April Fools Cancelled

So I was going to make an April Fool's Facebook post in the style of all those forwards you get from your creepy family members that say stuff like, "I was standing in line at Publix and the woman in front of me had a new cell phone and fancy shoes and gold teeth and was buying steak and lobster stuffed with caviar and booze with a food stamp card and I could only afford three beans because I work for a living. Then the cashier gave her $700 cash."*

Then I thought better of it. Who needs to get into a big political thing on the internet now that it's springtime and things are blooming and the weather's nice? Plus, what if I had friends contact me saying things like, "That's right! That totally happened to me, too!"**

It'd be all unsettling and weird, like when my friend Pat owned a record store and had weird 40 year old polo shirt wearing dudes from Ocala acting all squirrely asking if he had any Skrewdriver records behind the counter.

Would I have to weed out my friends? Would my friends think I had turned all teabagger and weed me out?

Then I thought how annoying April Fool's Day is after you grow up anyway. Gullible and trusting people like myself have to be on guard against the internet or NPR trying to trick us. Again, who needs the hassle. 

So instead of an April Fool's joke that probably wasn't that funny anyway and might lead to fights on the internet, here's a music video where monsters dance around.

Isn't that much better?




*And I'm not saying these things are racist, but isn't it strange how all the cultural signifiers used always point to African-American women?


**Hint. These stories did not happen to anyone. Tell your racist aunt.

White Riot

I don't have the greatest vacation track record. Whether going off on a Hunter Thompson-esque drunken tirade and public spectacle in front of 7,000 people in Chicago(warning - link takes you to my ancient myspace page) or nearly assassinating a poor old French woman in New York, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to just be a normal person and just see some sights and buy some trinkets, you know?


So in London we ended up in a huge anarchist riot. No shit. Check it out.

We went out shopping Saturday with about a gazillion other people. At the same time, a huge protest was going on a few miles away. From what I was able to gather from the helpful British people on the TV, banks and financiers made a bunch of risky deals, bankrupted the country, and now cuts are being made on public services mostly used by the poor and middle class. What a crazy country they have over there, huh?

While the little lady (or Bird, as they say over there) was looking through some store or another, I hear all sorts of chanting and commotion. I go outside to check it out and there's a group of a couple hundred people marching down the street. Well, that's sort of cool. They looked like the people that are at every protest, although there were a few older people and a couple English Nigels that looked like they were riding their bikes and just decided to follow the crowd for a while.

Fellas, if you ever need a diversion from shopping, watching a march that might turn into a riot will hit the spot.

This splinter group of anarchists ended up smashing up banks, occupying department stores, battling charming-looking English cops, and setting a big fire in the middle of ... Geez, I've already forgotten. A really major intersection in London.

The funny thing is, we would be walking around looking at stuff and come across a bank with their windows smashed and alarms ringing while cops formed a guard around it. Or we'd walk by a McDonalds smashed and paint splattered the next few blocks over. Somehow we kept following the destruction whichever way we went.

At one point in the night most of the streets were blocked and there were hundreds of anarchists, regular old shoppers and cops decked out in riot gear. Some people were trying to tip over a cop car (or Lorry, as they say over there). I took a few pictures, which I will be selling to punk bands for album covers over the next few years.

I never really felt in danger, mostly because we were Americans on vacation, so nothing bad could happen to us. Also, you'd see a line of riot cops (or Bobbies as they say over there)holding back protesters while a guy at the end helped a tourist read a map.

The riots lasted most of the night, and they caused all sorts of damage. I'll have some funnily captioned photos soon.

Don't know where the next vacation is. I hear Libya is nice this time of year.

Health and Healing Tour, November 2008

My dad had heart surgery last week. Actually more like artery surgery. I decided to take a week off and go up to North Carolina to help my parents out since he can't really do much of anything right now. Oh yeah, he's fine, thanks for asking.

I also planned to spend the night at my grandma's house, since it's on the way and I really need to get up there more. As I was loading all my crap up Sunday morning, I found out she passed out in church and broke her arm, but still wanted me to come up. I tried to get her not to cook or do anything, but she ended up using her one good arm to make me a feast of chicken and dumplings.



The picture doesn't really do it justice, trust me.

I love my grandma's cooking but felt bad that she had done all this and wouldn't let me do anything at all for her. Actually I got to set a clock back and open a jar, but that was it. Oh, and all that news the next day about Obama's grandma dying after she had done everything for him and made sure he got an education? I really didn't need to hear that all damn day.

I always thought I sort of hated driving, but what I forgot was how awesome it was driving alone at nightfall, watching the sun set behind me as I headed down to my grandma's, with the cotton on the ground looking like snow.

I also figured I had a license to speed since I was
A) visiting my sick grandmother who
B) passed out in church

I mean, what could the cops say?

I headed off to the parents the next morning. I suppose I should mention that I have a terrible sense of direction. Hell, I'm surprised I make it back home every day. To add to this, a good 90 percent of this trip was off the interstate, driving on little highways, usually stuck behind a tractor going 20 MPH.



Yep, I'm lost.



I was behind this tanker for like a million miles.



This is the front of the University of Georgia. I should not have been here. Oh yeah, WHOOOO! GO GATORS! WHOOOOO!



