I'm a Shitty World Traveler

This summer I logged another international visitation. I spent 2 weeks in Thailand (not getting laid, but that's another blog) with layovers in Tokyo and San Francisco. All places I'd never been before. My last continent hop was in 2007 when I spent a summer in Dublin, IRE. Before that I had also made sojourns into Canada and Mexico, the usual for most Americans. I've learned this:

I suck at traveling.

Not the mechanics of it. That actual enjoyment of the moment. You can drop me anywhere in the world - show me the sights, the activities, introduce me to customs, try different food, whatever...it does not move me in the slightest. At the end of any given day, wherever I am, I want a cool bar to hang out in and female company when I go to sleep. That's it. I don't get a charge from anything else. I don't stumble back to the U.S.A. with bags full of useless trinkets. Shit, I force myself to take photographs just so I have evidence that I was somewhere else. I spent like a total of 5 days in Bangkok. I couldn't tell you shit about it. Except that I didn't get laid. Again - that's another story.

Excuse my tunnel vision but that's the truth. I spent 2 weeks sauntering around beautiful beaches feeling generally nothing. Ko Tao, Thailand may as well have been fucking Pensacola, Florida for all I cared. A beach is a beach. Sand and water. Some are prettier than others but all give me the same sensation. Sand and water. I get wet and then I get sandy. Then I get back in the water to get the sand off. Then I get sandy again when I sit back on the beach. Maybe I have a drink with me. Maybe I don't. Some beautiful women walk past me and nothing happens. I can do this anywhere. Trust me, I'm working on it.

Besides that, there is the obvious culture shocking that also goes completely over my head. Yeah I know other places do things differently. I am not surprised or impressed by this. Living in thatch huts by the beach? Fucking great. Good for you. I'll take an air conditioned hotel room with a toilet that flushes. I will always take that. I will also eat all your 'neat' indigenous cuisine. Does it amaze me? No. I've had all sorts of food before. It's just fucking food. Noodles do not taste better in Thailand. Or Japan. Or California. Or Delaware. They taste like fucking noodles. These are just more examples of scenarios where I almost feel guilty for not feeling a single shred of excitement over anything. Except at that last second I remember that I don't feel guilt. Then I move along.

I've watched my fair share of travel shows. I've talked to a lot of my peers. I read people's online profiles where they list their interests and "Traveling" is always fucking somewhere in the mix. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Fuck, maybe I'm just completely being a human being wrong. You go fill up the daytime hours with whatever you want. Hiking? Swimming? Meditation classes in some Buddhist temple? Yeah, sure, have at it. That's all boring nonsense to me. Maybe if I were running drugs across borders this shit would be more enthralling. Alas, it is not.

Maybe if I had gotten laid I'd have more to report about the whole Thailand experience. The irony of traveling to a place renowned for sexual tourism and having my dick stay completely dry is not lost on me. In fact I thought about it every night for two whole weeks. Yep. Every night. Staring up at the ceiling. For two weeks.

You know what I WASN'T thinking?

MMMM THOSE NOODLES SURE WERE GOOD!!

My All Purpose Solution to Drug Addiction

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

If a drug addict has no one to burden with their horseshit, do they fucking matter?

No!

I'm not going to type a catch-all guide to brain repair for people with drug problems. I don't fucking know how to rewire someone's brain synapses. I'm going to write out a solution for YOU, the person who has to deal with the shitty behavior of a drug addict. Maybe they were your relative. Maybe they are a friend. Maybe you even got duped into dating one. Do yourself a Darwinian favor...

WALK AWAY.

Don't get all fucking humanitarian and altruistic and think you can amend this person. If a person's brain stem is severed, they lose motor function. You can't teach them back into walking. Similarly, the case for 'drug addition' is a case closed scenario. Some people are just wired to love things like drugs, alcohol, sex, work...more than anything else. If it bothers you OR affects your life that much, just leave. If you live somewhere shitty and you are unhappy, just move. It's that simple. Pull the trigger. Pack your shit, gas up the car and get the fuck out. Form new relationships with people who aren't inconveniencing you. It's that simple. Hell, even if its your mom. She's addicted to happy pills. POOF! Sorry, mom! GONE!

