Hooligan Street Journal

Ah.  Here we fucking go.  I don’t want to write about this subject because it’s been co-opted by cowards and waved around like a burning American flag.  The subject is…ugh…white privilege.  I can’t even say it without dry-heaving stomach acid fumes.  My fingers don’t even like punching it into existence, but here we are.

Before you stake what’s left of your charred flag, be open to the (dumb) idea of ‘white privilege’ and all of the inherent flaws that gather around it.  At the very base, what the fuck is this thing our silly culture has deemed ‘white privilege’?  

white privilege, as I understand it, is any benefit…ugh…white people receive, knowingly or otherwise, as a result of racism in our society.  

Please allow me to pull the tangled panties out of your sticky mousetrap with some caveats:

Not all white people benefit from white privilege.

Benefiting from white privilege doesn’t make the beneficiary racist in any way.

People of all colors benefit based on their skin color as well.

Less likely to get sunburned (example).

Does that make anyone feel better?  

Alright.  Back to this bullshit.  I think we can all agree, on some level, that racism exists in this country.  Let’s start there.  If you don’t agree with that, I don’t know what to tell you.

Why I have such a vehement distaste for the whole white privilege concept is that it is racism’s second-hand smoke.  Boil white privilege down and you inevitably get back to racism.  That’s all.  Why dress up the fucking pig?  Why coin this new term, white privilege, if the problem is racism?    

Most of us realize that racism exists.  Naturally, with racism, people with different colored skin will be treated differently.  When you treat people differently, for any reason, someone is going to bitch about fairness.  Leads us right back to racism (which we know is unfair).  Because white privilege is such a talking point, the most pathetic people in our society, media, has pumped it up.  Now, too many dorks are waving their flags, marching for, or against, racism’s second-hand smoke.  

Meanwhile, the racist continue to puff clouds of hate with three hands.  Don’t rebrand racism.  Racism is brutally divisive.  The entire platform of white privilege is a milder version of the same unnecessary division.  

Take race out of it, for a moment.  If someone said you, yes you, were receiving undeserved benefits.  And you took a step back, thought about it, and saw yourself in the same miserable middle-class position as everyone else — what would you think?  

We’re all full of ego and shit.  The last thing we want is to be labeled beneficiary for no reason and without reaping any rewards.  It separates “us” from “them” and plants more seeds of resentment.  Maybe you throw your hands up and say “Fuck that! I’m eating the same shit-sandwich as everyone else.”  Or maybe you try to prove how you haven’t received any undue benefits.  Either way, it’s not a pleasant feeling.  

So here we are.  white privilege divides again.  Sure, some white people recognize some level of advantage (back to the results of regular ol’ racism). Some of these people stand up, or march, or shout, or hug people of color in order to show their solidarity.  But these weren’t racist to begin with.  Benefiting or not, they’re breathing in the same second-hand smoke that everyone else is.  Whether they enjoy the cheap head-high is ultimately irrelevant.  

All we have is more noise.  More division, more outrage aimed at the wrong targets.  And racism does what racism does.  

What people maybe don’t want to hear is that racism is…ugh…unfortunately…human nature?  It’s born from ignorance and fear and it exists across the globe.  

If I could snap my fingers and make everyone exactly the same hue, guess what?  People would, probably immediately, team up.  By nose shapes, or armpit funks, or shoe size, they’d join clans and haters would continue right on hating.  That’s how it works.  Some people are dumb and/or afraid, and that’s their basic operating system.  

I appreciate the enthusiasm to squash out racism and all of its dirty affiliates.  But putting lipstick on the pig of racism isn’t going to make the world any better.  Sure, in many ways, our society was built right alongside racism.  (As most societies have been).  It’s not fair for all skin colors.  But to grandstand on behalf of, or even in opposition to ‘white privilege’ is simply slapping pointlessly at clouds of second-hand smoke.  

I was writing with my head too much

my heart too little

even when it was anger or pain

emotion

it still filtered through the grinding gears of my head

the head doesn’t mean to ruin things

but it can have that Lenny quality

petting the animals too hard

hurting precious things

i had to remember that the heart is strong

it can take a good kicking and continue on

it might even break right in half

but it holds onto its qualities

it’s clean

it withstands the fire and the storms

the head has endurance too

but it has a tougher time letting go

write with the heart more

Put those “I voted” stickers over your eyes before you walk into the voting booth.  Slide your tongue into the glory hole and exit with your hands in the air, mouth full of broken dreams.

Hope and reality walk down two sides of a dangerous stretch of road.  What good is exercising rights when the technique is wrong?  Scratch out the first two words from the “out of order” sign, but the pinball machine still eats quarters.  The is no way to fix the machine.

