What do you feel when you hear an unexpected knock at the door?  I am a pessimist, so I think it is either a policeman or murderer.  One can tell a lot about a person based on what they feel when they hear something rapping at the door.  This knock was not altogether unexpected though, my girlfriend at the time was coming over after work, but she never knocked, she would usually walk right in.  I opened the door expecting to see her but instead I saw one of my neighbors.  She was a skinny, late 30ish woman who I had chatted with a couple of times near the pool or in passing on the way out of the complex.  I could never remember her name and was too embarrassed to ask. She had her laptop in hand and begged to use my internet as the connection at her place was not working and she desperately needed to email something for one of her classes.  “No problem” I said and let her in.  That was my first mistake.

The cable modem was in my room so I let her in there and helped get everything set up.  We chatted and she mentioned getting engaged and moving to Chicago after she was married.  When she said ”Chicago” it triggered a thought of my move and for some reason I blurted out that I was potentially living there as well.  Mistake number 2.  I immediately regretted saying this to her as my girlfriend was not too happy about the whole situation and it was a very sore subject.  I thought about it then told my neighbor not to mention anything about it to my girlfriend.  Mistake number three.  Why does stupidity seem to snowball and eventually get out of control?

My neighbor was wrapping up what she needed to do and my girlfriend walked in, I walked her into my room, did introductions then my girlfriend and I walked into the TV room – no big deal.  As my neighbor was walking out the door, she said her goodbye’s and exclaimed ”Good luck in Chicago, Ultraparadoxical!” in a sing-songy tone.  What. the. Fuck.  Is that how you thank someone for using their internet, by chucking a socially awkward grenade on the way out the door?  The grenade turned out to be a dud and my girlfriend shrugged it off without incident.  She and I went out to dinner and I all but forgot about the cunty neighbor.  That was until my girlfriend and I were getting ready for bed and noticed a set of keys on my desk.  Fuck – this is the kind of thing that people do to get their hooks into you.  The “leave-behind” is the oldest trick in the book.  I was too tired to deal with it so I threw the keys on the ledge in the foyer and went to bed.  I had work in the morning at 6:30.

Work was uneventful and afterwards I immediately went to the gym for my regular Thursday night basketball game.  The plan was to play some hoop, shower up and go to my buddy’s house for a few beers and watch football because my roommate, Sally, was having her friends over for a jewelry party.  As I was about to leave Sally mentioned that the neighbor stopped by to pick up her keys and she had invited her to the party.  Mistake number 4.  Hmmm, why did she invite a random neighbor to her party, you ask?  1 – Sally is a sweet, social person and likes to involve everyone, and 2 – The more people at the party the more free shit the host gets.  Shrewd, Sally, very shrewd.  I said a few hello’s to the girls who had already arrived and headed to my friend’s house for bong rips, beers and Thursday Night Football.

I arrived back from football a little frazzled from the festivities and ready to dig into the leftover spread from Sally’s party.  As I was fantasizing about the bread bowl with spinach dip I saw my roommate and the girl who ran the party lugging her jewelry stuff back to the car.  I stopped to say “Hi” before I parked.  Sally greeted me by saying that my ”friend” was FUCKING CRAZY.  I tried to explain to her that she is NOT my friend, and I was NOT the one who invited her over for a lady-party.  Sally didn’t listen and went on to  list off all the the loony shit that my “friend” did at her party:

1. Asked the woman who was running the jewelry party (who had just had a baby) how the sex was during the pregnancy.  She then remarked how heavy she was even after she had the baby a couple months ago, ending her weight loss pep talk by saying that “maybe she should make losing the weight a priority”.
2. Told everyone that the jewelry at the party was trashy and that she only wears diamonds like the “massive” engagement ring she had recieved from her fiance.
3. Offered to pay Sally to check in on her elderly parents after she moved to Chicago becasue it is so hard to find “competent help” these days.
4. Bought some jewelry because she “felt bad” for the girl selling it and had too much money anyways.
5. Finished almost 2 bottles of wine herself.
6. Made intimations that she really, really liked perscription pills.
7. Lamented about how difficult her schooling in psychology (yes, psychology) was and how most of the people at the party were a bit too slow to understand what she was going through.

