Nerd Alert!

I've picked up the past oh, like four issues of the New Avengers, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by a guy named Lenlil Yu (I think). Since I've never read his stuff prior to the New Avengers, I think Bendis must be one of those love-him-or-hate-him kind of writers, in that he fills his panels with snappy dialogue, and slowly building plots. After wading through a pretty boring 12-issue arc of Uncanny X-Men (they were in space), and the slightly more interesting follow-up arc (they were in the sewers, fighting some renegade Morlocks) and the interminable wait due the don't-even-care-about-it-anymore postponings of Astonishing X-Men (which used to be my favorite title, since Joss Whedon has written it for the past three years), New Avengers is my New Favorite Comic. And that's a really long sentence. But if you care, New Avengers is basically the main resistance to the Superhero Registration Act of last summer's Civil War crossover. While I am apathetic about most of the other post-Civil War developments (The Initiative? Meh), New Avengers is pretty f'ing cool, and I think it's largely because of Bendis. I'm a sucker for good Spidey jokes, and given that the current story has employed Dr. Strange (who I unfairly dismissed as a superhero for weirdos when I was a kid), and the team features Wolverine, Spider-Man and guys like Hawkeye (now called Ronin), Luke Cage and Iron Fist, all of whom I never really appealed to me. So in other words, if you are so inclined, go pick up the past five or six issues if you can find them. I think you'll dig them, especially if you expect to hear another delay in Whedon's final Astonishing X-Men arc.

--The Robopirate

FORE!!!

So anyway, here I am, up at 3:17 am because of combination of fajitas, beer and golfing.

That's right, golfing.

At one point, a golfing partner said, "oh my gosh you really have never done this before." I replied that having known me for three years, was there anything about me to suggest that I would have ever set foot on a course.

Turns out, golf is kind of hard. Even with the assistance of beer. Which led to the comment made by another golf partner, "you'll do better once you've had a few beers. Which is true about everything in life, really."

Golf

Bass

Work

Parenthood

Yeah, I can see it.

--The Robopirate

Can't shake it.

Man, I am just sad.

There aren't any other words beyond those.

Bet you really wanted to know this.

You know why I liked living by myself? Because a closed door and drawn blinds ensured that alone time meant that I would actually be alone. Now, I have to apparently lock my bedroom door.

On a different note, how do you get someone to stop smoking? At this point, I'll tolerate Junior's weed if it means he ditches the Marlboros. In addition to his failure to recognize that no lights and a closed door is the universal roommate sign for don't-come-in-here-or-else-we're-going- to-have-an-awkward-rest-of-the-evening, he's raised my ire tonight by constantly hacking and coughing. Here's the conversation I had just now:

"Are you sick?"

"No, I just had a cigarette."

"Junior, why do you smoke."

"Because there's nothing like having a cigarette when you come home from work."

I should point out that he is highly susceptible to the sort of phrases and ideas that are bandied about as part of a lifestyle conceived by a marketer in order to sell something. Throughout his life, this has ranged from breakfast cereal to toys to Marlboro Lights.

"Do you even want to quit?"

"Eventually..."

"What have cigarettes ever done for you?"

"KOFF KOFF HACK KOFF KOFF"

And that was the end of the conversation. So it goes. The problem I have is that from time to time when I get hammered, I think that a smoke will go with those 7 or 8 beers just fine. In its temporarily pickled state, my brain gleefully follows the dubious logic that if my exterior smells like a bar, my interior might as well match. And then the next morning, I always think jeez that's the last time I do that, because I totally feel nasty. So in other words, I'm that guy. The guy who rails against smoking but who is ironically a social smoker. So I have a problem effectively yelling at him. The difference is that my tobacco missteps are so occasional that they're hardly worth mentioning beyond barely founding a case for my own hypocrisy. Same with the dope.

But all the same, I wish he'd knock off that goddamn coughing.

One night, I think this was the first or second night after we moved into the new place, I came home from bartending to find him camped out on the balcony getting high. And camped out is barely an exaggeration. He had a chair. And a black light. And a reading light. And his iPod and its speakers. And a towel. And his bong (on a side note, he refers to all of his paraphenia as his "pieces." We used to just call them pipes). And I went through the roof. Why couldn't he just smoke a joint in a chair on the balcony without making it such a big production? Why did I have to come home to find an array of blown glass drying on a towel on the kitchen counter? Why did I have to find a copy of High fucking Times in the bathroom?

