Trapped In A Cubicle

Bubblegum Album Back On Interpunk

2010-06-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Our debut album 'We've Come to Kick Ass and Play Bubblegum' is back on Interpunk. It was off for about three days and is now available once again for purchase.

That is all.

Please Kill Me

2010-03-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

My adress is 9522 63rd st, San Diego, CA, 95063.
I'm usually home around five o' clock and I am off on Saturdays and Sundays.

Thank you,

-Russell

Drunken Cholos/Rich White Males Split

2009-12-14T15:44:00.001-08:00

Gone.

The Worst Part Of Waking Up

2009-10-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

Monday I am quitting coffee. Cold turkey. It is my hypothesis that coffee is the catalyst for certain behavioral traits of mine that are not so favorable. Being edgy, constantly analyzing things, and just being an over all dick head, are the result of too much caffeine intake. Of course I have to take some accountability for these personality flaws being innate, but caffeine is a stimulant and stimulants are notorious for enhancing all of these behaviors which are, I hope, usually substantially subdued.

I plan to track my progress and will post the results as they unfold. I have no scientific training or back ground, so in lieu of solid facts to support my argument, I will be basing the success of my experiment on whether or not I feel good or bad, by its conclusion. If I am still bouncing off the walls then the monkey stays on my back, but if I am thinking clearly and not twitching as much, then it’s back to the Congo Bobo.

Now comes the hard part. What am I going to drink instead of coffee?

I could switch to tea I guess. My sense of humor would change from spastic and intense to dry and supercilious. I got no problem with that. Robin Williams to Basil Fawlty, it’s a no brainer. Also I would stop sublimating my superfluous nervous energy into reciting long winded philosophies on anything, to anyone who was within ear shot, and instead replace them with short arrogant quips. Either way I am going to look like an asshole, but it’s a little late in my life to try and avoid that, and besides by indulging in the latter I get to make other people feel stupid. One point for tea.

I suppose I could switch to decaf. Ppft, might as well switch to non-alcoholic beer and bubblegum cigarettes. You can forget about coffee pal. I said forget it!

What else is warm and soothing…hot chocolate? For those of you who are full grown adults and still enjoying hot chocolate, it is my delight to inform you, there is no Santa Clause. Now go choke on a pile of yellow snow.

And of course Diet Soda is out. The taste buds can only be fooled for so long, before they start to sense the difference between men made chemical liquid that gives rat’s lymphoma, and citrus.

Well gang I guess that settles it. Tea it is. Chip-chip, cheerio, and huzzah for the tea leaf. I’ll let you know how it turns out. But, if I were betting man, I’d put my pay check on the short ugly kid downs a can of Folgers by Tuesday.

If I'm Working On the Weekend, Then What the Hell Was I Working For All Week? Answer That Lover Boy!

2009-10-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

Somebody please shoot me in the face. What in the hell was I thinking changing my shift so that I have to come in on Saturday? No one is in the office on Saturday because only a select few of us are dumb enough or have schedules so demanding that we have no choice, but to forfeit one of our weekend days, in order to get a day off during the regular work week instead. Misery loves company my friends and it is pretty hard for me to sit here and suffer with the knowledge that the usual gang of idiots are out there somewhere sleeping in their beds and will soon be up and on the couch for the remainder of their day. Maybe that isn’t exactly what is on their to-do list for a Saturday, but it is for damn certain what would make up my days itinerary.

The last time I attended something work related on a Saturday was about three years ago when I made the mistake of attending a company picnic.

A few factors were at work to make my presence a reality, namely the promise of free food, and the fact that I was at the time, even more broke then I am right now. Almost living in my car type broke, which would have been a problem, because I didn’t have a car.

I got off the bus and made my way up to the park. I spotted the group of morons from a mile away. Their whiny brats were running around screaming their heads off while the people who usually sit at their desks all day eating food and drinking diet soda by the six pack, were now sitting in lawn chairs under novelty umbrellas eating food and drinking beer, by the twelve pack. Once I was a bit closer I noticed that among the kids running around and kicking a soccer ball was my former supervisor Marty Shoemaker. At work Marty was a real go getter type, and though I had an inkling, I didn’t realize how much of a dork he was until I saw him in his play time clothes. Long jockey socks were pulled up past his knee caps and damn near to his valuables, which themselves were barely covered by a pair of white tennis shorts that Daisy Duke herself, would have deemed too revealing. Thanks to innate evolutionary reflexes designed for survival, my eyes averted themselves automatically, preventing permanent blindness.

The fat lazy turds in their lounge chairs took a break from gluttony to give me a lethargic greeting courtesy of the gallons upon gallons of sugar induced insulin coursing through their veins. I smiled and began to load my plate with heaps of potato salad and refried barbeque beans all of which were being hovered over closely by a swarm of giant flies. I took my plate over to a picnic bench about thirty yards away from the crowd and began to choke down the slop.

About half way through it a group of kids started making their way in my direction. They were playing a game of tag and coming damn close to me. The group was being dictated rather harshly by a fat little kid of about age nine. He had curly blond hair and beady little eyes pushed deep inside his doughy face so that the fat from his forehead almost came together wit the fat from his cheeks making him look Chinese.

He gestured toward my potato salad. “Flies pooped on that.”

“Oh yeah? Well I like fly poop.”

“Ewww! He likes fly poop! He likes fly poop!” He waddled off repeating the phrase over and over again to the melody of ‘neener-neener-neener’.

After the little treasure had left me, my supervisor in short pants put the soccer ball into play with a swift kick, and approached my bench. He filled up a cup of water from a cooler that was sitting next to me and took a drink before crushing the paper cup in his hand and letting out a vociferous, “AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!” To let the people in Egypt know he had quenched his thirst. Then in what is easily the single most horrifying moment of my life he removed his t-shirt.

His skin was so white he was almost just an apparition of light with a voice. A conga line of loose hairs performed a tribal dance around his nipples and is concave chest sloped inward and then outward as it went down to his sagging gut. Somehow he was both skinny and fat. It was all I could do not to vomit. Once I had stifled the bile it took even more effort not to sarcastically compliment his tits which were as much of an eye sore as his wrap around Oakley’s hanging by their fluorescent sport strap around his neck.
“Bet you didn’t think I had a life outside of work did you Rusty?”
“Never really thought about it much Marty.”
“Well, come on and get out here, we need another player on the team. We’re going to get a game of V-ball going, hey Rick let’s get a game of V-ball going huh?”

Marty walked over to the group of immobile picnic participants still hovering around the food along with the insects. I followed behind because I needed more sustenance and I knew it would be my last meal all weekend. As I walked up, Marty was in mid sentence. “It’s like I was just telling Russ here, I got a life outside of that place! Just because sometimes I want to kill some of you, like this guy over here, doesn’t mean we can’t get along out in the real world huh?!” Marty threw a pasty white hunk of flab around my neck. His perspiration reeked of something awful and the sweat from is armpits trickled down my neck. If Miguel hadn’t showed up with a piñata causing Marty to relinquish his hold on me I would be in jail right now for murder.

All of the kids clamored up to the piñata. Miguel raised it high by hanging it over a tree. Each kid would walk up to it blind folded and get a chance to smack it with a whiffle ball bat. I stood a good distance away form all of this smacking on potato salad as the whole scene was a bit much for me.

I picked the perfect position to observe the festivities. Just as I swallowed my last bite of the mayonnaise based dish, one of the kids swung the whiffle ball bat way off target and knocked that fat kid who was standing in line next to hit the piñata, right in his shriveled little balls. The kid hit the ground and began wailing with tears. I swear to you it was the single most hilarious thin I had ever seen in my life. I chucked my paper plate in the trash can and walked toward the scene where every one was beginning to crowd around. As I walked past, I bent down slightly, pretending to make sure he was ok, and whispered in his ear, “Feel that kid? That’s justice.”

I hopped on the bus bound for the nearest shower to remove the stench of pasty old man.

Union Tribune Headline: Employee Goes Berserk!

2009-10-05T11:26:00.001-07:00

Two men sit at a picnic bench outside their place of employment. The fat one is trying to chomp down a salad with bacon bits sprinkled on the top, even though he knows that after this small victory he will eventually succumb to the pressure, and eat an entire tub of chunky monkey ice cream just before bed. His friend, we’ll call him the skinny one although only in frame of reference can he be referred to as such, because while he reaches no where near the enormity of his death defying cohort, he is definitely not starving. Neither of them is anything close to conventional attractiveness, something they have decided to combat by being infinitely inseparable, in some perverse logic of "two wrongs make a right".

Fatso looks up at skinny with a glob of ranch dressing loitering on his bottom lip. "It's so crazy."
"Yeah it is man. I barely knew the guy, but I still can’t believe he would do something like that."

"Yeah, I know he was in a band or something like that but I thought they were like some kind of crappy pop number y'know, you expect this kind of thing from like those people who listen to that satanic death metal or something like that, but not a guy who likes 1910 Fruit Gum Company, y'know?"

