January 28th: Never Trust a Manager

You may recognize the title of this post as being the exact same title of a song that the Rackatees released on their split 7" with the Shidiots of Omaha, NE, but I doubt it.  If I need to explain the title, then there's really no hope for the human race after all (probably isn't anyway). 

I decided upon this title as an attempt to somehow direct my flow of consciousness for this post, because that's about all that I can hope to accomplish as far as writing goes--to grab hold of the cartoon fire-hose that is my squirming brain and just hope for the best as it sprays its contents wherever it may.  On with the show.

I mentioned earlier that I got a new boss at work, as if I asked for one.  I'm simply thankful that I work the nightshift and won't have to worry about crossing paths with this person past 5 o'clock.  That's 2 hours of faking it, and them I'm more or less free to work and fuck off at my own leisurely pace. 

The problem with this person--who shall obviously remain anonymous, I'm not a total idiot who'd risk getting fired over a stupid blog post--is that they still believe in all of the shit that got them through high school and college.  The whole "are you a winner, or are you a loser" speech illustrates this pretty well, I'd say.  Come on dude.  Jesus.  Are we adults here, or are we teenagers?  Is this a fuckin' job, or is this football practice?  Because I don't know about any of you, but when I'm at work, I'm doing--at maximum--what I'm paid to do.  I am not here to "succeed", just here to make enough money to pay the bills I've got to pay and to have enough left over to drink with.  People like this scare me, not because they intimidate me, but because they seem so fucking fake that I'm honestly in disbelief that these sorts of people run shit.  It's like Vonnegut said, and I'll paraphrase: true terror is when you wake up one day and realize that your graduating class is now running the world.  This person is what the captain of my high school basketball team would be like if he hadn't have knocked up his girlfriend his senior year then gotten locked up for writing fake checks, gotten out, and found himself back in rehab for a pill addiction.  At least that guy is (was?) real.

Rant finished.  Thanks for reading.

P.S.- It looks like I will most certainly be traveling to St. Louis, MO to hang with a bunch of my punk rock music buddies.  Should be a rad time.  I will be sure to report in, probably this coming Tuesday, on all of the shenanigans.  And there will be pictures!  I'll be posting this tasty dish here on the Letters Home page of this blog for your enjoyment.

It is 11:30, friends.  I need to clock out and get drunk ('cause I'm a loser apparently, not a winner).  Ciao!

Follow me on twitter: @Paddy_Rhino,
on instagram: @paddy_von_westerhausen,
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January 26th, 2016: A Reaffirmation

It is a new year and I am back.  I would've closed that stupid greeting with an exclamation mark, but I am trying this new thing where I tone down my writing to reflect my usual state of being nonplussed (that's the 2nd definition in the Oxford Dic., not the 1st.  Unconcerned, in other words) by most situations encountered in my daily life or that I read about in the news.  Hooray for less bubbly prose.  Also, you may notice that I've altered the appearance of this blog after my seven or so months away.  I like to think of the new color scheme as being reflective of typewritten words on smoke stained paper, as though I were somehow a participant in the last great generation of American writers, which I am not.  Great, that is.  American, yes.  And that era is dead anyway.  This is the new media, and we are its slaves... ahem... I mean its pioneers.  I did keep the frothy beer in the background because I'm an inebriate by nature.  True, it would've been better if it was a bottle of middle-shelf whiskey with a few fingers missing, but I'll take what Blogger gives me until I can finally get off my lazy ass and take a picture of what I prefer.  And I'm rambling.

Now that that clumsy introduction is done with, I can announce my declaration of intention for this new year.  Here goes:  Write more!  Fuck, an exclamation mark! 

But seriously, I intend right now at this very moment to write more and for much of that writing to be present here.  There's still time for that to fail miserably, of course.  One never knows when one will be waylaid by a bout of clinical depression or find oneself sidelined by the ever more epic bender, now does one, now does one (there's a little play on some David F. Wallace for any hardcore lit nerds who might actually be reading this)?  I may also start to include photographs if I can muster the personal motivation to take my phone out of my pocket a snap a few.

And this year has gotten off to a fair start.  I've choked down a testament to self-loathing in song form, another testament to abhorrence of the local music scene here in Lawrence, KS also in song form, and my band The Rackatees--aided by our constant photographer/videographer companion Jake Gill--are finishing up a cinematic music video which stands as a testament to the Noir genre of literature a la Raymond Chandler... and booze.  Mostly booze.  A lot of booze.  More on that to come in what I'd imagine will be my next post.