After that laundry list of assholery Sally demanded that I go upstairs to ask my “friend” to leave the house.  I told her that she wasn’t my friend and I was leaving, she could deal with it, as she was the one who invited her.  Sally pleaded with me to help and due to a little curiosity and a lot of pot, I walked up the stairs into the condo and decided to kick this (crazy) bitch out of my house.  Little did I know, I was at the tip of the proverbial weirdness iceberg and I would soon be wondering if I was about to be stabbed.

TO BE CONTINUED

Whats that you say? ”To be continued” sucks?  You’re right…  There was nothing worse than watching TV back in the day and looking at the clock on the VCR seeing that it was 8:26 with no conclusion in sight.  Things like “There is no way ALF was going to be saved from the FBI in 2 and a half minutes.” or “How are the Keaton’s going to deal with Skippy coming out of the closet?” would flash through your head as those dreaded words were bound to hit the bottom of the screen.  I would be so pissed when that happened but it taught me a lesson… be patient (or better yet, don’t wasted your life on shitty sitcoms).

PART 2 next week…

Wallace has a writing talent and mastery of conveying salient points that reminds me of Oscar Wilde and as I read this book I would pause and think about how he was able to succinctly describe things that I had felt for a long time yet could never convey so clearly.  With that in mind, I selected some quotes that I found particularly interesting to highlight:

“[Americans] think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities”

This is essentially the reason for the current state of decline in the US.  It cuts all of the bullshit that divides most people whether it be by class, color or religion and distills the issue to one sentence.  It applies to the banker who is selling complicated loans to corrupt government pension funds owners or drug addicted mom’s milking the welfare system to get a free ride.  The majority of US citizens have abdicated responsibility but still demand our “fair share”.

Wallace goes on in the chapter to talk about how people have ceded their autonomy to the government and corporations with the expectation that we as a citizenry can control those institutions.  Instead of that we are seeing how corporations are now convincing the populace to think like they do: money is the ultimate goal and as Wallace writes “… responsibility as something to be enshrined in symbol and evaded in reality.”   That mode of thinking is corrupting everything it touches.  I see it where I work and I can imagine much worse going on at other companies.  People see corporations as the pinnacle of success and adopt the same destructive attitudes in their individual lives leading to the idea that “… our ultimate obligation is to ourselves. That unless it’s illegal or there are direct personal consequences for ourselves, any activity is okay.”  An urgency to cut corners and make as much money in the near term has short circuited growth for the future.

“If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you can’t accomplish”

This is the secret to a fuller life especially within the culture we exist.  It also feeds nicely into the theme of the book.  Beautiful, interesting things are easy to focus one’s attention on but to really focus and take an active role in everything that one does, interesting or not, is the key to happiness.  The culture that we have created teaches us otherwise.  Skim an article online.  Watch 30 seconds of a 1:30 YouTube clip.  Listen to a podcast on the bus while reading a magazine article.  Converse with a friend over lunch while checking Facebook on your phone.  Constant inattention, no focus.

Not only does this behavior make one stupid, it drains the enjoyment out of any activity.  I remember when I could sit on the couch and concentrate on a movie for its entire duration.  I can no longer do that.  I need to check my iPhone, text someone or otherwise distract myself, even if I am enjoying the film.  These activities detract from the experience but I cannot focus for that long anymore.  While I was reading this book I started to experiment by concentrating on giving my complete attention to whatever it was the was right in front of me without the usual distractions.  I have found that I appreciate whatever I am doing that much more and am able to enjoy whatever it is on a deeper level that is not possible when I force myself to leapfrog my focus across multiple different things.

It goes back to a more existentialist mindset that demands an individual to constantly be aware of his or her surroundings and strive for a further understanding of the world.  There is not necessarily a “point” to whatever is happening however the “point” of doing something comes solely from the experience of doing that thing.  The key is to fully invest oneself into that “thing” and avoid the sensory numbness that comes with over-saturation.  Try it.

