Author: substitute

nope

How to tell an average American from a celebrity

Here in the U.S., we have a jury system which randomly selects ordinary people to pass judgment on others. This results occasionally, during a celebrity trial, in a situation where non-celebrities appear on television. This may be shocking to people outside our country who usually only see our celebrities on television and assume we all look like them.

For example, Belgian tourists arriving in buses to see BAYWATCH TOWN discover that Santa Monica, CA is full of non celebrities. Many of them demand a refund.

Just as a guide, here’s a good example of the difference. Below we have pictures of an actual celebrity who was selected by the Clearchannel Death Star’s excellent algorithm, and one of the relics of our 18th century jury system who became famous by accident. Please do not be disillusioned when you arrive here on vacation and find that most of us look like the latter.

1. Actual celebrity Ryan Seacrest:

seacrest

2. Juror:

juror

Thank you, that is all.

I have three (3) bad songs in my head.

Tonight i was supposed to hang out with the crew, and they were all going bowling mostly. I did indeed see my friends, and they’re nice people and we hung out a bit. I couldn’t make it as far as bowling. I’m pretty down right now and being around the group is something I can only do for a couple of hours, I guess.

Something between petulance, shame, unrequited puppy love, and an egotistical unwillingness to admit reality is riding me lately, like a man rides a horse. The better part of me knows how dumb that is, but the big rejected dick is in charge of the serotonin, the testosterone, and most of the sympathetic nervous system. My apologies.

Lately I have a serious Quixotic wish that people could all hang out in a pack and sleep together in piles like cats. Exclusivity and ownership and competition and possession turn all this love into shit.

Since we can’t have that vision of Paradise, we try our best to get what we want and do good for others. I fail, you fail, they fail, he fails, she fails, we fail, one fails.

There’s part of loving someone that makes you feel big and important, because you have such a good feeling about another person and want so much for that person to be happy. And then there’s the other side of that, when you realize that how you feel isn’t that important, and that you can’t necessarily give everyone what makes sense to you, and that the needy part of your feeling can be hurtful to others just when you want the opposite. And that’s where we re-learn each time how to conjugate failure.

Peanut butter cookies and other delights

It’s 3:40 in the morning and I just woke up. Not surprising considering that I had three drinks earlier; alcohol isn’t a good sleeping medicine.

The Herb Alpert I was spinning earlier took me back to early childhood. My parents had a few of his records, and I would take one out and put it on the old KLH turntable with the multiple-record playing arm and listen, kneeling on the carpet exactly between the speakers to get the best of the stereo effect. My favorite was “Going Places”, with Herb on the cover in an old aerobatic plane.

For some reason I also remembered visiting my grandmother with my mother at around the same age (maybe 4). She lived in Leisure World in Seal Beach. My grandmother didn’t enjoy the company of children very much, but she would give me a Van de Kamps peanut butter cookie or two from the blue and white Dutch ceramic jar, and then I would go out and ride my tricycle slowly around the deserted sidewalks. The smokestacks of the power station off in the distance puffed out white clouds and I creaked about on the trike trying not to bother the other old people there.

The clock ticking on the bookcase next to me is loud in the night quiet. That’s a third childhood memory, of the big school clock on the wall as I looked down at my project or my text, and at the other kids around me, in my third grade classroom. I was sweaty and flushed from recess and it was hard to concentrate, but I tried to get my penmanship right while hoping that the clock would tick a little faster and I could leave.

Now the clock is ticking next to a man approaching middle age alone in the same town, in the same house, on the same couch. Maybe I should get the Herb Alpert records out and sit on the carpet again, and go places with Herb.

PROCLAMATION

ON THIS 4th day of the month of March, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand Four,

IN THIS City of Newport Beach,

IN THIS County of Orange,

IN THIS State of California,

BEING THAT numerous people we know have had a day which is unduly full of Fecal Matter, packed with Refuse, jammed to the brim with Sludge, and frothing over the top with Bilge and Sputum,

AND ALSO BEING THAT this comes on the heels of the first third of an inauspicious Year full of Illness, Divorce, Injury, unrequited Romantic Love, great Trials at the hand of the Government, loss of Employment, mental Anguish, Overwork, and inexplicable Failures of the Providence in which we Trust to Provide for us,

IT IS HEREBY PROCLAIMED that the Fourth Day of March in each Year shall be known henceforth as Crapmas.

By the Power and the Seal of the Great Lodge of the Exalted and Honorable Order of the Diedrichs Table, vested in me in my Office as an Ancient and Confirmed Member of the Thirty-Third Degree, I do proclaim this forth.

Ignatz Mouse
General and Presiding Plinthist
Grand Oriental Chief of the Ninth Secret Lodge
Grand Persiflager of the Reformed Templars
Hierophant-Elect