In other words, I wanted to know why he couldn't just smoke pot instead of being a stoner.

I explained to him, with the rage of a 1,000 sitcom dads, that it is stupid to see this chunky kid who used to be a D-1 athlete take the time to set all this shit up on a balcony just so he could get baked. He, of course, didn't see what the big deal was, and as I realized immediately, I didn't actually realize what real big deal was either. I didn't catch it until afterI had explained to him, this time with saltwater running down my cheeks, that it was weird and sad for me to see this chunky kid all chinese-eyed and addled, talking about "pieces," and "baba kush," when what I remember when I look at him is the 7 year-old who fell asleep in his Sonic the Hedgehog costume after trickertreating. Or the 3 year-old who thought that the pregnant cat my dad brought home from work would eventually lay eggs. Or the four year-old who fell asleep on my dad's shoulders during the Electrical Parade at Disneyland.

In other words, what I really wanted was for him to be a kid again. And I say this with complete sincerity, unsmirking, without a gram of smarm: my heart broke.

As if that weren't bad enough, I found myself able to empathize with my parents over a whole catalog of hurt feelings. I could now appreciate the anger and disappointment they felt when I came home from my first semester of college, reeking of Keystone light and a 2.4 GPA. I understood the resignation in my dad's voice when I told him, no I'm not going to quit the band. And finally, the defeated sadness in my mom's eyes when I told her I had foregone with saving myself for marriage no longer looked like martyrdom. In these instances, I bristled at all the various manifestations of parental disappointment, because every fuck up seemed to be a matter of how I was reflecting on them, not how I was reflecting on me. At the time, I always thought, fuck, it's my life and my mistakes, and you guys weren't perfect either. I'm pretty sure this is exactly what goes through Junior's head the instant I begin to pontificate.

Once again, I wish I could be a big brother. I feel like I don't know how. More than that, I feel a little lost.

And by a little, I mean a lot.

--The Robo-Pirate

My Life has Turned into a Dorm Room from 1997, Minus the Bob Marley Poster and Curlies All Over the Floor.

Let’s see here. Last post prior to the last post was in uh… February. Pretty terrible. You didn’t miss much, though. Band played some shows, I saw Valient Thorr a couple more times, got a new amp, my brother moved in with me…

Obviously, that last one is sort of a big development.

If you dropped by this spot often enough, you might dimly recall that my brother, who I’ll call Junior, was going to college and playing water polo (or wasserball, in German, apparently). Well, that didn’t work out. If you believe that marijuana (or, let’s face it, booze) is not a gateway drug, well, I have some bad news about the tooth fairy, too. Long story short, he moved here in August in order to grow up a little (and by a little I mean a lot) and get back on track. Results, as they say, may vary.

Now, I don’t care if he smokes weed. We’ve all been 19, and some of us have clung tenaciously to 19 for over a decade. But there’s a line (and not a fine one, I think), between recreation and self-medication. I mean, yeah he’s working two jobs and he’s sort of figuring out that life for most people is not an episode of Entourage. But the one-dimensionality of it all is wearing pretty thin. I don’t know. I hate saying that I took him in, because it makes him sound like he was some sort of junkie everyone had given up on, which wasn’t really the case. I suggested he move in with me so he could get a taste of living on one’s own, and how it sucks when you have to work crap jobs in order to barely have enough to pay rent and fill up your gas tank. And more than that, our parents needed a break.

He’s doing okay. I think he’s learning a little about gratitude (which in my mind has been the most egregious offense to our folks—he treated them like ass in exchange for free room and board, car insurance, a cell phone, etc. etc. etc.). And moreover, he’s a good kid with a good heart. I feel bad for being hard on him. I just don’t want him to echo the same mistakes I did. And he’s putting down the bong (or rather, leaving it alone) more and more.