“… basics of adulthood – that life owes you nothing; suffering takes many forms; that no one will ever care for you as your mother did; that the human heart is a chump.”

So true.  No wonder why this guy killed himself.

This book is not for everyone.  If you are into a clean narrative with a beginning and end then stay away.  However, if you are into masterfully written prose with brilliant insights on the culture of today then this is certainly worth your while.

Anyways, after my Australian automobile adventures I settled in on my couch on Sunday night and perused my Netflix selection.  I stumbled across a documentary called “A Life in a Day” which was a movie unlike anything I had seen before.  It is over 80,000 user submitted videos from around the world boiled down to a feature film from one day of all of their lives (July 24th, 2010).  The result is a conglomeration of clips that create a minute by minute crowdsourced travelogue for that specific day.  The thing that really struck me was the extreme cultural differences contrasted with the congruity of each individual’s motives and aspirations.  Whether it was the dirt poor family in Bangladesh or the woman with cancer in the US a common thread could be found in what was driving them to be who they were every single day.  Love, community, the aspiration for sense of safety, desire to care for loved ones and a fear of death were displayed by everyone no matter what culture was being highlighted.

After watching it I felt very small, though not in a bad way.  It is a smallness that comes with understanding that I am part of something much more complicated that I could ever imagine.  I also felt hopeful.  On the surface everyone is so different, but when the layers are pulled back people are the same.  So often in the news and media the differences are highlighted because clashing ideas makes better news than agreement.  There are a world of things in which EVERYONE can agree.  People care about themselves and the different concentric circles of “community” that surround them; starting with the closest of friends and family radiating outward to acquaintances, communities, nations and social or religious groups all the way to the entire overall human population.  This documentary led me to see things from a different perspective and the surprising amount of similarities there are in such different places all around the world.

Watch it – it will make you feel good.

“He’s a fanatic, so we can stop him, because a fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.” – George Smiley – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Generally, when I am aggravated by some political or religious viewpoint it is almost always uttered by some fanatic or radical.  Whether it is Rick Santorum spouting off nonsense about limiting access to birth control (do we really want more idiots to have children?) or an animal rights activist applying anti-slavery laws to animals, these people are continually popping up with outrageous viewpoints.  Fanatics feel a certain way about something so inflexibly that they could NEVER see the perspective from an opposite viewpoint.  Why are they so committed to a dogmatic approach to a certain way of thinking?  As this quote suggests, this inflexibility is protecting the fanatic from ever really examining their core beliefs to determine a more reasoned view on a topic.  If they limit their exposure to alternate perspectives then they can effectively contain that little contrary voice in their head.   Time and time again highly vocal figures in politics or other forms of public life turn out to be doing the things in private which they are chastising in public.  It is always funny to me that the same person who is actively railing against gay marriage gets busted blowing some dude off of Craigslist.  Being fanatical about anything is a easy way to sound like a huge douche, no matter what viewpoint you happen to ascribe to.

“Transparency is the obsession of modernity” – Chuck Klosterman – Grantland.com

We are in a time of endless amounts of information.  People desire to understand exactly why something is happening and expect the ‘what’ and the ’why’ immediately.  When the motives or reasons for something occurring are not known then they are usually inferred by the cacophony of various media voices around us; correct or incorrect makes no difference, as long as there is an explanation immediately.  Whether it is connecting with celebrities on Twitter or itemizing your phone bill online real-time, we have an unprecedented level of transparency and knowledge about the world why something is occurring.  At its base it is really just an extension of the rational society that has been emerging since the Renaissance.  Most intelligent people rely less on explanations like luck, augury or mysticism to explain the world around them and the manifestation of that is this obsession with transparency.  If we can’t blame the spirits or god for the events of the world around us then the only thing left is a rational explanation. 

Why has it been raining for the past 5 days?  Check out the weather app on my phone – What is Kim Kardashian up to? Check out her Twitter feed – What did the President just say in his speech?  Check CNN and get a point by point breakdown as well.  We demand to know what happened and why and that demand is satisfied more  quickly than any other time in history.

