where's my flying car?
They told us there would be flying cars. And self cleaning houses. And robots that did everything but wiped your ass for you. Not sure who "they" are. Maybe some evil cabal of evil scientists who preyed on the sci fi geeks among us who wanted a future so bright got to wear x-ray vision shades. So where is all this shit? Where is the automated future they promised us? Where are our damn flying cars? Hell if we know, but we're going to complain about it.
Michele gets on her flying car soapbox:
I got interested in the future at a pretty young age, thanks to some crappy rock music. 1969. I'm seven years old and stuck in Roscoe NY for another summer watching all my cousins swim in the lake I refuse to go in because it tried to eat me. Yea, that's a whole other story. But I'm sitting on this porch with my mother and she's listening to the only radio station they got out in the sticks there and this song comes and I'm thinking, "what the fuck is that sound? Is that....mariachi music?"
No. It was just Zager and Evans.
In the year 2525
if man is still alive
if woman can survive they my find
in the year 3535
ain't gonna need to tell the truth
tell no lies
Whoa. That had my interest. Seven years old and suddenly I'm thinking about the bleakness of the Earth's future. It was scary and fascinating at the same time. Sure, many years later I would realize that the song was nothing but an musical, Orwellian trip into a vast dystopian future. But at that moment, I became obsessed with the future. I mean, what the hell. The present wasn't really too interesting. I was surrounded by snakes and bats and mean cousins for another few weeks and then it was back to school.
Throwing myself into worrying about 2525 seemed like a much better way to spend the rest of the summer. I started to think about man v. machine scenarios and robots and an unthinking, unfeeling human race. Wheels were turning in my mind. The future, when seen through the eyes of a really bad novelty song, seemed pretty scary. I needed to know what other people thought the future would bring. So when we got home from Roscoe that August, I headed straight for the library and took out a pile of books on predictions for the future and some sci fi novels for good measure.
There was one book in particular I remember. It was old and smelled bad and had yellowed pages and a bent cover. The title was something generic like Predictions For the Future!!! Well, you can't really have predictions for the past, can you? All predictions have to be for the future.
Man will fly! Cars would have wings! We will live underwater and on the moon! We will travel, to other countries in the blink of an eye!
Well damn. That's a long way off from "if man is still alive." This was more like it. The future looked to be kick ass. Flying cars, man. Flying fucking cars.
So I waited. I waited for the underwater cities and the milk that would never go bad and the pills you could take instead of eating. I waited for hovercrafts and machines that would give me superhero powers and beds that would make themselves.
The years went by. I never stopped thinking about my flying cars. I kept reading books on the future and what was in store for me when I got older. I watched science shows and read sci fi novels as if they were really indicative of what I would be doing 5, 10 or 20 years from then. 
Hey, a girl's gotta dream. Some girls my age were dreaming about their first kiss or being a prima ballerina. I was dreaming about being entertained by a hologram David Cassidy or wearing rocket powered shoes.
So I waited. I waited for Rosie the Robot and the kitchen that would clean itself and something that would help me turn that asshole across the street into a fly.
I waited for my god damn flying car.
Listen, I don't want to hear your logical explanation as to why we don't have flying cars. I don't want to hear about sky high traffic jams and air traffic control. I. Want. My. Flying. Car. They promised me. In 1969. I think that was ample enough time for them to come up with some kind of air safety plan for cars.
So what happened to all these things? What happened to push button meals and space pads and underwaters cities and smell-o-vision and personal spaceships? Where did the future go? Why doesn't the world look like Cloud City? Why is it that the only predictions to come true from that damn book were the ones we didn't want to come true?
I think about that song sometimes, too.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
Well, I think they might have been a few years off on that one. I think you can do that already. See, some of this shit comes true. Why can't my stuff be reality?
I want my flying car, damn it. The scientists and speculators promised me there would be spaceships and mental telepathy. I want my x-ray vision and I want to teleport and I want it now, not twenty years from now when sure, I'll probably get a hologram Danzig, but I'll still have to clean my own damn kitchen. -M
turtle looks back and cries.
hm. Tough one. Well, I guess to me, it's not so much as what they promised me, but more of what I wanted. That doesn't make sense. Lemmie try again. I wanted a cure for this or that but no one ever seemed to really try to help me out with my wants. Sure, I still want a cure for addiction other than abstinence cause abstinence sucks. I, personally, would like some kind of pill I could pop after a beer that would allow me to not end up in an alleyway the next morning in somestrange town wondering what happened to my clothes. But, since I kinda like my clothes and my money, I think I'll have to stick with theabstinence rule. Dammit. I blame my father for my drug and alcohol problems. Or my mother. Cause it's not my fault.
See, this is one thing I hate about society today. Back when I was a kid, people always kept their mouths shut about a friends drinking problem. I don't know who the fuck brought up this intervention shit, but I sure as fuck liked it better when someone was told "daddy was just tired" rather than "we need to crate himup and detox him."
What ever happened to the great family values like shut the fuck up about your friends problems and fetch another 12 pack before it hits two cause I'm not in the mood to hit Reno again?
And speaking of that, beer runs would have been a hell of a lot faster if we had transporters. I mean really. Instead of grabbing a case and running out of a liquor store at 3 in the morning, you could just grab it and be teleported out of the store back to some late night cartoons. Yes, I know what you are thinking. A teleporter would destroy the beer industry and all the income generated by the government on DUI fines, but really, it sure would be a lot more fun being beamed out of there instead of having some pissed of liquor store owner chasing you with a baseball bat.
I also thought we would have some cool new weapons by now. I mean great, we have kick as stuff now, but I know with only a little hard work, we can make those weapons smaller, harder and faster. So small you could stick up your ass and still nail a communist at 200 yards between his red beady eyes.
So in the end, I want a pill that will allow me to be able to drink forever, a teleporter to steal beer, and a weapon that could kill anyone with a simple fart.
God Bless America. - T
So those are just a few of the things we were promised in the days of yore, but there are more. Some of us want to live in clouds while others just want to get loaded and fire rockets out of our ass. It is a strange world and in the end, we want our stuff now. So what were you promised as a kid that was completely forgotten about?
Michele and Turtle are working on a car that flies on beer.
The accordion is one, of course, but primarily it's the lyrics. It’s not just that they tell a story, but it's that they tell a story out of history, of a not-so-forgotten time in which men sailed the seas in wooden ships and, uh . . . whales ate people. I think it was the 1920s. Further adding to the song's charm is the lyrics, which integrate such words as "roustabout" and "magistrate". Between the Old World style lyrics, the lead singer's odd, nasally voice, the funky backing instrumentals and the storytelling aspects of it, this song seems like something that simply doesn't belong in today's music scene. It's fantastic. 
Meanwhile, what kind of revenge is he looking to take? Well, that’s where the darkness of the song really comes in. As his mother dies, she tells her son exactly what she wants him to do with the man who took advantage of her and put her on her deathbed, revealing that she's not a woman you should mess with: 
The place was small, almost claustrophobic. Marco was by no means a small guy, he used to play semi pro football, but he was a giant in the place. He covered three quarters of the table with his paws and his legs and feet were actually hugging the pole that ran up the middle. I actually wondered where the waiter was gonna put the food, so I jumped into the table right next to ours. The waiter took our order and brought us our food. He and I had been goofing around and talking all day, so mostly we ate in silence, feeding the machines so we could get up in the morning and finish this mess up. 
Around 7:00, Marco came over to check on me. I’d been in bed for an hour or so, trying desperately to get some sleep and not move at the same time. Every time I moved I thought that the dreaded bathroom cycle would begin again and I was in no mood to spend any more time in that bathroom. He checked me out and told me he’d be back, returning a half hour or so later with a couple of loaves of white bread and some Gatorade. Just so I’d have something in me to throw up. 
RULE 1: All CD's shall remain alphabetized at all times for instant access capabilities. Also, keeping them in alphabetical order takes away from the priorities of favorites so that no one will ever think that you believe ABBA is more important to you than the Clash.