The idea of washing out the corruption by voting is like curing acne with a paring knife.  If changing the mask on the monster makes you sleep better at night, so be it.  Voting won’t matter until the vail is lifted.  

The problem with anonymity is that it also forgoes accountability.  Trillions of taxpayers’ dollars unaccounted for.  Yet, every election the strippers dance and everyone throws their money.  Support your local prostitute…I mean politician.  Unfortunately, only one comes with a happy ending.

I’m not pumping my fist because I didn’t vote.  It’s not a point of pride, not too cool for the voting booth, and certainly not sticking it to anyone.  It’s disenchantment.  I can’t look past the transparency issue.  I know as well as you do — the machine eats quarters.  But maybe one more Tuesday morning shit, with the right speed and consistency, will unplug the toilet.

The desert speaks.  Not in words.  With wind and sky and dirt and nothing.  As quiet as peace — as loud as fear.

When we arrived, the color blue dominated the desert sky.  Cartoon clouds for contrast.  A darker beast on the horizon.  A cloud like a bad mechanic’s coveralls.  Crawling on its belly, making its way over the mountains, along dirt roads, licking its black lips.

Set up camp. Pour wine to lure in the desert gods.   Make a ring of fire and dance about it.  Ride bikes across what was once the sleeping quarters of a lake.  Nothing to trip over in this desert.  No stones to turn.  No jagged plants.  No fish bones.  The desert floor absorbs it all.  Seals what was, beneath a puzzle piece mural.  All that remains is what is.

Eat slowly.  Listen to the desert.  Watch the beautiful monster, inching closer.  Aware of our perception, unconcerned with our safety.  The playa breathing huffs of wind.  No dust.  Not in this desert.

The evening wrings the blue out of the sky.  Even the rainbow is sucked into black and white.  Rain dance around the fire.  It makes no difference.  Each individual raindrop separated with a scalpel into one-hundred liquid pinpricks.  Don’t retreat.  Let the desert ease our anxiety.  

Drunk electrician working in the sky, along the edges of the desert.  Lightning moving latterly.  It has a healthy respect for the desert floor.  It understands power.

Celebrate the chameleon sky.  What was brilliant and blue, now overtaken by dirty hues of deep purple and coal-smoke gray.  More flashes of light, no thunder.  Sound works differently in the desert.  In the desert, a whisper can travel a thousand miles.  A scream might fall dead where it was born.

Time is as elusive as the wind in the desert.  It’s not as late as it seems and it’s always past your bedtime.  Take photographs.  The dirt laughs at our pathetic attempts to capture it.  Too much for one picture, and too little.

The ring of fire withstands the wind and the rain.  It contorts and snarls, but remains undaunted.  This child of lightning also knows power.

A camp of humans in the desert.  The tallest things for miles.  Asking for a jolt.  Thunder purrs, an unsettling calmness to it.  The black mass is close enough to breathe in.  There’s a spice to it.  The spice of both life and death.  

Retreat to the vehicles.  Rubber tires for grounding.  An illusion of safety.  If the desert wants us, it will have us.  Blow smoke out the window to pacify the storm.  Laugh at the fragile nature of humankind.  Witness the perseverance of the desert floor.  Admire the light show.  

The beast crawls over us and into the night.  Reconvene around the fire.  Stare into the ring.  Give it a silent piece of ourselves.  Accept the warmth it offers in return.  Sit, sandwiched between the clouds and the desert floor.  Little headroom.  No plan or room for escape.

Most of the clouds move along, like sucker fish on the belly of the beast.  The brightest stars greet us from afar.  Ride bikes in the dark.  Turn off the headlamp, trust physics.  If we become lost, remember — stars up, dirt down.  Test the courage, ride toward nothing, until the hairs on the back of our neck stand and shriek.  Turn around, return to the firelight.  

Play with a glowing frisbee.  Lean into the darkness.  Appreciate the little bits of light.  Leave the shutter open the camera and try our hand at capturing the night.  Darkness — another slippery subject.

Crawl into the bed of the truck when the power levels turn the color of embers.  Bundle up.  Breath in deep, soothings breaths of dark nighttime air.  Watch the stars work against the black backdrop.  The clouds are still out there, with the wind, with the lightning.  Don’t let that disturb us.  Exposed, we’re left to dream as massive as our brains will sanction.

Wake up in the night.  The winds have returned.  This time they have brought a river of sound.  Listen as the gusts sprint over the desert floor.  The rains follow.  Heavier drops.  Move to the fallout shelter.  Wrestle the wind.  Pry the flattened tent from the crushing hands of the desert.  Hunker down.  The night is strong in the desert.

The rain lasts until morning.  The puzzle pieces that were once the desert floor become hungry.  The mud has no taste preference and an insatiable appetite.  The time has come.  Everything must go — otherwise, everything will go.  Pack quickly.  Spin the tires.  Fling thick chunks of desert concrete. Maintain forward momentum.

