Cold Dark Hatred and Self-Loathing

This was performed last Tuesday.  Full disclosure; I have a single one-liner that was lifted from a Doug Stanhope performance.  I don't consider this joke theft because of the context of the bit.  The interaction with the co-worker I described really did take place and just had to tell that story on stage.

Hopefully, Stanhope understands this.  I really don't want that guy coming after me.

Occupy Wall Street; Some Thoughts About

Here's some thoughts.

I watch the news. A lot. I've never been one of these "ignorance is bliss" types, although I've been jealous of those types for pretty much most of my life. I mine the news for information and ideas that I can use in my creative pursuits on a regular basis. This practice usually makes me depressed, cynical and pissy as a trailer park mom on child support payment day.

But I keep watching. The fucking news. Hoping and hoping that something will come along, that something will happen that is going to turn the country, if not the world, into the direction of progressive thought or at least something we can all agree on as common sense.

That day has come.

These Occupy Wall Street Protestors have earned my love in a way no blowjob ever could.

They may not have a leader. They may not have a centralized, cohesive, articulated or even well thought-out message, but, in the end, fuck you. They don't need one. This is not an organization we are dealing with. This is not a political party we are dealing with. This is not your fucking khakis!!!

This started just a couple weeks ago with twenty hippies in a park refusing to go home and now it's people screaming "FACSIST!" in cops faces.

I hear people on the news trying to compare them (or in some cases distance them) from the Tea Party movement.

The truth is this is the movement that ate the Tea Party. Or at least they ate the part of the Tea Party that mattered. The Tea Party got started by some right wing think tank with a good PR team that could mobilize people who were pissed off. At the end of the day those people were run, led and organized by Republicans.

the Occupation on the other hand is just chaos. It's everyone. It started with a few people with a broad, undefined message and now it's grown into God knows how many thousand or million people with a broad, undefined message.

And the part about their message being broad and undefined seems to be the cornerstone of the right wings criticism of them.

"Oh, typical liberal," they say. "You whine about a problem, but you don't propose any solution."

Which is obviously a bullshit counter argument. I mean, seriously, do you only complain about problems you have a solution to? Do you go see a doctor only when you know your diagnosis? Do you only take your car to the mechanic when you know what parts need to be replaced? No. Of course not. A person can be smart enough to notice a tumor without being dumb for not knowing how to deal with it.

And the tumor in this country right now comes down to a break down in equality.

Economic equality.

And when I use the words "economic equality" I don't mean what you probably think I mean.

Most people think that when I say "economic equality" I'm griping that some other guy has a lot of money and I don't. This is not the case.

Under the constitution of this great nation everyone is created equal. Remember that, because I'm going to get back to it in a second.

I make in the range of 25k per year. I'm comfortable with that being a single guy who doesn't own a car and lives in a shitty apartment. I'm also comfortable with the idea that other people make millions of dollars a year and live in massive fuck-off awesome mansions. Massive fuck-off awesome mansions sound nice, but I don't want to do what those people had to do to get to be millionares so I'm happy with my 30K a year job and modest apartment. Happiness is the key here. Me and the millionare are both free to persue that.

The problem originates at the point where the millionare gets to; lobby harder than I can, because he has more money; gets to advertise his political viewpoint further and wider because he has more money; gets to purchase campaigns (which is what the Citizens United ruling under the Supreme Court allowed them to do) simply becaucse he has more money; gets to say that the law does not appy to him because he has more money.

This is the state we live in. One voice no longer equals one vote. One voice equals a sound bite if that voice is lucky and in the right place and time when a camera is around and again only if that voice says what the network owners want to be heard.

A dollar, on the other hand, that equals a vote these days.

And that's a problem.

We don't hate the rich. Hugh Heffner is still cool. Let him keep his mansion. He earned it.

We hate the rich who exercise control. The ones whose desicions affect the rest of us, but avoid the consequences of those desicions. We hate those rich who tell us what we can and can't have regardless of the fact that we are equals to them under the constitution. We hate the rich assume a level of control that should be beyond the average citizen.

I've been telling my republican friends for years that capitalism should not be a game of survival of the fittest but instead a system where everyone thrives and only the most ambitious get to have the mega wealth. They all say, "Sorry, it's a game. There's winners and losers and the losers go hungry."

Ok, shithead. You wanted survival of the fittest. You got it. Welcome to the jungle. The rich are on the menu.

Andre the Dildo

I haven't really been giving this blog the kind of love and attention that it deserves.