Simon: Yes, and I still stand by that statement. However, that is not to say that I am pessimistic about every facet of today’s artistic climate, rather just a bit disgruntled. Perhaps when I lash out in my aggravated narcissistic belligerence, the finer points of my attitude are lost.
Simon: The commercial artist is something of a weak demigod, or if you will, a cardboard icon. He stands precariously between two vicious and fickle masters, the market and his corporate handlers above, and the public below. If he loses favor with either of these forces, he will be destroyed. He stands atop a flimsy pedestal, at the mercy of sales and public opinion. In most cases, he struts and frets his fifteen minutes upon the stage in a nearly godlike fashion, until the inevitable backlash, which strips him of this status and leaves him forgotten at best and reviled at worst.
Simon: Thomas, you need not feign such naiveté with me. A dancing bear with a ring through his nose is just that. The commercial artist who makes his name through outspoken political views or the championing of causes is still at the mercy of his corporate puppeteers and the fickle public. In fact, his position is even more precarious than that of the purely “pop” commercial artist. If a nitwit like Britney Spears decided to take up some cause like PETA, no one would bat an eyelash as long as she continued to spin out the same useless tripe on record. However, the political commercial artist is locked into his image even more than today’s flavor of the hour. Imagine, for instance, what would happen if Eddie Vedder decided that not only did he have a decent childhood, but that he was going to become a Republican. Or, while not necessarily political but related to the topic at hand, imagine if Trent Reznor decided to write a happy love song with no anger or ironic twist, and play it on acoustic guitar. The disruption in the vacuum between the ears of his pierced and tattooed admirers would cause a collective outburst that would make the Hajj look like a pleasant walk on the beach. The political or social commercial artist is therefore so locked into his own image that he cannot escape it for a moment. His fans know this intuitively, his record label knows this explicitly, but he must feel this most acutely. He is incapable of change. As Eminem says, “I am whatever you say I am.” This is why the most fortunate commercial artists know their inherent lack of substance on some level, and therefore exploit image to the hilt. I point you to David Bowie and Prince. Both realize that image is the name of the game, and are free to change their image at any whim. If either were to take the stage tomorrow donned in a tuxedo and singing jazz standards, the public would love it, because it would be just another example of attention-whoring pop tarts doing what they do best. Whether or not I take them seriously, I respect their inherent understanding of the way stardom works. 
They have, literally, a shitload of names, and each carries a slightly different flavor/personality/attributes... but basically they come down to the female nurturer and the male protector. Sometimes she's a warrior, and kicks ass, and sometimes he's a lover and dances in the deep woods. So I became a practicing pagan oh, thirty years ago or so.
Almost trained in their minds that even if this gift sucks, it doesn't really matter cause their birthday is in six months, so if it sucks they can just get the new one that will be out soon.
It doesn't have to be the Christmas season for me to loathe going to the mall, but it sure makes the pain and agony ten times worse than going any other time of year. I can't tell you exactly what makes my mallergy flare up so acutely, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I hate crowds, I hate people, I hate spending money, I hate roving gangs of giggling 13 year old gangs, I hate the senior citizen power walkers who use the mall as their personal indoor track, I hate the soccer moms in designer sweatsuits, their only workout of the day being carrying around several large Nordstrom bags out to the valet parking area. I hate the overpowering stench of the perfume whores in front of every department store, I hate the music wars that go on between clothing stores so the volume of whatever crap they are playing gets louder and louder as the day progresses. I hate the Hot Topic kids with their noisy pants and long bangs and petulant frowns who hang out in the food court all day and make faces at the people eating animal products. I hate the whiny little monsters in the toy stores. I hate the mall. I hate the mall. I hate the mall.
They’re, like, half a mile underground, lost, and this chick can’t even scratch her face because the fucking planet won’t let her. The Earth is pinning her arms to her sides. A stronger sense of helplessness you’ll be hard pressed to find on the surface in the human world. The scene is shot really well but it’s the overall atmosphere that makes the scene, and the movie, stick with you long after it’s over. 
Feel the uncertainty of the city council. Feel the camaraderie of the crew on the boat, having a few drinks and singing a few songs. Feel the barely restrained panic as you realize that Quint has read way too much Hemingway and is not going back to that fucking shore without that shark. And if he can’t do it, he’s taking you with him. Your heart’s in your throat as you watch Brody sitting on a sinking stick with the shark heading right for him. Two hours later, you can finally breathe. Now that’s atmosphere. 
It happens the last full weekend of July, in downtown Portland on the waterfront, next to the Willamette River. Thousands gather for the
and his buddy who joined him, and the drunk guy five feet away who couldn't help but continue it, and on and on through a crowd loosened by alcohol and susceptible to group pressure and rowdy camaraderie? It could have been one of the former but I still suspect it was the latter. Someone started it and others continued it. Funny enough, it happened in two different sections of the festival, again and again, independent of each other. Perhaps there was an explanation beyond simple drunkenness and group dynamics, but I very much doubt it. After all, I joined in without knowing the source, for no other reason than it was happening and I had been enjoying beer all afternoon.
The closest many of us will ever get to playing a big venue or even (in our wildest dreams) a stadium of some kind. The rush is awesome. I would wander around the crowd and it never seemed like that many people, until I got onstage and looked out at them. 
Here is a sticking point with me. Being in the military is a career for some. This career requires that you move every year or every few years, which the government gracefully pays for. Your wife, if she works, must either try to figure out a way to transfer to another office or quit all together. This means at your next duty station she has to start basically all over again with her career if there is even a job to be had in her field or profession. She gladly does it, though, because she loves her husband.
works on his. Yes, I was creating distance that otherwise was unnecessary, but why is my happiness worth less for a choice that I made than my husband who also made a career choice?
100%. In fact, we found air to be so lethal that even most of the researchers directing the study succumbed to its ravages."
Nat Bussichio - The Peach Pit. This has to be burned down. Or did it already get burned down? No matter what happened back then, it happened again and now Nat is living in a cardboard box, sipping off his fortified wine waiting for the death of all cowards as he goes to sleep every night behind an old porn store. We could work with this. Steve, selling his goat porn, recognizes Nat in the alleyway.
. An umbrella hat
Ok? I know, you're a creative mom. You're artistic. You cry yourself to sleep at night knowing that your talents are going to waste on a couple of kids who don't appreciate that you can make a plate broccolli look like a topiary of characters from the Wizard of Oz. You could have done better. You should have listened to people when they told you a liberal arts degree was a waste of time. Computer Science was where it was at, but you thought being a starving artist was romantic. Look at you now. Cutting crusts off of bread for two midgets who piss their pants and throw peas in your face and don't appreciate your efforts to teach them shapes through organic peanut butter and banana sandwiches (this rant may or may not be personal).
9. porn
Small record store with about 3000 people clogging the streets destroying everything as we just stood on the roof with 40's of King Kobra watching the next generation of kids start a mini riot in all the chain stores up and down the street as the roof starts to vibrate. Kids shredding on parked cars as the stench of sweat comes up from the ground. See, those are fun secret shows. The ones where they just didn't know how big it was going to be until the kids packed the place and the parking lots and every store around and the cops came 'round. That's when it gets fun.
But every year when I put that thing together, I would end up with scratches up and down my arm, some kind of puncture wound, a tree that looked like a drunk person put it together and a near nervous breakdown. Some of the branches formed a weird design and it looked like the tree was mocking me. I'm sure it was. "HAHAHA I foiled you again, you horrible tree-put togetherer! YOU SUCK!"
