.
11) I’ve been told if I contest the ticket and then plead guilty to the judge, it will only cost me $45 and it won’t go down on my permanent record.
12) I’ve got a great collection of records but I don’t have a record player.
13) Swampthing and I did a photo shoot in Café Bong the day after I was fired. He is a great photographer. Esther, who is my good good friend, set it up since I couldn’t go in due to the fact that I was fired.
14) Esther is awesome. In fact, she is probably the most awesome person on the face of the planet, you just don’t know it because you haven’t met Esther.
15) You should meet Esther
16) The photo shoot was for the cover of the new Goner album, Rock and Roll Always Forgets.
17) Goner loved the shoot and is putting me, my fedora and my white sneakers on the cover. I look like Run DMC.
18) I have to go to the DMV to keep this ticket off my record.
19) I will be in the studio tomorrow morning at 9am to record some college kids singing Abba. That song always gets stuck in my head and I need to play Proof loudly to get it out.
20) I’m famous, or at least my back, my hat and my shoes will be famous.
21) It’s been a great week.



Photo and Design by Ian Merritt. See more of his photograpy at www.idmphotography.com

The Barsky's Hit The Road A While Ago - OR - What I Wish I Did Over My Summer Vacation Rather Than Play POGs With My Ugly, Stupid Neighbors

The Barsky Family, Nina, Howard, Michael, Benjamin and Daniel Barsky, took a road trip in 1969. They traveled across the U.S. in a TravelAll and an Airstream trailer, from L.A. to Maine and back through Canada. I don’t know them, but I am jealous. I stumbled across this journal of the trip, mostly written by Nina, the wife and mother of the clan. It has been a source of inspiration to me; to drive to the horizon, to see the wonders of the road, to meet new people and amaze the ones I already know, to fall back in love with the world and to have… dare I say it… a family to do crazy things with. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.



http://bigtrip69.blogspot.com/

PowerThirst

Why is this somewhat believable?



Powerthirst 1 is here.

There Is No "I" in "Sunday Supper", Or; Why Did The Duck Sauce Cross The Road?

Every Sunday, there is a meeting of the minds. It is at a friend’s house, it alternates which friend hosts, but they are the kind of friends that own matching plates, more than four wine glasses for each kind of wine, have coat racks, welcome signs and shoe mats, and have family pictures on the walls and guest bedrooms and untuned pianos in the living room. The kind of friends with dinner tables that have leafs. They are good friends, no matter what they own, and they own all this stuff. Every Sunday, my friends and I eat a home cooked meal, drink a lot of wine, and let the week behind us melt away with talk of movies, weather, theater, art, music and wine. At least that is what they say they used to talk about before I started coming to dinner. I have a way of obscuring the lines of decency with the lines of a more unrefined manner. As an example, the second dinner I attended was at an American Baptist Minister's house, he goes by the name Tripp, he’s the mandolin player in an Irish band that I’m in and here is a link to his blog. He and his wife hosted a dinner that included the following items; an appetizer of an assortment of eight exotic meats and cheeses with table crackers, then the main course of gluten free lasagna and flattened chicken breast in a light brown sauce with capers served with whole broccoli heads, and for dessert a chocolate frosted chocolate chip cake (also gluten free), all accompanied by more than seven bottles of wine throughout the meal. At one point, the conversation brushed the topic of the gentrification of Andersonville, my neighborhood. Someone noted how it was nice to see my neighborhood getting safer due to local businesses demanding police attention to gang fights in the alleyways. Someone else noted how they noticed that the shops were beginning to only focus on very specific items which seem almost useless to the general public; an exotic imported olive oil shop, a healing rocks and dream catcher store, a furniture shop called White Attic, which only sells tables and dressers that are painted white, designer pet food stores, and my (least) favorite, Sir Spa, a men’s only day spa, “Where Men Get Their Go”. Barf. The point was made that this type of lucratively expensive, obnoxiously specific type of business was driving out any sense of diversity in the community and forced rents up or renters out due to the construction of “Condo-Land, Chicago”. That’s when someone noted how hard it was to get American- Chinese food anymore. “Not real Chinese, there are restaurants serving Authentic Chinese Cuisine everywhere. I’m talking about the take out stuff that comes in folded paper boxes with fortune cookies and plastic packets of duck sauce and chop sticks that give your tongue splinters. Where everything comes with an order fried rice, no matter if you want it or not. You know, the kind you order by memory.”

And this, my friends, is when I chimed into the conversation.