What I was initially worried about when he moved here was not having his head in the proverbial clouds. It was him getting depressed and lonely because we are ten years apart and I don’t know too many people under 21. Fortunately, he met some kids at one of our shows with similar interests, and now I routinely come home to an apartment full of 19 year olds. This is good and bad. On the upside, he has people to hang out with, and they’re pretty cool kids. Junior and his new buds smoke Marlboros and what, if I had to guess by the smell, might very well be dirty diapers. I’ve never been a gourmet when it comes to dope, but whatever they’re buying is definitely shitty. They also play a lot of video games, which as Jackie pointed out, is adorable. Prior to getting Xbox Live, this was Mario Kart and Goldeneye (Junior is, without a shred of irony or kitsch, an old-skool gamer, which is one of the many things I love about him—in fact, he is almost completely devoid of irony. This is a subset of his personal naïveté, a character trait that is simultaneously endearing and worrisome). Now they stay up until 4am playing Halo 3. And this is what's annoying, coming home yet again to a bunch of kids who don't have to get up and go to work.

In the latter activity, I wish I could hang with them. If not for the ol’ dayjob, I’d love to stay up drinking beer and shooting red or blue iterations of Master Chief with Junior and his friends. But I can’t, on account of the frustrating advance of adulthood. And this is currently the big sticking point between him and me.

For several years, my mom has complained that Junior “rats around all night.” And I never thought it was a big deal until I discovered that he slept in until the mid afternoon because he’d been up until four doing whatever the fuck he does. I don’t care about the staying up late. But I’ve been of the mind that the price for staying up late having fun is suffering through the morning of the following day. Even on weekends, I am out of bed before noon, and usually I’m out of bed before 11. And this also was the case during college, when I had marginal jobs and no places to be. Yet Junior has an entirely different philosophy. And so we go round and round; I fulminate and sermonize, he makes promises, and then when he gets up an hour before he has to go to work in the afternoon, I shake my head and think up a big sarcastic speech to deliver the next time we have some time together. Repeat. I can’t say that he’s as lazy as he used to be, but the constant sleeping still pisses me off to no end. And yes, I’ve considered that he’s depressed, especially when you couple the sleeping with a constant cannaboid fog. But lying in bed in hot bedroom that smells like burned Pampers is no way to pull yourself out of a funk.

Still, the whole process seems to be moving forward. He owes me money, and I’m being a jerk about it, and when he can’t afford to buy crappy shwag maybe then he’ll really get what I was talking about when I said, “my life really isn’t as big a party as you think it is.”

And then, what would be really great, is if I could start to feel more like a big brother than a parent.

--The Robo-Pirate

Look, a blog.

Don't call it a comeback, but I'm back in the writing saddle again. It's all rusty and cracked (making the writing saddle an edifice made of iron and uh, porcelain?), but I'm sitting in it again, and slapping the reins.

If that didn't make a lot of sense to you, you're not alone.

Anyway, I had five or six beers earlier while watching my friend's band play at a fancy grocery store. The kind where the rich folk in your town send their hot wives to grab fresh fish and fennel after their tennis matches. It's true. I've checked their carts. But yeah, the beers have given me a headache.

Jackie is asleep right now because she got offered a long-term sub position, for which she gets training early tomorrow. I'm so stoked for her!

I started reading Kevin's Smith's blog today, and on paper, he's an amusing motherfucker. And honestly, Clerks was pretty damn funny (and uncomfortable, since I rented and watched it with my parents--should anyone's mom ever have a snowball explained to her?); his other movies have been hit and miss for me. That led me to read about Jason Mewes' struggle with drugs, which was equally fascinating, only because it showed how much Tons o' Fun cares about him. It does not, however, make saying "snootchie bootches" funny.

Sorry about the lack of links. I don't feel like futzing with the code.

Band is set to record in November with a guy who's pushed levels and twiddled knobs for Edie Brickell (known for shooting rubber bands at the stars and other egregious album titles) and Pantera's Reinventing the Steel album (whose title is the opposite of egregious). So that's pretty cool. I can already foresee a few headaches and headbuttings over stylistic differences, especially when it comes the mixing part, but I guess that's part of the fun of having a band.