Fatso farts silently as he shovels a large piebald of ranch dressing, processed salad, and carrot shavings into his gaping orifice. Skinny doesn’t even flinch, his senses so well adapted to foul odors, since he possesses his own brand of ripe smell that could kill a daisy from seventy three yards. Two girls walk by them. One scrunches up her nose and stifles a gag. Neither Skinny, nor Fatso notice, and continue their conversation.

“He didn’t like to be bothered though I can tell you that." Fatso mumbles incoherently, the sound trying to escape through gaps in his mouth not crammed with food. "I mean, I would try to talk to him constantly y'know, to try and loosen him up. When you sit next to a guy for eight hours a day, I mean you know me I like to talk, but he would sit there reading his books, typing on his blog, and I just couldn’t seem to budge him. Tried to show him my Rubik's Cube, and he was just not interested, never took any of the food I offered him neither."

"What about your Journey stories? Did you tell him any of your stories about Journey?"

"Yeah and nothing! Y'know when you say you're into music and a guy sitting right next to you says that he went on tour with fucking Journey for a year and you don’t even bat an eye lash, well I start to question just what kind of a rocker you really are."

"I used to go over there and hang out by your desk all the time too, and I can tell you what I noticed, he seems like one of those germ-a-phobes, didn’t like me touching his stuff.”
Skinny sniffed and pulled his index finger across the bottom of his nose, dragging a long snail trail of snot across his finger, and wiping it on the table where in the future, other people will intend to eat.

"I just can’t believe he popped like that. I don't get it."

“Me neither, some people are just crazy."

Don't Talk To Me

2009-08-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

A rather disconcerting thought has taken hold of me: I have never had a boss that I genuinely liked. Having affection for an authority figure is something I never will have. I get along with one specific type of person. Exactly what type of person that is I can't say for sure, though I know that person does not wear shorts and flip flops simultaneously, nor do they appreciate anything produced by the band Nickel Back.

Usually this type of person is smart, with no motivation for money beyond the amount with which is necessary to live, and they generally look to do the very least that is to be expected of them without getting into trouble. No company would ever hire an intelligent person who is way to smart to buy into a ridiculous ploy to make the rich richer like money motivation. Therefore no boss and I shall ever get along because they simply do not put my type of person in a position of such power. I get along great with janitors, mail room clerks, and cafeteria workers, but anxiety fills the room like a broccoli fart when confronted by a supervisor, CEO, or Site Manager.

They are the same people I have run ins with at bars and had scraps with in high school. They are the same people who cut me off on the free way and have the brass balls or their heads so astoundingly far up their asses that they truly don't know they look ridiculous in their bright red corvette blasting Creed. If the two of us cannot peacefully exist in the real world, it is no wonder that we clash so hard within the confines of the cubicle jungle.

Everyday I come into work I avoid my boss. Her daily routine involves scanning the premises of the office, approaching every employee's desk, asking them awkward questions about their well being which are actually and obviously a guise to find out how well we are producing. I hate this game and refuse to play it. So everyday I am forced to maneuver my way through the cubicles like an office version of Pans Labyrinth.

I got away scot free today, but I swear the next time I get caught and she asks me how things are going, I'm going to tell her I think I have rickets.

Well, What Do You Expect From A Rich White Male?

2009-07-29T15:56:00.001-07:00

Every morning I clock into work, I feel like there should be a large hairy man in a wrestling singlet standing over me shouting, “Here comes the pain!”
Coming back from a three week vacation to sit inside a cubicle and be pushed around by my boss is tough after being trapped in a car and being pushed around by my band mates-a tough transition indeed.

But, so is the life I have chosen to live. I suppose I could put some actual effort into my job by attempting to take some interest in my contribution to the company, increasing my production, thereby bettering my chances at advancement. Ppppfff, yeah right, how punk is that? And become one of the Zombies man, the already dead?

No thanks.

That’s the mentality anyway, isn’t it? My band mates and I were at a diner somewhere while on tour. The waitress was complaining to us about her previous customers, real yuppie rich types, who after receiving their bill contributed zero for gratuity. Flo, our waitress, smelled like potato chips and bad decisions, and her demeanor was far less than pleasant which probably contributed to her being stiffed, but I kept this keen observation to myself. No, it wasn’t her gravel gargling voice and surly demeanor that got her stiffed, it was the fact that the rich are only rich because they pull these kinds of little stunts. My band mates all agreed.

Again, my trap stayed firmly shut. When surrounded by a pack of alpha males, to offer anything other than direct agreement with the group is liken to announcing you enjoy the taste of penis: It cements your position on the outside and let the teasing commence (I should note here that being on tour with my band is like being on tour with the cast of Punk’d. Wacky hi-jinx included having my socks cooked to oblivion in the microwave and being woken up nightly by my band banging out some music on their fully assembled instruments. Oh jolly good ribbing indeed! I had a pretty good plan to get them back though, I was going to wait until they each fell asleep and then I was going to slit their throats! But, I decided to save my plan for next tour if needed.).

So, yes, this is why the rich are so rich, eh? Because they hang on to the two bucks they owe Flo?

At the risk of being unpopular, most rich people are not trust fund children who garnered their vast wealth by inheriting the scratch of a deceased relative. Rich people are more than likely driven, focused individuals, who visualized a goal and obsessed over it until seeing it come to fruition. Even after that, they continue to let it dominate their lives because-and as much as this boggles the mind of the average Joe-working, and making money, is their passion in life. Nothing they can do will ever release its grip on their lives. They live to make money and they like living to make money. It is innate, it’s a sickness and a disease, and if they won’t broke today, they would be back on the corporate horse tomorrow, beginning all over again, their assent up the ladder.

I liken this sort of uncontrollable passion to that of the punk rock musician who, regardless of the fact that he never attains any sort of fame or fortune, continues to tour and record music. No matter what any working musician says, none of us have any idea why we do it. It’s inexplicable, it is something that burns inside of us, and as less stressful as our lives would be, none of us can break free of the addiction.

Only we get no returns other than a good show on a Wednesday night or fifty bucks in our gas tanks. At least the rich get the pool, the house, the entertainment system. But, the rich are bad, and we are the good guys.

From where I’m sitting, we’re both screwy, only one of us is broke.

Trapped In A Van

2009-07-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

Going on tour is like boarding a giant rollercoaster. At first it's exciting, then about half way through you want to puke and go home, then when it ends you want to immediately do it again.
Inexplicable is the human brain.

Right now I'm in Portland Oregon. A city which apparently, upon taking up residence, a person is immediately handed a gift bag full of meth. Oddly enough they hand out the same gift bag in Washington as soon as a person takes up residency, only theirs also comes with a gun.

We live in a country of apes and I am going bananas.

Ok, I gotta go load up our gear. It was nice talkin' to ya.

Crawling Across the West Coast - Bugs Tour 09

2009-07-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

I hate to write one of those gushing, oh I love the fans of that city we played last night, and oh thanks to every one blah blah blah type of things here, but man I love the fans of that city we played last night and oh thanks to everyone and blah blah blah!

Beer started flowing like sweet wine at around five o clock which resulted in one of our more drunken sets last night in Anaheim, but I guess feeble minds think a like because everyone in attendance seemed to be properly shnockered as well. Oh, booze, will I ever escape your firm grip? Nope!

We had a BBQ outside and we were grilling burgers and throwing back suds under the perfect Southern California climate of July. We went to the liquor store and were almost witness to a real live Los Angeles gang affiliated homicide! Wow, it was like being on set of a rap video! The antagonist, a large Latin American fellow, delivered one of the most peculiar threats I had ever heard. He said, "Hey holmes, you better hope I never catch you in prison, or I will fuck you."
I have plans to utilize this very insult in order to escape any future violence that might come my way. My plan is to say to my attacker, "Listen buddy, I'm gonna fuck you, oh yeah, that's right. I'm gonna take you out to a nice dinner, then I'm going to take you home and fuck you! Then we'll get to know each other better and have a beautiful relationship, and even if you cheat on me I will still take you back because I love you, and we have spent to much time together to throw it all away!" Hopefully this will detract my opponent, although I'm afraid that in reality, I will receive a severe beating just after I utter the part about having sex with him, leaving me battered and with a sexuality highly in question by all those within ear shot.

Not that there is anything wrong with being gay! Geez, gotta be careful what with everyone suspecting that the Bugs are the ring leaders of some sort of hate crime syndicate. I wanna make this clear: We are not homophobic. We, the Bugs think that two men in love is a beautiful thing. It's just when they start touching each others butts that it gets kind of weird. OK? Whew, glad we got that all sorted out.
Tonight we are in San Diego. The Secretions have been fantastic and if you are in the San Diego area tonight I suggest you come out and take in a night of entertainment.

Me, Ive learned my lesson, and will not be starting the booze intake until six pm. And I am very strict about this!
Tune in later for more updates from the road.

Check Out My Ink Bro

2009-06-29T19:04:00.001-07:00

Most people my age are covered with tattoos. Everyone looks like they were tied down and mauled by a cartoonist. I have yet to see a really good tattoo. Most of the time it is some contemporary image that is currently fashionable, but will no doubt be completely out of style in the next five minutes. Today's bitchin tattoo is tomorrows mortifying embarrassment. It's like permanently attaching bell bottoms to your skin. Or that mustache all of our dads had when we were two.

