The Big Nothing:

Being a geetarist, I occasionally stumble upon ideas that have been buried in the back of my mind for quite some time and am not sure how I suddenly remember them after they've been gone for so long. Sort of like every so often when I catch a whiff of certain brands of bubble bath. I'm suddenly brought back to when I was a kid and received a bottle of dinosaur bubble bath for Christmas with that same scent. All of a sudden there it is in my brain: the bottle with the hard brown plastic T-rex head on it and the smell of the thick wrapping paper whomever gave it to me used to coat it.

And so it happened today when I picked up my guitar: a haunting, depressing, beautiful, minimalist little song came out of my fingertips that I hadn't remembered or played in a good ten or so years called "The Big Nothing". I was 22 during its inception and it was my way of giving a nice big middle finger to the quandaries that tend to arise when you're a hopeless romantic. I couldn't figure out how to finish the tune off and left it at that.

Due to circumstances as of late (not to mention I'm about a block away from where I originally wrote it), out it popped again like an old high school friend a few days ago to finish itself off. All of the gaps and holes it once had have been resolved. POOF! It returned like it never left.

I love it and wonder where it's been hiding out the last ten years. Regardless, it's nice to have it back and I now wonder when the next old song will jump out at me from out of nowhere like this one did.

p.s. - It'll be ripe and ready for its debut at this show *cough cough*

How my job search just got even slower

2 words: 56K modem.

Here is the process:

1) Log onto internet
2) Look on job pages, bite nails and pull out hair while waiting at least 30 seconds for pages to load
3) Once page is half loaded, internet disconnects
4) Reconnect to internet
5) Contemplate taking a laptop to go use coffee shop wifi
6) Realize nearest coffee shop wifi is 20 miles from here
7) Say a lot of bad words
8) Rip more hair out

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Being here at my parents is supposed to be a productive time and I appreciate their selfless hospitality. But I've just taken one step up and two steps back with the very tool I'm using to help land a job and am one step from saying f*&k it and going to apply at McDonalds.

Whooptie friggin doo. Somebody please kill me, thanks, I'd appreciate it.

To be continued...

Corduroy Silencers

I was walking around in Barnes and Noble today while wearing corduroy pants.

I like corduroys as much as the next guy, but they were making that fwwwwip..fwwwwwip.. noise as I was walking from the inner leg areas rubbing together. It's fine most of the other time, but when I'm in a quiet place like Barnes and Noble and I hear my pants as I'm walking, it starts to piss me off a little and I start looking around to see if anyone's noticing the sound. Sort of that same paranoia you get when your shoes are squeaking really loud on the freshly buffed floors of Target.

So anyways. Does anyone know if they still make those iron-on elbow patches for long sleeve shirts? If I recall correctly, you used to be able to get corduroy ones.

If so, I'm gonna get a set of two and stick those bad boys on my cords on the upper inner leg area. And I'm gonna stick 'em on there sideways, because if you get two cord pant legs rubbing together and the grain of the corduroy runs horizontal rather than vertical, they would be way more quiet to walk in. More of a barely audible swishhh swishh... I definitely wouldn't be getting mad at my pants if that were the case opposed to the way it is now.

Sidenote: While at B&N, I stumbled upon a book called Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin by Paul Feig, coincidentally the creator of one of my favorite shows ever, Freaks and Geeks. It was a hilarious read and I highly recommend it if you liked the show or are on the market for some good literary candy - expeshilly if you are or once were a teenage boy. I damn near plowed through almost half of it before some sluts came over and started bothering me causing me to make like a tree and get outa there.

The Herpes of Nature

I truly believe there is no God.

Why?

Because as of today, a bevy of chigger bites have appeared on my skin.

Chiggers are the herpes of nature. They give you bites that itch something fierce, and itch even more when scratched. Then you think it's all over and hours later your clothing will ever so gently touch your skin, the wind blows the wrong direction, whatever, and the shit flares up all over again. Being a seasoned chigger victim, I know for a fact that this insanity will now go on for weeks before letting up. If there were a God, he/she/it would not have created such an insipid, destructive creature. Their existence is even more useless than mosquitoes, because at least skeetos make for good bat food. Chiggers are not cute. Unlike fleas, you cannot train them to become circus performers. I seriously doubt that chiggers are ranked very high in the food chain or that other animals prey upon them. So why are they here?