Moving on.  With the change in appearance of this blog, I'd also like to welcome a change of tone.  Say hello to the change of tone, everybody!  Stupid.  Anyway, I'm going to fill this thing with even more failure by making it something more of a music journalism blog and do my best to cut out the political rage.  I know, there's plenty of music journalism blogging going on out there, and this is kind of a cheap shot for me, but that's life.  Just accept it.  I have.  And I'm sure that much about my boring exploits in this quote/unquote life that I quote/unquote live will make it on to these pages.  And yes, I could've stuck with the very literal eye-sore of the green/white color scheme, or maybe utilized an "edgier", Hot Topic inspired scheme to convey this change, but fuck that.  I like the colors and they're easier on my old eyes which by this point will probably be filmed over with cataracts in 20 years or less thanks to my job as a typesetter. 

That's still a thing, by the way.  I'm still setting type on the night shift.  Things are dead around here, allowing for the night desk to remain open and functional for now.  I got some new coworkers, only one of which grates upon my poor consciousness daily, and we all got a new CEO who's leadership philosophy apparently comes from watching Monday Night Football.  Highlights from his Meet-n-Greet speech:  "So, are you a winner, or are you a loser?"  Had to really bite my tongue during that one.

2016.  Shaping up to be another year I'll hardly remember.

Cheers, folks!

Follow me on twitter: @Paddy_Rhino,
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or on facebook (just search my name, k?)

March 4th: Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

It's like the hits that never quit here in the Sunflower State. 

Good ol' Sam Brownback keeps rolling out legislative act after legislative act aimed at dismantling all vestiges of government in Kansas.  Now, if you're a libertarian, you might be thinking that that's awesome.  I'm going to correct you and tell you that a) it's not awesome, and b) if you're a libertarian, you're a fucking idiot.  Don't take that the wrong way; I once believed that Anarchism was a viable political and economic system.  We've all got to grow up sometime.

Here's what's wrong with libertarianism; it is a political/economic model that rides on lofty claims of individual liberties that it never even comes close to meeting in practice.  Every major politician that claims to be a libertarian is a homophobic quasi-fascist who has no qualms with trampling the rights of gays and those with dissenting opinions.  Going even further, the libertarian economic model sets itself up for establishing corporate feudalism.  This is the kind of shit that leads to for-profit prisons (totally a thing, not making this up to scare you) in which inmates are subjected to horrible, unregulated conditions.  In fact, it leads to for-profit everything as an end goal.  Fuck.  That.

Keeping Kansas blissfully unaware of his evil schemes by making them illiterate seems to be at the top of Brownback's agenda.  That or he was shamed by a teacher at an early age for not accepting the objective evidence of the Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang, because he seems to have it out for educators.  One recent proposal has been to ban teachers, family members of teachers, or even roommates of teachers from ever sitting on a school board.  If you think that sounds like some real North Korean type bullshit, then you are correct.  Another proposed bill-that if it passes muster will doubtlessly be signed by ol' Sam- will basically disallow teachers from stating any sort of opinion deemed "harmful" to the "moral fiber" of Kansas school kids.  What that really means is that we're one misplaced step away from book burnings and sieg-heiling portraits of the governor every morning at schools and the workplace.  This is all just Nazi-type dog shit piled onto an already stinking heap of cuts to education funding and a wicked curtailing of basic labor rights for teachers and what they're able to do in their classrooms.  To summarize, Brownback is an asshole to teachers and a 21st Century society's worst nightmare.

Inevitably I'm lead to the point where I've got to shake my fist at all of the imbeciles who voted for this menace.  I'm reminded of them whenever I watch this video (see around 1:45):

They're the rabbits.  Too dumb and passive to help their fellow bunny.  They just sit there and chew their food and watch.  The bunny being pursued is too dumb itself to kick back with those powerful hind legs and break the stoat's furry little spin.  It just slows down until it can't run anymore and then reluctantly accepts its fate with a pathetic cry.  As an aside, please don't ever think that I'd compare Brownback to an adorable and fuzzy little stoat.  The guy's clearly a weasel.

I refuse to be one of those rabbits, thus you'll see me protesting out in front of the State House in Topeka next week.  If you're a Kansan who's sick and tired of being ashamed of the state of your state because of Brownback and the rest of the rogue's gallery that runs this shit-awful show, I invite you to please, please, PLEASE join in the struggle.  When democracy fails, as it clearly has, civil disobedience is always a handy second option.  You can find more information on this protest here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1422104641421067

On top of peacefully assembling for a unified show of severe dissatisfaction, I'm also going to be writing the head of the Kansas Democratic party to see if they wouldn't mind mobilizing some of the party's fundage to seriously review at least a few of these belligerent and clearly unconstitutional laws this state's republicans are trying to enact.  If those laws can be appealed in the supreme court, that would be amazing.  It would be too satisfying to see this fucker publicly shamed and impeached.