In other band news, the Grampus (our beloved touring van, not that we go on too many tours, and by "too many," I mean "any") needs its balljoints replaced. Before you get too caught up in laughing because "balljoints" is a funny word (as are scramble, dribble and drapes), consider that replacing them costs over $900, and not replacing them eventually causes the wheels to fall off. Not so funny now, is it? In hipster parlance, broken balljoints is the new broken A/C. It's a really hot repair right now.

And finally, since I mentioned hipster parlance, check out this video, entitled the hipster olympics. Normally, I am leery of such deliberate parodies, but this one is right on the money.

Oh and also, I've become obsessed with modern archecture, particularly Googie. I hate that word. Googie is essentially the future as envisioned in 1955. If you've ever been to Tomorrowland in Disneyland prior to the late '90s, then you've seen and enjoyed this type of design.

While I am obsessed with Googie, I'm even more obsessed with as I am with hoarding and hiding change. I'm like a dragon in a D&D campaign.

--The Robo-Pirate

(Eric's face + power windows) carwash = hilarity

Darth Vato - The Grampus Gets a Bath

On the way home from our show in Houston, we gave the Grampus a bath. Eric got one, too. Music by The Ziggens.

"Vegetarian Mumbo Jumbo"*

There is this vegan restaurant in Fort Worth, called the Spiral Diner. I love it. They magically take some vegetable product and make it taste like bacon. The building has this cool retro-diner vibe, the music is either of the world variety or ambient indie, and the waitstaff is for the most part friendly and unobtrusive. It's comprised of what you'd expect--hippyish peace punks with sleeve tattoos, grins and socialist ideas. They share their tips and the restaurant has a sign reminding diners that while the staff are there to help, they are not to be treated as servants. As a former waiter, I can totally appreciate this.

As for their politics, I don't really care one way or the other. Thanks to the trigger-happy oligarchists in the White House, my beliefs have increasingly skewed left, so I don't mind the muted presence of various fliers and get-involved literature lying around, nor am I terribly bothered if one of the staff mentions whatever liberal cause he or she is interested in. So, when the one who waited on me and my girlfriend on Saturday asked if I wanted to get involved with building a free skatepark in Fort Worth, I happily took his email address.

This conversation was a refreshing in light of the server I got on Thursday night. My buddy Cliff and I went there for dinner; we ordered magically meat-like sandwiches, and hummus for an appetizer. What we did not order was thinly-veiled condescension; apparently, you get that for free.

The dude came over and dropped off our hummus.

"Thanks!" I said.

"No problem, man," he said "Listen: do you guys support democracy?"

Now, it's been my experience that when someone like this server broaches the subject of government, the conversation usually doesn't end well. I looked at him fixedly, so as to not roll my eyes.

"Yeah, I'm a fan. Very grateful for it."

"Where do you guys work?"

Ah. A twist. I don't work in oil, I don't cut down old-growth forests, and as I am not president of Nike, I thought I was safe.

"I work at an internet marketing company," I said.

"I work for my family," said Cliff.

"Are your jobs democracies?"

Well what the fuck. Are any? I mean besides the ones had at vegan restaurants? If businesses (and I'm strictly talking about their employees, not shareholders) were democratic, what would get done? I'll bet that tiny indie record labels can get away with equal represenation, but everyone knows that tiny, indie labels don't make any money unless they happen to have something to sell off like Nirvana.

But he was earnestly looking at me, waiting to see how I would deal with his rhetorical trap. And frankly, I failed spectacularly. As you read the next exchange, keep in mind I have a B.A. in poli-sci; allegedly, I know what the word democracy means.

"Yeah, it is."

"So you guys get to vote on all the decisions?"

"No... I mean, we can wear whatever we want, well, we can't wear shorts, I guess. And we have a non-traditional management structure... But no one voted on them, so yeah, it's not really a democracy at all."

Apparently, the idiot half of my brain had wandered out of the Nintendo room and down the hall to my mouth. The logical half must have been on the toilet. I confirmed this later because when I encountered him again, he smelled like Glade air freshner.

"Oh..." he says, eyes hardening in smug satisfaction.

The best I could do was return his forced smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh no reason. I'm just trying to start a revolution."

He walked away, basking in his own glowing sanctimony, or at least what I imagined was glowing sanctimony. I could be wrong. He was probably glowing from that bacon magic.