Stop for coffee and eggs and bacon.  Reflect on the desert, the discipline, the power, the endurance.  No need to mention the mud.  It’s obvious — on our boots, under our fingernails, in our soul.  

Interviewer V:  Do you consider yourself an artist?

Grunt Words:  More of a destroyer.

Iv: Destroyer…in what way?

G:  Destroyer of tradition.  A pothole filled with Thai food… with a heartbeat…most of the time.

Iv:  So, do you do your work in a studio?

G:  My studio burned down.  Pure coincidence.  Microwave oven went spicy.  The trash bin, the drapes, then everything else.

Iv:  Sounds like a terrible accident.  Did you have to move?  Was anyone hurt?

G:  Nothing is permanent.  It’s still my studio.  No injuries.  Smells different.  Probably not going to get my deposit back.

Iv:  What kind of work are you doing in your studio, post-fire?

G:  Lots of trespassing.  Had to break in the neighbor's place to steal the wifi password.  Router was a casualty of the Great Microwave fire.  I also have a neighbor who has a really good coffee maker.  He works during the day, heavy sleeper.  Leaves his window open. I go up the fire escape, make a few cups of coffee, bail.  

Iv:  Wait…you steal your neighbors coffee…while he’s sleeping?

G:  No…well…yes.  I take a little coffee from time to time.  It makes the room smell nice.  Who doesn’t like waking up to the smell of coffee?

Iv:  Hey, I ask the questions here.

G:  Well ask them, you puke.

Iv:  Was that a lie, the coffee thing?

G:  no.

Iv: Wow.  So what type of art are you making?

G:  I wrote a long story on a roll of toilet paper — prison style.  It wasn’t good.  I just put it in the bathroom.  So now I wipe my BH with it.  But…I keep it, some of it.  The story paper.  It’s hard to handle sometimes.  Some of it isn’t worth saving.  I’m repurposing the story, the salvageable parts.  Maybe I’ll make it into a large mural.  Maybe I’ll flush it.

G:  Don’t look at me with those judging eyes.  You asked your question and I answered it.  What art are you making?  Don’t say interviewing either.  Its difficult, but it ain’t art.  A shit-story mural, that’s fine art, if you ask me.  

Iv:  You just caught me by surprise.

G:  Rule number one of interviewing.  Always be surprised.  No expectations.  What did you think I was working on in a burned down studio?

Iv:  I…I thought that you were maybe working on a novel, or a series of short stories…

G:  Boring.  It’s been done.  I tried going the traditional route.  It’s worse than death.  I can live on very little.  I can live like a caged animal.  But I work the best when I’m…you know…going up the fire escape, and getting enough fiber in my diet.  Always writing, but there must be some excitement — off the page.  Coffee helps.  

Iv:  How did you develop your style?

G:  What’s my style?

Iv:  I’d call it…well…it’s difficult to classify.

G: Try.

Iv:  You have a very…a kind of renegade…

G:  Stop.  Stop trying.  Is that your cat?  Does it have mange?  It looks tired.  

Picture pretty

Soft a silence

fools gold funny

show me where magic goes to dance

drink wine out of chipped goblets

grow wildflowers in a human skull

stink like springtime

sing off key

don’t take shit from anyone

You can’t dance without celebrating.  Dancing for love.  Dancing for joy.  Dancing to shake off the madness.  Dancing for war.  Dancing for beauty.  Dancing for life.  That thought made me realize, I don’t want to be a disgruntled old knob.  I want to be a celebration.  A dance of words and thoughts and movement.  

There are other ways.  I admire the broken-hearted, the down-trodden, the disasters.  I admire their full commitment.  The courage.  The surrender.  I enjoy a death march as much as I enjoy a dance.

You’ll find whatever light or darkness you’re looking for.  And at some point, you’ll have to decide which direction to face.  Today, I chose to dance.  I’d love to tell you what I’ll do tomorrow — but right now — I have some music to make.

-dr. sunpuss

...

I don’t know about that last one.  Lay off the rose water.  Good energy will only take you so far.  Eventually, you’ll have to pay that electric bill.  Everyone thinks there’s some nobility, some prestige in quelling anger.  The truth is, there’s a bit of a wildfire in my head.  I do my best to cut burn lines and I try to set up a perimeter, but I don’t pretend to have it contained.

The smoke and the danger and the discomfort, they’re good things.  They don’t always feel good.  They’ll fuck your allergies up, for sure.  They’ll give you bags under the eyes, but who are we kidding? A little ugly is good.  A little ugly is what makes perfection.  At least that’s how it works for me.