Sorry, fans. I've let you down. I've got a few rants in the pipe that need polishing, but it might be next week before those get polished enough to be posted.

So, to tide you over until then, I'm going to share with you a piece of something I've been working on.

The following is an excerpt from my doomed to fail vampire novel (yes, I'm writing a vampire novel. Shut up.)

The chapter you're about to read comes from the middle of the book, but I think it stands on its own enough for you to pick up the plot and it brings the funny.

Enjoy.

***

Here’s the back story on Andre the Dildo.

He’s a human dildo. Enough said.

Oh, what? You want the long version. Fair enough, you bought the book and all.

Andre the Dildo is the world’s one and only vampire hunter. And yes, he’s serious about that. He’s got the business cards and everything. Never mind the fact that Lizzard is the one and only human being who’s ever been publicly outted as having a nutritional dependency on human blood and an allergy to sunlight so severe that he will actually burst into flames. Never mind that Lizzard has never taken blood from a human without consent or killed anyone. Never mind that he’s the only one the general public knows of with that condition and that apart from having an unlisted number he’s not really in hiding from anyone. There’s actually a lunatic out there who claims it’s his profession to “hunt” people with Lizzard’s condition.

Needless to say, Lizzard hates this guy’s guts. The harassment he’s suffered from Andre the Dildo hasn’t been as whole hearted as the that he’s suffered from some of the radical Christian groups out there, but it has definitely been annoying. Andre’s idea of hunting Lizzard apparently includes posting gay sex ads online including Lizzard’s real phone number, going through his trash and occasionally trying to murder him in public. Once Andre tried to stab him with a wooden stake, but between the fact that the stake was a number two pencil and Andre was too nervous to give a proper stabbing, the pencil just broke against Lizzard’s chest. That time Lizzard got rid of the scared-shitless little wonk by telling him to fuck off. The other time Andre tried to kill him was on the subway when Andre tried to wrestle Lizzard’s hood and day shirt off him to expose him to sunlight. This actually frightened Lizzard to the point that he broke Andre’s arm in two places and then, inexplicably felt bad about it afterwards. Bad enough that he declined to press charges, but not bad enough to stop him from filing a restraining order against the turd.

Truth be told, Lizzard hated the living shit out of Andre the Dildo long before he came down with his condition.

Andre the Dildo earned his nickname simply enough. Despite the fact that he held no more personality, intelligence, basic social skills, physical attractiveness or physical hygiene than the piece of dead plastic that shared his moniker, a staggering number of women and a men enjoyed having him inside them.

Any and every habit one might consider a hindrance in the pursuit of nubile, young posterior of either gender was demonstrated by Andre the Dildo on a fairly regular basis. And yet, more people slept with Andre in a given week than some professional basketball players experience throughout the course of their careers. The most aggravating detail about Andre was that most of the people who fucked him didn’t seem to know why they’d done it. None of them ever agreed to ever having liked the man, even a little, before or during and sure as fuck not after the act itself. Not a single one of them that Lizzard had spoken to could give a credible reason as to why they had dropped trou for the Dildo nor could they point to a single thing they enjoyed about the their session with him.

Missy once confessed to having gone to bed with Andre. Once Lizzard stopped choking on his own tongue he allowed her to fill him in on the gory detail.

“He was constantly sweating,” Missy told Lizzard. “And that big hairy belly kept rubbing up against me. It was like fucking a walrus. Oh, and he drooled. At first I thought it was sweat until later when I had the lights on and I saw actual goddamn saliva leaking out of that stupid stroke victim looking face that he gets when he’s horny. After that I insisted on being on top. Oh, and the kicker, once we were past the foreplay stage he started sticking his thumb in me. Over and over. At this point I’m good and warmed up and just ready to just get it over with. I kept yelling at him to fuck me already. And he screams like a little kid, `Dumb cunt! I fucking am fucking you!’ So, I reach over and turn on the lamp and, sure enough, that was his cock the whole time. Seriously, I have no idea why I did that.”

“So why did you?” Lizzard asked.

“I don’t know,” She replied with a shrug. “I was horny. He was there and he had the balls to go for it.”

“Yeah, but there had to be other guys around that night. Why him?”

“I don’t know. I…” she paused. Her eyes got wide. “…I really…don’t…know.”