From the night desk,
     Beunos noches, amigos!
 

February 20th: A Book Review

Well, I've done it.  I have finished my good friend Robert's chapbook of poetry and now I'm going to review it as promised. 

Part of my job as a typesetter is to, well, typeset articles for scientific journals.  A lot of these journals contain book reviews, so I have a fairly good idea of how one should go.  Of course, I'm not going to follow the professional formula at all because formulas are fucking boring.

A typical book review in a scientific journal will include a brief description of a book's cover, the blurbs about the book and its author, and so forth.  Fuck that.  I took a picture of the book with my phone so you can look at it and judge for yourself;

No, I did not receive the book all bent and banged up like that.  It got that way from me toting it around in my back pocket and reading it at my writing desk at home while I drank MD 20/20.

Jesus, where are my manners?  The chapbook is titled Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card, if you can't clearly read the title from the photo.  It is by one Edward Austin Robertson, which is the nom de plume of my good friend Robert.  But enough of these formalities.  Let's get on to the stuff that really matters; the poetry.

There are about sixty poems in Chasing Kerouac which are divided into two separate parts.  The first part chronicles feelings of restlessness and boredom and then the subsequent quest to put those feelings in their place.  The second part kind of tails off from that quest, but get's progressively melancholic toward the end.  I really enjoyed how the poems were strung together with a sort of chronological cohesion.  It made reading the chapbook (which is a pretty quick read at just over 100 pages of poetry) feel more like I was reading a novella of vignettes stitched together from the writer's memory.

 

This is how I suggest you read this collection.  Use your substance of choice.  Mine is shown.

The poems themselves have a Bukowski-like quality to them.  They contain unabashed descriptions of sex and debauch that never get repellant, but seem instead to draw the reader in to the moment.  And it's not like you'll be sitting there panting and wanting to beat off, either.  The moments are intimate and sweet and a little sad sometimes for all the sex they ooze. 

You know how I said it starts to get melancholic toward the end?  Well that's a bit of a Bukowski-ism too.  There are poems in here about starvation and frustration and loneliness and isolation (you know, the kind you can only see in the slow movement of the hand of a clock?) and you feel that too, especially if you've been there. 

For all of the influence drawn from old Buk's work though, there's a good slathering of the Beats in there as well.  The whole book is a journey from home to the world and back home again with all of the spiritual learning that entails.  We follow our hero as he travels from Texas to the East Coast, up to Canada, back down again, all the way down for some raucous shenanigans in Mexico, and then off to California and back.  Not once was I left feeling distant from the poet, but instead felt like I was right there beside him in all those places I've been and in all those places I want to see.  Even the food poems are good, for Christ's sake.

Anyone who's a fan of poetry or transgressive literature should give this little book a shot.  It won't eat up a whole hell of a lot of time (you could finish it in one sitting if you wanted to) and is plenty fun to drink along with as you read.

I found the book on lulu.com where it's sold, so here's the link if you want to check that out;
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=chasing+kerouac+with+my+credit+card&type

Check out Robert's blog here, while you're at it;
http://thaclick2pick.com/

The guy's hilarious and won't disappoint.

From the typesetting desk,
     Good night!

February 19th: The Sun Always Shines in Brownbackistan

Q: How is Sam Brownback similar to the Clap? 

A: You don't know who gave him to you, you damned sure didn't ask for him, he hurts to even think about, and you're ashamed to even discuss him in public. 

It's ironic how closely a sexually repressed, gay hating idiot like Brownback psycho-symptomatically resembles a venereal disease.

If our old boy Sam conjures the shame and grief of chlamydia or herpes, his policies are far more syphilitic in their effects when it comes to the moral and physical well being of the state of Kansas.  Sam's just made it perfectly acceptable for GLBT employees of the state and local governments to be fired for nothing more than their particular choice of who to love, or fuck, or whatever they want to do.  How that is even constitutionally acceptable, especially in the age of DOMA's demise, is beyond me.

If you find yourself doubting that Brownstain's recent slight of the moral hand will result in any gay employees getting terminated, allow me to get a little hypothetical.  As a Kansan who's spent the majority of his employable life working for either the state, city, or school district, I can assure you that most of Kansas is populated by people with-shall we say-"anachronistic" world views.  These are people, well meaning or not, who use the word "faggot" in it's original and completely not-pleasant meaning.  These are people who still base their senses of humor largely around racial epithets, for crying out loud.  Imagine the type of person that rises to a position of management over such folk.  They tend to be a particularly high grade of asshole, just look at the governor himself for an example.  If you don't believe any of these people are capable of begging their superiors to fire Jimmy because he's a "queer that keeps starin' at my butt", or giving Linda the pink slip just because they "don't want any dykes on the payroll" (read both preceding quotes in your best stereotypical Kansas accent for full effect), then I invite you to live in a small town in the middle of Kansas for a month.  That's all the time you'll need to witness some spectacular form of ignorant hate or another.