It makes me feel bad. All of the trees going to their death. I walk up and down the aisles and look at each tree and wonder if it will be chosen by a family or if it will suffer the cruel fate of being chopped down for no good reason at all. I imagine that the trees come to life, like a Christmas special cartoon, and they all sing a sad, forlorn song - complete with dance routine - about standing and watching while their friends get taken home by loving, happy families and how it feels to be the last one picked. Or not picked at all. Like the Island of Misfit Trees. I tell all the trees that I wish I could take every single one of them home and make good use of them. They cry a little and tell me how generous and thoughtful I am and that my Christmas spirit gives them a little hope and makes them feel a little less unloved. Then I remind them that either way, they'll probably end up in a fireplace or being smashed to pieces by the blade of a garbage truck. Because in the end, all the trees end up dead. Sure, some of them get to enjoy a week or two of bliss and get all decorated with pretty ornaments and have presents put under them and all that shit, but in the end, they are all just so much mulch. That's when the trees turn on me and I flee the lot screaming "The trees are sentient!! The trees are sentient!!" 
Hmm. They cost more, they don't smell like Christmas, they hurt like fuck when you put them together. But you don't need to remember to water it and with a fake tree you don't lay awake at night wondering if it's too dry and is going to spontaneously combust and set the house on fire,thus ruining Christmas for your family. Probably New Year's and Valentine's Day too. 
So let’s see, I myself was born here in Vermont to a single mother, who sadly enough, couldn’t really afford to take care of me and my twin brother. (Yes folks, I’m a twin, but never to fear, we are fraternal twins; which means that we look almost nothing alike.) So, we were adopted by my folks. So already there is my birth mother, who holds half of our genetics, and then there are my parents… The wonderful people who wanted my brother and I. 
We sometimes take our families and the people we love for granted. It happens when we are just so used to having them around. I have had my share of friends toss my friendship away when I finally stuck up for myself when I was being taken advantage of and under-appreciated. I have caught myself a number of times taking certain people for granted. Even the three people listed here have suffered at one point or another by my occasionally flaky attitude. I have suffered from their in- attentiveness as well to be sure, but what sets us apart from your average fair weather friends, is that we can argue about it, yell, scream, and fight. Then go back to being jovial in a matter of minutes! Thus is the dynamic of family I guess.
The town’s too damn quiet for me in my current state of mind. If I'm gonna shake this funk, I need loud music and 24 hour party people to spend some time with. People who yell "Whoo" in a bar and order rounds for the entire bar. People I usually can't stand. Exactly what I need. The complete antithesis of everything I look for in a bar. And from here, it's about 10 blocks to Old City, where every bar is an expensive party and every restaurant is a "dining experience". Because I'd never go to a "dining experience" under normal circumstances.... But maybe that's what I need right now. Something I'd never do.
These are not my people. I need dirt and desperation and a jukebox that doesn’t contain Justin Timberlake. I want a slightly sticky bar and barely any overhead lighting. I want surly bartenders and a wait staff that doesn’t give a fuck if I’m having a good time or not. And I am obviously not going to find it here. 
Basement bar. Concrete floors. Brick pillars doing more than their share of holding up the fifteen or so stories above me. A little dirt and some cheap heavy stools. Prayer candles written in Spanish are the only source of illumination and a there’s jukebox playing The Pixies. Carnival and religious memorabilia lining the floors and walls. And there’s a couch along the back wall and a table for my laptop. 
i'm sure we looked like a clockwork orange clown car when we pulled up at 930 f street and skinheads started piling out onto the sidewalk.
Cropper has performed on some of the most influential soul and early rock and roll music that this country has produced. Additionally, he and fellow session musician Booker T. Jones formed Booker T. and the MGs. Their track 
Hi – I’m Dfactor, a NYC blogger/singer/songwriter/rocker. I usually live over at 
Rolling Stone was caught up its own ass in its self-importance, covering the cocaine dinosaurs of the era and the whole “LA stoner mellow” scene. Ugh. To me, CIRCUS stood out in its New York-centric rock outlook, always looking past the LA loving-Hefner Playboy mansion-bullshit rock scene and into the louder, faster in your face kind of rock and roll. Because of CIRCUS, I was exposed to Iggy Pop, David Bowie, KISS, the Dictators, the Ramones, early Genesis and 
II – Chocolate Chip Cookie. There are two kinds of chocolate chip cookies. The right kind and the kind that are nastier than licking the Devil’s ass… When the cookies are done right, they’re still a little warm and buttery, the chocolate is soft, but not runny and the dough is just barely cooked. When they’re hard and crunchy, they’re right out. It may be a cookie, (and some cookie is better that no cookie), but no cookie is better than a hard, nasty one.
2) As I Am - John Petrucci (Dream Theater) - Dream Theater's pretty much every guitar fan's soggy dream as it is, and As I Am's solo is one of the best Petrucci's ever done, and boy is that saying something. I'm pretty sure in the 80-some-odd seconds that song is going on, he touches all 7 strings and all 24 frets of that beautiful Ernie Ball guitar of his.
1. Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones - I just got done reading Paradise Lost.
Pittsburg at RI
Who is this “we” you might ask. Our crew consisted of Canadian Les, English Matt, Loud-Ass Norm, and me (Smart-ass). It was my first Japanese game, and Matt's first baseball game EVER. He loves to study, however, so he read up on baseball fairly thoroughly before we went, which led to a lot of awkward baseball theory talk, especially after the game got underway.
My favorite team name, however, goes to this year's Japan pro-yakyu champs, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. Say that name a couple of times to yourself. Then consider that they are often referred to as “the Ham Fighters”. Then stop giggling...really, stop... I'll give you a second. Ok. Whew. 
So our runner is taking his lead, the pitcher has the ball...looking squarely at the runner...and the runner breaks for second while the pitcher has the ball and is watching him! There is a beat while the pitcher shakes his head and rubs his eyes, then the easy toss to second...OUT. Astounding. 
The “Don't Throw Shit” girls are simply girls that file into the aisles and balconies holding signs asking people politely to not throw things onto the field. I got a picture of our DTS girl, and was talking to her a little when she got a nasty look from her supervisor and was relocated so that she could devote all her energy into holding up her sign with no distractions. We did get yelled at though, thanks to Norm's home-made Dragons banner (bedsheet and magic marker). He figured we'd get on TV, we just got in trouble instead. 
Plus, there’s a chance that a win might provide some motivation for the chicks at the semi-formal dance later on that night. 
Say the house is filled with children you hate (they could be your own or someone else's). Now let's say that these children are running around, flailing about their arms, screaming and probably breaking your shit. If there are people flailing around, screaming and breaking shit in your house, it should be because, as Henry Rollins says, you never quite outgrew the "fuck on the floor and break shit" phase. It shouldn't be because you're being forced into playing daycare for every random family member you only see once a year. If, however, that is why your couch just collapsed, then relax by putting in some music. I suggest the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut soundtrack. Queue up that second track, "Uncle Fucka" and blast the shit out of it.
scream along to the music. You won't have any idea what's going on and nobody will dare touch or approach you when you're standing in the middle of the living room, eyes closed, fists clenched, perhaps a small trickle of blood coming out the side of your spittle-flecked mouth, screaming German as loud as you can.
One of the first bumper stickers on my car read "My Goddess Gave Birth To Your God". If you actually read about the history and evolution of religions in the Mediterranean region, that is a true statement in an anthropological sense, never mind the metaphysics of the issue. It's also pretty guaranteed to piss off the Religious Right - hey, that's my favorite button: "Doing My Part to Piss Off the Religious Right!" Followed by "Lord, please save me from your followers!"
So why don't I extract witchy revenge on people who screw with my life? Because I'm a white witch; I don't use my abilities to hurt people. Sure, I know how. I even know how to make a voodoo doll that works - but I don't. There's this thing called karma, which is basically "you reap what you sow". I told my doc, and a whole lot of other people who've asked, that I don't want to spend my next lifetime as a dung beetle in an elephant herd. Think about it. Too much shit, too little time - major frustration!
A midget in a cowboy hat appears before me, with eyes of fire and hovering six inches from the ground. At first I think it is a vision from our Lord, but then I realize that he is just a regular at Saddle Ranch.
From my mouth comes, "Do not question me you smug little prick, for I am the Lord, and verily I say unto thee, get thee to the parking garage and do not look back. The end is nigh. Okay, so maybe not the real end, but things could get ugly around here, if you get my drift."