… and now to completely deflate my point regarding rationality.  Based on the tweet above, from a football player who dropped a key pass in overtime, and who subsequently went on this Twitter tirade, there are still people in the world who pay no attention to rationality and fixate themselves on blaming/praising god for everything that goes on around them.  This is so incredibly narcissistic.  There may be a grand creator but why do people insist this omnipotent being would give a shit about their personal life?  It is interesting to me that the belief that each person is the center of their own universe is such a highly regarded quality in certain circles.   This mode of thinking is increasingly becoming a relic of the past and based on the current trajectory of human thought we are bound to release ourselves from the shackles of mysticism in trying to accurately describe the world.  I believe that this is a good thing as the more we tether ourselves to rationality and the “real” world, the closer we get to truly understanding what our place in life means.

Stevie, I hate to break it to you, but YOU dropped that pass and god is no more the cause of your pain than gravity.

 
… poor Stevie (queue the sad trombone).

“Sometimes ‘why’ is not a valuable question to ask.” – Sarah Hepola – Salon.com

 … and to completely deflate my last point regarding the importance of rationally questioning the world around us there is this quote.  The question of ‘why” has always been bouncing around my head and at times it may be a question I want an answer to but is an answer that I can never get.  Things just happen sometimes.  There may be no readily available explanation for why something occured and any attempt to answer the question will just provide empty rationalizations like “everything happens for a reason” or other such moral acrobatics to explain it away.  I have realized that at times the ‘why’ is not valuable, what is more valuable is the reaction to whatever had occurred.  Horrible and wonderful things happen every day, there is no sense on dwelling on why things happened when that answer is unknowable.

What do you think?

Anyways, the podcast has Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh hanging out rating snacks, taking it way too seriously and making up a bunch of stories surrounding the food and their friendship.  Michael is constantly making fun of Tom for playing the role of  “The Park Ranger” on the Yogi Bear movie (“Being the Ranger on the Yogi Bear franchise is LITERALLY a license to print money.”) and making up nonsensical words to describe snacking activities (“Janellying” – the act of starting to chew something and chugging a liquid while the food is still in your mouth).  I am about 10 episodes in and needless to say I am enjoying my free entertainments.  I highly recommend downloading this off of Itunes.

In addition to the free internet chuckles the podcast has had me thinking about snacking and the role that snacks have played in various parts of my life.  For example:

Skittles

Freshman year of high school during lunch there was this kid that sat near us who, looking back on it, may have been legitimately mentally handicapped.  He either had a bad speech impediment or was retarded, maybe both?  He always had a shitty lunch and would try to mooch whatever good stuff we had in our meal.  That’s where the Skittles came in.  One of our friends at the time decided it would be a good idea to give the Skittles to the retarded kid only if he could bounce them into his mouth.  To this day, I cannot think of Skittles without thinking of the yellow and green candy morsels careening across the lunch table and bouncing off of that kid’s face; his mouth curled in a grim rictus evoking  those carnival clown games where you squirt water at to blow up a balloon.  It is as true today as it was in ’93 highschoolers are horrible, horrible people.  I’m glad the kid didn’t choke on one of those Skittles as I would be just getting out of Joliet State prison from my manslaughter rap.

I'm ashamed of your racism.

Grapes

As I was writing that last paragraph it triggered another (loosely) snack related incident that happened in high school with the same kid.  We had some sort of fundraiser going on and as a promotion for it a few kids were called down to the main office to participate on a quiz game that was broadcast through the PA system during homeroom.  One of the kids happened to be the “Skittle receiver” with the speech impediment mentioned above.  Everyone had been zoning out and fucking around until this kid’s question came up… “What is the world’s favorite flavor?”  At this point everyone is thinking “Chocolate”… or maybe “Pepper”?  Not this kid.  He paused for a few moments… audibly shifted in his chair grunting a few times then nervously blurted… “GWWWWWAAAAAAAPPPPEEE?”  Excuse me?  Motherfucking grape?  Huh?  On what planet is grape the world’s favorite flavor?  And, no, I already know what you are thinking… the kid was NOT black.  You are soooo racist.