I have a tattoo. A faded, green, bland tattoo, liken to the kind you might find engraved on the leathery skin of your long deceased grand pops. The one that drank gin and bacon grease everyday of his life and still lived to be 86. Although mine isn't of a tiny devil holding a pitchfork with the words '23rd infantry - you can run but you'll only die tired' like your grand dad's, make no mistake, it is still a man's tattoo.

Cool tattoo's are cheap and badly drawn. They signify a time in your life or something about you that will never die.

Here is a list of acceptable and unacceptable tattoos, comprised by me, the final word in cool:

1.Flames Other than being horribly burned in a grease fire, there is no other acceptable reason for having an appendage permanently damaged by flames.

2.Dancing Ladies Having a dancing lady on your fore arm is a classic tattoo. Also it provides hours of entertainment as you sharpen your little womans skills on the dance floor of the flesh. For a tattoo like this it is acceptable to have an assortment of colors though one can never go wrong with a red dress and matching heels. Hair must always be black. And the image should always be on the inner forearm, of your left arm, so you can beat off to it when you are doing time in prison.

3. Guns Of course. And on a side note any man who has a gun tattoo should also have a minimum of four peices of heavy artillery and at least one of them has to be illegal to carry in the United States. Any spot on the body is acceptable except, and speaking to the ladies, for the area next to the hips, where the guns would be pointing down towards the crotch. Having these in such a spot just makes you look silly, because none of us will be able to stop thinking about how, as you age, those six shooters are eventually going to evolve into long range rifles.

4. Misfits Skull No other decorative is more preferable, in dressing up the floppy old man tit of a Vietnam veteran, than a faded war propaganda skull that reads, Born to Kill or Kill em All Let God Sort em Out. Directly opposite is the effect of a Misfits skull emblazoned on the chiseled pectoral of some twenty five year old beef cake, who, upon the reinstatement of the draft, would rush to Canada, quicker than the blood to my groin during an episode of the Golden Girls. If you are a twenty five year old beef cake, or a twenty two year old meat slab, rubbing shoulders with the hipster trash in the gas lamp quarter, then we can already assume that you are a devote fan of the Misfits. No need to advertise.

The 0's

2009-06-26T14:31:00.001-07:00

Last night I ate some beef. A burger to be exact, which for me is quite odd, because I don’t usually eat beef. Cows are not my preferred protein source. I am more of a chicken and turkey man. My body has had an interesting reaction to the flesh of the cow. Something I will call ‘Beef Shits’. Sounds like a great nick named for the one fat kid I the crew doesn’t it?
Probably you are asking yourself, ‘What exactly are Beef Shits?’ Well, I think it’s pretty clear but for the dimmer bulbs amongst you, I will elaborate.
Beef shits are a special kind of turd. Its firm texture and smooth exit is something of which I have never experienced before. They drop like cinder blocks almost cracking the bottom of the porcelain and all of it is done before your pants hit the floor!
And though you wouldn’t know it by looking at the thick, dark, perfectly symmetrical mass, but it is virtually odor free!
Amazing.
I can’t say enough about how fantastic a bowel movement I had today.
I’m going to the grocery store after work today to stock up on fresh ground chuck.

Moving right along…..the reason I ate the burger that gave me such a fantastic scatological experience is because I went to the Zeros show last night and got properly hammered. And afterwards at Rudfords Diner, I was so hammered that I forgot what I usually order. Ok, enough with the beef….the show was great. Probably the best thing about it, and the reason why it was actually a good show, in fact the best reunion show I have ever seen, was because they came out not trying to be a parody of themselves. An act the French call, ‘FEAR-esque). The first thing out of Javier Escovedo’s mouth was, ‘Jesus, I need glasses to read my set list, it’s come to this….’ and everyone laughed. A perfect precursor or things to come, it set the tone perfectly for the rest of the night. The band played a good mix of classic tunes and probably the coolest thing they did was to bust out a bunch of old Nuggets covers that I don’t think were ever recorded. And of course at the end of the set they covered the Seeds in tribute to Sky Saxon, lead singer of the Seeds, who died yesterday. A fact which went totally unnoticed, amidst the wide spread panic over the demise of Michael Jackson.

It was a good show.

Now back to work.

Cuz Yer A Wimp Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah

2009-06-25T20:27:00.001-07:00

I’M GOING OUT OF MY MIND OVER HERE. I AM TRYING, DESPERATLEY, TO KEEP MY HEAD ABOVE WATER IN OUR CURRENT ECONOMIC CLIMATE BUT MY HEAD IS REELING SO MUCH FROM THE AMOUNT OF DEBT I AM IN I HAVEN’T EVEN REALIZED THAT FOR THE LAST FOUR SENTENCES I HAVE BEEN TYPING IN NOTHING BUT CAPS.
Sorry.
It’s pretty bad out here in the States. Sure, we have seen worse, but I have never seen worse, so for me, this is pretty bad. Times are tough and up until recently I hadn’t felt the strain. Until my job started really cracking down, and not in their usual way. No, this is something different. They are actual sweeping people out the door and I am one of them. No matter what I do, if my sales are up, my attendance is down, if my customer service rating is high, my morale is too low, it makes now sense, and there is seemingly nothing I can do about it. To make matters worse, after I get done being brutally punished here on the job front, I have to go home and hear about how North Korea and their wing nut of a dictator have nuclear missiles casually pointed at America. Hmmm, sweet dreams! I am a man of anxiety. Too much anxiety. When I talk to people about my concern for the country, I am met with equal feelings of unease, but after a while it becomes apparent that while my fellow man indeed feels a certain amount of anguish at the potential threat of a nuclear attack, mine is something bordering on total panic.

Probably I need the help of a hundred physiatrists, but since I am to lazy to seek out peace of mind, I’ll just have to remain at ease, by staying as drunk as Carrots Tops plastic surgeon (I know that joke came totally out of left field and was completely without reason, but I thought of that joke today and just had to fit it in somewhere and besides, since when does anyone need a reason to slam Carrot Top?).

Let’s talk about something else.

Tonight I am going to see the Zeros play a reunion show at Bar Pink. Should be a hoot. If the hoards of bands that fill the clubs night in and night out in this city sounded like the Zeros, instead of sounding like themselves, then I would be Head Marcher in the San Diego is the Greatest City for Punk Rock Parade. But they aren’t and I’m not. So I am coming out of my show attending retirement tonight, I am hopeful, not to be disappointed. Oh, what an ass, scratch that last remark from the record. What a lame thing to say. Shame on me! I am not going to tonight’s show expecting anything. I never go to a show expecting anything. If the Zeros suck tonight, well then, they sucked. It won’t change the fact that I still love the weathered relics that are the existing recordings of the bands work. It will just mean that I have seen better shows, a conclusion that I find myself coming to often, when I come to see older punk bands giving it a go again, after many years. The thing with the Zeros show though, is that it is all original members and although I know absolutely not one of them, nor do I know anything of their reasons for reforming for us tonight, I just feel like the are doing it for all the right reasons, even though I don’t even know what a ‘right reason’ is.

I will say one thing about the 0’s though, which is, so far, through my own experience I think they place themselves a bit high in the ladder of important punk bands of all time. Sure they are San Diego’s claim to fame on the seventies punk sound side (Battalion Of Saints being our claim to fame on the hardcore side. A title won only because they were the only San Diego band that actually toured, not because their songs were anything spectacular), but they ditched us and went to Los Angeles. But people still talk about their band thirty some odd years later, and in the world of punk rock, where it is so fashionable not to respect a group that worked hard enough, and played well enough, to garner that sort of recognition, I salute the boys from Chula, and am very excited to see their set.

If some of you are confused at that blurb, seeing as how it began as a praise, then sort of drifted into a slam, then floated off subject on a raft made of indifference toward the Battalion of Saints, I can only blame the massive doses of anti-anxiety pills I have been consuming, which side effects include sudden mood swings.

Check Out My Ink Bro

2009-06-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

SOAP

2009-06-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

I was scrubbing my personals in the shower last night, just before I performed my trademark maneuver of shifting the wrong way within the tiny confines of our shower, and knocking all of the shampoo bottles, moisturizers, and body lotion a married man has lined across his shower shelf, all over the floor of the tub, further disproving the commonly agreed upon fact that I would do well in prison.
As I was correcting my mistake I noticed the back of the label on one of my bottles of body wash soap. It had step by step directions that I am hopeful are actually a requirement of the soap company put forth by some sort of safety organization and not realized upon the soap companies own volition. They were fairly simple if not sexually ambiguous.
1. SQUIRT IT
2. LATHER IT
3. SCRUB IT
4. RINSE IT
Hmm. I am at least grateful that they didn’t incorporate the word ‘bro’ after each step though it was definitely implied. Since when does everything have to be advertised like a beer commercial? If the manufacturers of soap, wanted to be apart of a hip product for the young and reckless demographic of society, they should have gotten in to the business of producing prophylactics or booze. But, they didn’t. They make soap.
I picture the CEO of a particular soap agency bursting into an ad campaign meeting, the result of a mid life crisis, wearing board shorts and sunglasses, declaring that the soap industry is going to ‘get DIRTY bro’.

