A few years ago, I was a middle school teacher (yeah, I know). I liked the job and working with those awkward, goofy bastards (at a bar last weekend I heard a pretty girl describe me the same way) but capitalism reared its bitchy head and I pursued other “things.” Everyone remembers the impromptu interpretive dance troop I co-founded entitled “I swear I’m not Gay,” but the black tights were not exactly flattering and I do have an aversion to Germans who refer to themselves as the symbol “?” with parrots named Longfellow. Anywho, I’m not sure if the parent’s enjoyed my quirky lesson plans.
“…and that students is why God invented hangovers.”
Or.
“…and so Harriet Tubman became the first black bus driver.”
I went to a late happy hour the other night (some call it breakfast) still in my shiny shoes and “strong” tie. I wore a look on my face like a dog after his owner tells him not to eat out of the cat’s litter box. A young, clean-cut kid came in with two other people, he had an innocent look as if the world had yet to cock-slap him in the face. He was giddy being one of the few times being in a bar at legal age. (Remember, ohh, give me the drink with the big umbrella with dirty whore in the title!) He was a Marine on leave from Iraq with only a few days left before he had to leave again. If I had seen him in another scenario, I would have sworn he was only a few years older then my former students.
“It’s not that bad. The sand gets everywhere and occasionally a brown person will shoot at you,” he said.
“Sound’s like Galveston!”
He oozed Semper Fi and wore Jesus Christ on his sleeve. He seemed very optimistic and a little drunk. “I heard there is only, like six Starbucks in Baghdad. So in the morning, how do you tell your captain that you want a vente skinny toffee nut latte easy on the foam? Do you like, write it in the sand next to your tent at night so the lesser soldiers can place the order?”
I’m not stating anything new to say that Marines are more than a little brainwashed. But it’s more than that. “Diamonds are forever” is “The few. The proud. The Marines.” little bitch. The Marines are brilliant marketers.
Identifying the Problem: How do we convince young people to be the first line of defense to break the enemy line and mostly likely die? Like using three Q-Tips while your waiting for your boyfriend to get back with the tampons…it will stop some, but there is going to be blood all over the place.
Target Market: Young, mad aggressive, hard-on teens, that want to have a cock-size contest with the world. (aka, most teenage males)
The Solution: Create a conducive environment for breeding destruction. A multi-media onslaught of messaging branding the Marine as a machine only capable of making death.
Results: Teenagers searching for an identity will line up in hopes of fitting in to this image.
“…and that’s why class the government turned young aggressive men into disposable heroes or simply the cost of doing business.
As the young Marine was leaving, the hot bartender gave our new friend a sincere handshake of gratitude for serving our country (actually, I think he was a good tipper). My friend and I worried as we saw the confused look on his face of misguided lust and testosterone that he would pounce like a jackrabbit in-heat. I was worried that he would say something stupid to prove his testosterone.
“I’ve seen every Jean-Claude Van Damn movie three times!”
Needless to say, all went well. Hopefully I won’t read about his death in Iraq.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Machine
The loud sound wakes me in the morning. To be at the utmost level of efficiency, I require proper rest and adequate nutrition. In the mornings, I wound my face and adjust the dead cells to look respectable. A colored piece of cloth is noosed around my neck and wrapped under a hard shirt constricting my head movements. Companies require us to wear suits so we can’t look around. I leave early to wait in line with the rest. I take my caffeine enema and chew on my processed, artificially flavored, cost efficient square of substance, which I have yet to decide if I enjoy. I collect money by practicing socially acceptable norms and speaking in moderate tones; too loud and I’m asked to leave, not loud enough I stay in the same position, in moderation I slowly ascend. Three times a week I prepare for mating by running in place and moving heavy items. I’m allocated two days a week too support the others and try to get the other half to understand me. On unannounced occasions, I take certain liquids that make me smile and I study sponsored colored, blinking lights of fantasy that help me forget about the monotony. You see, Brian is an idea shaped by the others and identified by a series of numbers. My thoughts and actions group me into a target market so the others can survive.
Friday, March 21, 2008
St. Patrick and Irish Soccer Houligans
Mmm. St. Patrick’s Day, an excuse for loud white people to get shit-faced and collect beads from scantily clad women. Sign me up! We went to Duke’s in Addison the day before St. Patty’s. A place with a huge crowded patio and a constant stream of ultra-loud music.
-“Yeah, so you should check out my blog!”
-“I don’t want too see your hog!” she said disgustingly.
-“Oh, I love dogs!”
Duke’s is a place where douches take off their work uniforms and put on their equally as conforming, biker uniforms. “Look it’s Bob from accounting wearing leather chaps. Sunday’s he has two hours of freedom before returning to his 401K, nagging wife, and two kids. He’s a badass!” You’re a target market. Your friend with the black bandana and dark Ray-Bans sporting a Harley tattoo across his bicep should ink a barcode across his forehead. You tattooed a brand across your arm; you’re a marketer’s dream, you’re not a target market, you’re a product. I’m going to tat’ the Starbuck’s logo across my back to show I believe in fair-trade coffee beans not forced indigenous South American labor and hip unique music not selected by an edgy folk artist but a savvy marketing team to further brand their product. You’re not a rebel. Give me a quiet, portly, middle-aged man, with a hard right part in his hair and a round face that volunteers with his church’s youth group on the weekends who avidly complains to his company’s board of directors about their shitty pension plans and lack of maternity leave for husbands. While his co-worker, “Biker Bob,” complains at the water cooler but does nothing and conforms to his little biker demographic. You’re as edgy as a gumball. Give me a little Hispanic cashier woman who daily calls Wal-Mart’s employee complaint line for a plea for health insurance. Rethink your iconic ideas of freedom and rebellion, douche-bag.