The stitches, the broken glass, the abandoned beauty — that’s what fuels me most.  Too much symmetry, too sterile, to exact and I get itchy.  I’m not signing up for the nihilists' committee, but constant positivity doesn’t get me anywhere. It brings about confusion and delusion and complacency.

I wasn’t born out of complacency.  I was born at the end of a long line of chipped-tooth fighters.  I can’t tell about the piss or purpose of those people that preceded me.  I can’t tell you their motivation or their inclination toward mischief.  I can only tell you what I feel.  I can tell you that there’s only one way to get out of this game and it’s never picture-pretty.

Maybe I romanticize the outlaws and the marauders.  Maybe I’m asking for disaster.  But where there’s smoke, there’s fire — so why not fan those flames.

How does a person get by in this wicked world of dating? Date no one and you become too strange, too wolf-like, too feral to date.  Date too many people, on the other hand, and you become ostracized, a deviant, a lustful creature of the night.  There’s a fine line you must walk and at any moment, you can be jousted off that line by your own hormones.  A desire too strong, too forthcoming, or opposite, too passive — all end in disqualification.  

These aren’t real rules.  These are beaten and boring pathways, trodden by too many mediocre people.  These are animalistic tendencies to keep everything controlled under the safe canopy of normalcy.  Outside the lines is dangerous.  Animals that don’t behave under the specific set of acceptable rules are mauled, killed, dragged away and eaten.  The pack watches, safety in numbers.  A smugness twists their faces.  They warned you about straying from tradition.

Relationships shouldn’t have to appease these rules.  Relationships, human relationships specifically, are too complex, too subjective.  Love doesn’t play by the rules of tradition.  Love and friendship and attraction work under many different circumstances.  They are affected by the weather and silent smells, pheromones.  They’re affected by posture and brain chemistry and confidence.  Relationships live and die on communication — and communication is dynamic.  It happens in words, written, spoken, sung.  It happens in the passing slide-show of train-car art.  It happens with the vibration of guitar strings.  Communication happens with movement, eye-contact, touch, and taste.

That’s why it’s a flaw to become trapped in the regulations of dating.  It’s a mistake to work solely on the lessons in the book, while refuting experiential evidence.  This is not a purely hypothetical game.  Human on human interaction doesn’t take place in a simulator. The moves must be made, in person, communication and kiss and chaos must be played out.  

This is part of the fun of life.  To play.  To accept free will.  To move with passion rather than fear.  The rules can be guidelines.  They will keep some people safe and secure and comfortable.  But magic is rarely made inside the rules.  Not with love, not with relationships, and not in honest communication.  To express oneself honestly, the training wheels, the governor, the safety must all be off.

I want to appreciate good writers, but I also want to stack tires around the bad ones and set them on fire.  It’s a bit extravagant, and a nightmare cleanup, but it sends a clear message.  Don’t take it as bitterness. Even the so-called “successful” writers wind up producing stacks of well-bound and branded hog-shit.

That’s the tricky thing about writing.  The ego gets involved and everything runs into diarrhea.  You don’t have to be a writer to write.  The same way you don’t have to be a championship level competitive eater to put away three, lukewarm hotdogs in one inning.  Anyone can write.  

There’s no fighting the truth of it.  No novice is going to get lucky at karaoke night and make a hit record, but occasionally someone puts together a decent caption under their instagram photo.  Maybe it’s based on an experience, maybe they captured an emotion, or made a funny, but they did the thing.  

Now, it doesn’t mean they’re the next Bukowski.  They just got it right.  And they might get it right again at some point.  I’m all for that.  Writing isn’t an arena of scarcity.  It’s going to go on forever, I’d imagine.  In one form of advanced emoji-driven hieroglyphics or another, the communication form will live on.  It won’t all withstand the test of time.  Even the good stuff will burn up — ask the librarian of the Library of Alexandria.  

There is a difference between art and writing.  I wouldn’t propose it as two overlapping circles, but more like two stray bullets slamming together out of equal parts luck and precision.  Even the greats struggle at making the shot consistently. I’m not talking about a .300 batting average either.  I’m talking a .003.  Three times out of a hundred for the best to ever do it.  And that’s a generous estimation.  How’s that for a slap-shot sports analogy?  

I’m living in a tall, narrow room with little, three-eyed flies.  Crunch the spiders with the bottom of a glass slipper.  I’ve got a tendency to exaggerate, and I limp because of a fractured heart. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to dance.  This is life.  I try to have a good time.  Join me in the mania.

Alright, no more poetry.  I’m a proper writer with poise and structure.  A storyteller in sweatpants.  Working on an orange desk.  Drinking tap water and listening to hip-hop.  

That’s the thing about stories.  Everyone tries to make sense of them.  When is the last time your life made sense?  It’s a comic book.  You’re the main character and sometimes goofy kids tear out pages to make paper airplanes.