I don’t want dirty soap. I want clean soap that is naturally opposed to dirt. And I don’t appreciate the blatant reference to my phallus on the back of the bottle. What about the rest of my body anyway? I have other things that need clearing rather than ‘it’ y‘know.

After being offended in the shower, I went to brush my teeth, and noticed my tooth paste had printed in big bold letters across the front, Now With Tartar Control for Fresh Breath and Whiter Teeth!
There ya go; I knew I could count on the toothpaste company to be infinitely square.

I'll Shave You...

2009-06-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just before work this morning I caught my brother shaving his balls with my razor. I less than politely asked just what in the heck he thought he was doing. He paused, the razor halfway around the circumferance of his left plum, and while still holding his lathered nuts he said, "I didn't think you would mind."
The amount of incoveniences to others this man has justified by applying this motto is endless.
F#@k it.
I gotta go to work.

Trapped In A Cubicle. As Written By Charles Bukowski

2009-06-10T17:43:00.001-07:00

I sat down at my desk and reached for the twelve ounce can of Budweiser I keep in my drawer. I cracked it. Poured it into my coffee cup and drank the whole thing down in one swig. I put away four more of those before finally sitting down to start my work.

My boss came up just as I had wiped the froth from my lips. I didn’t have time to pop in a stick of chewing gum so I tried to keep my mouth shut while I spoke. She had a good build. Thick juicy breasts and a good fat ass. She started in on me about this and that, the same old bullshit. “Chinaski, your sales are slipping. Shape up.”
“Maybe I could shape you up sometime, baby.”

I’m ugly as shit but she went for it. I pulled my giant, veiny, purple, dog out of my pants. She liked that. “Cute, Chinasky. Just watch your ass.”
She walked away from my desk and I sat back and hooked up an IV of straight gin while I took a few nips of some brandy I keep under my chair.

After a few calls it was time for break. The old bitch caught me staggering to the break room. “Goddammit Chinaskyi. What do you think you’re doing taking a break?”
“I gotta get a cup of Joe. That alright with you?”
I took Joe to his desk and let him out of the cup before going back to get a cup of coffee. I nixed the coffee and instead I downed an entire bottle of window cleaner I found next to the sink. It tasted good but hardly did hell for my buzz.

Sure is a god damned hell hole here. A man can’t be expected to sit for eight hours a day and endure the same old thing over and over. It’s the same method the China men used to torture boys in the war.
I don’t want to think about all that damn shit and piss though. I’ve got a job to do. A fuckin damn shit ass job to do.
I cracked the tops of off seventy six Milwaukee’s Beasts and slugged em all in one gulp.
I went on Mickey Rourke’s blog.
Then I went to work on the bastards.
Shit.

I Hate Teenagers

2009-06-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

I hate kids.
Specifically teenagers.

Outside our office there is a huge parking lot. To the rest of the employees and I the parking lot marks our last few moments of freedom. It's black tar emanating heat back on your face is symbolic of the hell for which you are about to enter. Once your car has turned from the free life feeling of the road into the parking lot you have crossed the Rubicon. Calling in sick is officially no longer an option. A commitment has been made to work. All freedom has been relinquished for the next eight hours. God have mercy on us all.

But to a teenager, or a young child on the brink of adolescence, it is a concrete playground. Asphalt as far as the eye can see perfect for gliding by freely on ones skateboard device, throwing tennis balls up against the walls of the building, or navigating an RC car throughout the automobiles. Oh joy.

Today a group of kids showed up and began partaking in such activities right outside of my window. Don't get me wrong I do not have a window office. It's more like a porthole that they accidentally moved me in front of. I'm sure soon enough they will realize their mistake and relocate me to the basement. Anyway, kids have fun and kids play. Fine. But personally I would rather not be reminded all day of my wasted youth by having a bunch of kids outside my window laughing in my face while I sit inside with a noose around my neck enduring the glow of my computer screen while they get the hot sunlight.

Finally I had enough. I got up from my desk, on one of my designated break times of course, and went outside to greet the future pencil pushers or ditch diggers of America. Every child deserves to have at least one visit from the ghost of wage slave future. A little dream crushing will be good for them.

There were four kids, a black kid, a fat kid, a white kid, and a Mexican. As I got closer I realised that they were dribbling a basketball shooting imaginary hoops, and while doing so, they were smoking. I paused for a moment. These kids didn't look but thirteen years old. The way they were puffing on those cigarettes drove me absolutely white bat turds. Long confident puffs, the kind of arrogance that can only be present when accompanied by an even greater amount of ignorance. I remember what it was like to have the brass ones to eyeball some square who just came out of an office building to tell you to amscray. No forget that, I had character, I had respect for my elders. You heard it here folks. Generation X had class.

"This isn't a playground alright kids, you guys gotta beat it." Ha. A little intimidation ought to send those kids scurrying away like church mice.
The little white kid took a long drag of his cigarette and replied on the exhale, his words coming out a puff of smoke. "It's a free country."

"Damn right it is a free country. Free enough that a man has rights. And one of those rights is the right to buy property. And the right to keep people off of his property. Another man has the right to refuse to move from that property sure, but guess what happens then? Are you willing to die for your right to stand on my asphalt?" The fat kid giggled.

"Whats so funny tons of fun? Every kid here needs to stop smoking except you. Anything that goes into your mouth that isn't a Double Bacon Cheeseburger is an improvement." The Mexican kid who was so stereotypical, he looked like someone had placed a HOMIES figurine in the same cupboard that one kid put the Indian in that stupid book.

I hummed the theme to 'Low Rider' and modified the ending. "DA DA DA DA DA DA DA...DA DA DA DA shut up."

The black kid didn't say anything so I addressed him next. "Listen Sammy Davis, and I want the rest of the rat pack to hear this as well. I know you kids think I'm an asshole but let me explain something to you. Inside those walls is your future. In about four or five years you are going to get your first job. From that day forward you will spend forty hours a week, eight hours a day, doing something you hate. Your only saviour will be those cigarettes, which by that time the thrill of which will have worn off, their only remaining purpose will be to expedite your highly anticipated death."

I think I actually moved them because, before I left, they warmed up to me which left me touched. I returned back to the office and sat down to finish the rest of my day.

The End

Quick note. In order to get an accurate depiction of the story, in the last paragraph, replace the phrase 'warmed up' with 'delivered a horrendous beating' and also replace 'touched' with 'horribly disfigured' and finally, the last sentence should be re-written entirely using the words emergency room and reconstructive surgery.

Slacker Manifesto

2009-06-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

Something that needs to be understood about me is that although I put up a heavy front of pomposity and arrogance, I can assure you, that beneath this exterior lies true genius. And beneath that lies an even greater genius. And even further below, beneath that genius, lies an intelligence so brilliant that it goes far beyond your limited comprehension.

With that said, let's move forward.

One of my bosses at work has a major problem with me. Coincidentally this is one of my bigger bosses who has a rather big problem. Since the dawning of my employment he has produced the same tired argument which is why, if it was my choice to work here, do I insist on being so miserable. Let's get something straight. I did not choose to work here. In our country we are forced to choose. This is supposed to create the illusion that we ever really had a choice.

'Ok', he might say, 'but if you are here shouldn't you make lemonade out of your lemons.'
'Boy, you sure a stupid dick.' I might say if I had any testicular fortitude, before rebuttling, 'And yes I should and will, but with the ones I have left over, I am going to throw them at your head for making me work eight straight hours, five days a week, to prepare for you this cool refreshing drink, for which I get a mere sip. I mean, if done tactfully I can get away with it, so why not?'

I can tell you why not. It's because with dignity, is not the way he would prefer me to except his dominion. He and his bosses want shiny happy people smiling brightly in the face of those who look down on them as subversive servants. My boss doesn't care about my well being. I am capital. I am a tool, whose purpose is to facilitate the accumulation of their wealth. I'm supposed to be motivated by the small cut of profit in the form of a wage, that is dangled in front of my face. Which is no more than a fraction of a fraction of a minute percentage, of the maximum profit taken in by the firm. Which considering the cost of living in today's climate is barely enough to retain my status as a member of the lower middle class.

This is not news to me of course. But much like Mike Nelson and his robot pals, in order to keep my sanity I have to perform my duties with a heavy amount of sarcasm towards my superiors. I take pleasure throughout the day by resisting them at every turn, revealing from underneath the rocks of their corporate double speak, the steaming pile of turds that lies beneath.

So it has come to pass that here and now, I present to you, the oath of the slacker.

Say it with me now everyone.

I will do only as much as I have to do.
I will remain as insubordinate as is possible while still not technically doing anything that could constitute a legal termination.
I will make jokes at the expense of my superiors behind thier backs leaving no possible trace that it was me although they will know darn well it was.
I will not be money motivated.
Bonuses and incentives to work harder will have no effect on me.
Instead of going the extra mile for the customer I will make it to the finish line in the exact amount of time that qualifies for average.
I will be impossible to tame.
I will be impossible to terminate.