Other times the comedy is really offensive: Doug Stanhope. And sometimes, when it’s really called for it I have to dip into the secret stash of the most offensive (and sometimes my favorite) style of comedy... the comedic styling of Lil’ Jimmy Norton. 
11. The last time you attended a Donkey Show.
They chose the lure of the filthy lucre over their loyalty to their own people. Errr...raisins. They signed a contract with their agent that said, in essence "we will allow you to exploit our musical talent, our dancing abilities and our acting skills by marketing us and our likeness in any way possible, be that records or holiday specials or pillow cases or cartoon shows or however you can possibly exploit a raisin and, in turn, you will see to it that we four, out of all the raisins in the world, will not be devoured by human beings." See what they did there? I wonder how they are looked upon the raisin community. I bet they are loathed. Hated. Villified. They go on tv and talk about the wonders and nutrients of the raisin and raisin products, and they never have to worry about being eaten because their talent agency hired some goon - probably a pickle or a banana - to act as a bodyguard for them. DO NOT EAT THIS HERE RAISIN. HE IS A MUSICIAN, NOT A FOOD PRODUCT!
Now. Let's talk about Mayor McCheese. Dude. Your mouth is made of meat and cheese? Doesn't anyone else find that a little offputting? Does the cheese ever get moldy? Does the meat ever go rancid? Is that bun head of his stale at this point? And how does one grow a hamburger head on a semi-regular body anyhow? What are his parents like? Did a woman fuck a cow and that's what happened? And how does that hat stay on his head anyhow? And how the fuck did a guy with ground beef for brains get to be Mayor, anyhow? 
Maybe because he didn't want to be eaten. It's a tough world. Sometimes you got to sell out to survive and if that means Major McCheese killin' off a few of his own to keep his ass of the flames for four more years, your cheeseburger ass is gonna go down. Never quite figured out what the hell Grimace was. I mean his fucking name was Grimace. You know what I think of when I hear "grimace"? Anal sex. I'm sorry. It just happens. I sure whoever decided to call him Grimace was not thinking about anal sex at the time, but, you never know....
Joe: Yeah, good old Atlanta, it’s raining like shit out here but it’s 62 degrees. But I’m from New Hampshire so it’s warm here, it’s not bad weather to me.
It wasn’t because they were off, it was because they just weren’t a good band. I mean, they had that one song that was kinda catchy, but… Green Day came up out of the trenches. They were just schlupping around in their van and just rockin it, you know? And that was the experience, it wasn’t just some band that had been put together and known each other for six months. 
“That reminds me of the singer from Journey.” I mean, when we did it in a punk band at first it was a parody, and he’s a parody of a parody and he doesn’t even know it. He’s back to Journey. They don’t get the fucking joke. And those guys, Lord forbid that you should fucking stand up and say anything, because you make a big target in this day and age…… It’s like when you read a book and there’s a character who goes through an experience from beginning to end and learns something by it…. Your whole agenda can’t be just to go to a show with a purple Mohawk and say life sucks, fuck you, I want to beat people up. I mean, do you learn anything by it? This thug mentality shows that we’ve not learned anything from punk rock; I mean maybe the music has been done so much that there’s just not gonna be another really great punk band, I don’t know. I mean, we’re not great; we’re a good punk band, but we’re not trailblazers. But I will say that we have a sense of humour. 
We have a new album coming out, a DVD coming out, and we’ve been working on a tribute album, I’ve got to get a few more bands together, and that’ll hopefully be out in May. I think we got The Dwarves, The Parasites, Screeching Weasel, New Bomb Turks….. some good bands there. 
To operate it, one had to use chopsticks. Luckily these were in heavy supply. You found whatever button you needed to press by peering in with a flashlight, and then you jammed the chopstick in at the correct angle. 
In the first few months after my divorce, this was the first avenue I tried. I had some success with it-several good dates and a good bit of no-pressure fun. I eventually met someone through a different website altogether, so that was the end of my internet dating experience for about eighteen months. Within the last couple of months, I decided to try it again. What the hell, right? 
muscled, earns 1200 figures - same thing every girl wants, right?) Anyway, I receive more responses from guys who fit almost none of the things I not only want but must have in a dating prospect. All I ask for is to match the important ones. If I say I don’t want to date a smoker, please don’t send me a picture of you in your wife beater with your big red and white pack of Marlboros in a box. I DON’T WANT YOU, ASS MOUTH! Oh, and no offense to those folks who wear wife-beaters. I wear them often-usually to workout, but sometimes I wear them to just feel a little skanky. 
Over the course of the next several weeks, I have dinner at his house, and we went out several more times. I met his 19 year old daughter which was a surprise meeting and a little bit of a shock. I look more like someone who could have been her best friend instead of someone who’s dating her dad. 
I moved from Warminster to Warrington during the summer of ’83. In Warminster the kids were still about late seventies rock and the “cool” ones were about the Sugar Hill Gang. I couldn’t really get with either one. I had a thing for the Kinks and I was definitely impressed with Van Halen but the Punk stuff my dad was listening to was so new and perfect. When I moved to Warrington I met CJM, he was just getting into bands like the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys through some other kids he knew from the city. I jumped right on that. I thought only people my dad’s age were listening to Punk so hearing another 14 year old playing it ruled. I remember the first haircut I got that summer, it had to be something new, it had to be Punk. No more parted in the middle feathered back on the sides. There was this hair stylist at the local strip mall that CJM was fully hung up on. She really was hot and she was from the UK so the accent was perfect at that time. I figured this chick had to know what I needed. 
out of it. I consider that my first sexual experience just so you know. At that moment, I loved my hair. It took only my walk back home and into the bathroom to realize that I fully had a “New Wave Dave” thing going on. I wanted it off, but I didn’t want anyone to think the stylist fucked up so I dealt with it. 
the chunks that mean my doom 
spewity spewity spew
Let's visit the lighter side of Things I'm Thankful For.
I remember they made the announcement on April 1st and everyone thought it was a nasty April Fool's joke. We kept waiting for the punchline. There was none. 
Then he'll sort of trail off, as if he forgot what he was going to say or just lost his train of though. A lot of people don't like that about him, but I find it fits in well with his act and personality. I think it's kind of endearing. He also has a tendency to explain himself, how he got from one subject to another which, again, I find really works for him. I just really like the way everything seems off the cuff and thought up on the spur of the moment, often coming out as nonsensical. Hey, I'm a nonsensical kind of gal. And yes, he's a very pretty man.
which is what I loved most about him. I may not have always agreed with what he was saying, but I loved his intensity and the power of his belief in his ideals. 
A 12" cast iron skillet is like $20 or 25, and worth every penny.
It'll coast those last 10 degrees. Secondly, if you cut into it as soon as you take it out, the juice will run out and it'll be dry. That'd make me a sad messenger of Satan.
Add the cranberries last, because you want them very chunky. Zap until they're just chopped up a little bit. Dump into a bowl, and make sure you get all that juice. Add the sugar and jello mix. Stir to combine thoroughly. Cover with tinfoil, and let it sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours. That'll let some of the juice come out of the cranberries, and mix with the jello and set up.
The Devin Townsend Band
Bill Stevenson of 
8. What's the last album you bought?
school had maybe 200 students ranging from seventh grade to twelfth grade. We knew everything about each other and sometimes that was good and sometimes that was bad. As you can guess, I was a raging "brat" unlike my friend who was more sensible.
What we learned that day and throughout growing up is that we were petty, but who isn't? We realize, however, that as petty as we were back then, our lives were ultimately changed by being military brats. We were forced to leave our friends more often than most children our age, and we were also forced to accept each other. We had to sometimes live without a parent when that parent went to war. We got to experience a culture unlike our own. Open-mindedness is born through experience. I think my friend would agree.