Arby’s Sandwich

I don’t even know if this would count as a snack but fuck it.  In college, my roommate and I were milling about our fraternity house during welcome weekend while everyone was moving in.  As you could imagine 25+ college guys moving into one house is about as organized as Afghanistan’s space shuttle program.  I had arrived early and finished moving my stuff so I spent the rest of my time drunk and mocking the people who were still lugging shit up to their rooms. **sidenote** When I say I “moved in” that is a bit of a lie.  I had not planned my move-out the summer before to well and had to pack whatever I could in the back of a friend’s Pontiac Sunfire in the 15 minutes before they left.  A Sunfire is not exactly the prime vehicle when you are looking to move house; I had to leave most of my stuff back in a unoccupied room and asked a friend who was staying the summer to keep an eye on it for me.  Smashcut to move-in day and pretty much all of my shit was ransacked during the summer and left strewn about the filthy hallway.  I learned 2 things from this experience: 1 – Never leave anything of value alone with my dickhead friends for 3 months and 2 – Never trust a guy nicknamed “Stinky” to be responsible for ANYTHING.  Lessons learned.

Drug Den

Sometime during that day my roomate and I were offered a case of beer to help one of the guys put his loft together.  After negotiating we agreed to do it – for a case of beer and an all-we-could eat session at Arby’s (that’s what I call negotiation – eat your heart out David Stern).  As anyone knows there is one thing that MUST be done before any Arby’s visits visit… so we headed to my buddy’s van to get baked.  We sat in his peice of shit van sitting on the actual lumber we were to help him assemble and proceeded to get “Dock Ellis” levels of fucked up.  Which we did, oh yes, we did.  I was so fried that I barely remember the trip to the land of the “Big Montana“.  The only thing I can recall about the meal was slathering a filthy amount of “horsey sauce” on the sandwich as that was the only thing I felt I could taste at the time (say no to drugs, kids).  We convinced our friend to buy us our case of beer on the way home and when we got back we promptly finished it off, passing out moments before any work was done.  That’s why socialism doesn’t work.  USA!  USA!  USA!

Do you have any snack related stories to report?

I watched the entire season of “The Bachelor”.

It truly pains me to say that.  I feel like I have betrayed a part of myself.  My hatred toward reality shows is well-known but I started watching anyway.  I watched as the women sauntered in and met the floppy haired douche they would be fighting over for the next few weeks I could feel my brain softening and leaking out of my ears but I was undeterred.  I watched as each one competed for attention while my IQ silently ticked down like the seconds wasting away before a microwave burrito is cooked but I continued week after week.  I watched while these fame hungry, deluded, empty vessels of women plotted and schemed for a guy they barely knew.  The truth though is that I watched for the same reason EVERYONE watches shows like this… to give myself a sense of superiority (mission accomplished).

Why the fuck do these women parade themselves around fawning over some guy who is dating 10 other women?  Why does this make sense in the reality TV world and nowhere else?  If you had a friend that told you she really liked a guy and she was falling in love with him… but he was dating enough other chicks to field a baseball team (I call pitcher!) you would be a bit skeptical, right?  They get sucked in though.  The same way that I get duped in to watching the show they get dragged into the abyss of reality television and they start believing that this alternate universe that have become a part of is real.  For the people involved in the show it is a highly charged, intense environment so it makes their decisions look even that much more foolish to the casual viewer.

Sitting on the couch with nothing invested and being able to walk away from the show in an hour’s time creates a detachment for the viewer that the contestants do not get to enjoy.  For them, their experience has all the qualities of a dream.  They are so immersed in fiction that it becomes a reality in and of itself.  They eat, sleep and breath this competition with producers and show-runners using editing and other tricks to distort and manipulate their emotions and motives.  It is no wonder why a receptionist from the Midwest can be turned into a sobbing puddle driving away in a limo screaming ”Whaaaatttt the FUCK HAPPENED?”  That she only met met the object of her tears a couple weeks before seems to make no difference.

This “dream-like” state is built upon throughout the series as the women get pulled deeper and deeper into the fantasy culminating in a final episode where the producers try to convince the viewers that the bachelor is in love with 2 women at the same time and could potentially propose to either of them in the end.  I watched this episode last night and as part of my healing process I thought it would be a good idea to talk it out right now and finally get the monkey off of my back.