Slackers of all countries, unite!

Ah, Did You Miss Me?

2009-06-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

sdfiuwenfowin hehe, sorry folks, what I meant so say was gijn&jfhwe kdfkwkfk, uh, let's try again, you see the thingg is sfmsmfoegmjssill

Dagnabbit! Sorry everyone, but I have been experiencing an extremely rare case of writers block. My problem is not thinking of things to write about, but rather, I have lost the ability to literally type the words. I can't seem to write for more than five minutes without sofiasfoiasfnaofina, sdofiqwsfoiqn, aw! See?! As I was saying, I can't write a substantial amount of words successively without having to pause every five minutes and slap a monkey. So you can understand the reason for my absence.

Probably most of you thought I was busy chirping or flittering or whatever the heck every body else is doing these days instead of blogging. But, no. I have been awaiting the arrival of my Ermese Chimpanzee to be imported from Africa because it was getting both tiring and risky to sit with my laptop at the San Diego Zoo, rushing up to the gorilla cage every five minutes to introduce the big galute to the buisness side of my palm.

Everything is fine now though and the gorilla, Bobo, and I have since made up. I have agreed to show him how to type and he has increased my poo flinging distance by seventeen feet.

Tuna Sandwich

2009-05-29T20:25:00.001-07:00

Although not fully the land of the liberal, I’d say our society has come a long way in their reduction of racism and prejudice. I’m no historian, but considering that just sixty years ago, black people couldn't’t vote, and women had to ride in the back of the bus, I’d say our progress toward equality is that of a husband who still beats his wife, but now has a strict policy to lay off the face.

One object of prejudice that has proved rather sticky is that of the tuna fish.

Listen, I hate red meat and turkey makes me sleepy. So when it comes to lunching at work, there is only one alternative, and that is the tuna fish sandwich.

However, it’s not more than two seconds of sitting down at my desk, unwrapping the cellophane which conceals it’s salty freshness, that the talking heads begin to form around my desk saying things like, “eww, you like tuna?” Or far off cries of, “Hey, who brought tuna?” And ogling me as if I just wet myself.

What boggles my mind is that apparently, there seems to be a fairly high market for the tuna fish. A fact I have totally fabricated based on the following theory concocted by myself: Demand for tuna appears to be grossly high. Now I am no economist but the production cost for one can of tuna I think comes in somewhere around half a penny. So what that means is that the producers of said product are in fact charging 89 percent above production cost. Still, the public has shown that it’s demand for the tuna fish is so high that they will pay any price for it. The only other product capable of boasting that kind of consumer loyalty, is black tar heroin.Thank God for Government mandated price ceilings, or the fat cats over at Bumblebee would have no limit to thier price gouging. To further my point, consider the amount of excess supply with which the tuna industry is faced. There is more tuna in the sea then there are people in China, which should cause a gross excess supply, yet still the public manages to consume it at such a high rate, that we remain at a market equilibrium.

So where are all these other tuna lovers? Every time I pull out said product on rye, I am ostracized by the public! How can an American classic such as the Prince of the Pacific, the Mayor of Mayonnaise Town, be so badly oppressed by the bourgeois status quo?! And the fact is, as I proved, people love tuna fish yet they are all chowing down in the closet! The only other product which can contend with its popularity using the same logical reasoning I applied to the tuna fish above, is the cup-o-noodles. Another dish one can’t enjoy without being made into a social pariah. Before my noodles are even done simmering beneath their paper lid, after being extracted from the microwave, I will have already heard a pithy of phrases such as, “Oh sodium soup huh?” Or “Those things are really bad for you y’know?”

Fine! Stay in the closet, all of you!

I will wave my freak flag high and continue to fill the office with the sweet salty scent of the Chicken of the Sea! And suck it down with a styrafoam cup of cardboard noOdles! To the masses, I say this: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Slave Of The Month

2009-05-22T20:19:00.001-07:00

Work has laid down a firm policy that no one is any longer allowed to read in between phone calles or watch t.v. on their computers. One individual in particular, to be set within the cross hairs of the higher-ups, is yours truly. The scene went something like this:

Big fat ugly boss approaches Russell's desk

Boss: No more reading at your desk.

Boss exits stage left and Russell begins to grumble incoherently

Rats! Reading on company time was one of this jobs greatest perks. Without reading or catching up on my blog all day, what am I going to do in this joint? Work?

Well thats exactly what I have done and incidentally, something of anomaly has occurred. I am actually doing well. Sure my writing has suffered. My speling and grammer has got all no good and my vocabulary has gotten really, really, really, really, bad. But, I'm making tons of money, for someone else. Hooray, I'm responsible!

At work I do my absolute best to go unnoticed. Usually this is a fairly easy task as long as I manage to restrain myself from screaming obsinities at customers or co-workers. I like going unnoticed, being the ninja employee, because whether or not it's for praise or punishment, I do not like to talk to the powers at be, ever.

So you can imagine my horror coming into work, the day after being the number one salesman in the office, and finding all of my bosses and supervisors gathered around my desk. It was all, 'Hey, there's the number one sales man!' and 'Can we get you a cup of coffee big man!' Ho, ho, and humdy dumb, ya big jerks. You're welcome for making your pockets so much obsenely fatter than they already were, now would you please vacate the premises! A man with a shred more integrity than I, may have conjured up a retort of that nature, but like the limp dicked dope that I am, thier praise was accepted with a spineless grin. A faux gesture of gratitude which almost caused my teeth to burst forth from my face, caused by the pressure of a thousand offensive curse words, pressing against the back of my Mr. Bean-esque grin. The kind of smile a special ed student might wear after eating a bucket of paste. My damn for vitriol held steady though and soon the group of pigs dispersed. Good thing it had too. My one day of geat sales doesn't afford me the tenure to be able to act such an ass. Some guys are so productive and thus so valuable to the company that they could show up without pants with 'LETS PARTY' shaved into their pubes, and wouldn't even cause mangement to bat an eye. Someone like me? The boss will have me filing for unemployment if he hears me fart the wrong pitch (for those of you who don't know, a proper fart is in the key of A).

This week has been a whole different ball game though. I actually count. I have developed a name instead of a number. And the worst part about it is that I am starting to adapt. It's becoming a part of my routine. Whereas before my work routine consisted of doing the least amount I possibly could while still retaining my job, now I find myself actually trying. Only because they've taken away all my toys like reading and internet. Now I have nothing to do but my job. It stinks.

It scares me because taking pride in ones job is the last gasp of the loser. For years I could never understand people who actually liked to perform well at work. It was mostly old people, although I did notice it alot in people who weren't mentally retarted (Zing! Take that Grandma!). People who actually like to do well at work, do so either because they know that they will never do anything of worth in thier time, or they have already failed at whatever they were trying to achieve. Anyone can do well at work. Anyione can do it, and so it's the safest way for failures to feel mildly like winners. It's pathetic. But my only options are to become one of them, a zombie waiting for the weekend, or else get canned.

My brain is under assault for forty hours a week.

Only one thing can be done to fight off the damage that my job is doing to my creativity.

I must watch as much television as I possibly can.

Try your hardest evil occupation, but I will combat your efforts to make me into another one of the dim American masses, by immediately coming home and ingesting hours upon hours of 'MUST SEE' television. And I'm going to eat tons of food!

Ha, you won't snuff me out, you evil bastards!

How To Not To

2009-05-16T07:48:00.001-07:00

My workload this week has prohibited me from posting here for the past few days. So, I am taking just a brief moment out of my eight straight hours of television I plan to consume today, as I do every Saturday and Sunday (Oh it's glorious! The wife leaves at 7 am so if I wake up to see her off, it affords me eight straight hours of tube ingestion, allowing one hour for lunch. Some people call this type of behavior avoidance, but I try to stay away from people who say things like that), to put a few thoughts on screen, regarding self help books.

Self Help books may be the butt of many jokes. However, I find them to be exactly what there cover suggests: largely effective in the helping of ones self. Last week was a disappointment as I was expecting to receive the books, How to Stop Obsessive Thoughts and Overcoming Social Anxiety. I couldn't stop thinking about their arrival, but I was too nervous to go out and greet the postman when they arrived. So that was a bust.

I did manage to overcome my fears on Wednesday though, and other than offending my African American landlord who was gardening with his shirt off, by making the comment as I passed, "Hey you look like you're losing weight Jeff. But then again, black is slimming!", I was able to retrieve my book, Small Penis? Big Deal! from the postman, without any problems. Sorry If I am a little preoccupied but I am instant messaging my cyber pen pal from Japan, Yoshi Mitsubishi, whom I just related the story about my landlord to. I'm pretty sure he found it hilarious as he replied back to me with a hearty 'ROR!' which for any of you not familiar with Internet jargon means to convulse with laughter, though I am always suspicious as to whether or not my epistolary interlocutor is in fact, actually audibly laughing.