--The Robo-Pirate

*Big points if you know this reference.

Would you guys just stick to conspicuous consumption and hos, please?

I'm in week two of my attempt to shrink my beer gut. I've been eating much better (a lot of shrimp, beans and trips to this vegan restaurant), and since the 6th, I've had little more than a couple beers and a few shots of rum. This is in tandem with speedwalking for an hour every day (except for yesterday, due to MLK Day closing a lot of stuff down) at the gym.

As such, I've started watching TV again.

Now this is not to say that I am one of those effete, artistic people who proudly proclaim how they don't watch television. As proof, below is a short list of my favorite TV shows of all time:

G.I. JOE
Roseanne
The Cosby Show
Jeopardy
The Simpsons
Futurama
King of the Hill
Entourage
Firefly (though sadly, I never watched it on TV)
Heroes
In Search Of... (that show with Leonard Nimoy talking about mysteries such as Stonehenge and Shatner's hairpiece--heyo!)


See? There are eleven shows there! So I like TV. I just that I don't have cable and my reception is bad. But since the gym is on TCU's cable network, I end up watching about an hour of TV a day.

Mostly, I watch the news or Simpsons/King of the Hill reruns. If there is a compelling car-rebuild, I flip between Pimp My Ride. On Sunday, I was lucky enough to find Sinbad and That One Time When He Looked for Fabulous Treasure While Fighting Awesome Ray-Harryhausen-Monsters on Turner Classic Movies. This was especially great, because TCM doesn't run commericials during their features (I think--I haven't had cable for a couple years now). Typically, I stay away from music videos,though; this has a little bit to do with the artists but a lot more to do with the fact that it's mostly hip hop videos and hip hop videos are almost universally similar and dumb.

As a case in point, I watched the video for "Cupid's Chokehold," the new single from Gym Class Heroes. Now I like Gym Class Heroes. It's mostly clever hip-hop made for Fall Out Boy fans, which I am not, but whatever. They're cool. And the song is fine. It's basically a grass-is-greener-as-relating-to-girlfriends public service announcement, but the video bothered me because it features perhaps the most irritating trope in the entire history of rap and hip hop videos. I'm talking about the totally lame old white guy trying to prove otherwise.

In this case, the Totally Lame Old White Guy is represented in the visual narrative by the MC Travis McCoy's flashy new girlfriend's (not the original, dependable one he reunites with fifty seconds later) rich, white, turtleneck-and-blazer-wearing father. The poor guy, who looks a little bit like Marvin, Vince's accountant on Entourage, is sitting there having to pretend to like with this pierced-faced, parka wearing, hip hop guy dating his daughter. All he really wants to do is enjoy his martini. And then Travis's boys come in, and they're of course loud and disruptive, and the poor Totally Lame Old White Guy grimaces, and the music switches to some freestyling and beat boxing. But then, when the music switches back, Totally Lame Old White Guy is irrhythmically nodding to the mad beats.

Old Rich White guys aren't that funny, and they're even less funny while trying to be anything other than old, rich and white. In fact, they're really more like the enemy of everyone, from golf caddies to goonies to pants-peeingly hilarious rappers. They are a joke that's been tired at least as long as the old lady mewling out "Rapper's Delight" in The Wedding Singer.

I'm just saying is all.

--The Robo-Pirate

Faith in God renewed by the drunken generosity of SAE's, AKA "Everything's coming up Milhouse!"

I never thought I'd say this, but I was glad to see the frat kids back in the bar last night.

See, on Tuesdays, I check I.D.s, bar-back and mop at my friend's bar. If the joint gets busy enough, I get to jump behind the bar as a third and get the other two bartenders caught up. Then I get tipped out from the other two bartenders, usually doubling my normal take. Of course, it's been about a month since I've had to bartend; school's been out, and the bar has been pretty dead. Luckily, all the kids have to drag their khaki-covered butts to class on the 17th, and they were easing back into form last night.

I like bartending. I've been doing it part time (always as a supplement to whatever 9-5 I've been doing) over the past five years. It's way more fun when you only have to do it for an hour a week. This is because all the things that college kids do to rankle a full-time bartender (not knowing about tipping, getting legendarily plowed, snapping their fingers for drinks, walking tabs, etc.) are not nearly as aggravating when not encountered on a nightly basis. After all, the money I make at the bar is pretty much spending cash anyway.