When Alabama allows gay marriage and your state doesn't, even though it's the state that basically made the whole "Civil War" thing a struggle for fundamental human rights, then you start to realize where the whole gonorrheal shame thing comes from.  I guess none of this should come as a shock in a place known nationally as the home of the sociopathic Phelps family sect and the equally sociopathic and piratical Koch brothers.  It just hurts as a born and bred Kansan to have to say, in all honesty, that you are ashamed of your state.

Look at that smug, evil fool.

 

And I am ashamed, oh yes.  I voted for Davis last November, even while he was being ripped to pieces in political ads for going to a strip club once.  When I stepped away from the polls and then watched them on election night, I felt my heart sink into a new, ever more profound place of darkness.  It was almost worse than when Bush was reelected in '04.  I didn't cry this time.  I had the opportunity to cast my vote against the vile scumbag Brownback and his retinue of some of the worst so-called human beings who've walked this planet (here's looking at you, Kobach).  My outrage was such a defined thing because I thought that Brownback's incredibly imbecilic botching of his first term would be evidence enough to oust him.  Clearly it wasn't.  I sat in an almost blind rage, trying to figure out how anyone could've overlooked such monumental ineptitude, and then I remembered; "oh yeah!  I live in Kansas!"

Everyday is a struggle now to not allow myself to slide into complete cynicism and laugh while I watch the great ship Kansas sink with every soul who'd elected the captain still on board.  I have to remember the children, the mentally ill, the poor, and the GLBT community who are basically being punched in the face daily by the biggest asshole I've ever seen or heard of.  Because of that, I am in a state of constant, simmering rage.  One day an aneurism will take me and I'll be free at last, or I'll move to Colorado or Oregon and just forget that I ever lived in such a stupid, fucking place like Kansas.

To end on something of a positive note, I put my electronic signature on the petition to oust this dick and his cohorts.  I urge you to do the same if you're reading this and you're just as incensed as I am while writing it.  The link is right here: http://www.petitions.moveon.org/sign/recall-sam-brownback/
While it doesn't seem like much, it's at least somewhat encouraging to know that 35,000 people and counting can't stand the guy. 

From the typesetting desk,
     Goodnight.

February 17th: Beating Around the Bush

First order of business; I am in the process of reading my good friend Robert's chapbook and will have a review posted soon.  I can assure anyone who even reads this that it is, indeed, good shit.  Now, on with the show.

There's a lot of news already about GOP presidential hopefuls for 2016.  In the running we have the union busting crypto-fascist Scott Walker (who doesn't believe in evolution, but looks oddly ape-like), Rick Perry (everyone's favorite racist cowboy), a friendly looking writer and neurosurgeon by the name of Ben Carson, Chris Christie (who looks like the guy who can't make it all the way through Ikea and has to stop and sit on display furniture every couple of minutes, breathing so loudly you can hear him over the rest of the crowd), and Jeb Bush.  Might I add as an aside that my state's own inept and sinister governor, Sam Brownback, is not in the running as of yet.  That guy shouldn't be allowed to govern a high school prom committee, let alone an entire state.

Now it's too early to even begin to tell who'll get the nomination to run for POTUS from the GOP, never mind what any pundit tells you.  The late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson turned such speculations into a betting game, and his wagers were fairly accurate.  I'm going to attribute that to Thompson's insane genius far outstripping that of even your most intelligent political pundit.  That said, all of the hoopla right now seems to indicate Jeb Bush as a potential darling for the Republicans.

As far as Republican scum of the earth goes, Jeb seems fairly innocuous.  He looks a smidge'n more intellectually sound than his older brother, the last Bush who held the job in contest.  That doesn't mean that I'll vote for the guy.  No way, no how.  I'm politically unaffiliated, but I steer clear of Republicans.  There's a creepy, rich-old-white-guy vibe that they exude that I can't quite come to terms with.  That and I came into my full-blown social consciousness during the reign of Jeb's older brother, George W. Bush.