Other notable bull crap from this past work week is that they replaced my long time cubicle neighbor, a nice man named Jerry who never said a word which was fine by me, with his complete antithesis. John, the new employee who they have sat right next to me, is your typical annoying know it all. He sits next to me chattering all day long while simultaneously exercising his fore arms with one of those grips that you squeeze back and forth. His arms must be bionic because he squeezes the thing all day performing something lke nine thousand reps, all the while spouting off about politics and the economy using words like fiscal and diminishing returns, which I have yet to challenge him on whether or not he even knows the meaning. And he smells like cheese.

To boot, I was horribly emasculated when I curiously tried my hand at squeezing out a few reps on Johns little kung fu grip device, and found that I could barely eek out three or four girlish reps. So now I have it in my head that I need to work out more which is a near impossibility for me, because number one, I barely have enough time to get through all of my television watching as it is, and two, and I don't know if it is this way for anyone else, but whenever I work out I always feel extremely gay. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay, but it's just that I find it particularly uncomfortable to do anything that can be described as 'manly' which also requires sweating and grunting.

I would love to elaborate more on my distaste for physical exercise and it's homosexual connotations, but the postman has just arrived with my self help book, How To Finish What You've Started.

See you Monday.

Reverse Stupidity

2009-05-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

As I've stated before, my occupation involves customer service over the telephone. Our tools for work are large, outdated apparatuses, that look like orthodontic headgear designed by Nintendo, which rest on top of our heads, leaving our hands free to click clack away on our computer keyboards. The monotony of it all is enough to make a man do all he can not to commit mass genocide. One after another the calls come in, each one preempted by a beeping sound that resonates within your skull like the high pitched shrill of death come ripping.

So, of course everyone at the job will do whatever they can, minus pawning there work on to someone else (an act executed only by the most despicable of employees) to get out of having to receive calls. Throughout the years I have learned a lot of tricks of the telephone my friends. Things I can't entirely share with you here though I will say some of my favourites, are hitting the extension button to make an outbound call to a number with no answering machine or resident household member, so the phone just rings and rings.....the ringing will get tiring after a while and our calls are monitored so better to just pull the old 'excuse me while I put you on hold ma'm, we are having MAJOR system problems'. Then you just put them on hold for ten or twenty minutes while you see whats new over at The Onion .

Now, we are able to transfer calls to each other as sometimes a customer requests an action that is beyond our means, forcing us to pawn them off onto another department with the proper capabilities. If done courteously and with enough care, this is a standard business practice that leaves no love loss between co-workers. So I wasn't surprised when my phone produced a call with another one of my associates on the line requesting to transfer.

A few quick notes about the employee in question. His name is Brummel. At least for now his name is Brummel. Because on the off chance that he were to walk by my computer right now and see me hacking away at my Blog, there is a good chance that he might shove his snout into my business and see what I am typing. As he often likes to come by and see what I'm doing, because he finds it absolutely fascinating that I would partake in such a faggy past time as writing or reading.

It goes without saying that Brummel is a walking, barely talking, cave man. Someone who all of us have to deal with in contemporary society. A man who never graduated high school mentally, yet has seemingly surpassed his previous status of lunk to ogre, physically.

Brummel walks around the office with his balls slunk over his shoulder swinging his dick like Charlie Chaplain. Arrogance emanates off him like Axe body spray. Making cat calls to the women of the office, 'hey jiggles!' While reaching out to fake pinch them as they walk by. All of the equally moronic women, with more whorish leanings, seem to actually like it. Which further baffles me as to how our country maintains it's level of superior sovereignty.

In short the guy is a goon. A Spike TV watching, UFC cheering, Coors slugging, tap out t-shirt wearing, neanderthal.

And he has just called me for a transfer. The scenario went something like this:

Russell: delivers appropriate greeting

Brummel: (laughs) Oh, it's you. Hey listen man I'm at the end of my shift and have to go some where so I am giving this call to you, thanks.

Next thing I know an elderly women is on the phone and I spend the next twenty minutes repeating myself every other word too this bitter old bag of bones.

Perhaps I didn't explain this properly, but it is company policy that even if you get a call 60 seconds before the conclusion of your shift, an employee MUST take the call. Yes it's a drag, and yes, it is one of our worst fears. As many of my co-workers have often been stuck on calls for hours past their departure time. It is no laughing matter I assure you! But you still take it, because to pawn that kind of torture off on to someone else is inhumane. And guess who was also on his last minute of work but didn't have time to shout that fact to Brummel? Me!

After I got off the call with the oldest women in the world, I was pretty steamed.

I went over to Brummel's desk, angrily scribbled my complaint on a post it note, and stuck it to one of the many magazines he has laying on his desk with big bulging shirtless men on the cover. Magazines like Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and MEN MEN MEN...OH BOY LOOK AT ALL THE MEN! Were all strewn about his desk as well as a few dumbbells (the man works out at work) and various empty meal replacement bar packages. It's like I work with Body By Jake.

My note is sure to cause some unwanted confrontation, but I had to speak my mind because if I were to let this go, it will only lead to further, much worse, situations. Below is my depiction of what my future will be like if I don't put my foot down on this:

Scene: Office environment. Brummel walks up to Russell's desk carrying a large stack of papers dropping them on his desk.

Brummel: Here are some papers I don;'t feel like filling out. Also I got a speeding ticket that I need you to pay and my girlfriend needs Tampax. So if you could stop by the Safeway on your way home, and also I need you to go to 24 hour fitness tonight and work on my delts, thanks.

Russell:(frantically) uh, hey!

Brummel turns menacingly

Russell:(retracting) Should I use free weights or cables?

1-B-6

2009-05-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

Caffeine floods my ventricles, like that scene in the Shining, the liquid gushes toward my heart. Cholesterol from freshly ingested eggs and bacon oozes through my veins, hardening on the walls of my intestines, like a fat man on a water slide; it damns the flow of other vital fluids. Caffeine now taking effect, my heart beats to the rhythm of a ball and paddle game being engineered by someone on Meth. Upon the absence of blood, my left arm goes numb, and I hit the floor. Within minutes I have faded from reality, not before receiving one last thought: ‘My life has been a waste of time.’

********AND...SCENE!*******

Hoof! Easy on the Dostoevsky before work! Part of the above is true though. I do drink an awful lot of coffee (to the minute, I have drank a 7-11 twenty ounce cup, and four cups of my own homemade brew, and I haven’t even punched in yet). My coffee habit has evolved at an extremely rapid rate in the last few years. Before I started working in offices, someone couldn't have forced me to slug down a cup of mud. Now it's only a matter of time before A&E shows up to document my addiction. As I stated before though, this was not always the case.

My furthest memories of my distaste for coffee go back to when I was a kid, smelling it on my mom’s hot breath, as she kissed me goodbye in the mornings. Coffee until recently always appended itself to the image of my mother with frazzled hair, in a bath robe, thick sagging bags under her eyes, her arm hitched at a right angle, clasping on to a novelty mug (Picture the Sunday Comic Strips Cathy screaming, 'I Don't Do Mondays!'), it’s rim caked with faded lipstick from previous caffeine indulgences.

Other coffee involved scenes from my childhood that waned me off of the legal amphetamine for so long in my adult life include being exposed to my grandmother and my aunt adroitly slurping from their mugs like robots on a ride at Disneyland. Always hanging on to their mugs with both hands, they would follow a pattern that could be counted on a watch. Every five seconds it went, lift, slurp, down, and lift, slurp, down. SLUUUURRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPP. And the slurps were always followed by a MMMMMMM, or an AAAAHHHHHH, on the exhale. Never once did they acknowledge each other beyond making some banal comment about Penny’s having a sale, or other such notable bull crap. That kind of thing will drive a kid nuts when he’s trying to watch cartoons. And do you believe those broads had the audacity to ask me to turn down my funnies so they could hear themselves slurp!

So that’s why I hated coffee for so long. Plus I always thought it tasted like butt. Once when I was about thirteen though, one of my friends, who I’m pretty sure developed a cocaine problem in his later adolescents, introduced me to the delicious effects massive amounts of sugar and cream can have on a cup of joe. One morning he and I got ripped on free caffeine they were giving away at his church. At first I was mad I had to be dragged to his place of worship (hey all I signed up for was a sleep over, not to be a part of a day in the life of the Henderson’s), but after having sucked down enough cups of coffee to mimic the effects a tiny amount of speed would have had on my young body, I was offering up comments on my feelings toward the prejudice of the King James version of the Good Book in no time!

A few years passed and I never really touched the stuff. Until I got my first office job and I noticed everybody performing the exercise of lift, slurp, down, in unison. If you can’t beat em, join em, I thought. So I poured my first adult cup of coffee, which is a mostly black liquid, mixed with a moderate amount of cream and sugar.

Blech!!!! I could barely choke it down! How do people drink this molasses? It tastes like burnt motor oil! I promptly through it in the trashcan and perused the menu on the coffee machine for a selection less stiff. Ahh, the coffee machine, let me take a moment and explain the mechanics of this device, which should be ever so ubiquitous in any respectable office environment.