Although Lizzard has never heard a reason why anyone would go to bed with Andre, he’s heard more than enough reasons not to go to bed with Andre. These reasons include but are not limited to the following; the aforementioned lack of hygiene, nose picking, verbal abuse of friends and strangers with a Tourette’s-like suddenness (Once when asked if he wanted carnitas in his burrito he once screamed at a girl working the counter at a Mexican restaurant that, “I don’t fucking speak Del Taco, bitch!”), being a bit of a racist, an affinity with, and obsession for, role playing games of every kind, and a tendency to walk around believing himself a vampire hunter\paranormal consultant.

The delusional reckoning behind that last one alone should be enough of a built in cock-block to ensure a mobile three mile “abstinence only” radius around Andre the Dildo, but no. Every day claims a new victim who wanders into the Dildo’s space and is sorry they did. Lizzard has a theory that Andre generates a force field like Omega Red in the X-Men comics. But instead of sucking life out of his victims, Andre’s force field takes away reasoning, discretion and self-respect. He imagines that when Andre tries to get in some one’s pants their internal dialogue goes something like;

“Holy shit, Andre the Dildo is trying to fuck me. Do I really wanna fuck Andre the Dildo?

“I don’t know. Do we really have a reason to live anyway?

“Good point. Tell the bartender we need shots and condoms.”

Naturally, Lizzard has always hated Andre the Dildo even before Andre started “hunting” him. How a human being of such objectionable caliber could walk ass-backward into so much free tail was a vexing thing for Lizzard, who experienced a number sexual exploits that could be described as inconsistent during a good year. Every time he encountered Andre his mind flashed, not on the countless man hours of dedicated harassment and scorn he’d suffered from this man, but on “the incident” that he and his friends had tacitly agreed to dub “that one time at Clappers.”

Ok, so, this one time at Clappers, Lizzard and a few of the guys from the Pub are hanging out having a few beers when three drunk girls walk in. One of the girls, inebriated beyond any semblance of consent or reasoning, falls three steps into the door skinning her knee. Her friends pick her up and set her on a bar stool gingerly, like they’re trying to balance a wobbly stack of coffee cups on a fence post in high wind. They order their drunk friend an ice water and then go off to do whatever they went off to do.

The second the more sober members of the trio depart Andre the Dildo appears, seemingly from nowhere, and takes a seat next to the equilibrium challenged female.

“Jesus, I didn’t even know he was here,” Sheriff said. “He’s like a creepy, molester ninja.”
Andre and the drunk girl were a good distance away, so Lizzard and friends couldn’t hear what the two talked about. But they were able to observe Andre, obviously as drunk as the girl he was talking to, wave his arms and pound his fist on the bar as whatever conversation they were having got heated.

“I’ll bet twenty it’s got something to do with unrealistic depiction of trolls in a certain Buffy episode,” Missy put out there.

About ten minutes into their conversation “the incident” occurred. The incident would haunt all who witnessed it forever. Missy, who by that time had actually experienced the Dildo in all his glory, would be the most traumatized by the event and soon after left Clappers to go home, hide under the covers and softly weep while reciting a personal vow to, from that day forth, always use her vagina for good and never for evil.

Andre, in the midst of an apparently passionate bit of monologue, stops, looks sick, puffs his cheeks like he’s got a bad cough, then proceeds to lean forward and vomit directly into his own half-full pint glass of Budweiser.

Pay attention. That’s not the incident. The incident comes after.

Once the last chunky bit have finished coming up Andre goes back to talking to the girl like nothing happened. The girl for her part continues to nod and grin politely. She doesn’t seem to notice that anything just happened. A couple more minutes into this conversation the unthinkable happens. Andre lifts his glass to his lips…

…and drinks.

Not just a sip, either. He takes a serious pull on his puke filled beer and continues his one sided rant.

No, don’t stop reading there. We’re just getting to the good part. The incident that scarred the corneas of all present comes next.

Andre keeps drinking his beer as he talks the ear off this sweet, pretty girl who has quite obviously drank herself down to the mental equivalent of a half bright cabbage. At one moment her eyes come into focus and she glares at Andre with a fierce intensity and Lizzard thinks to himself that this is it. She’s sobered up a little and now she’s going to go find her friends and say it’s time to go home alone and sans douche-bag. Instead the even more unthinkable happens.

The girl reaches over, grabs the back of Andre’s head and pulls him into a kiss so deep and hard that her tongue must be looking to taste his spleen.

Then the two walk out of the bar hand-in-hand.

“I’m confused,” Sheriff said. “Some one explain to me how that just happened.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Missy said.

“I can’t tell you how much I hate that guy,” Lizzard said.

That’s Andre the Dildo.