Sex, Drugs, and Excel Spreadsheets

I don’t really go to shows because I am a boring person who does nothing interesting. 

Last night I was hanging out with some friends and we met a couple of Canadian girls who liked the idea of one of my friends rubbing her own feces all over her body before they copulated. 

So we went to the bar where Scotty’s friend was, “spinning records.”

So we’re in the bar and the band is rocking hard. No shirt, tattoos, people making out, iphones at the ready. 

I don’t know, I mean, I had a pretty bad day, feeling down and everything so maybe that’s why this thing made me even more upset. 

Usually when I have had a bad day and my friends make me go watch music I will have a couple of drinks and I will feel better. 

There was a Black Sabbath cover band. 

Black Sabbath is great. 

These guys just made me unhappier. 

I guess I feel like if you go to a show and the music is hardcore, or metal, or core, or death, or death core, or punk rock, or punk core. Or basically something involving anger, and social unrest, then people should be hitting each other in the face. 

Instead people were gently bobbing their heads and swaying. 

Maybe they don’t get angry. Maybe they were raised to have self respect and self esteem. Maybe when they were in high school they were busy studying for their SAT s and planning the course of the next 40 years of their lives and setting up 401ks and mutual funds and their kid's college fund and mortgage and health plan and healthy relationships with healthy, happy friendships at a good job that pays well with good benefits that had nothing to do with their major and they just didn't have the time to be an asshole and smoke pot and sneak out and have sex and other things you should be doing in high school and now they are trying all that stuff after they have settled in to their responsible lifestyle and just can't seem to get it right because they don't know how to be the right kind of asshole. 

Maybe.

I wish I didn’t get angry and was raised in a more nurturing environment.

So yeah, the girl with the brand new Samhain shirt and her boyfriend with the brand new jean jacket with the brand new patches all over it, I hated them the most. 

I asked him if I knew him from the office down on soma. He didn’t know what I meant. 

Then I broke a glass and spit on the floor. (because I am stupid)

Some girl said, “that’s gross.”

I said, “I know, it’s hardcore.”

Or was it punk rock? 

I don’t know, I try not to pretend I’m something that I’m not.

If Bald, Gay, LSD Tripping Philosophers who were Friends with Freddy Mercury can't Play Video Games, the Terrorists Win

My dog was trying to ask me a question this morning. 

I thought it might have something to do with the relationship between our historic tendency to associate behavior with morality and the juxtaposition of the psychopathological turn of the nineteenth century as elucidated by Foucault.

But she was just asking for food. 

I knew she just wanted food in the first place but I am hopelessly optimistic. 

I get called that a lot. 

In fact I have lost friends from being as they so unsympathetically referred to me as, “positive.”

I don’t consider myself to be positive as much as I think of myself as, “realistic.”

The truth is that I heard someone say that once and I stole it. 

I thought it was a clever cop out.  

Everyone is realistic though. 

Our views are always rationalized by our sense that they are, in some obvious way that no one else can understand, realistic. 

I’m pretty sure we are all right though, I just can’t put my finger on it. 

The pulse that is. 

Maybe that’s because our culture has finally reached its inevitable end. 

We are a country that has been referred to as an experiment. 

Our culture has reacted to itself every ten years, taking drastic turns whenever it seemed to become self aware. 

At least that was true for the twentieth century. 

(I can’t really speak for the Whigs and manifest destiny. That shit was not hip.) 

We have been out of the twentieth century for almost 15 years and we can’t let it go. 

I would be ok with that if we would have learned something from the generations we try to emulate but it seems we are only taking the worst qualities out of each of them. 

The clothing style of the 90s, the greed of the 80s, and so on. 

Actually I don’t have any more examples because the 60s and 70s were a rock and roll filled drug orgy, which is pretty cool. 

So yeah, it appears that once the 90s ended we didn’t know where to go from there and we pretty much got stuck shopping at the Gap and investing in corporate takeovers. We wear plaid shirts and drive Beemers. We eat cheese and drink wine. We talk about the new place and the new show. We try and feel emotions when we hear that black people are still being abused institutionally. We save for our kids education and tell them that someday they might be president even though we know that we live in an oligarchy run by obscenely rich sociopaths. 

All I can say is this, the Interview is $5.99 on you tube and I haven’t been able to log in to my Playstation network for 3 days. 

At least we can stare at our cell phones all day and avoid having any real emotional connection to one another because we pressed a like button. 

Seriously though, that might be for the best.

Too Young to be this Awesome

When I was 12 my friend Marciel and I came across a skateboard. I have no idea where it came from. The best I can remember is that he found it in his garage. 

I don’t know what kind of board it was either but we spray painted it white. It could have been a Powell Peralta board.