On the bight side, there are some constants.  Water.  You’ve got to drink it.  Wash your teeth daily.  Tell people you love them, but not just in word form.  TELL THEM IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Tell them twice in a row.  Give them love shaped like nothing at all.  Burp it in their face and if they give it back that feels good too.  I’m not sure about all the rules.

Sometimes the water is poison.  Sometimes love eats you whole.  We’re going to die anyway, so don’t go feeling sorry for yourself.  Fortunately, we don’t all go quietly in the night.  Some of us rip right through the sound barrier and scream at the gods.  Others die in outer space.  Others die stuffy hoarder huts.  Cats eat their lips.  And that’s a part of the story.  A little dramatic if you ask me.

So forgive me if i’m not “even keel.”  I don’t mean to be.  I don’t apologize for not blindly marching toward retirement.  I guess I’m a fighter after all.  Black-eyed, busted lipped, bruised and begging for more.  Why not?  Scars are better than postcards.  I guess that’s a personal preference.  

Don’t expect me to follow the rules.  I’m not telling you everything. I cut out the boring parts.  The parts where I’m banging my head against the same bloodstained wall. Not my blood.  I’ve killed the same spider twice while writing this.  That’s not a joke.  It’s not even part of the story, but it just happened.

See, I can’t explain it all. I’m not that kind of writer. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Poetic diversions, sipped out of a green bottle in a paper bag.  I haven’t lost control.  I simply don’t require control at all times.  The story doesn’t go beginning-middle-end. It’s not always going to be a chronological highlight reel.  This isn’t instagram.  The only filter here is your reading and comprehension level.  I’m not a writer, I’m a walking Rorschach test. I read slow and think fast.  It isn’t always pretty.  Sometimes the ugly way is the better option.

There’s a tendency to develop habits.  A little cyclone, synchronized with the hours of the day.  Daylight savings doesn’t provide enough disturbance.  Sometimes it takes a broken nose and a bail-bondsman and a beaver to change the direction of the stream.  It’s hard to tell what’s intentional and what’s chance.  And I’m not sure if recognizing the momentum is enough.  I know it’s good to stomp from time to time.  Make a little turbulence.

The story is about balance and scraped knees.  The story isn’t accepting awards.  If it accepts the awards, it has to accept the cunty remarks.  I don’t think the story needs to carry all of that weight.

Can’t write

too much on my mind

can’t write

hungry

too full

tired

need a joint

and a beer

and there’s nothing to write about

can’t write

give me ten minutes

can’t write

just one sentence

can’t

do it

turn off the lights

tip the beer

let it out

let out the pain

the confusion

the delusion

drink

put it on paper

the nails on the chalkboard in my chest

discontentment

trying to hold face

fear and courage

side by side

neck sore

standing up for six days

writing nothing

living by braille

days moving too fast

nights too short

romantic hopeless

wanting to cry

can’t cry

have to write

have to put the thunderstorm into words

writing in a blood-red stolen marker

let the ink drip

breathing heavy

uncomfortable

living in the basement of an ex-girlfriend’s home

even the dog sleeps upstairs

evicted in fifteen days

the new boyfriend will be here shortly after

she’ll scrub me out of the place

I’ll be happy to be gone

only she’s keeping the dog

I’m going on the run

quitting the job

I’m done betting safe

the universe loves courage

I don’t know much

This Is Not Fame by Doug Stanhope

She had too many piercings in one ear and a voice like a peeling scab.  Her legs stubby and bowed, but well shaven.  The woman who stole her identity was longer.  Stretched almost to the point of being flat and translucent.  To disguise her flimsy frame, she wore flowing silk and sunglasses that sat like a welder’s mask on her face.  Her nails were painted, nibbled, and repainted.  She came with a musk.  It didn’t originate from her person, but from some object, a purse, a sock, something dead in her long tangled hair.

The last page was torn out of the book.  The doorbell rang.  He threw the book at the wall.  It bounced and knocked over a vase holding his mother’s ashes.  There was a moment of disgusted silence.  The doorbell rang again.

“I don’t know, man.  There was something off about her.  You could see it in her eyes…In the good eye at least.  She tried to suck my dick through my pants.  No.  It’s not funny.  I wasn’t sure at first.  I thought maybe there was a medical issue.  Maybe she was having a seizure.  But no.  She put her head in my lap.  Yes.  AT DINNER.  She tried to suck my cock through my pants.  I can’t go out with her again, man.  I won’t.  Help me come up with a good excuse.”

“Stop that phone vibrating or I’ll smash it with a hammer.”

“Okay, phone police.”

“Dale, why do you have to be so aggressive at the dinner table?”

“I bought this goddam dinner table.  And I fucked you to make him.  I can smash the phone, the table, and the boy if I want to.  That’s my right as the man of the house.”