Except, of course, for this week, when I had three checks floating around in the banking netherworld and the electric bill set to be debted out of my account on Thursday. I was sort of praying to either get a FW Weekly check in the mail or make some extra cash last night, as one of my three New Year's resolutions is to go the entire year without any overdrafts, and I had set myself up to break it two weeks in. Some time after Christmas, I posted an angry, resigned gripe about God, Bush and the war, because my faith at the time was pretty much at a low point. Every so often, however, God does come through in the clutch. Or at least it looks like He does. Granted, college students usually come back to school a week early, and it's easy to call an answer to prayer a coincidence rather than divine benevolence. Ultimately, though, I think life is a little sunnier without a haze of cynicism coloring one's perception. So thanks, God, for sending the college kids (like manna from heaven, if manna were clad in Northface vests and Ducks Unlimited hats) to get drunk and give us their parent's money.

Oh and also, I booked a Sabbath tribute band for my birthday. It's in June, but you know, whatever. You've got to take care of the important stuff in advance.

--The Robo-Pirate

German guy needs to pay better attention. (Joke about a German stereotype included)

I like to poke fun at Germans. I got really excited when I heard the hidden track on NOFX's most recent album, called "Insulted by Germans Again," The chorus goes, "Germans love to insult me/the whole country condescends/we call it arrogance/they call it making friends." Condescending Germans are hilarious. Anyway, Kerry sent me this Reuters story about a German guy who inadvertantly flew to Sydney, Montana while attempting to visit his girlfriend in Australia. The article is mildy amusing, especially given the German reputation for being efficient and meticulous (the kid does find it odd that he would travel to Australia via the US), but I was interested by what the author left out.

As everyone knows, everything in Australia is the reverse of what it is in the rest of the world. Its fish breathe air, its men have boobs and its summer lasts from December to February. The author subtly illustrates these differences by detailing the kid's traveling attire:

"Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday."

It's obvious to me where the editor's redlines fell, because that passage should have read:

"Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt, shorts, socks and sandals..."

--The Robo-Pirate

"Tonight, on the History Channel: 'My Dad Telling Some Story'."

I love him.

--The Robo-Pirate

NorCal, the westernmost province of Redneckistan.

The short of it: went to a bar in my hometown with another hometown expat who lives in San Francisco. Came to the conclusion, in conjunction with evidence observed yesterday, that Northern California is at times just about as country as North Texas is. Thus, for the time being, I will be referring to the place in which I grew up as South Carolodi. Or maybe Lodisiana? I dunno. Pick your favorite. Slowdi is easier to say, but it doesn't convey the same sense of jerkoffs roaring past you in jacked-up F-250s. I mean seriously, it's the same NASCAR hats, same Calvin-pissing-on-whatever stickers, same same tacky goatees. If not for the weather and the scenery, I'd swear I never left cowtown.

--The Robo-Pirate

p.s.
Oh, and also, Lodi is pronounced low-dye. Or load eye, if you prefer.

Dear God, I hope You're not just making this up as You go along.

After spending a wonderful Christmas morning with my family, I got around to reading my friend's blog. I hadn't been by in a while, and when I ran across the post linked here, I teared up. Fallen soldiers are tragic enough, but when casualities are personified beyond the dreary statistics of a headline, the emotional impact is always heavier.

Our military has suffered nearly 3,000 deaths. On an intellectual level, I understand that dying is an occupational hazard one assumes upon choosing to be a soldier. But that doesn't make stories like the one above any less heartbreaking.

Of course, I want this heartbreak to weigh upon the men who started this war with the same totality as the families of every person killed in battle. And maybe it does. Maybe I'm just sad, angry and presumptuous. Maybe I'm making unfair assumptions about our leaders. After all, what do I know about sacrifice, railing at them from the safety of a suburban home? What do I know about the pressures and guilt of running a country in time of war? How dare I presume to know the heart of men who send others to give their lives for their country? Well, President Bush, I guess I have to give you a pass, because I can't read your mind or hear your heart. But God can. I hope you and He are cool about all this.