 

 

Doesn't he look smart and almost friendly?  Appearances can be deceiving.  Personally, I have very little knowledge of the man's background save for his family tree and that he was governor of Florida once.  Those seem like horrible credentials to flout when vying for the presidency.  So your brother is mentally handicapped and you can just barely keep a penis-shaped peninsula that's been turned into one big Jimmy Buffett themed hospice center from sinking into the Gulf of Mexico?  Well, shit, my friend!  Here are the keys to the little black box that holds the launch codes for the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in human history!

 

I jest, of course.  George W. Bush was not mentally handicapped, just dangerously close.  The man just might go down in history as the president single handedly responsible for putting the final nail in America's superpower sized coffin.  I remember an administration rife with racists, anti-immigrant and anti-gay agendas and war-profiteering schemes.  I hated George W. Bush with a passion, I mean a fervent fucking passion for many years.  I cried when he was reelected, cursing that I was a few months too young to cast my vote against him.

 

When I think about it now, I kind of like the guy.  I mean, I'll never be able to overlook the awful things he did, like botching the whole Katrina thing and starting two of the most embarrassing and globally irresponsible wars in history, but I consider him to be a kind of comically tragic figure.  The guy paints portraits now, for gods' sake.  He's basically a dumb, rich kid with a coke habit and a love for partying who never grew up and ended up being used by a cabal of some of the worst people ever to pull off the greatest, shittiest heist of all time.

 

Look!  He even feels the same way about babies as I do.  Seriously though, I'd love to meet the guy and send him sprawling off the back of the wagon for one night of raucous debauch and discussions about how mesmerizingly evil Dick Cheney was.  That would be a damned good time.

So I guess what I'm saying is, no Jeb.  Please don't.  Your brother made a shitty president, but he seems like a fun guy.  You will also, most likely, make a shitty president, but you don't seem half as cool as old George is.  Look at that face!  The baby's too!

 

February 3rd: Happy Early Birthday, Bill

Two days from now will mark the 101st birthday of one of America's greatest writers from the 20th century, William S. Burroughs.  I'd like to commemorate that day (Feb. 5th) some more on the actual date, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it.  That said, I'm doing this now.

William S. Burroughs is one of my favorite writers.  I was introduced to him by reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  That book, by the way, may be solely responsible for my decision to take writing seriously, but that's a tale for another time.  After I'd read the parts about all of the weird shit that went on at Bill Burroughs's ranch, I had to look the guy up. 

My first exposure was intentionally going to be Naked Lunch, but of course the nearest bookstore to me at the time (a Hastings in Hutchison, KS) didn't have it.  All they had was Junky, but I wasn't complaining.  I picked the book up and read the first 40 or so pages of it that night.  I loved it.  I'd never read anything like it, replete with it's vignettes of collapsed veins, rolling drunks in the subways, and trading illegal firearms for morphine.  Not even On the Road, which at that time had pretty much been the sauciest, sexiest, drunkest thing I'd ever read, could touch it.  By the time I'd put that book down I was a staunch admirer of the insanity that was Burroughs.

The gun thing was a huge part of the mythological persona of Burroughs.  I tend to visualize the man in a dapper suit on a heroine nod with a shotgun cradled in his arms.  If I recall correctly, in a previous post I mentioned that he shot his wife in the head during a drunken, high-out-of-their-minds game of William Tell.  That actually happened.  That incident, by the way, is probably the most polarizing aspect of Burroughs, because you either love him, hate him, or have never really read or heard of him.  There are many out there who consider the man to be a murderer for what happened to his wife, Joan.  I just listened to a documentary on Burroughs on the This American Life podcast.  It was really good, actually.  Iggy Pop narrated and John Waters and David Bowie made some appearances.  One of the detractors said that the "artistic apologists" seem to overlook the fact that Burroughs killed another human being, if only accidentally, and that makes him a despicable killer.  I'm not sure what to believe really, but I do know that I love the man's work.  An exhibit of his art was held at the Arts Center here in Lawrence not so long ago, and the stuff was about the kind of crazy chaos you'd expect from the man.  I was not disappointed.

There's a sort of correlation with the insane and highly talented American writer and the love of guns.  When I think of such figures, I'm immediately struck with two who also happen to be a few of my favorite writers ever; Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway. 

 

 

Anyone familiar with these two will know that Thompson was a drug abusing lunatic and Hemingway was a manly alcoholic.  They were both suicides in the end, as it turns out.

 

I guess it goes to show that inner turmoil, a propensity toward insanity, addiction, and the love of all things destructive are a perfect recipe for genius and an untimely end.

 

The last thing on the list for tonight, before I get back to typesetting, is the addition of tabs linking to the various pages on this blog.  Those tabs can be found just below the title, so even I will be able to navigate to those pages!  Alright!