Other companies I’m sure have a hand in the coffee machine business, but I have always found the most accommodating machine to be produced by the company, Rainbow Vending. Their machine has all the trimmings one needs in order to compose a quick fix of java effete of mandatory line waiting, like you will find at a Starbucks, or any other bustling coffee shop. The cups come in two sizes, large (12oz) and small (8oz). Amongst the different selection of coffees, we have the Gourmet Roast which is a buck rather than 75 cents, Decaf Coffee which is only a measly 50 cents, and also a few bourgeois drinks like Gourmet Hot Chocolate or French Vanilla Cappuccino.

French Vanilla seemed like just the ticket to me, my decision being based on the fact that I like Vanilla, and my affinity for Plastic Bertrand . From the moment its foam touched my lips giving way to the warm liquid that followed, I knew I had found my preferred morning treat. ‘C’mon baby,” I said to my coffee, ‘You’re my new Morning thang.’

To seasoned coffee drinkers, gulping down the frothy mocha of my choice is looked upon the way someone who prefers smoking cloves is looked at by a black lunged war veteran, who has been puffing unfiltered lucky strikes since Nam. Not that that ever bothered me, that is until, I started getting really fat. At first I credited this to old age. I was after all approaching my twenties. Refusing to let go of my heroin addict figure, I decided to investigate as to what exactly was causing this rapid weight inflation. I mean Geez; I was ten pounds away from tits!

Sure enough it was those French Vanillas, which boast a whopping 200 calories a pop, most its caloric value coming from fat. And I was on three or four a sitting. Now that I was heavily addicted to the slight caffeine high though, I had to make the switch to the nearly effete of any calories at all beverage, of straight black coffee with a minimal amount of powdered (must be powdered mind you) cream. Or, to put it in Rainbow Vending terms, a 1-B-6.

1-B-6 led to large coffees at 7-11, which led to large coffees at Starbucks, which led to drinking entire pots of coffee at home, before slugging a large coffee at 7-11, while nibbling on chocolate covered espresso beans.

So, thus is a comprehensive guide, to the development of my caffeine addiction.

Darn, only five minutes to the beginning of my shift. Time for a 1-B-6.

And the ride continues!

Whats Another Word For Balls...Nuts!

2009-05-11T20:33:00.001-07:00

Aside from the first time I got kicked in the plums, enduring this day at work has been the single most painful experience of my life. Gladly, would I exchange it for that first blast to my barnacles. Which, probably wouldn’t hurt that bad if I were kicked there now. Since my job has whittled away what little nut sack I had, so that now all I have left is what looks like two peanuts wrapped in a chewed up piece of bubblegum. Good thing all the radiation, radiating off these headsets, has no doubt nuked all of my sperm, otherwise I would have to live through the shame of having my son being fathered by George Mcfly. Which, if I don’t get out of this hell hole soon, is exactly the man I am sure to become.

Considering everything this place has already taken from me, I’m sure you can understand that I have made it a habit, NAY, a duty, to take as much back as I can on a daily basis in the form of office supplies. Aside from basic prizes like scotch tape, ball point pens, staplers, paper, note books, and scissors. My tree of employment offers up many more a tantalizing fruit. One of the best things it offers up is the copy machine. Oh, yes, good bye Kinkos, see you in hell UPS, I’ve got my own means of duplication! Only as of late, since my hobby of playing punk rock has been a bit on the skids, my necessity for mass producing images on paper has in the past few months, waned. But I can’t just let that thing sit there! It’s freakin’ free copies man!

So a few of the guys here at work decided it would be funny to copy our nuts. Rather homoerotic, yes I’ll grant you that, but you have to grant me it’s hilarity. You haven’t seen your love apples until you’ve seen them blown up in black and white Xerox!

Ok, true, it started to become less and less funny after the tenth or twelfth time, but we had to do something with these modern works of art. So, pushing the proper buttons on the machine we were able to blow Keith Johnson from sales, balls up to the enormous size of about one foot by one foot. Johnson was picked on purpose based on the fact that he had the weirdest, therefore most hilarious, looking pair of kiwis.

So we decked the halls with Johnson’s hollies under the caption, “WORK MAKES ME NUTS!”

If we get caught for this, no doubt I will be relegated to the mailroom, or more accurately, to the streets. Hopefully they will understand that having seen Johnson nestle his wrinkled clankers, up onto a copy machine, is far worse than anything they could conjure up as punishment.

Coffee Is For Closers? Wouldn't It Be Easier Just To Say The WORD Platitude?

2009-05-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

Upon this beautiful San Diego morning, I find myself deeply immersed in a fascinating, if not lengthy, piece of fiction. And you know I am pretty interested in it if I can remain concentrated despite blasts of horrible punk rock emanating from my brother, and current roommate's bedroom, halting only momentarily every few seconds when his girlfriend calls him, they have a huge fight, and then he slams the phone shut gain, cranking up the tunes to fuel his anguish. Ah, young hate.

The only reason I put the book down is because I realised it is in fact Mothers Day. And if I don't drop a line to the vessel of my life immediately, I will no doubt forget to ring her up at all, no matter how much I tell myself I will call her by the end of the day. I am only veering off course for just a moment, to write this, and then I am giving her a jingle. There were three words used to describe a telephone call in this paragraph, can you find them all (Answers at the bottom of the page)?

Something caused me to bristle as I made my way to the bedroom to retrieve my cell phone. My job has warned me that if I don't increase productivity then they will be forced to decrease capacity. In other words-the ones I should have used first-they are going to give me the can.

Why is it that I still treat things the same as I did back in highschool? For Christ sake I am twenty five years old now and still being reprimanded for poor performance? Save that for my bedroom, not for my job. I should not still be acting this way, right? RIGHT???

That's the thing, I don't know either. I will tell you one thing. That in the last few days, since I have decided to be totally compliant with all of the companies policies, generating more productivity in such a short amount of time since the industrial revolution, I have become totally effete of any creative energy. Hacking out the words you are reading right now, is the first step I have taken towards anything creative in the last three days. I feel like a damned Zombie and to be frank, I don't know which I would prefer more. To be a wealthy philistine, or a bum that can recite Shakespeare.

Back to my original point-the one I should have stuck to in the first place-why is it that I am still so utterly insubordinate?

When I stop admiring the perfect symmetry of my balls for just a moment to think about it, I find that it is only natural I should have such a strong distaste for my work environment. I work in an office. Stepping back and looking at it objectively, it is quite possibly the apotheoses of capitalism. Considering this, understand that at my job, a SALES job, where I am nothing but potential profit, a set of statistics-how much are you selling? How much have you produced? What is the percentage, the dollar amount, the customer to sale ratio????. A golden carrot is dangled in front of my face, insulting my intelligence, that of making more money. So when I show little to know interest in making money at all, beyond that of which I need to survive, it throws a big rusty wrench in their corporate cogs. On top of that I'm sure it confuses the hell out of them. Also it causes them to slag me off as an idiot, a slacker, a good for nothing. When deep down they secretly fear my intelligence and BALLS, which would no doubt incite a plot to have me assinated in countries of a lesser democratic.

OK so whats the point? Well the point is I have at least pinpointed why I hate to work and why it is beyond my control to hate to work. I hate work because I am naturally an individual, naturally a black sheep, most of the time that is too my detriment (see high school, class of 00). I hate to be considered a number, and my job is the worst purveyor if this kind of mentality. They emit a foul stench of faux sincerity toward our well being when in truth they could care less if each of us was incubating a large tumor in our brains, which I'm sure most of us are from all the radiation being soaked into our brains from the telephones we are forced to keep on our heads for nine hours a day minus thirty minutes for grub and java(it's kind of like a telemarketing job. I didn't really want to reveal that to you, but here is my shame) as long as we generate massive quantities of money for the company.

Unfortunately, I have also realised that in this uncaring and subordinate world, people like me who wish to challenge the Establishment either end up shot or homeless. And since at the current moment my usual stasis of being ONE has now become TWO since I met a lovely lady who depends on me to make the rent and keep us fed. So please try not to laugh as I bend over, spread my butt cheeks, and chuck all my ideals out the window in order to make room for the colossal anal penetration that is about to take place, courtesy of the long dick of my employer.

Ahh, that felt good getting a little bit of the old writing done. Now I can get back to that thing I was supposed to do, which if I remember correctly, was to go and wish my dog a happy birthday.

A: Drop a line, Ring, and Jingle.

Real Quick

2009-05-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

When making my daily commute to work, I often see stickers placed on the rear window of a vehicle that read, 'In memory of' so and so. Below that will be thier date of birth and decease.

My problem isn't the memorial, but the phrasing. What exactly is in the memory of the individual? Usually, a memorial apends itself to some kind of inanimate object, like a statue or a street sign, in the rembered's name. In this case though, is it the windhsield? Or is the memorial the sixteen story lifted truck, that looks like it could be a Transformer, on which the sticker is adhered too.

Oh wait I get it! The sticker itself is the memorial for the deceased!

A sticker?

No statue? No street sign?

Jesus, when I bite the bullet, you tight wads better cough up more dough than that.

Otherwise, cram your condolences!