We got some clear grip tape and a Powell sticker that was the top graphic on their boards and stuck it on there. 

I think we found some roller skate trucks in his garage and put them on. One of them was on backwards. When we tried to ride it the board went all over the place.

Lesson learned.

I’m not sure what kind of wheels they were. 

Marciel and I were best friends since elementary school. 

Marciel was young but he had a majestic Aztecan nose. 

The first time I rode that skateboard I hit a rock and slid on my knees, skinning them both real good. 

So that sucked, I probably cried, I don’t remember but I hope I did. 

Not crying is for pussies. 

We both got new skateboards at the same time. 

He got a Per Welender and I can’t remember what I had. 

I have to be the dumbest shit. I can remember my first board but I really have no idea what my next one was. 

Oh wait, it was a Lance Mountain. 

Damn, I got scared for a minute. 

So it was an all white Lance Mountain future primitive. I put blue grip tape on it because Lance Mountain did. 

I have had a lot of all white boards and I think it’s because they were sick as fuck and I wish I had all of them sitting in my closet. 

I remember it had Indys. But there is no way I can remember what kind of wheels it had. 

So Marciel and I skated together for a couple of years, until I made other friends and then we just didn’t hang out anymore. 

I really don’t know why. Most likely because I’m a shit friend. 

He was really good though. He was the stylish guy. 

Christian Hosoi was popular at the time and Marciel was more stylish than Hosoi. I think some people were jealous of him. 

I also think he didn’t care that much. 

The last memory I have of Marciel is when this guy we were friends with punched Marciel in the face.  His name was Bill. He wore a glove because he was a dick and thought it would be cool to punch him in the face with a glove on. 

There was a big group of us and Marciel came skating down the street. This is the first time I felt like shit about a friend. 

Really I was just stupid and was convinced that Bill had some kind of real grievance with Marciel. 

In reality, Marciel probably was talking shit about Bill, because BIll was an asshole. 

I felt really bad. And confused. 

But I have always been a moron and could not stop it. 

I did go home with Marciel though. His face was red from where he got punched. 

Marciel was rad. He got chicks.

Bill made me leave my board outside one day so his friend could come steal it. 

Bill died of cancer. 

I’m not happy about that. And I am tempted to think he got some kind of karma, but really I just think that life is fucked and we all get fucked by it at some point. 

Another guy I know who is a really good guy was good friends with Bill. 

It hurt him deeply when he died.  

Simple Pleasures

Sitting on the couch, watching tv. 

A man types on keyboard. 

“I had a rough day”

He sits, pondering his existence. 

“I don’t understand.”

His wife walks across the living room floor. Her curly hair, shiny. Her shoulders obey the gentle commands of each step. 

She scratches her head with a crochet hook. Her head turns in his direction, her eyes follow, almost instantly. 

“Did I gross you out?”

She did not, although in some ways, it was gross. 

The television offered its usual comfort. 

The characters delving deep into the cultural psyche, exploring the idiosyncrasies of human nature while it softens the blow with the delicate comfort of humor. 

Then, when we are entirely at ease, like a stubbed toe on a hard wooden coffee table leg, our unsuspecting heads are smashed into the petrified poplar of harsh reality. 

“This is for sale, you need it, buy it.  We could work to make your life better but we don’t care, so we got this job, to make money, lots of it, and to keep you dumb, and desperate.”

The girl with the crochet hook and the animal lying on her side, lifeless, farts (the dog, not the girl.)

Although, she is not above it. 

Nor am I.

Der Übermensch ist auf Instagram

“This is Alan, he’s addicted to you tube videos.” 

On the screen a commercial is playing.

While staring at his phone, a man opens the door of his car and hits a guy on a bike who then flips over the car. The man driving the car is fixated on his cell phone watching a video of a guy getting hit by a car on his bicycle. 

“This is great Jason, you have a gift.” A tall, blonde, moderately attractive 28 year old woman with a great ass that she got from the gym that is attached to her condo named Susan tells him. 

“You have made a great addition to our creative department.”

Jason has been in San Francisco for 3 years. He considers himself an artist but he is working in the marketing department of a technology startup company because rent prices in the city are very high. 

The company Jason works for is called, “Bumble Bee”. He doesn’t know why it’s called that, he has never asked. 

The company prides itself on its "hipness" and "relevance".

Many of the engineers as well as the creative department spend most of their time there. They are fed three meals a day, have an endless supply of beer and even have a recreation center full of games. 

The Nintendo 64 emulator is especially popular. 

Also, ping pong. 

Jason studied art design in college. 

He is a nice guy. He likes to have fun and is happy to be living in the city. 

He was born in Wisconsin and even though he loves his home town, wanted a new experience.

Jason, at his heart is an artist. Well, he feels that way. 