And Star Wars was definitely a seminal event in my life. But I’d have to boil it down to two films. Blade Runner was the first film that really grabbed me when I was young. Still being young and inspired by science fiction, it was the first nihlisitc, dark, noir film I’d seen. Later in life I’d grow a deep appreciation for film-noir in general. But Blade Runner was the first. John Carpenter’s Halloween was probably the second most influential on me. Mainly because it scared the shit out of me. It was the first film that got me thinking about wanting to make my own movie. I really wanted to scare other people like that film scared me. And from that point forward I was hooked on a string of horror films from the late 70’s and early 80’s with a bedroom strewn with Fangoria and Starlog magazines.
But it’s still one of my favorites. It’s a short little sci-fi cautionary tale about how technology distances people from each other. I had the idea germinating in my head for a while when the second season of Project Greenlight was announced. And they opened it up to directors this year. So I thought it would be a hoot to enter a film. We threw it all together pretty fast. And it was just one of the projects that just gelled, had synergy and was blessed by the movie gods.
There's not a lot of money to be made from killing your guests. For all the scary height and freakish speed, coasters are specifically designed to keep you alive throughout the ride. The forces are pretty well understood. The restraint systems are built to mitigate excessive forces. The park WANTS you to survive the trip, so that you can come another day and spend more money.
A few years ago I was at Holiday World, a fine park in the southern end of Indiana, in a tiny town called Santa Claus. Holiday World has long hosted events for coaster enthusiasts, bringing them in for nighttime rides on their excellent coasters, putting on stage shows, throwing together massive picnics, taking people behind the scenes for views that most patrons don't get. They throw a great party.
A good number of us were pushing out to the edges of the area, waiting for the barriers to drop. We wanted at those coasters.
Well, she got them. On the coaster's fifth drop, a wicked little spot known as "The Drop" among us coaster idiots, she appeared to have lost her grip and tipped out of the car. Her body pin-balled down the structure before landing. It's generally believed that she died on impact.
When did this become such a "take all" type of thing for me? There had to have been some point in my life when "just having fun" stopped and "getting as much as I could while I could" started.
We didn't wear shorts and tshirts to gym like most normal people. Or like the guys. We had to wear this jumper. Shorts and a shirt all in one. Snapped right down the front. Freshmen wore this ugly green color. And it had all these pockets. That was kinda cool. Until I was told that no, the pockets were not meant for cigarettes. Or to stash my nickel bag. The uniform was so hideous I can't even find a picture of it, so I drew one for you. 
"Good evening, Officer,” I smiled. He gave me a look that said “Split.” So me and the redhead did just that. We were half a block away when we heard the rest of the cops pull up and saw the lights flashing behind us. We kept on down the street and hopped into a train station. Once we were down the steps she and I went our separate ways and I never saw her again. 
Two more blocks to the house and I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out whether I was just being paranoid or if there really was a good reason that the cops were tailing us. Jonny wasn’t dealing nearly as many drugs as he used to, Andy quit beating people up in the street… Hell, the house had been deadly quiet for months now. Ever since Angela had left…. Oh crap.
Let’s begin with a very common fetish, and work from there. It has been my experience that a few people have a foot fetish, these people think toes are totally erotic, the shape of the ankle, the curve to the heel, all combine to make the foot a wondrous thing to behold to some people. They want to suck kiss and lick a person’s feet and feel sexual arousal from doing so. I recall having my toes sucked for the first time when I was about nineteen years old, and it was I’ll admit a very arousing experience. Now I don’t find the foot to be a particularly erotic part of the body, but I will concede to the erotic feeling one receives when receiving this particular treatment... I also giggled quite a bit, and am ok with returning the pleasure, so long as the foot is washed and in reasonable shape. Aside from the foot, people find all sorts of body parts more arousing than others. 
This practice scares me to no end. The process is rather long and drawn out, more of an operation than a sexual experience. (At least to me.) One person either gets on all fours or gets into a very relaxed lying down position, usually with the legs in the air. This facilitates better angles for entry. Now the “fister” usually, and should wear a latex glove that reaches past the elbow. This gets slathered in generous amounts of lubricant. Most popularly: Crisco. (SHIVER!) The submissive will lie there while his poor anus is slowly stretched and poked, first with a few fingers and then a while later the entire hand, which can then, (Once past the sphincter.) be slowly and carefully inserted up to the forearm or further.
We have touched on this subject a number of times in my article, mostly because it is quite a curiosity to me, and generally is one of the more widely known fetish areas. Personally, I am a bit curious as to what sex with leather accessories would be like, and sooner or later I plan on experiencing it at least once, minus the pain and exaggerated bondage. These people like the feel, smell, and look of leather. They buy harnesses, collars, chaps, thongs, vests, pants, and any manner of leather to feel sexy and erotic. To my mind some go overboard, and wind up looking like that damn fool from the movie “Barb Wire” starring Pamela Anderson, Do you know who I mean? If not, this poor actor got up in a suit that looked more like a scuba diver than a sexy man in chaps. Can we find a picture of that?? Anyone???
My own personal fetishes??? Well I personally have an appreciation for cowboys. (Brokeback Mountain was totally an emotional and visually arousing film for me. My friends call it my “Porn”. It is actually a very moving piece of cinema, if you haven’t seen it, try it, you might be surprised!) I happen to like noses. Its weird and I don’t get sexual kicks from them, but I do happen to notice and appreciate a nicely shaped one! I have a curiosity about leather, and sometime I hope to see what that’s all about. Maybe sometime “The Boyfriend” and I will go shopping for intimate playthings once we’ve gotten a bit closer and open about such things. (Well, I’m an open book. He still has embarrassment issues, I guess.)
For example I was just online not long ago and was conversing with a nice man who was suffering pretty badly from a feeling that he was not attractive or wanted in any way. He was a nice looking man in his thirties, with a lot to offer a person, and while I’m not a single male he had some nice qualities, which I’m sure any number of men would appreciate. But his attitude was a huge turn off. He continued to beat himself up emotionally in a conversational way, saying that he was destined to be single forever, and that no one wanted to love him. 
One, is that there was a study I read about, I think it was one of my folks AARP magazines, or maybe a “Details” Or “GQ” article, that stated that the average person meets their spouse later in life, that people wind up in love in their mid forties as opposed to earlier in life, they said that this was in part due to the longer life span of the human race, and the fact that later in life, people tend to be more stable in life, and that translates into confidence. Do you hear that people? Confidence in one’s self equates an ability to find love! Now I’m not talking about the cocky, “I can do anything” attitude, but the: “Hey I’m me, and I like who I am” attitude. So work on making sure you’re happy with yourself, and love will most likely find you!
Hey what’s up Foosball Fanatics? Welcome to the new time slot for ‘The End Zone.This is the place on Faster Than the World where Football rules because, well, Football rules! Excelsior!! I feel like Stan Lee from Marvel Comics now. 
Ask the 49ers fans. As far as the division goes, Chicago is running away with it at 8-1. Minny and Green Bay are both floundering at 4-5. They are clinging to any playoff hopes for dear life right now. Can a 4-5 team make the playoffs? Sure! There’s still time to climb out of the basement, but it is running out quick. If they want a shot at a Wildcard spot in the playoffs, Green Bay and Minnesota will need to string some wins together (duh.) 
And it always worked. If you haven't tried this stuff yet, I strongly (is that a word?) urge you to go out and get a bottle of this stuff. It has a nice burn that cleans you out like piss thru a hot goat. Or goat piss thru a hot something. 
Dick Duff – A hockey prodigy from Kirkland Lake Ontario, landing a full time slot with the Toronto Maple Leaf when he was 19 (1955). He was part of the team rebuilding and was integral to the Leafs 1962 Stanley Cup win (over Chicago). He was traded to the Rangers and then to the Canadiens where he was part of four more Stanley Cup Champion teams.
Florida at Buffalo (Fri), Buffalo at Philly (Sat)
Minnesota at LA (Sat), Minnesota at Phoenix (Tues)
Pittsburg at Buffalo
Philly at San Jose – The Sharks will take this, no doubt in my mind. The real question though is whether or not Forsberg will have another meltdown.