I’ve been living in Andersonville for three and a half years and I’ve watched it change. I’ve had to move out a huge $900, two bedroom apt with a huge dinning room and an even larger living room with tons of natural light, where heat was included and there was a roof deck and back porch. It was converted into $475,000 condo units. I got the first option to buy a unit due to the fact that my apt lease was being broken. I passed it up but not without snickering at the fact that I had been living in a half million-dollar condo for over a year. I’ve seen the building since they renovated it, there are two bathtubs in each unit and each of those bathtubs is about four feet long. My 6’4” body and I preferred the old six-foot cast iron tub with the lion feet and wrap around shower curtain to the two “foot baths” that replaced it.

But, alas, the point that I just made here was not my response to the conversation at the dinner table.

I have seen the shops in Andersonville change from that of a cute little Swedish neighborhood, to that of a fun loving 'lesbian response to Boys-Town' neighborhood, to what it is now; an affluent, mostly white folks, extra-starch, dry clean only, now-that-I-have-a career-I'm-too-busy-to-be-an-activist, "Hey! You just hit my bumper while you were parking!", small-dogs-wearing-sweaters-in-the-summertime, Christmas-decorations-up-before-Thanksgiving, I-don’t-stop-for-pedestrians-because-I-drive-a-BMW-SUV-with-GPS-and-XFM and-I’ll-honk-at-you-if-you-cross-infront-of-me, gay friendly... but not too friendly, prudish, uptight, over polished, uninviting, materialistic community complete with expensive restaurants on every corner, condos down every block, with fences around every tiny front yard, and people who don’t say hello, with all the day spas, coffee shops, tax offices, investment bankers and furniture stores than you can shake a stick at, and I can shake a stick rather well, thank you very much. And, of course, every business has a “Please turn your cell phone off while shopping with us” sign on their door.

But this isn’t what I talked about at the dinner table either. What I said after someone mentioned the lack of take-out Chinese in Andersonville was…

“That reminds me of a joke. A small, old Chinese man says to his wife as they are lying in bed one night, ‘How bout a little 69?’ And his wife says, ‘Why you want Chicken and Broccoli now?’”

Super Pissed Off

Last Night's Fun

It’s another Friday night and I got nothing going. So I’m doing what I did on New Years Day; cleaning my apartment in random, spastic bursts, while writing down some thoughts and listening to a random mix of music that includes everything from INXS to Otis Redding to Public Enemy to Shostakovich. I know what is going to happen tonight, because it is just like New Year Eve. I’m going to be cleaning the bathroom with some previously-unknown-to-me passion for cleanliness and grout free bathroom tiles and, just at the climax of Dark Side Of The Moon, just about twenty minutes before midnight, the ajax covered toothbrush I’ve been using to clean the hinges of the bathroom mirror will get tossed into the pristine blue water of my spotless and sparkling toilet bowl and, like an abrasive-cleaner-covered, attention-depraved janitor from hell, I will descend onto the dive bars of Chicago armed with a blue rubber glove, toilet scrubber and a bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles. Until then, I will alternate writing a sentence and Mop-and-Glowing my living room. At midnight on New Years, I was three sheets to the wind thanks to a warm 11:45 pm welcome the bartenders gave me with Jameson and Jim Beam, and the PBR that was basically thrust into my hand upon entering, and the multiple shots from the plastic bottle of Mango Vodka that the bar owner dusted off and decided to give to the revelers at midnight. Some one was making newspaper hats, tons of newspaper hats, and everyone was wearing a newspaper hat. The really wild thing was that each of those hats was a totally different style. There were sailor hats and waiter hats and dreadlock hats and dunce caps and top hats and captain hats and pirate hats and pope hats. I didn’t know there were that many varieties of paper hat, this guy was prepared. There was a young couple dressed in shiny black leather jackets and pants, with jet-black hair and thick black eyeliner (the guy was wearing more than the girl), doing interpretive dance to Auld Lang Syne, which involved flopping around on the floor of this dive bar like fish out of water and then knocking over some drunk people doing shots of Mango Vodka, then striking a disco pose and finally making out on the pool table. That night was good, unpredictable, down and dirty fun. The kinda stuff you just can’t make up and it was the kinda night that you hope to have once in a while. I just finished doing my dishes and washing the kitchen counter while listening to Tom Wait's The Piano Has Been Drinking,when my buddy, DA called. It’s only 11:22pm, but that’s close enough. Let’s see what tonight brings. Cheers.

To the LINKS!

If you like me, if you trust me, then follow these links and digg them.

1) David Sherman's new music video, "If I Were President." He's a great musician, and he picks up the bill when we go to breakfast. I'd vote for him.

2) An addictive vocab game called Free Rice. My pops maxes out at level 51. I'm no where near as good but like going down to level 1 and defining the word, "chair."

3) Ask a ninja. Really, the name says it all.

4) Despair.com, my favorite place to shop and live. Someday I'm gonna cover my office with the motivational posters. Sure to be a cult classic

5)And, finally, a list of members of the coleus plant family, offically named Solenostemon scutellarioides.

Cheers