It wasn’t a rash.  It was more of a soggy spot on the skin where bacteria or parasites or fungus had begun eating.  There were no showers.  At best, they’d open the window in the afternoon and a little fresh air would come in and mix with the funk.

One by one he started peeling away keys off the keyboard and popping them into his mouth like candy.  They made tremendous crunching sounds.  His beady eyes squinted hard when he swallowed.  He made it through most of the letters and finally choked on the spacebar.  

To him, they were all rats.  Vermin with little or no right to go on living.  He spat at them.  His blood pressure redlined when he knew they were around.  At night he had violent dreams about them.  He’d wake up sweaty and out of breath.  It wasn’t the consequence of prison that stopped him, it was his pathetic physical shape.  He lacked the strength to hurt any of them.  Even with a weapon, he’d have a hard time.  

They held hands, but they might as well have been holding opposite ends of a two-headed snake.  They were wrong for each other.  The relationship was toxic.  They screamed and got red in the face.  The neighbors called the police.  Late at night, after they were exhausted from arguing, the tried to make love.  

One bird flapped its wings twice and stuck like a dart in the stain-glass window.

Sitting outside in the winter, waiting for the sun to get around an emaciated tree.  There’s still snow in the shade.  Piles of dirty, used snow.  Snow that was once cotton ball fluffy.  Old snowmen and snowballs and snow angels, all discarded now.  The community has made its opinion known.  A few days of heavy powder is all they can handle. They’re out today.  Wandering in light jackets, removing layers.  They’re ready for warmth.  They're ready to run along the river without their fingers freezing and falling off.

How long will it last?  This is an indecisive community. Spring will come with its buffet of flowers and honeybees.  The sun will shine for so many days before the masses of half-hearted people turn on the weather again.  They’ll decide that they’ve had enough.  They’ll fold up their beach towels, fold their arms.  They’ll pray for snow.  “The grass is always greener” has never been truer than it is in this wishy-wash town.  

Maybe this is how it always is.  As far as weather is concerned, this is the first place I’ve lived that has had it.  Four solid seasons.  Weather that can kill you if you’re unprepared or careless.  The older the population the more disenchanted, it seems.  Good weather is never good enough, or long enough.  You’d think they’d learn to appreciate it while it’s here.

Welcome to the age of short attention spans.  Blame the constant stream of information, mostly useless.  Unfortunately, there’s a lack of short tempers and short skirts.  The edge has been filed down here in the pacific northwest.  

Apparently New York still has some bite to it. The east coast has managed to hold onto the short tempers and short skirts.  For how long, who knows?  With the clear-cut gentrification, sweeping away the culture, hauling off the conflict, one neighborhood at a time, it allows too much space for a new breed of over-comfortable, under-appreciative twats.  They move in before the rats have moved out.

This is a wasteful bunch.  More money than sense.  More bark than bite.  New York rats will grow fatter than ever.  The people will have to coexist.  Rats are quick to learn the scent of an easy mark.  New York might have enough of a sharp edge to survive.  If rats ever invaded this place, the entire city would pick up its skirt and run away screaming.  

Maybe that’s what we need here.  A plague of sorts.  If the wolves moved down from the mountains, to keep people’s heads out of their phones.  They’d be forced to be aware of their surroundings.  They’d learn to appreciate the sunshine and the snow.  So long as they’re not being eaten, asshole first.

Rats might be a better option.  A more subtle invasion.  Sneaking along the floorboards, hiding out in nooks and sewer systems.  Rats would outbreed the exterminator industry.  Wolves might be too easy to shoot, trap, and poison.  What the rats lack in ferocity, they make up in numbers and vileness.

If I had it my way, this city would get invaded with both.  Discomfort might make us all a little more communal.  Niceness only goes so far in a place like this.  It stops at the end of the block. It ends with strange faces and anything unfamiliar.  Niceness exists here, but mostly in the verbal form.  Everyone is relatively safe.  There’s no need for action.  There aren’t enough wolves to hunt us.  Not enough rats to chew through the souls of our comfortable shoe inserts.

But who am I to call out a soft city?  The sun made its way around the tree.  It’s working through the light cloud cover.  I’m using free wifi.  Punching words into a fancy laptop.  Drinking coffee.  Soaking it all up with half a smile on my face.

If the rats and wolves ever do come — they should start at my house.  We’ll work up an appetite together. 

It’s February.  The time of year where the dirty pork-scented tax companies feast on the hearts of the working class.  The time when vomit-breathed thieves like TurboTax look to get their sticky palms greased by everyone on the payroll.