As we wandered around the outer isles looking for new releases, my daughter's attention was immediately drawn to The Punisher DVD. At first I wondered what little girl in her right mind would be attracted to such a thing, but then I realized that it was the skull on the cover, not the tall, scary man holding the AK47 - at least I was hoping. She picked it off the shelf and ran over to me in a fit of glee, shouting "Look Mama! Just like daddy! It
As I was paying for the rental, my daughter noticed that, lucky us, The Punisher was for sale and on display. Of course, the display was gigantic and now the man that was on the cover of the movie was life-size and wearing a skull T-Shirt and she could not be convinced that this man was not her father. She immediately ran over to the display and began touching and hugging it. "It's daddy again, mama! Look!"
“Look,” he said, “I’m not really gonna have time to watch you. Your mother’s gonna be working a lot and your siblings will have school and stuff, so… I guess this is where I tell you that you need to start acting like a man.”
I happen to like it, for the most part. This song is one of my favorites, period. It falls very much into the category of slow, quiet, often stripped down songs that I like to listen to when I'm in more of a contemplative mood. In fact, it works perfectly for a quiet and rainy day. There's definitely a haunting quality to the song
Who knows. I never understood why kids started turning schoolyards into there own personal shooting galleries but it's way to late to blame anyone for that at this time of night. But, I blame Tom Hanks movies. Admit it. Anytime you see that bastard smiling in a press shot with fucking Opie from Mayberry, you feel like shooting up some playground too, dontcha? Give ‘em one for Aunt Bea and shit? 
I have a couple of basses, and I love both of them. But one is a 40-year-old hollowbody and one is a 10-year-old solid. The hollowbody is fractious and temperamental, but beautiful. The 10-year-old, like all 10-year-olds, is indestructable. 
Dude, this is one of the coolest zombie movies I’ve ever seen, and not for the usual reasons. It’s a great movie but it’s a little more than that….. they’re just a touch more obvious in their social commentary (which is in just about every zombie movie you’ve seen or are likely to see). Made by dirty hippies for sure. It has this big, in you face subplot about the evils of progress and its effect on society. In the opening scene there are multiple shots of exhaust pipes and people wearing face masks to protect themselves from the air pollution caused by their all too rapid progress that threatens their very existence, blah fuckidy blah. It’s lame but it’s great too. It’s just a cool little snapshot of the culture of the time, and the ideas that the filmmakers had.
Okay, this movie isn’t the best, it’s horribly 80’s with the bad hair and the dated clothes and the college setting and the guys looking for strippers and the Asian nerd and oh my, it must be fun. Grace Jones plays the head vampire(ss), and if you think that’s scary then wait until you meet the lead character, a dude by the name of Chris Makepiece. Maybe you know him; I think the height of his career was Meatballs. Or maybe My Bodyguard….. No! Mazes & Monsters! That’s my choice, the height of his career was Mazes and Monsters (and it sucked). Oh shit, I forgot about The Falcon & The Snowman. Meh, with crap like that behind you, nobody’s going to remember the one time you acted with Sean Penn except you.
or Cream Stout, or a Rogue Mocha Porter or Chocolate Stout, perhaps an Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. I can revel in a Shakespeare Stout and Samuel Smith Imperial Stout and sit back, fat and full and warm, my craving for a beer that's more like a meal completely and utterly satisfied.
My little sister works full-time and goes to law school at night. She is usually very tired at the end of the day when she gets home, but when I called her tonight she said she was feeling great. 
There's laundry to be done while that one is playing. Gotta dye my hair. Rake the leaves. Anything but subject myself to watching little Anakin Skywalker whine his way through the movie. At least now we know where Luke got that trait from. 
You can never go home again -- especially if you're a soldier traveling at relativistic speeds and fighting a thousand-year war. This is not only one of the best sf books ever written, it's also one of the best war novels ever written. I'm not a fan of most military fiction, normal or sci-fi, because it usually focuses on the gee-whiz aspects of war: the toys and the tactics. No one ever focuses on what it really feels like, but Haldeman, himself a Viet Nam vet, captured the weird disconnect someone feels when they've not only been away from home for a long time, but they've participated in things that no one back home can relate to. Haldeman uses time dilation as a device to exaggerate the feeling, but it doesn't diminish its authenticity. The main character, Mandella, does what a lot of people who find that they no longer fit in with "the world" do: he re-ups and basically spends the remainder of his life fighting and living in an unchanging reality with the only other people he can relate to -- his fellow vets. The book also features a thread about the way military folk are often viewed and treated by the higher-ups: basically as pieces of expendable, thinking meat. If you've ever heard the phrase, "I need a body for (insert task)", then you'll get the mindset that Haldeman explores in the novel.
I have a soft spot for the Foundation series (yes, even the later ones). Asimov's great gift was his ability to tell large, complex stories in a simple (but not simplistic!) style. His writing is so clean and smooth that your eyes slip off the page. He never needlessly complicated the text by including archaic or obscure words, as some authors do to impress us with their ability to read a thesaurus. He also communicated great ideas with a great economy of text. Contrast this to modern authors, who feel that a thought is only as deep as the amount of verbiage used to express it. With Asimov, you never find yourself skipping page after page of filler to get back to the plot.
Red Mars is the first in a trilogy describing human colonization and terraforming of Mars. Of the three, Red Mars is the best, mostly because of its realism and Robinson's ability to present different points of view equally well. There's none of Heinlein's wanking in these books, which are told from different points of view and represent what will likely be the debates surrounding the colonization of Mars. Some believe it should be kept in its pristine state while others encourage full-bore terraforming. Even though the mission calls for strict adherence to Earth's guidelines, the 100-person crew quickly fragments and starts doing their own thing. They eventually become the leaders of the various factions on Mars, and much of the rest of the book explores the consequences of the First Hundred's decisions. Some live, others die, but all are profoundly changed by the rapid colonization and terraforming of the planet, as well as an increasingly over-populated and creaking Earth. 
Dune's stock in SF circles goes up and down over the years, but it remains my favorite book to date. Forget the movies (but watch the 
Hey, porn stars come from somewhere, we don’t just grow em like fucking crabapples. It’s a nice thought, but we got plenty of assholes for parents doing that for us all across the states. Amazing how once the chickies hit the pole, they slide right in to porn.
wrong, there were still plenty of assholes around but from Front Street up to around 7th it was always alive. This is when we would usually end up there. This time though, I was tired. I could see that John was as well. We covered what felt like all of South Philly trying to find CJM just to find out he already went home. I remember feeling a little weird about Butcher asking us if we needed somewhere to stay, Brody’s door was always open, why would we need an invite? 
When I was younger, I did more than my share of experimenting. I did my share, your share and I borrowed quite heavily from everyone you know. So, if you’re reading this and you haven’t so much as smoked a joint, I’m sorry. I took your share of the drugs. I stayed up for days at a time, completely out of my head. And I’d do it again.
It wasn’t a huge job, except that Dave the Costa Rican drug dealer was editor in chief, and Lester and I spent most of our time making sure he didn’t spend petty cash on pot or hookers. But my finances were a complete mess, because I hadn’t paid taxes in years. So reconciling back taxes for me had become Lester’s regular job, and after months of working on everything, there was finally an end in sight. 
“Money,” he growled. “I’ve got it all. But it’s not good for normal monetary transactions, no? Tracking—they track this money. The numbers are on it, and they know them. Use it for a taco, they know where you live. It’s blasphemy!” 
I shrugged. “He’s right Dave—if it weren’t for drugs, I probably wouldn’t have to be messing with these back taxes right now.” 
A butt plug is a “device” that looks rather like a large mushroom. I suppose it is used similarly to a dildo as it is inserted into an orifice to create pleasure in that area.. Only from the way it seems to be designed, it’s meant to STAY put. I assume a dildo is created to mostly move about. So what is a butt plug meant to accomplish? Is it solely to keep one’s rectum relaxed? Does everyone like to feel loose? And what happens if it goes in a wee bit more than it should and you loose it up there? Can you stand with one of these inside you? I should think it would be pretty painful, and look a lot like you’re putting a traffic cone into a place where no cars would bother to go. Some of these butt plugs have themes to them as well.