I'm only trying to save you future trouble. You won't listen to me of course. If you are set in your ways of being an enabler to your shitty drug addled constituents...then much like your addicted brother, sister, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend or roommate....you are not going to change. Enjoy the drudgery of a life where you have basically relinquished your independence and control. Drug addicts are notorious for bad punctuality so let's see how late they are to your funeral. They probably won't even show up.

Because they love DRUGS! Not YOU!

Pack up your shit and move on...or suffer some hilarious (to me) consequences.

It's your funeral.

The Fine Art of Compromise and the Finer Art of Not Compromising and the Finest Art of Simply Not Listening to Women Give Advice

"Never settle, Josh."

That's what she said. I'm being completely serious. We were standing in a bar, our usual after-after hours haunt and she was somehow slipping in sacred guidance before the first round even arrived. This was many years ago, mind you. I'm not sure why I'm bringing it up now. It was one of those nuggets of conversation that never left  me. Even if I did end up getting smashed that night, I'll always remember her saying that. It sounded really stupid then and it sounds just as stupid now. "Never settle, Josh." What the fuck does that even mean? That's the problem when women take psychology courses, I guess. You find yourself cornered in a situation like this.

I used to fuck this girl. Years ago. It ended badly I suppose - I wanted to keep fucking and she did not - but time passed and the residual emotional energy was eradicated. That is a beautiful process in itself but it still did not stop the conversation I was now having from happening. For some reason, we were out together again. Sharing that mutual dead space that people 'who used to fuck' usually do.  Banal, polite conversation that isn't supposed to veer into anything too serious. Yet there she goes dropping inane statements like "never settle" and I'm left completely dumbfounded. And I wasn't even drunk yet.

We must have been talking about dating or the people both of us were currently fucking. I had long since passed the stage where I cared about who she was with, so I don't even remember what she said. I must have spouted off about some girl I was half interested in - leading to her eventual comeback of 'not settling' as it were. This left me confused because advice like this sounds heavy, in theory. Like the person listening to you actually thought about your emotional state and doled out their best possible wisdom. I knew this girl didn't give 2 transparent fucks about my emotional state. Hence, my bewilderment. She was just shitting words out of her mouth and for some fucking reason...all these years later...I remember them and they still irk me. God damn it.

Listen. Listen to me very carefully. Despite all you have heard from the likes of Emily Dickinson, the women you love will never feel as lonely or betrayed as you. These are beautiful women with a lifetime of being lifted up on to pedestals. They live in a different world. At any given moment they have lines around the corner of men wishing to entertain them for an evening. They can have this every evening. Meanwhile you will sit in your room, no one calling you on your phone and you will stare at the walls. You will continue to stare and contemplate suicide every fucking second. Not too seriously. Not like an overly emotional teenager. You will coldly think about to all your life experience and compare the victories to the failures. For every grand night you won, there were a thousand spent like that. Staring at a wall.

These beautiful women never had that. Yet here she was saying "Never settle, Josh" as if she knew something I didn't about the human relationships, human fate. The narcissism was sickening. The tone. The eye contact. The charade. It was enough to make you wish you were back in your room, alone and staring at the wall again. The walls don't lie to you like that. They tell the truth. They offer nothing but silence. Their tomb is the real meat of existence. Some fucking women offering you dating advice from her lofty social balcony is not. It's not real. None of it is. The thought that I once looked forward to fucking this girl every night was revolting now. The thought that I actually missed her when she was left was worse. The hollowness of the human condition is never more apparent than in that circumstance.