I’d like to audit that swarm of swine.  See how many shifty moves they make every year to sneak a few more hundreds out of blue collar wallets.  Last year I spent two hours navigating TurboTax’s dyslexic website.  Following instructions for FREE tax return, only to get to the end where I ran into a “Do Not Pass” screen.  They wanted a piece of my return.  

What would I pay you for?  You’ve done nothing of service.  The whole thing is a thorn entangled money grab.  You think I wanted to play this game?

So, I didn’t get a refund last year.  I should have, but I wasn’t willing to give the vampires at TurboTax their cut.  I shut the laptop before I ever submitted the goddam form.  I thought about pounding my fist through the thing.  I thought about flinging it like a discus into the corner, where the ceiling and walls meet.  I wanted to use the computer as a mallet to bounce off the heads of the corporate beetles over at TurboTax.

As for the rest of you tax thieves, don’t think you’re any better.  If there is a god, he’ll send a car off the road, hopefully breaking the stripped legs of your sidewalk sign-shaker.  Horrible companies.  If you thought the IRS was greedy, these are spiny she-spawns of satin.  I’d really love nothing more than to pull the top hat down over those Liberty Tax people’s head and boot them right in the crotch.

I’m not wading into an argument about the unfortunate tax situation in this country, I’m spitting gasoline at the crooks who swim behind the system like scavenger pilot fish drafting behind great white sharks.  These are slippery, awful, underworld creatures.  We HAVE to do our taxes, but first, we have to navigate the treacherous waters of the tax industry first.  

All for what?  To get our own money back.  The money that the government regularly takes too much of.  And do we get it all back?  Never in a million years.  Normal people don’t, at least.  The filthy rich might be able to pull some strings, but the working class leaves millions upon millions in the flabby hands of the tax man.  Money that is rightfully ours, but due to an overcomplicated system of fuckery, we can’t figure out the appropriate forms to fill out.  Extra-lines, receipts, amendments, and with each one, TurboTax is there with a shit-eating grin, stuffing more money into their sweat-stained brazier.

Hell.  For all of them.  Make us pay income tax, and demand bribes to release the excess cash.  The whole thing sticks of corruption.  Every time tax season rolls around, they crawl on their bellies out of their fungus holes and stand on the corners, salivating behind their American flag banners.  Hot hell to every one of them.

I get it.  I need to find a “tax guy.”  A man or woman who knows the potholes and loopholes of the system.  But they take their cut too.  Why is that my responsibility?  To find my own personal shark, who, for a small fee, will infiltrate and bring back a larger portion of MY OWN FUCKING MONEY.  Money that we all spend our days, our time, and our energy earning.

If we can’t fix this fucked tax system, a system that is ultimately a leech on everyone, how the fuck are we going to fix anything else?  Where do you think they get all the money for drone strikes and presidential golf courses?  I’m not suggesting some kind of anarchy, non-taxed society, but don’t makes us dance and pay and jump through hoops to get our shit back.

And if we decide not to pay our, guess what? They’ll send the IRS after us with torches and ski masks.  They’ll garnish our wages and add fines on top of what is already owed.  But will they seek me out to give me last year’s return?  Not a chance in filthy tax hell.  They might even charge me a fine to claim last years taxes at this point.  They’ll say I was late to file and therefore should be punished.  Wait a second…I was late to pick up money that you owed me…so I have to pay more money?  That sounds right.  You've earn interest on this extra money of mine for a year, but I’m the one who has to sit across from the mouth breathing morons dressed in American flag pants to get it back. 

Fuck you TurboTax.  Fuck tax season.  Taxidermy is the only thing any of you shitholes would be qualified for.  Shot and stuffed, your lifeless bodies uncomfortably positioned in some working class living room of middle America.  

Take the bus in Colombia.  Take it like you’d eat a handful of acid, or a nibble of a cyanide pill.  Not enough to stop the heart forever, but enough to run it over a few hundred speed bumps at 120 miles per hour.

Look into the driver’s eyes.  Notice the ruptured and twitching veins.  Notice two-thirds of a booger hanging in his mustache.  Don’t worry.  Bloodshot eyes are better prepared for looking into oncoming traffic.  The booger will lose its grip on one of the many switchbacks and tumble into his lap.  It will roll back and forth along with other bits and pieces which have escaped his mustache.  Potato chips, spittle, narcotics — all settling in the driver’s lap like a homeless trail-mix.

The music will be bad, but it’s only a nuisance for those sitting in the first two rows.  Beyond that, engine noise, rogue horns, and disturbing window rattling will drown out the static.

Pick your poison.  Keep the window closed and watch it vibrate off its hinges.  Slowly suffocate.  Poach in a stew of your own sweat and the cumulative funk of the other passengers.  Or keep the window open.  Violent rattling.  Suffer the toxic fumes, black clouds of brake dust, nuclear waste and toxic rain.  Still too hot for comfort.  Humidity turns you into a sticky surface, best suited for collection grime, dirt, and dead insects.  