Odd, and here I thought love was something beautiful, caring, and about respecting your partner. When it seems parts of the population believe love is an act of voluntary rape and abuse. Hmmmmmm...
Crisco, one of the amazing things about this cooking supply gone wrong, is that while still used, it’s not being used discreetly. I have seen adult movies, where the can of Crisco is in plain view and used liberally. (I am not a fisting fanatic, but I have been subjected to viewing its follower’s porn, which should be avoided.) There are no pretenses in these films about the “Exotic” lubricant they use. Seems a little crazy to me that Crisco hasn’t completely objected to the use of it’s product in these films. But perhaps they like it because it certainly must affect sales; I can’t remember when I’ve ever seen the stuff used for baking ever. So I guess it’s possible that it’s actually silently endorsed by the makers of Crisco. You know, funny story, I once saw one of these films that included a man, a can of Crisco, and a selection of Bocce balls. (Large, relatively heavy balls used for lawn bowling.) Draw your own conclusions. 
Paddles are another thing I barely understand, I mean, its one thing to have a fantasy and be spanked, it’s another to have someone decide that a board covered in and paper would make a pleasing addition to your collection of sexual memorabilia. What happens when your parents come to visit? What happens if you leave the door unlocked and one of your kids accidentally finds your hidden dungeon of pleasure? Would you really bother to tell your mom that you don’t hang potted plants from those hooks, but you do have a great sex swing that fits perfectly? How does one explain away a guest finding the car battery and tit clamps you store under the coffee table? Or maybe having to tell your sister that you do half of your baking in the bedroom, which is why there is Crisco on the shelf. 
reasonable wear in public. I like role playing, having my man in uniform, or dressed as a cowboy, maybe a prison inmate for those “conjugal visits”, stuff like that. The dungeon of doom, I leave to the professionals, would you really go out in a dog mask with a butt plug up your ass to dinner? I think I’d like to keep my sex a little more “Halloween costume party” as opposed to, “Sadistic man in hooded mask wants to make me a slave, and beat me”.
The Band That Should Have Died: Van Halen.
Now I'm in Ohio
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 
The phone sucks. But the thing is I am excited for you and I want to share all of that stuff with you. But you caught me at a bad time.
Ripe for exploitation. It's like taking a kid with a peg leg and making fun of him every day until you are missing a bat during the recess baseball game. Then all of a sudden that peg leg kid is looking good.
I read journals of other writers who hold down full time jobs (like I do) and run their families (like I don’t) and still manage to keep their output up. 
You need to make a decision about your writing and you need to stick to it. 
6. October Sky- This is one of those “true stories” that actually feels true. Its not about some Greek Hero, or some famous general, or even some epic struggle between good and evil. No, its about a guy named Homer Hickam Jr. who grew up to train Astronauts at NASA and work in the space program. "What ?" you say. Yeah, follow me on this. 
7. My First Mister- Ok, before your head explodes from a huge “What the fuck is he smoking ?” let me tell you why this is on my list. This is one of those films that came outta nowhere, and was directed by Christine Lahti. Its got Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski in this odd, but charming story about mismatched people looking for something.
8. Millers Crossing- This is the 3rd greatest gangster film ever made in my opinion. The Cohen Brothers at their finest. You want to tell a classic crime story about wise guys and mobsters, this sets the bar for witty, clever, well written dialogue. This is a well constructed tale that has the most amazing twists and turns, and yet, never once leaves us behind. Some of the best performances ever committed to film on in this little piece of greatness. 
9. Mad Dog Time (aka Trigger Happy)- Ok, this is the 2nd greatest gangster film of all time. It was written and directed by a friend of mine, Larry Bishop ( Larry plays Michael Madsen’s boss at the strip club in Kill Bill Vol. 2). This film has so much talent in it, that to make this film today it would set you back 200 million. Larry made this film for under 6 million in 1996 and the cast includes: Richard Dreyfuss, Jeff Goldblum, Gabriel Byrne, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Ellen Barkin, Kyle Maclachlan, Billy Idol, Burt Renyolds, and some really great cameos by Rob Reiner, Joey Bishop, Richard Pryor and pretty much every great character actor you have ever seen. 
10. Primer- Ok, this is a film that’s waaaaayyyy different than anything you have seen. Its about 4 guys, all struggling scientific types, young and smart, like the dot com people with big ideas we always read about, who accidentally create a device that allows them to time travel. "What ?" you say. Well, follow me here. 
You go to a function that is “voluntary” (In the military nothing is voluntary) and “everyone” is there. Some random wife that you’ve seen only once gives you a hug and says hi in a way that makes dogs come running. Not only are you now embarrassed for her but you are looking around to make sure you don’t get bit in the ass by some 
Actually, it was kinda nice to turn my mind off the site for a few hours and just make decisions about the site, questionable columns and new writers on the cell phone for about five minutes a day. 
Not that he was Jack. I mean, he's on his way here to settle down, he's not exactly out there tracking down a rogue president or saving the world from terrorists. Then again, Jack is good looking, smart, brave to the point of foolishness, fearless and never backs down from a challenge. So yea. Turtle is my Jack. I'm his Chloe. Minus the whole smart as fuck thing. That girl has got it going on. It's no wonder Turtle has this huge crush on her.
Meltdown all you want Forsberg, your hissy fits make me laugh – you have so much anger, maybe you should channel that into scoring (on the ice) or something, instead of being Das Suxor. I’m just sayin’. 
Asinine, totally asinine. 
Sometime during the making of The Matrix: Reloaded Larry Wachowski left his wife, started dating a dominatrix, wearing women's underwear, and from all appearances...started taking women's hormones.(click the picture to see the larger image) This movie is not about political revolution, it's Larry Wachowski's cry for sexual acceptance. This, I believe, is why Alan Moore ran away from this movie so fast that flames shot out of his ass. The Character V is the master of the movie. He wears a stylized gimp mask, has a secret dungeon where he keeps people, and he likes inflicting pain up close and personal, which is why he carries knives instead of guns. The second most important tertiary character, the TV station manager, is a gay masochist. The entire movie is about people outside of the sexual norm striking out against the sexual standard. I really don't care what fetishes people have. If you want someone to tie you up and shove popsicles up your ass...well good for you, it's just not for me. But if I wanted to watch a movie about someone's cry for sexual acceptance I'd go watch brokeback mountain or my own private Idaho, not something that is sold to the masses as a popcorn-munching, summer, action flick.
I wasn't always like this. I bought the damn game expecting (like many of you) to pop the thing into my PS2 and experience the End of All Things Good About Final Fantasy. I was buying this game merely to complete my collection, and would at least start a game as a formality, with no commitment to finish the thing. I had harbored this notion since I first saw what the battle system was about. It looked like the thing would actually play itself with minimal input from the player. For those "non-gamers" who may still be reading this: imagine it was as if you were about to sit down to play solitaire, and suddenly you realized all you had to do was shuffle the deck and then the cards would start dealing themselves, and you became a spectator of your game of solitaire while the cards themselves carried out the game. In other words the game was Destined to Suck. In the package with Dragon Quest 8 ( a fantastically awesome old school RPG--NES whores represent) there was a totally incomprehensible FFXII demo. My fears had been confirmed.
Then they killed My Guy.
I don't know when I made sense of the battle system and suddenly found it fun and efficient, and not really dumb at all, because after all, in any party-based RPG it's not like you can do anything you can't do with this system. Did I REALLY have total control over all my characters in FF9? No, not really, and battles did degrade into repetitive button-mashing. This just makes things faster and less annoying. One thing I DON'T like about regular RPGs are the random battles. You're in an empty countryside, getting where you're going and then--for no reason whatsoever--there are now up to 8 enemies, some of them HUGE, in your way. Why? Where were they hiding? In FFXII the enemies are always visible and therefore they become another obstacle to overcome. 