That said, look at me now. Still standing around the same bars making idle conversation. Still staring at four walls waiting for them to cave in. Still not being called on my phone while I watch the beautiful women of the world dance around in their palaces of attention and ease. They have the liberty of imagining their own dramas and tragedies. They come and go as they please.

And yet here I remain.

I never settled, Lauren.

Sinking Above Ground

A shared human experience
I can assure you
is that sensation
of falling
as your stomach twists
when you learn
something unsettling
very suddenly
through one of your
five delightful senses
and your body reacts
with a biological
boxing match
where your mind
has thrown in the towel
but the referee
doesn't see it
and the body blows
keep raining down
until the knees buckle
and the lights
go out

later on
in the silence
of the locker room
when the fight is over
and there's no more blood
left to spit out
the scene replays itself
over and over
the unexpected right jab
when you were
throwing a hook

Mardi Gras: Roll, Roll, Roll Your Float Gently Down the Dream...

It's not usual to be drinking at 9 in the morning. Or 10 in the morning. Or any time before your local cantina's maligned 'happy hour' special. It is usually a paradise reserved for the degenerates of our fair society. Otherwise known as our creative forward thinkers, depending on who you ask. But this time we are talking about Mardi Gras, in New Orleans. The strangest mish mash of cultural hoopla and history mixed together in a big purple, green and gold pot. Kind of like gumbo, another proud tradition in these parts. On one end of the spectrum, you have the juvenile 'girls gone wild' scene where women flash their goods and a crude barter system for plastic beads is enacted. That's been the streamlined version of Mardi Gras (and the city of New Orleans in general) for the past 30 years or so thanks to movies and well, 'girls gone wild' late night TV propaganda. I consider it my duty to inform you, the reader, that women can provide you with cheap thrills in exchange for petty gifts in any region of the world, at any time. Go ahead and try it. Your welcome.

To say that the whole scene of tourists that floods Bourbon Street, New Orlean's most infamous route, is all that is Mardi Gras is ludicrous. Which makes this all the more dumbfounding. Mardi Gras in its purest essence is just a big party before Ash Wednesday, where people of the Christian persuasion give up some bad behavior for Lent. However there's loads of other things that factor into this holiday equation. Some parts of Mardi Gras feel like a giant 4th of July cookout, where instead of fireworks there are beads and music. Parents are hoisting kids on their shoulders, families are coming together and people of all colors, from all different types of backgrounds are dancing in the street in wild celebration. Then you walk one more block and a bunch of twenty-something fellows are shotgunning cans of Natural Lite and passing out jello shots. And maybe just passing out. Trust me, I tend to find myself in this type of company. But then you drunkenly stumble through a happy family of five's cookout and realize there's a whole lot more going on. It is a weird menagerie of events all happening at the same time and yet it all makes sense in its absurdity. By every evening's end (if there is one) beads are hanging from trees like a neon canopy, flags are flying from every house and the crowds have shuffled into the thousands of local bars. Once again, you're in a whole new world.

Time and again I'd find myself in the middle of this dance, trying to piece together another haphazard plan of attack for every nightfall. After a day of watching parades charge down elegant St. Charles Avenue (while drinking) and attending dinners (while drinking) I was often being led off to another place (while drinking) and always eventually, into the heart of the beast - the French Quarter (while drinking). Every morning it certainly would catch up with me but by the same time everyday, I was back on the almost mechanized process of Mardi Gras yet again. Everything turns into a multi colored waterfall, spilling into glasses of different shapes and sizes, just before it all goes black. I'd run into faces and names I'd have not seen in years and just as easily lose them again as they disappear into the crowd. They are the people you only meet in a dream. Because that's what this really is, a dream. Fully realized and pumped into our physical world. The happiness and brotherhood that sweeps you up while your swimming through a sea of strangers is very hypnotizing. To a point where you don't realize that just mixed tequila with whiskey and wine. And that you still have work in the morning. Your blindsided by the spectacle and everything else falls away. The best part is while your nursing your hangover in the days that follow, you can count on it coming back the next year, bigger and more overblown than ever.