One of the advantages of driving alone was that I could do stuff like take pictures out the window while steering with my knee. Look, mountains!


Once I got into north Georgia the roads started going crazy. Remember in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" when Pee Wee was driving at night and the signs get more and more ridiculous? Well, add a couple falling rocks signs and that's what I was dealing with. Oh yeah, add this every half hour or so:

"Holy shit! Is Jethro really trying to pass me on a blind curve? Doesn't he see that it's like a thousand foot drop with no guard rail? Why the hell did they have to make all these curves? Why didn't they make the Irish drill some tunnels or something?"

But it was really pretty when I wasn't almost getting killed.


I had a pretty good stay with the parents, even if I didn't get to do all the work I had planned to help them with. A lot of that had to do with the fact that the sun sets at like 5 PM.

Check it out, this is what it looked like while I was raking leaves.



The last day we lit our Pagan bonfire to ensure a bountiful harvest for the next year. Oh wait, that's one of those family-only things I'm not supposed to talk about.


Oh yeah, election day was that week. It was sort of like the Super Bowl and Christmas to my parents, as George Bush has turned them into hippies.


My parents have pretty much adopted Barack Obama as their Kenyan son. A couple times I wanted to point out that their real son was the one raking and cutting up trees, and maybe they should call their boyfriend Barack to help them out, but that would have been rude. Watching the republicans get their asses handed to them, the family came together as never before, although not before a few conversations like this:

Mom: "McCain 56 %? I thought you said this was going to be a landslide."
Dad: "It's 15 after 8. That's like 1 percent of one state. Just wait."

Both the speeches were good - if McCain had spoken like that throughout the campaign instead of all that "Joe the Plumber says the terrorists are going to spread your taxes" crap, maybe he wouldn't have gotten his ass beaten so bad. Oh, but what was that weird sad Darth Vader music they played when he walked off the stage?

And Obama paraphrasing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," which coincidentally was the song I was listening to as I pulled into my parent's driveway (Otis Redding version)? Awesome. My mom cried during it, and I gotta admit, I was getting that "It's a Wonderful Life" I'm-not-really-tearing-up-I'm-just-adjusting-over-here feeling as well, especially when he was talking about the old lady voting. Hey, grandmas and old ladies are a weakness of mine, alright?

Then it was on to Lawrenceville to stay with Todd and Leila and Baby Eloise, who actually isn't a baby anymore. You know how Lou Dobbs and all those other cable guys are always going on and on about immigration? Well, what they don't mention is that all those immigrants are bringing their treats to Georgia and turning it into Shangri-La. Holy crap, Lawrenceville is like an EPCOT full of food and treats and I vowed to eat my way through most of it.

Hey, you know what Jacksonville needs? A place that makes bubble tea. I was told this was a jackfruit, which I'm pretty sure is a made up fruit to fool white people. Anyway, it sort tastes like 40 percent pineapple, 40 percent coconut, 40 percent vanilla and 80 percent awesome. This is what angels drink in heaven when they run out of egg nog. And those little tapioca balls are chewey bits of heaven.


I took like 2 pictures of my dad, but ended up taking a gazillion in this Asian market, mostly because of signs like this.


Coming home I ended up in a traffic jam outside of Atlanta that lasted like an hour, but other than that I had no problems. Now I have a million work emails to catch up on and 3,000 miles to do on my bike to make up for the eating tour of Lawrenceville I undertook.

Early Voting

Stood in line about 45 minutes this afternoon to early vote. I'll be out of town on Election Day, but I love early voting anyway just because it makes me feel smug.

"Oh you're finally getting around to voting now? It was a whole lot cooler when I did it like two weeks ago."

For the first time in quite a while it feels like I might be backing a winner, although as my dad said last night, "There's still time for them to pull some GATdamn tricks."

I also got to listen to two old church ladies almost come to blows over the whole 'don't let the gay people get married' bill, so that was worth it.

Music and Politics

If Obama is really in this to win this, he should consider changing his campaign song to Motorhead's "Bomber." Seriously, take a listen to the chorus, it totally sort of sounds like Lemmy's singing, 'it's Obama, it's Obama,' if you kind of stretch it a bit. With that bold move, Obama would capture the coveted record store nerd vote, easily bringing in dozens of votes, provided the nerds actually made it to the polls in November and didn't get distracted by some shiny new CD reissue or a chance to display their obscure record knowledge to a fellow nerd.


On a related note, while riding my bike last weekend, I was totally cracking myself up with a proposal to change the national anthem to Bad Brains' "Pay to Cum," if only for the fact that by the time you got a stadium full of people at a football game or whatever to stand, the song would be almost over. Sure, nobody can sing it, but nobody can sing "The Star Spangled Banner," either. Plus, how funny/awesome would it be to see crowds of people all shouting out the lyrics, which I always thought were something along the lines of "hubbadubbadooranmakamakaflooremanamanamamamaFIGHT!"


This also started me thinking of how many '80s hardcore bands were lauded as the fastest band in the world - off the top of my head, I can recall Husker Du, Bad Brains, DRI - I'm sure there's tons more. Sort of how about a half dozen bands were called "America's Wire" - Mission of Burma, Urinals, Minutemen, etc. I guess it's kind of like how there are about a million "Master of the American Short Story" authors out there - Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, etc.