Bachelor Finale Recap

The finale kicks off by declaring the bachelor’s choice as “the biggest decision of his life”.  Really?  Most important?  I would probably rank this decision somewhere between ”Do you want fries with that?” or “Should I take a dump at the gas station or gut it out until I get home?”  They show the final two contestants and start playing the obligatory David Grey song as the Bachelor wistfully stares out into the mountainous landscape of Zermatt, Switzerland.  At this point the “Mom and Sister vag-block” portion of the finale commences.  The two objects of Ben the Bachelor’s desire now need to get vetted by his dour faced Mom and sister who is wearing one of those crappy poncho-like tops that can make any woman look unattractive.  At the end of interrogating each woman his Mom says of Courtney “Give it a try, see what happens”.  Ummm, Bachelor’s Mom, this is the decision for whom your son is to marry not deciding weather to try out a yoga class.

Gammmeeee oooovvveeerrrrr....

It is obvious that Lindzi is a non-factor and has no chance, so I zoned out a bit and started playing “Draw Something” on my phone during their date.  By the way, I would not have been able to watch this show without some sort of distraction whenever the show was repetitive or was too awkward to watch directly.  Sometimes my level of embarrassment for the actions of the characters is so intense I can’t even watch, it is like looking directly into the sun.

His last date with Courtney starts off with a helicopter ride through the mountains and is “one of the top 5 experiences of this life”.  The Bachelor has logged more hours in a helicopter this season that most gunship captains did in ‘Nam.  The Helicopter Pilot’s Union lobbyists must have gotten a hold of the execs at ABC because the helicopter budget must have been half a million bucks.  After they are done flying around the mountains Courtney gives him what I like to call the “Game Over Scrapbook” and puts the final nail in Lindzi’s coffin.  He thumbs through the book and asks breathlessly “Where did you get all of these pictures??”  At which point I screamed at the the TV “The show’s producers gave it to her, you DUMB FUCK!  You are on a REALITY SHOW!  There are FUCKING CAMERAS on you at all times!”

Sociopath Champion!

They wrap it up by talking about how “vulnerable” and “open” they are to each other.  The illusionary “openness” of the contestants is always very important and is talked about in hushed tones on the show and is much of the basis for how the pairings work.  If I were to make a ACT question out of this it would be “Openness” is to The Bachelor as a red ass is to a mating baboon.

They wrap things up on the mountaintop when he dumps the blond and proposes to the sociopath model, Courtney.  Ben notes how surreal the proposal is and it is exactly that feeling that should tip him off to the illusion of this manufactured setting.  They leave the show, engaged, at the center of a media frenzy and apparently they broke off the engagement… which they promptly flip-flopped back to being engaged during the after show.  So much for the “most important decision of his life”.

Ahhhhh – it feels good to get that off of my chest.  Now when does Jersey Shore start again?

First of all, shout out to LS for bringing this glorious clip to my attention.  There are several things that are amazing about this video:

1. 0:30 – Do they usually allow people blown out on coke to be interviewed by the news?  It is pretty obvious.  He has all the signs of a massive coke-head: mirrored aviator specs, sleeve tattoo, trampy looking bleached blond girlfriend lurking in the background and the disposition of one of the extras on “Breaking Bad”.  Get it together Channel 10 news team, Gloria Mantooth would not be proud.
2. 0:41 – Damn those bastards at “Pleasure Lounge”, always up to no good.  This was actually the original premise of “Backdraft” but then they canned it when Kurt Russell got burned by an exploding bottle of fuck-lube.  In all fairness though, its really a stock practice in the dildo peddling business: 1 – Burn down competitor’s shop, 2 – ??????, 3 – Profit.  Simple as that, business school 101 type-shit, Warren Buffett would be proud.
3. 1:13 – “Suckatorium” -  I picture this as terrarium with a lot less hermit crabs and a lot more gay cock.  His hand motion that went along with his explanation of a suckatorium was pretty necessary as I would have had no idea what he was talking about. **sidenote** I just added the word “suckatorium” to my WordPress dictionary.  I feel like this may be an all time low for the blog… good times. **end sidenote**
4. 1:25 – Even through all of the adversity he has faced, the gentleman with the singlet (Australian word for tank top), is still a world class marketer by declaring his gay sex room as “…one of the better ones.  This is quite clean, there are some putrid ones out there.”  Any discerning sex shop customer knows that it is always worth the premium price not to end up in one of those low-end, “shit-smelling” places.  On the grand reopening of his shop I heard he will be launching a advertising campaign similar to the Dos Equis commercials from a few years ago – “I don’t always frequent gay sex rooms, but when I do, I choose the least putrid ‘suckatoriums’”.  I feel like he is going to do very well with that.
5. 2:03 – Even with his small business in shambles this brave, young entrepreneur still can step back and gain a positive perspective on the events that have befallen him.  Simply and calmly after all of his hardships he can look down at his bicep and say “Get Fucked”, yes sir, as true today as it was in Jesus’s time, “Get fucked” indeed.
6. The ”related videos” that Youtube brings up along with this clip can lead you into the weird part of YouTube very quickly.  Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.  Everyone has taken a meandering stroll through the  related links that can go from kittens playing with laser pointers to kids taking salvia to bizarre Asian semi-porn in a hurry.

I read through some of the comments on the video on Youtube and it looks like he was able to reopen his shop before Mardi Gras.  For that, I am truly happy for him.  Coke isn’t cheap and he better keep the money coming in to support his habit.  In the end (get it?  the end?  Pun intended).  I wish him well on all of his future “suckatorium” endeavors.

Besides that heartbreaking story there were some other interesting things that I saw this weekend as well:

1. One of the most renowned portions of the Sydney Mardi Gras parade are the “Dykes on Bikes” which is a bunch of lesbians riding around on Harley’s.  You could imagine my excitement when, as I stepped off my elevator, I saw a young lady with a butch haircut buffing up the chrome on her Softtail.  She would be soon doing her best impersonation of a DMX video with a few hundred more lesbos and she was RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF ME!  Tom Brady could have been tossing around the ol’ pigskin across the street in the park and I would have been less impressed.
2. My favorite sighting is always the half-effort trannies.  There is nothing sadder then seeing an overweight middle age dude with a 5 o’clock shadow and a pink mini-skirt strut down the street.  If you are going to cross-dress at least put a little effort into it.  At the very minimum: 1 – Make sure your wig is on straight 2 – Tuck your cock back (no one thinks that bulge is your FUPA.)  3 – Back-hair and spaghetti straps are a no-no.  4 – Show a little initiative, if not for you do it for the rest of the neighborhood.

All in all my first Mardi Gras a sobering experience.  Unfortunately I don’t have a good way to wrap this post up, so I will rely on a wise scholar who once said… “Get fucked”.

Bro - 4:15 PM: Has the eagle landed?

Mr. UP – 4:26 PM: Not yet, tonight

Bro – 5:38: Take care of them – Mom needs a nap mid afternoon and Dad needs red wine of beer before dinner

Bro – 7:32: Have you received the “package”

Mr. UP – 7:42: Full effect

With those texts the parent exchange had been completed.  In the familial relay race these messages were the baton hand-off.  They are now my responsibility.  I had done my research though.  My brother had called me earlier in the week to give me the instructions for the care and use of 2 65+ year old parents.  His advice was:

• Keep them busy, wear them out.  Treat them like an overactive 6 year old and have them constantly moving around otherwise they will become cranky and listless.
• Get them into a hotel – apparently my Dad wakes up at 6AM every morning and he pops out of bed like a jackrabbit.  In fact, this was something I already knew about him from our childhood.  He took sick pleasure in annoying us whenever we were relaxing.  It is almost like it was a personal insult to him that we were napping or lazy.  He would poke us, talk to us and just generally bother the shit out of us anytime we were zoned out on the couch or getting ready to nap.  He had some kind of sick “spidey sense” for his children’s laziness that would kick in any time we were sedentary.
• They need to know what is going on at all times.  My Dad takes pride in having a great sense of direction.  Instead of just following me and trusting that I know where I am going he needs to have things mapped out in his head like some sort of geriatric googlemaps.  If  Clark couldn’t make it and it ended up being Louis and my Dad shit would have gotten REAL.  I can picture it now… “Louis?  Louis…?  I think we should have made a left at the Rocky mountains…”

My parents leave the country about as often as locusts crawl out of the ground and fuck, so this visit is a rare occasion.  It had a lot to do with me going to Australia, and that my Mom had not visited my brother since he moved to Asia 15 years ago.