I know this sounds really spiritual, but consider this - I'm not really a spiritual person. Not in the slightest. I'm one of the more hardened, cynical assholes you'd find creeping around a diver bar in the most questionable of neighborhoods. All I'm saying is that if you ever wanted to make a proper argument for there being 'one united consciousness' of humanity, come down to the Mardi Gras. I'll see ya there.

The Christmas Bonus

I didn't really have a weekend to look forward to, working 3 jobs took care of that but it was still Friday and that meant it was payday. Even with this information obvious to everyone in the office, the boss (let's just call him what he really does - checkwriter) still waits until 5:29pm before he starts printing and signing paychecks. I guess he likes to see the dogs line up and slobber at his door. Whatever. I'm generally too exhausted to get outraged these little tricks so I just stand their patiently and wait for my few hundred dollars of insult to be placed in my hand.

This time was different though. It was Christmas time. That would usually mean the elusive holiday bonus was sniffing around nearby. That shadowy ghost only few people catch a glimpse of in their lives. Given that this job was online retail and our profits had sure tripled everyday since Thanksgiving, I was rightfully curious as to whether or not I'd see this delightful beast, The Christmas Bonus.

By the way, I'm not calling it the holiday bonus. It's not because I'm self righteous, I just don't care. Christmas bonus sounds better. Sounds fatter. Like Scrooge himself delivering a turkey to your door.

My boss hands me the usual paycheck envelope of shame...and with it...and additional envelope! The unmistakable boxy Christmas card shape and carefully scribbled "Josh" on the front was a dead giveaway - this was it, the Christmas bonus! I mumbled my thanks yous, clocked out and shuffled down the hallway. I didn't want to open it in front of anyone, that's generally bad form. Especially in a work place. I crashed through the giant glass doors of the faceless industrial complex building I call 'work' and rushed to my car. There, alone in the dark and surely out of the sight of any coworkers, I opened the envelope.

Typical Christmas card, red...green...gold....ambiguous greeting, whatever. I cracked it open to find a little handwritten message. Ever so slightly personalized in that it starts with "Josh..." which I thought was a nice touch. That wasn't the point though. Tucked inside of the card was the real treasure, the real city of El Dorado, the sure deliverance of the past few weeks of shitty holiday hassle that comes with working online retail. My eyes began to widen.

The first thing I noticed was that it wasn't a gift card. A good sign in most cases. It wasn't a check either. It was just money. Grandmother style. Now I was concerned. The bill looking up at me was none other than crazy-eyed Andrew Jackson. A $20 bill. I hesitantly reached for the cash and noticed there another 2 bills under it. $100s, perhaps? I peeled them apart in the dark, quiet of my car - which I still hadn't started. A $20, and then another $20, and then...a $10. That was it. Fifty dollars. "Nice work helping the company make a couple extra hundred thousand dollars this year, Josh, here's 50 bucks, happy holidays!"

I wasn't sure if I should be happy or mad, pissed or grateful. As I mentioned before, I was too tired to really occupy an emotional state. I just tucked the money away in my backpack and stared out through my car window, still waiting to start it. It's those minutes of silence I always have in my car that I really cherish. When you have the unlimited capabilities of 4 wheels, an engine and a tank of gas right under your foot. And you think about your 65 hour work week and the crumpled $50 in your backpack that's sitting next to you in the passenger seat. It all makes sense in that minute. Where it's quite obvious you'll never win and the clank of champagne glasses at a holiday party is something you'll only get to hear in a movie.

I started my car, turned on talk radio and tried to block those thoughts out. At least I'd gotten something for a Christmas bonus, most people get nothing, right? That's what I imagined friends would say if I told them about it. I guess I should just stay tight lipped and be grateful. At the same time though, in the deep, dark scarlet red of my blood, was a different opinion. One that required no voice or argument. It bubbled and popped as I pulled my car out onto the highway to sit in the usual cascade of brake lights on the 101 Freeway.