Give me one good reason why chiggers need to exist, please. I bet you're at a loss for words. Why? Because much like Celine Dion CDs, there are no good reasons for chiggers to exist. They leach onto you without first asking, which is very rude mind you, and poke multiple teeny little itchy holes into your skin that drive you to the point of self defenestration.

As you may have read in the informative documentation I linked to at the beginning of this piss and moan session, you get 'em from traipsing through nature. The most nature I've been through is mown grass here on my parent's acreage the other day for a minute or two. As a result of walking on the mown grass which I thought would be safe, I noticed chigger bites on my ankles. Okay, understandable, I guess. Ankles are fair game, I'll give them that one. They're close to the ground and are connected to your feet - the very utensils you use to transport yourself through mown grass.

But after awakening from a nap today, I came to realize that areas of my person at much-higher-than-ankle altitude have been overthrown by these little fuckers. I can count at least 6 areas on my upper legs with some hella itchy chigger bite areas, and worse yet, 2 chigger patches have now appeared on my hips. And I'm sure more will appear in due time.

My hips. I did not roll naked in the well manicured, yet chigger-infested pastures that surround Rancho Relaxo, yet one would swear I did by the looks of my skin.

So here I sit itching myself until my skin burns. And then the itch subsides - only to be replaced by intense post-itching burn.

Screw you, chiggers. Let this be a warning to all of you: If I spot even the slightest sign of your handiwork near my junk (a.k.a. the Privates, the jewels, the lower abdominal area, etc.), I'm going to have to take that giant gas can out in Dad's garage, water the lawn with it, and throw a lit match on it from a safe distance. I will watch your sorry asses burn in sweet Hell, and will love every minute of it.

Good day.

Cats are awesome.

If you’re not a cat person, you may as well just skip this one and go about your daily business, you filthy cat-hating ninny.

My new kitty Frank has finally come out of his shell 3 weeks after my adopting him at the used pet outlet center, a.k.a. Tha Animal Humane Society. It’s always a little scary with a new pet as I was telling Berkman the other night, as you’re always a little worried they’re gonna be duds – cats in particular. Either you get a hider, which are the cats that give cats a bad rap, or you get one that wants to be friendly and hang out with you all the time. Thankfully Frank finally came to last week and is indeed a hanger-outer.

Yesterday I went to live at my parents for a little while and decided I warn’t gonna do it without my new little buddy, so with the okay from Moms and Pops (bless their souls), I plopped Frank in the Death Star and we were off to Rancho Relaxo. The air was thick with danky heat and he was a-panting like a dog for the most part, but he hung in there like a trooper and made it to the Ranch A-OK. During the ride, he proved himself to be quite the entertaining and reliable passenger, which I was very relieved to discover. Not too many cats are travel-savy and I always like mine to be so’s I can take them up to the cabin, so that was very cool. Perhaps it was the soothing comfort of the Death Star that helped him remain composed.

Upon arrival at Rancho Relaxo, he hid for a while, but eventually ended up coming out and saying hi to everyone... still need to work on peaceful co-inhabitance with the dog, but I'm sure that will resolve itself in a few days.

When Frank takes a dump or goes pee, I’ve noticed it’s never covered up (when cats go, they usually cover up their dootie with surrounding cat litter). I discovered why this is: He does indeed go to cover it up, but scratches the top of the litterbox rather than the litter itself. He continually goes back realizing he didn’t fulfill his mission of dootie coverage and takes another stab at scratching the top of the litterbox to try to cover it up. It’s sort of the human equivalent to taking a dump next to the toilet and then flushing it. Very bright! I'm thinking maybe I need to dip the litterbox lid first in a mixture of eggs and milk and then cat litter to "bread" it so he's at least getting some coverage by scratching the breading off of the lid.

Another strange behavior I’ve noticed is he scratches the ground as he drinks water.