And what of that, anyway? Given Bush's public proclamations of faith, I wonder what it is that he and God are actually talking about every morning. I hope he isn't asking for wisdom, because if he is, God doesn't seem to be listening. When I started this post, I was filled with righteous indignation, excited at the prospect of declaring "fuck you, President Bush" in big, bolded, angry capital letters. Now I am just sad and even a little frightened. If the President, whose faith is apparently embedded in his character, can't get an open channel, what hope have we who have lapsed into cynicism and doubt?

Maybe he isn't asking God for wisdom. Maybe he's asking for, I dunno, catfish filets or a cure for hiccups or something. I kinda hope that's the case, because I still like to think that God is a pragmatic being. I expect to get denied when I pray for two aces on a split pair of tens. However, wisdom in times of crisis is a very reasonable request, and I don't think God should be silent when His children come looking for some. I can handle it if this disastrous war is a function of Bush's praying for the wrong things. I am ill at ease, however, if he is praying for an end and God is saying no.

Then again, maybe God is counciling President Bush on the direction of the war. If that's the case, then the universe is way more existential than I am comfortable with.

Sorry to bum anybody out. Appreciate the moments with your family and friends, for God doesn't have a rhyme or reason that makes any sense. Life may turn according to His plan, but that doesn't make it any easier.

--Steve

Feliz navidad!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and R.I.P., James Brown! Show those stuffy angels what soul really means!

--The Robo-Pirate

The end of my Wooderson phase. Funny pictures and title tags included!

I've been growing beards on and off for the past few years. Once they start to approach gnarly status, I try to trim them, fuck them up and then shave them off. I grow beards partly because I continue to get fatter; beards are good for several things, but they are really good at distracting people from added poundage. In fact, it's possible that Vikings and wizards grew gnarly beards because they were self-conscious about double-chins. Another reason why I grow beards is that they are totally awesome.

Anyway, I got rid of the beard and the accompanying longish non-haircut (seen here in this file photo) in an effort to look a little more professional for work. I had recently been pegged as a doppelganger for the Burger King, and while I did receive all the accolades you would expect, I was a little embarrassed when I had to lead a meeting looking like a roadie for Molly Hatchet. Trust me, it wasn't nearly as cool as it sounds. So I cleaned up, or rather I at least cleaned up the hair and the beard. I still kept the mustache.

Now mustaches can be cool, and I think mine falls within the parameters of coolness. Plus, I drive a shitty van, which practically demands that I have one. This isn't my first mustache, but it's the longest time I've kept one, post-beard. I thought I could hack it until the new year, but I bailed, and it went down the sink this morning.

Here's why:

Since Wednesday, I have been in Lodi visiting my family for Christmas. My stay has been punctuated by two developments. The first was a giant, underground, pulsating zit on my cheek right next to my nose. It is so large and red that if I were to stand on a traffic island, I'm confident that cars would stop and wait for the zit to turn green. When one's face has such a captivating topographic feature, it doesn't really need anything else to draw attention to it. So I started thinking, hey, you're going to be seeing relatives later--maybe you should lose the molestache.

The other development that sealed the deal was a trip I made to the scale. Now I know I've put on some weight. I tried on some old suit pants recently; the button and hook were about as likely to hook up as Jerry Falwell and Harvey Fierstein. Last time I checked, I was in the low 180s, but this time, the scale showed 197. And that was after I had been to the toilet. So I started jogging. I figured I'm here for a week; I might as well be productive, especially since I'll be eating (figurative language alert) copious amounts of crap for the next few days.

So there I was, running around my parents subdivision, calves clenching, sweat streaming, lungs giving me dirty looks. I had a motivational iPod mix that went from warm-up speed (Tijuana Brass Band) to Run to the Hills. I was pumped. I was driven. I was even visualizing. As I puffed past the neighborhood park, there were, several middle-schoolers pretending to play on the swingset. And in a fantastic example of karmic retribution, the lead-twerp said, "Nice mustache, douche."