You see, Jason is not an artist, he is an asshole. 

Of course he is a very nice guy but what makes him an asshole is that he is completely oblivious to the fact that in order to create art you have to suffer. He did read that before though, in a book, in a class.

Jason came from a nice, clean, nurturing middle class white family. 

He is happy. 

He also is not aware that other people suffer. 

He wants to be creative though but really he is simply emulating things he has seen. 

This is not art.

It's confusing, I know, I do it all the time.

In a story like this, Jason’s life will take one of two directions. 

 

In one scenario, Jason will meet a girl.  Most likely of ethnic origins. This girl will show him the hardships that she has endured and help him understand that even though he is a nice guy, he is completely out of touch with the frustration that others experience daily. 

Jason will then have new experiences, meet new people, quit his job and devote his time to working with people who have been neglected by a system that favors those who are typically white, come from middle and upper class families and do not understand the nuance of exploitation that makes some rich and others poor. 

He does not talk about himself anymore, rather he sees the needs of others and is overcome with compassion. His art reflects his passion for life and expressing the deep sorrow that he feels when he witnesses the mistreatment of those whose voices go largely ignored. 

He is deeply pained at his own inadequacies. He does not make excuses for himself anymore. Rather, he learns to accept who he is. He is filled with rage at the act of distorting the truth in order to convince the population that they need to buy a product despite our over indulgence at the expense of a genuine culture. 

The other thing that can happen is what most likely will happen.

Jason will work at his job, try and paint in his spare time and go to hip restaurants with obnoxious names that serve slightly better than average food and drinks with people who are just like him that he met at work. 

They will have endless conversations about how they have always wanted to live in a city and do very cool things and meet very cool people.

Occasionally they will say things like, "wow, it's really crazy in the Ukraine." And, "what does ISIS mean?"

Eventually Jason will meet a girl who is very much like him and they will buy a house that had recently evicted a family of non white origin who had lived there for over 20 years. 

He will have no idea. 

They will have a couple of kids, send them to private school and live boring, mundane lives while drinking very tasty beer and watching Netflix originals (which, indecently are not too bad.)

For the sake of a continuation of an unoriginal theme, Jason will (stupidly ironically, or ironically stupidly) get hit by a car while watching monkeys jump on top of a bus full of tourists having sex (the monkeys, not the tourists. Well, maybe the tourists).

“Where am I?”

“You are in an ambulance.”

“How did I get here?”

“You were hit by a car.”

“That’s ironic.”

“It is?”

“I think so, I don’t know why I said that.”

Jason will be taken to an emergency room where he learns that he has no idea who he is. 

After a month of recuperation, even though he has never regained his memory, Jason returns to work.

(Jason walks through a door.)

People yelling in front of brightly colored streamers crowd in front of a big sign that says “Welcome Back!”

Jason does not recognize anyone but he can tell that they are all a "little fucking weird". 

“Hi.” Jason said to a tall, blonde, semi attractive woman with a great ass she got from the gym attached to her condo. 

“Welcome Back!”

She exclaimed. 

Jason felt uneasy. On the one hand he was not attracted to this woman but when she turned around, he was.

Someone hands Jason a beer. Jason drinks it and thinks, “damn, this is really good.”

Someone also hands Jason a taco, “holy shit! That’s a good taco.”

After all the partying and ping pong die down, Jason gets back to work. 

Unfortunately for Jason, he does not remember how to use the software. 

Fortunately for Jason, it isn’t very hard. 

Jason picks it up quickly and gets right back to work. 

His boss, the tall blonde lady, likes Jason’s new edge. 

Jason has a new edge BTW. 

He uses profanity more loosely. 

“This is fucking awesome!”

He exclaims. 

Also, he buys "skater clothes". 

They are still new so he has kind of an urban, hip, informal/formal work style. 

Jason really wants to have sex with the blonde lady. 

Fortunately for him, she also wants to have sex with him. 

So they go to one of the studios in the building and have sex.

(a little while later)

They both walk out of the door. Jason is buckling his belt and he winks at the fat guy sitting behind a computer who is wearing a t shirt that says, "engineers do it sitting down"  and is writing code for an application that helps single dads find cool stuff to do on the weekends that they have their kids.

You see, Jason sucks. 

He will always suck because he just does. 

He is not inherently a bad person. He just does whatever he has to do to survive and be happy.

That’s it, nothing else. 

His white, liberal parents fucked up. *

They forgot that they needed to raise by example, not simply have NPR playing in the background while they paid their Mexican laborer a small amount of money for mowing their lawn that shouldn’t have been watered in the first place because there is a severe drought going on. 

(of course that doesn’t really apply because there has never been a drought in Wisconsin)

(I think)

(Yeah)

(pretty sure)

*But they are proud of him.