As soon as I hung up the phone with my brother I started to freak out a bit.  I really hadn’t prepared too much for their visit and I felt like would probably be the only time they would come to Australia so I had to be a good son and put on a show.

It is an interesting dynamic having my parents in town and around me everyday, it almost feels as if I am a kid again.  It is a very different experience than what my other siblings who leave near my parents in the US experience.  They have the day-in-day-out family activities over the course of the entire year where as my interactions, on the other hand, are condensed to sporadic phone calls or visits.  My oldest brother who has kids and lives near my parents gets shit from them all the time about not visiting enough or calling as often as he should.  He gets so pissed because my Hong Kong brother and I are non-factors for most of the year and get let off the hook because we are “overseas”.  Then, when we do come into town it is like U2 has stopped by for a few nights of shows and the excitement level is cranked up until we leave.  We are never in town long enough to really get too much shit or have our presence become routine.  It is really the perfect crime.  I amost feel bad for him, but then I don’t.   **sidenote** The “overseas” factor is awesome when dealing with some of my older relatives back home.  I sent a birthday card to one of my aunts and she acted like I had etched a message to her on the surface of the moon.  I have never recieved such a high level of praise for paying $1.20 in postage and dropping something in a mailbox.  Newsflash: I am not living in sub-saharan Africa and there is such a thing as international postage. **end sidenote**

Anyways, my parents have been here for the past week and most of my worries were unfounded, my Dad has slept in, they have explored Sydney while I have been at work, and it seems like they are really enjoying themselves.  I feel like getting on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with a big banner saying “mission accomplished” behind me but we all know how that works out.  They are in Tasmania for the rest of the week and then come back to Sydney tonight, so I have a few more days to fuck things up.  Only time will tell…

Author’s note:  This is my 100th post!  As a celebration I will get drunk this weekend (to be fair this happens on weekends I do not make 100th posts as well).  Actually, as a real celebration item I am getting together a Facebook page for the site in order to get my ass VIRAL.  Check it out and “like” for updates…

 Ultraparadoxical on Facebook

Having a ton of time to burn and a near endless library of movies gave me the ability to attend to one of my secret vices, shitty movies.  I love them, sometimes even more than great movies.  There is something about seeing something that sucks and ripping it apart.  It is like that “friend” everyone has who is the butt of all the group’s jokes (wait… you don’t have a friend like that in your group?  You wouldn’t treat any of your friends that way, right?  I hate to break it to you in blog form, but YOU are that “friend”).  Shitty movies are a great way to laugh at someone’s hard work and wonder why they ever wasted their time and creative energy on a monumental peice of shit.

The steaming pile of directorial feces that I subjected myself to as I was confined to my couch was “Wickerman” starring Nicolas Cage (definitely a Type 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart) .  Sweet Jesus, this movie was so randomly shitawesome (new word, I kind of like it.)  He punches women, accosts bicyclists with handguns, chases people in a bear suit and gets bees poured on his head (not kidding).  The dialog is meandering and inartful, the narrative is plodding and at no point should this movie have been released as a serious endeavor.  In a word, it was GLORIOUS.  I cannot recommend this movie enough, it needs to be seen to completion to really soak up the crappiness but here is a little taste:

 ”Not the bees, not the bees… aaaaaauuuggghhhhhhh!”  Fuck me, that is awesome…

They happened to be in Sydney this weekend playing at the Metro and they didn’t disappoint.  Their sound is precise and the concert was more like an opera than a rock concert.  It is definitely not for everyone but take a listen and let me know what you think.  Here they are… enjoy.