"The kids these days!" I said to myself, quickly realizing that not only did I look like an old man, but I that I thought like one, too. And of course, because my life isn't a movie, I didn't stop to deliver any of the clever remarks I made in the imaginary scenarios that unfolded in my head as I ran away. But here they are, anyway, and writing them out makes me feel twice as lame, if that is even possible.

Scenario 1:

"Nice mustache, douche!"

"Thanks! Good thing for you that I have one."

"Why's that?"

"Because if I shave it off, I'm overcome with an uncontrollable urge to kill kids."

Scenario 2:

"Nice mustache, douche!"

"Thanks! It looks great on your mom's vagina!"

Scenario 3:

"Nice mustache, douche!"

"What must--oh..... I must have just grown it."

"What do you mean just grown it?"

"Well, my mustache is sort of a warning. It immediately appears in the presence of kids who are going to grow up to be ballsucking queers."

Scenario 4:

"Nice mustache, douche!"

"Thanks. Say, you know how certain frogs are brightly colored to warn predators not to bother them, you know because they're poisonous?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, see, mustaches are like that because they're supposed to let you know that I like to slap the shit out of smartass little kids."


Woulda, coulda shoulda... and the mustache, no longer mighty in the sum of its parts, swirled about the porcelain basin, drowning in rusty hole of shame.

Guess I'll get started on the next one.

--The Robo-Pirate

Look, a post! In half-assed list format!

A List of Super-Rare Wishlist Items That You Probably Won't Get No Matter How Good You Are

1. Enriched uranium

2. Dilithium crystals

3. Stradivarius violin (apparently you can get one here.)

4. Clemency

5. Liver transplant

6. Cop when you need one

7. Chance to do college over

8. Wisecracking pet griffin

9. Eternal youth for Bob Barker

10. Grimace-hide cowboy boots

11. Invulnerability

12. Wings that work

13. Bill Waterson's return

14. Dino DNA!

15. For mopey, one-handed whiner to join you and rule the galaxy as father and son

16. A way out of this crappy deal memo

17. A "yes" answer to your prayer

18. For uppity rock critic to like your band

19. Indiana Jones IV

20. For 2008 to roll around so you can retire to your Crawford ranch and finally build that potato gun.

--The Robo-Pirate

"PUHING ONA RITZ!!!"

Rest in peace, Peter Boyle.

love,

The Robo-Pirate

The stirrup pants of the '00s

Dear women who insist on wearing gauchos,

In ten years, when VH1 decides it's time to reinvent I Love the '80s for the aughts, I predict that M'onique, Loni Love or another similarly unfunny comedian will go on and on about how gauchos were terrible. And while I probably won't laugh (unless they pick Wanda Sikes), I will agree with them. Seriously. These pants aren't doing anyone any favors. I've often said that I have about as much business telling a woman how to look as a woman has telling me how to drive, but gauchos are a fashion statement that manages to embarrass both the wearer and the observer. When I see them clinging ferociously to every topographic feature of a woman's ass, I feel shame for both of us. It's the same feeling I get when I get caught staring at a fat man with a toupee or a wiener dog in a sweater.

You could put gauchos on Adriana Lima, and they would still make her look ridiculous. If you look at the link here, you'll see what I'm talking about. Put that lady in anything else, and she'd be fighting off prom dates with a machete. The pants successfully make her lower half look like it belongs to an action figure. And then there's the flares. If I wore these pants, I'd feel obligated to swing from a mast with a knife in my mouth and bury some treasure. Why would a woman want to dress like a pirate? I like pirates and all, but not because the clothes are anything anyone should still be wearing.

I suggest to you, women who insist on wearing gauchos, that you go home and cut a bunch of holes in them so that you won't be tempted to wear them or give them to the Goodwill. I'd hate for a hipster or a hippy to pick them up and embarrass herself even further. Then, once you've cut them up, put them in the trash and set the trash on fire. When the fire goes out, cover the ashes with vomit, pack them in an urn and bury it in a haunted cemetery. Finally, find out who convinced you to buy gauchos in the first place and sit her/him down for a very serious discussion.

Sincerely,

The Robo-Pirate

Pauly Shore gets punched out by a redneck in Lubbock.

Sorry, Pauly, but for once, I'm siding with the redneck. That's what you get for getting Drama kicked out the the Mansion.