You know, I think I might have a fix for this litterbox thing. I’m putting his water bowl in the litterbox.. that way when he does the drink scratch, he’ll potentially cover up his poo and maybe make a connection.

“Why doan chu go see how far chu can steek chor head up chor ass?”

Those words, my friends, are the recipe for getting your drug-deal partner bound, gagged, and carved up with a chainsaw like a Thanksgiving turkey while a nice man points a gun to your head to make sure you’re watching.

Ah, the wonderful splendor and glory of cinema.

I watched Scarface the other night for the first time since I was a youngen. Very charming, happy la la family fun piece of work, I must say! The soundtrack was so cheesy that it really dated the film… if the soundtrack in a movie stands out, it means it’s either really good or really bad… sadly, Scarface falls in the latter of the two categories. But other than that it was great, man. Or as Tony would say, "foh-king grate, mang!"

They sure say 'fuck' in this movie a lot, says I to myself as I was watchin' it. I just want to walk around saying "Fug chu, mang, you fugging peese of chit!" to everyone I see now as a result. As a matter of fact, I bet if somebody developed a drinking game where every time the F-word was used and you had to do a shot, you wouldn't be able to feel your legs after about 20 minutes. They even pointed the gratuitous F-word abuse out in the movie itself: A Grease 2-era Michelle Pfeiffer plays Tony's (Al Pacino's) wife and yells him saying he says "fugg" too much. When you're thinking it as a viewer and then one of the characters points it out like that, it makes you feel like you told her in private that maybe she might want to talk to him about it.

You could also make a drinking game by taking a shot every time someone in the movie gets shot. It prolly wouldn't be as consistently intoxicating as the F-word drinking game. That is until the very end - where after copping a light buzz for most of the movie, your liver would receive a tidal wave of liquor and you could very well suffer from blood alcohol poisoning. A shitstorm of approximately 18,872 bullets fly through the air and take up residence in who and whatever happens to be in their paths. Nearly everything in the set was turned into swiss cheese and it was hella awesome, let me tell you. Most believe that those were just actors acting, but I heard that they were actually really getting shot to make the film a little more convincible.

I was very amused watching Al Pacino's mouth move whenever he talked, especially when he was really pissed off. It looked very silly, sort of like it was on spin cycle. And his sister’s cotton-candy hair... priceless.

If there was a “Most Cocaine Snorted in a Motion Picture” academy award in 1983, this movie would surely take home the cake. Seeing Pacino just bury his face in mountains of coke made me want to jump on a unicorn and fly through rainbows throwing lollipops from a magic bag.

Overall, this was a great film and I’m probably going to go watch it again now with aspirations of someday owning a bathtub the size of a small house in which I can take small house-sized bubble baths, smoke Cuban cee-gars, wear gold chains, and say the F-word too much. All while watching the giant TV located at the foot of the small house-sized tub.

“Say allo to ma leetle frend…”

NO GUNS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS EXIT

We had lunch the other day in a local watering hole and I noticed a sign that caught my attention. It read:

NO GUNS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS ENTRANCE.

"But Micycle, I see those all over the place!" you say. Well DUH, but this one caught my attention because it was put up on the door so you could only see and read it as you were on your way out of the place. Usually places of business have these signs posted so they're visible from the outside of the establishment, but I guess this place is taking a new approach: Sure, bring your guns in, but you have to leave 'em here. Instead of protecting their employees and clientele, they're more concerned for the safety of everyone else.

Person 1: "Mmm, that lunch was delicious! Want to go see a movie or something?"
Person 2: "Okay!"
[both getting up and walking towards door]
Person 1: "Aw, shit."
Person 2: "What...?"
Person 1: "Looks like I have to leave my gun here."

These signs are just plain silly to begin with... I think before their inception we all pretty much knew to keep the guns at home when going to rent a movie or getting a latte. So I guess it's kind of cool that this place gave it a new twist by allowing guns into the place but not letting them out. Perhaps they're part of an underground gun sales ring and were running low on inventory.

I've always thought it would be better to have a NO GNUS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS ENTRANCE sign in the window, 'cause when I bring my pet gnu around, I get pretty pissed when I walk in with him and they tell me he has to stay tied up outside.