Pop Journalism for Pop Music!

Behold this gem of an article from Buzzfeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-extremely-disappointing-facts-about-popular-mus

(not trying to promote that site, its content or its content providers)

Do you see that? Another handily constructed list for your avergae web surfer to cruise through in between gulps of cheetos and Snapple. The internet is full of them. For some reason, countdown style writing was selected as the optimum mode of communicating one's point as soon as the Internet was born and everybody with a keyboard inherited a journalism degree. The subject (or victim) in this article is music. Typical fare for every hip, tongue in cheek website out there. Something that will draw a lot of folks in by cramming as many different keywords (ahem, artists) into the article as possible. Keep in mind, referring to this as an 'article' is just something I am doing out of habit. It's big, bubbly bullet points with a bold title.

In keeping with the millenial style of having an undeserved tone of authority, the author(s) chastise the current state of pop music by comparing it to a time 50 (and in some cases, 60) years ago. You see, human beings like to think yesterday was this amazing thing. A grand, missed opportunity. Where everything was different. And better. In the case of Americans, our culture is locked to that idealistic period from the 50s and 60s. Then when it comes to music - everything NOW just fucking sucks. Yawn. We get it. This carousel keeps going. An infinite loop of whiny young adults, jaded adults and kids who just don't give a shit. From my perspective, I'm not sure why it matters so much. People don't listen to the radio. Music television doesn't really exist (outside of countdown shows, yet again with the lists) and the concept of the album and/or rockstar is as outdated as the idea of PAYING for music. Ha!

This Buzzfeed article opens up with Creed selling more albums than Hendrix. Once again, let me remind everyone. Music is art and thus not quantifiable. The only empirical data idiots have to judge it on is album sales - which even then, barely cover the entire spectrum. Then also imagine this...hold on...take a deep breath...MAYBE NOT EVERYONE WHO BUYS MUSIC IS A HARDCORE MUSIC ASSHOLE. MAYBE THEY JUST HEARD A SONG ON THE RADIO AND BOUGHT THE ALBUM AT WAL-MART LATER. MAYBE WHAT EVERYONE DOES WITH THEIR IS MONEY IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

Seriously, imagine if all these critically acclaimed music heroes were the ones every listened to and paid for. What would change? Nothing. Music press and assorted college kids would still bitch and moan. Yet here we are, filling up more space on the Internet talking about this nonsense. People need to realize that pop music (like The Beatles, another common catch-all for the Jesus Christ of modern music) was still just 'pop' music in the 1960s. Kids bought it. It was on the radio, it was on TV. It was everywhere. Now, thanks to overpopulation, we have more kids. And they buy what's on TV and the Internet. They don't know any better. Oh well. Maybe when they get older, they can turn into pissy 25yr olds with 'refined and obscure' tastes. What the hell makes Springsteen or Nirvana better than Katy Perry anyway? Do you expect a 14yr girl to connect with some kid in the 70s singing folk songs about growing up in a small New Jersey town? Integrity in the music business is an illusion. It's a faded black and white photo in Rolling Stone with the artist looking distant and poor. It's horseshit. Always has been.

Hopefully, all of you will live to see the day when Katy Perry, Shania Twain and Flo Rida are looked back on and heralded as heroes from a lost age. It sounds silly now, sure, but look at what bloated legends Kurt Cobain and Elvis have become? Really just thanks to t-shirt sales and more god damn TV specials doing stupid countdowns. Yes, I understand, websites like this pump out content just everyone at their shitty desk job has stuff to glance over while procrastinating, but it still perpetuates this idiotic ideas that somehow in 2011 we missed the boat and no more good music will ever come out again. And if it does, it won't be popular? What a crying shame. Since when has anything popular ever been fucking good? Eh?

Fucking never. Go enjoy your good old days, Planet Earth. I live in 2011 and [insert band]'s latest album was fucking awesome! Suck it!