Robot Man

2009-05-04T13:27:00.001-07:00

Because I don’t own a television, working radio or any other vessel for media fear mongering, I am Johnny-Come-Lately, as to the news of our imminent death via Swine Flu infection. My confusion, the reader can imagine, was considerable, upon entering a Target to purchase a microwave, and seeing a bunch of soccer moms here at the office wearing masks like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat. Those masks won't keep out the stench of a fart; however, it seems to put the housewives at ease.

Anxiety, in all forms, is attached to my life like a stubborn dingelberry. I am a punk rock Woody Allen and whether it’s school shootings, Y2K, terrorist attacks, Attack of the Killer Bees, SARS, or the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes which had us all shitting our pants to eat a BLT last year-I am the first person to whig the fuck out.

In regards to the current threat on humanity, I am going to play it cool. Glance at the list above. At this point I am a damn professional when it comes to receiving ominous predictions of apocalyptic magnitude. So now it’s the second coming of the black plague? Well, I for one am SICK (at fourth and goal, Russell decides to PUN!) of it, and refuse to shake in fear.

I read an interview with Ray Kurtzwiel, author of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurtzwiel’s theory is that by 2050, humans and technology will become one. Objects that were once tangible items have now become intangible such as movies and music. Now they have become files when before they used to be physical items. A pretty incredible advancement which we take or granted.

Kurtzwiel predicts that once technology has surpassed the capacity of the human brain, we will be able to incorporate this into our bodies in the form of nano-robots, supplementing our shortcomings. Allowing us to obliterate the barriers put forth by our own biology, enabling us to reach unmitigated heights of intelligence and physical capability.

Yeah, we’d be like, part fucking robot, dude.

Don’t be scared, pussy. This is awesome! With the incorporation of nano-bots into our system, we would see the eradication of among other things, disease and the fear of death. No more fear of dying? How will the government keep us subordinate?

Gaining a few points on my I.Q. sounds great to me, however, it will eventually result in the end of humanity (you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!).

Without the need of education, because we will be able to upload any piece of information into our brains we desire, there will be no need for schools. We won’t need food or gas either since we will be able to leap thousands of feet with one single bound (I am hopeful that there will be a way to program our bodies to make the Million Dollar Man sound when we perform these giant leaps) so there goes the need for grocery stores, gas stations, or Wal Marts (I suppose I could have just said Wal Mart since I believe they sell all of the aforementioned).

Each of us will become autonomous relinquishing the reliance on government. Government being cyborgs themselves will try to retain order causing a revolt resulting in a war between the cliché of , US and THEM. Us being the public and Them being the government and its supporters (probably robots from Texas who even though they possess the capabilities of a superhuman would still rather be kept under the thumb of the powers at be because ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it.’ Of course they will have no problem becoming robots as long as it is government sanctioned and guaranteed to be good for them and their families.).

Of course other countries will follow suit and either we will coincide or clash. I am inclined to believe the latter will occur causing World War 3. Keep in mind we are extremely advanced intellectually by this point so most of this war will be fought in space, involving aliens that we were able to discover since our newly discovered technology allows us to travel into depths of outer space previously un attainable.

So that’s one direction this ball might roll.

If Kurtzwiel is right and our future does go the way of the android, it will be a damn embarrassment that we will have to submit to the fact that our future was predicted by a bad 80’s movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I am hopeful that instead of sending a cyborg back in time to kill the inventor of the first nano-bot, perhaps our solution will be as easy as getting the creator of the nano-bot to stand up for himself against the school bully when he was in high school, setting him on a different path in life, and it will be carried out by a wise cracking teenager and an eccentric scientist, so at least Robert Zemeckis can get the credit for being a prophet, rather than James Cameron.

Money Motivated

2009-05-04T13:26:00.001-07:00

Last night we got drunk as hell. I slept in too late and had to run out of the house without taking my traditional morning after beer shit. As soon as I got to work I was overcome by an overwhelming urge to poop. I shifted my course from work station to bathroom as tiny beads of perspiration formed on my brow caused by the effort it was taking to keep my butt cheeks clenched. The turd would push itself against the wall of my defenses, and I would pinch it back, my stomach gurgling as the shit recycled itself back into my guts.

Finally, I made it to my destination. No sooner had my ass hit the porcelain than did an old man plop down in the stall next to me, and blow his o-ring out. Long, ripping, farts bounced off the tile walls. As if one old fart farting next to me isn’t bad enough, all of a sudden every asshole with an asshole filed into the bathroom. All the stalls were filled now, meaning I had two men on either side of me, going into labor. The grunts and groans of their efforts made me shit shy. I had to plug my ears and concentrate in order to finish what I started. Unlike most beer turds, this one was stubborn; the old brown couch wouldn’t fit through the front door. Finally pushing so hard I saw spots, I shot it into the toiler like a torpedo. I was so relieved I didn’t even care that the splash from the impact got water all over my balls.

I cleaned up and got the hell out of there, the sound of blasting farts disappearing, as the bathroom door shut behind me. I walked about ten paces before running into my boss who said she had been looking for me. I was scheduled to be in a one on one meeting concerning my yearly evaluation.

I sat in front of my manager, unshaven, a spider web of red veins crawling across my eyeballs. My good pants, the ones without holes in them, were in the wash. So I had to wear my jeans with the shredded knees to work that day. I sat cross legged in front of her, with my elbows resting on my knee caps, trying to conceal the fact that they were bare. My manager began to go over my stats for the year which were deemed ‘unsuccessful’. One after another she went over all the aspects of my job in which I am failing. Then when she felt my self esteem had been sufficiently decreased, she set the paper down, and stared at me for a moment in silence. Her wrinkled lips, pursed in disapproval, spread apart to deliver my most hated business slogan, “You are here to make money aren’t you?”
“I certainly am here to make money.” I said, smiling like a mental patient, freshly lobotomized, “Enough money.”

I have never been money motivated. Perhaps I have never been offered a large enough sum to motivate me. Wave a few million dollars in my face and I might give it a little elbow grease. But, to put in the kind of effort that would turn me into one of the balding old limp dicks, I left dropping bombs in the mens room, just for a few measly hundreds or even thousands of dollars extra on my paycheck, no thanks.

I make enough money to survive. My lifestyle has been specifically designed to thrive on minimum amounts of income brought in by the most minimum amount of effort. I make enough money to get drunk, eat, and do what I want without busting a heart valve in the process. Any more money beyond that is just going to go right back into the rich who gave it to me anyway, in the form of frivolous spending on a bunch of crap I don’t need. I give them enough of my time and effort let alone a healthy cut from my pay check through the incredible amount of taxes they swipe off each of my pay checks.

We all have to work. My parents crammed this down my throat when I was a kid, only they covered it in sugar first, by telling me how rewarding it can be maintaining a job. They told me of all the friends I would meet (acquaintances at best) how I would be able to eventually move out (why when I can just live here with you guys for free?) and how much character it will build. Years later, drunk at a party, an older guy in a SEX PISTOLS t-shirt explained it to me much better. “Work sucks. But we all have to do it. So just do it.”

Had my parents been straight forward enough with me not to omit ‘sucks’, the essential word to be used any time you are speaking in regard to work, I might not have spent most of my young adult life on their couch, drunk, and proudly unemployed.

Our society has to function under capitalism. History has proven it is the only method that works. Even sovereign nations functioning under communism have had to incorporate capitalist methods in order for their economy to thrive.

Unfortunately for you and me, capitalism is what keeps us busting hump in our jobs, for measly wages. Capitalism is based on profit. In order to gain a profit, you must pay your workers a lower wage than your actual income, and so it goes that the more the profit the greater the difference there is in what we receive and what THEY receive. We stay stuck in North Park while they suck down martinis on beautiful beach front property.

So those are our options. We can crumble, or thrive in the way of capitalism. Anarchy won’t work because as soon as you destroy an establishment, you become the establishment, and the whole mess starts all over again; on and on, into infinite, until we arrive back at capitalism.

Slacking off at your job is understandable. As I said before, I am about getting the maximum amount one can get, while putting in the minimum effort. But someone who just plain does a crappy job for no reason is being a baby and is just making life on this island earth a lot more difficult for the rest of us. We have no choice but to work, and likewise, as much as I hate to be a servant, it also means that I have to be a customer, and come bother you at work, when I need to get something done.

So stop venting your frustration about the fact that you have to work by giving me shit while you bag my groceries or answer my phone call. It isn’t helping a damn thing. If you don’t do your job well, you are not sticking it to the man; you are sticking it to your fellow man. We all know work is crummy, but we have no choice but to live this way, so I will do my best to make your job easier when I am in the customer chair, and I hope that in turn you will do the same for me when it comes my turn to answer your beckon call.

I get the feeling that somewhere my mother is nodding her head in approval at how much her little boy has grown up. Wait, mom, you didn’t let me finish.
Yes we all have to work.
And it sucks. It does nothing for your character. It stifles creativity and suffocates the soul. I hate every minute of it.
If you can come up with a better way of life, I’m all ears. But, until you build us a new republic Plato, this is our situation.

You want to be a baby about it?

Let me speak to your manager.