It started for me when I was two. I don't have really many memories from that age. But, according to my brothers, I would attempt to sing along with "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Apparently they also taught me a nifty maneuver called headbanging. I had good brothers, I think. 1994-1995 though were easily the years that got me into music. The magic three bands were Nirvana, The Offspring, and Green Day*, yes Green Day. My brothers collectively had albums like Nevermind, Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smash, Ignition, Dookie, Insomniac, Superuknown, and Core. All those famous 90's bands and albums. They were played over and over. Then I just seemed to really get into this stuff, I was always asking to borrow an album. I begged my parents for a CD player until their heads exploded. All this time though I never really knew what punk was at all.
I found out about The Clash from my brother who had bought the Singles album. So to make that story short, hooked. I listened to that album to no end. For many years after that I slowly got into punk, band after band, getting deeper into it as time went by. Every band just led to another great band. I was on a high. Along the way. though, I was listening to some music that was regrettable. But since then my music tastes have changed, the high has gone away, and I mostly don't listen to same music I used to when I was a kid. But the Ramones and Clash will always have a special place in my heart. And I realize that I have some cool brothers, with a wide variety of music tastes. Their music tastes have changed some too and we all went in different directions, so we all end up arguing and recommending music a lot. Here are their approximate music tastes.
Michele said no.
Oh! Let me do tell what ended up happening with The Crush. The crush came to see me one weekend as we wanted to meet in person to see how things went and go from there. It was our first face-to-face meeting, and it failed miserably from the very beginning. No chemistry. None. Zip. Zero. I feared it would be a long, very long, weekend. At first I thought, eh, maybe I’m just nervous; maybe the chemistry will develop. Maybe I’ll feel something after I kiss him for the first time. Yeah, no. I felt really badly about it, too. 
Now, Vegas’ first trip to see me down south from waaaaaaaaaaaaay out west was a good trip. An excellent trip. A mind-blowing, heart-pounding, panty-wetting trip. It was after about three months of being in near-constant contact, and I was really looking forward to it. I knew we had the chemistry. I knew that when he kissed me, my toes tingled, the blood drained from nearly every part of my body and was focused in one area, my breath hitched, my heart nearly exploded from beating so quickly, my head spun, all of it. All of everything I loved feeling from a kiss, I felt every time I kissed Vegas. Story of my dating life, though, was that here I was getting hooked on someone who lived too fucking far away to do anything about it (you see, I’m not as love-lucky as Michele and turtle). The trip goes by so quickly that it’s almost as if it didn’t happen at all, but I know from the complete disarray my bed sheets are in and the spinning of my head that it did indeed happen. Well, that and the whole, “I love you” thing. 
BUT…I realize at some point that Vegas has commitment issues even with the small amount of non-exclusive but not seeking out others commitment we do have (clear as mud, right?) Even the small amount of commitment we had seems to be too much for him. Too caged. Too confining. Too whatever it is that (mostly) men feel when they have commitment issues. He starts disappearing here and there on weekends, and he’s completely out of touch on at least two weekends after having told me he’d “call me tomorrow”. 
I have always loved record stores. Big ones, small ones, even the ones that look like junk shops. I love the smell of old cardboard and the dusty, stale air that you only find in a record store. I love the sound of the needle as it clicks into the groove. And I love the people who work in record stores. The stoners and the serious musicians, the artists and the critics. The guys who’ll quote you the first and last names of everyone who played a session with Miles Davis in ’65. The longhair who smells of something long dead that works your last nerve with his consistent talk of Sabbath. Freaks, every last one of ‘em. But they were my kind of freaks. 
I was walking around town last night with the baby on my shoulders. He and I had been singing “Whoo Hoo” by the 5.6.7.8.’s for about three blocks when I finally decided to pop into the Tower on Broad Street and pick up a copy of the album. At least that way, I figured, I could share the pain with my wife when I wasn’t home. And when we got to the entrance I was shocked by the signs on the door. “Bankruptcy Sale” glared at me in looming letters five feet tall. “Everything Must Go!” and “All Sales Are Final” pasted on every non-horizontal surface. Tower had finally succumbed like most of the smaller record stores in town.
Rigorously scheduled, vigilantly supervised ‘fun.’ These are the women who bash your ankles with their strollers when their children are infants. The ones that debate preschool choices with all the gravity of international policy makers. These women are not fooling around and you’d better not be either. A sub-species of the Soccer Mom is the Big Shoe Woman. They’re always inappropriately dressed and prone to posing picturesquely on whatever is handy…park benches, swing sets, monkey bars, etc. They’re more interested in whether anyone is looking at them than whether their children are having fun and/or kidnapped.
Do not approach Aging Couple’s child as you most definitely have Cooties.
And the funny thing about following the wrong paths and making the wrong choices and taking the wrong turns is when you are in the act of doing them, you mostly know somewhere in the deep recess of your mind that it's not right. A small alarm goes off, or a whispered voice in your head tries to warn you, but you dismiss that and think to yourself, no path is every going to be perfect, so let's just take the one we are on and ignore the brambles and sharp stones and hope for the best.
Man oh man, Northern Ontario has some wild stuff hanging out in the forest. I saw lots of deer and foxes, a bobcat I think, two bears, a spider that was about an inch and a half long in the body, and that guy moved like a motherfucker too. Although I would move like that myself if the whole sky suddenly turned into the sole of a size twelve doc. Still, I think he scared me more than I did him, and I killed him. Shows you what a baby I am when it comes to big and unusual spiders. Regular spiders are fine but you know what? If I don’t know you and you look like a mean bug, then I’ll assume as much and stomp you. I’m not so tough that I wouldn’t care about the baseball sized, rock textured lump your cousin gave my friend a few years ago when you bit him, and I ain’t taking the chance on you giving me the same gift.
But it’s the woods, the forest, the country that seems to get to us the most. Probably because it’s just not our element anymore. We’ve given it up for something more comfortable, and now half of us are scared to walk comfortably in the woods at night. 
One of the best movies to portray that feeling is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but only towards the end, when the surviving cast members are realizing that something is definitely very wrong and that they have to look for their friends. The entire movie is set in the Texas countryside and I think that the movie (and ones that followed it) had a lot to do with bringing these fears out in people. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere and royally fucked sums it all up. It just isn’t home and home is safe and I want to go home now. 
At FTTW, we believe that our writers are our company’s strongest asset. We troll the four corners of the earth, seeking out and courting only the most talented young writers. New writers are handled tenderly and gingerly, in much the same way you might care for and cultivate a flower. We strive to breed creativity in a nurturing and caring workplace. But we’re not training flowers here at FTTW. We want thought-killing machines of incredible prejudice. We want you to write so well, other pages with written words become a vague memory in our audience’s minds. With that in mind, every minute you are at work must be spent at work, producing content for the company. If, for any reason, you are unable to produce for the company, please alert your supervisor. As an extra incentive to inspire your creativity, please be reminded that if you don’t produce, we will kill you and your entire family.
The rain comes down it's pouring hard
cross the mountains hit the flats
It’s just going to get colder for a while. It sort of gets to be an issue with the guitar after an hour or so. The shit just goes out of tune. My bass, wonderful creature that it is, seems to NEVER go out of tune, no matter how cold it is, how hot it is, how hard I play it. The only thing that makes it move is if it gets physically hit on one of the tuning pegs. 
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
City of Lost Children
Death is probably right. But in Sexton's defense, he has never seen the world before with Death as his guide. 
Along the walls of the passageway were drawings that would come to life as the fairy's light landed on them. At first, the passage was filled with the sound of my laughter, as I watched all kinds of funny, mystical creatures take wing and fly around me. But as we rounded a corner, the light played upon a creature so hideous that the site of its face knocked the wind out of me. I fell to the ground and as I did so, I caught site of the creature. He was staring at me through hideous eyes. Now that you have seen me, I will never let you forget me, is what he said. And I didn't forget him, which is obvious as I repeat this dream to you now.