Empty your bladder before you board.  There are no accommodations of any sort.  The quarters are too close to wee into a bottle.  The turbulence would never allow for it.

You may eat, but it’s not advised.  Especially if you are prone to motion sickness.  Drinking is a task of tremendous effort.  By the end of the voyage, your beverages will be splattered down your shirt front.  You will likely have a puddle between your legs, a combination of your drink and tiny squirts of urine, excreted upon moments of pure unadulterated fear.

The Colombian people will not provide any sympathy.  Your dread is completely your own cross to bear.  Colombians are accustomed to this type of travel.  Maybe they thrive in this environment.  An eighty-foot bus, passing a semi-truck full of diesel, on a blind curve — this is where they find peace.  You’ll notice the locals becoming drowsy, a display of boredom, or a defense mechanism to the high-speed horror.  Many Colombians will fall fully asleep.  Toddlers in their arms, also unbothered.

Every four miles, be ready for a rolling stop where some ill-advised soul will climb aboard and scramble to their seat.  Also, be prepared for the vendors.  The vendors are an experience all on their own. A wide array of old and young.  Everything from sweet-faced students, selling candy-coated peanuts, to the one-footed ogre, sweat-stained and agitated, looking to sucker a few people into buying hygienically unsound, crudely chopped fruit.  Napkins, utensils, containers never provided.  Eat with your hands.

A transaction with a vendor entails a slick handoff, a trade of sorts.  A potentially edible object exchanged for a few pesos.  As quickly as the bus vendors arrive, they disappear again, leaping from the death carts at fifteen miles per hour.  Tumbling to a dusty stop.  A few seconds to compose themselves and to gather their belongings.  Another bus will be traveling in the opposite direction.  They’ll sprint and cling to the open door like a Somali pirate.  

Maybe your experience will end in a head-on collision.  Maybe you'll learn true weightlessness as your sleeping driver sends you careening off the edge of a cliff.  But most likely, you’ll survive.  Despite their bloodshot eyes and shaky hands, these are professionals. The precision of maneuvers. Obviously not paid by the hour.  You can feel it in the velocity as you are driven into your seat.  You’ll arrive at your destination disheveled, covered in fear-stink and or vomit, but you’ll be alive.

More alive than you’ve ever been.  

I’m here to drown these corny, busy-body, bullshit journalists.  For every clickbait article they write, I’ll smash their frail, non-callused hands in rat traps.  I’ll stuff them in used car tires and use their own low-quality newsprint as kindling to roast them.  Until I’ve eradicated the world of these useless fucks, I’ll take to the streets, snatching these early morning newspaper delivery men out of their minivans.

Sensitivity is at an all-time high.  I’m pushing all of my chips to the center of the table.  Let them come with their tiki torches.  Give them poster board and magic markers.  Let them surround me and protest with tears in their eyes.  I’ve got a can of hairspray and heart full of jellyfish venom.  I’ll get behind the wheel of a heavy piece of farm equipment and I’ll mow them down like wheat.

How ironic.  The gluten intolerant, evangelical vegans will scurry like field mice.  Wait until I get my hands on them.  To make my message clear, I’ll use the reaper’s scythe to cut ribeye steaks from their rumps.  I’ll cook them rare and force feed them their own tasteless asses.

The mediocre media stops here.  I’ll kick the doors in and drag the editors out by their neckties.  Try to barricade the entrance, I dare you.  I’ll come down the chimney in a ski mask like the misfit, adopted brother of Santa Clause, on PCP.  I’ll shoot flaming arrows into the printing presses.  Tell the underpaid janitorial staff to call in sick.  There will be an overwhelming amount of blood to mop up.  It’s not worth the eight dollars a day they are paid to do the dirty work.

It’s gone too far and someone has to step up to the t-ball stand.  I’ll gladly accept the position.  I’ll even wear a name tag and a smile while I do it.  Every schmuck with a keyboard isn’t a writer.  The same way that painting over the mold in your dingy bathroom doesn’t make you an artist.  

I’ll find you all, one by one.  As you’re working out that catchy headline; “Grunt Words singlehandedly kills print …” you’ll feel my breath on the back of your neck.  The next thing you know, you’ll be picking the copy room printer out of your teeth.  Spell my name right, fuck-o.

They all want to see their byline in print.  They don’t care what bullshit article it’s attached to.  If the editors won’t cut the fat, someone has to make them eat those poorly selected words.  A plastic funnel and a full, soggy Sunday newspaper will surely satisfy their appetite for nonsense.  Ads and all.  

Maybe tomorrow morning they’ll shit out something half decent.

Happy New Year,

*Don't forget to write your New Year's resolutions.