-“Have you ever heard of the Lambada?”
-“Yes, I love lasagna!”
I was already half-drunk when we arrived and very dehydrated from the previous day’s festivities. All I could think about was pure glacier water and Gatorade enemas. After the seven hour “delay” at the bar for my beer, finally I was able to talk to an uninterested yet Amy Winehouse-hot bartender. “Umm, this green beer looks like Smurf piss. Yeah, little known fact, Smurfs were herbivores, which made their urine green. You know, I’ve actually masturbated to Smurfette!” Her stoic face told me she wasn’t interested in my quirky banter.
-“Yeah, so you should check out my blog!”
-“I don’t want too see your hog!” she said disgustingly.
-“Oh, I love dogs!”
Duke’s is a place where douches take off their work uniforms and put on their equally as conforming, biker uniforms. “Look it’s Bob from accounting wearing leather chaps. Sunday’s he has two hours of freedom before returning to his 401K, nagging wife, and two kids. He’s a badass!” You’re a target market. Your friend with the black bandana and dark Ray-Bans sporting a Harley tattoo across his bicep should ink a barcode across his forehead. You tattooed a brand across your arm; you’re a marketer’s dream, you’re not a target market, you’re a product. I’m going to tat’ the Starbuck’s logo across my back to show I believe in fair-trade coffee beans not forced indigenous South American labor and hip unique music not selected by an edgy folk artist but a savvy marketing team to further brand their product. You’re not a rebel. Give me a quiet, portly, middle-aged man, with a hard right part in his hair and a round face that volunteers with his church’s youth group on the weekends who avidly complains to his company’s board of directors about their shitty pension plans and lack of maternity leave for husbands. While his co-worker, “Biker Bob,” complains at the water cooler but does nothing and conforms to his little biker demographic. You’re as edgy as a gumball. Give me a little Hispanic cashier woman who daily calls Wal-Mart’s employee complaint line for a plea for health insurance. Rethink your iconic ideas of freedom and rebellion, douche-bag.
-“Have you ever heard of the Lambada?”
-“Yes, I love lasagna!”
I was already half-drunk when we arrived and very dehydrated from the previous day’s festivities. All I could think about was pure glacier water and Gatorade enemas. After the seven hour “delay” at the bar for my beer, finally I was able to talk to an uninterested yet Amy Winehouse-hot bartender. “Umm, this green beer looks like Smurf piss. Yeah, little known fact, Smurfs were herbivores, which made their urine green. You know, I’ve actually masturbated to Smurfette!” Her stoic face told me she wasn’t interested in my quirky banter.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Seattle Chronicles: Fin
Boy someone sounded like a big ole’ Serious Steve in the last entry! So being the last night for me in Seattle, I decided to see how many microbrews I could drink and still stand straight. Needless to say, today I awoke with an “organic” hangover. The beer maybe fresh, but I still feel like burnt dick.
The Sealltites call the area of Shoreline, close to where my brother lives, the ghetto. I’m not sure why but I think a cop once spotted a “negro” walking these streets. The only danger you may be in is if your attacked by a frustrated gang of post-happy-hour computer programmers mad because they lost the semi-final round of Warcraft’s League of Champions because their battle dwarf, Lord Hagar, was killed by a frumpy gargoyle due to his lack of dexterity points.
So I went to a local bar to grab “a couple” of beers. After “a couple” of beers I struck up a conversation with a group of rowdy guys at the beginning of a bachelor party. Real salt-of-the-Earth type guys, mostly sawmill workers and dock man in their flannel shirts and Dickies. I was in the middle of telling them about my extensive array of hair products and my Express credit card, when I was interrupted by a guy sitting behind me.
“Ohh, damn baby, you look good!” he yelled.
As I turned around I said “Why thank you, I just got this sweater on sale at Brooks Brothers and I’m trying something different with my…oh.”
I saw a scantily clad woman walking in the door and I quickly deduced she was the entertainment for this evening. One of the guys knew the bar owner and reserved a back room for the stripper. The lady began flirting with the guys when one of the men’s wives called and said she was on her way up to the bar to make sure there were no “whores” around.
I wanted to help the guys escape from this desperate situation. I wanted to create a diversion of sorts. I thought about telling the stripper to hide in the bathroom and the guys to encircle around me. When the angry wench would walk into the door, I would pull out a book from my man-purse and read like it was an impromptu men’s reading group, called “Prose over Hoes.” I would read, “…and at that point I knew we were no longer little girls…but little women,” my voice trailing off in a fit of emotion as a single tear runs down my cheek. A burly lumberjack named Biff, with a pension for tattoos, motorcycle rallies, and 1920’s French Impressionist Cinema would grab a Kleenex to wipe a tear.
Of course this never happened, and when the butch woman with a bourbon-slur came in the door she called the nice stripper a dirty whore. She created such a scene as her husband tried to lead her out of the bar. I decided it was time for me to leave.
My sister-in-law Kirsten, picked me up and we went out to see some local live music, being the fact that my brother, David had to work all weekend. At this point, I was already pretty sauced from dealing with Biff, my thoughts, beautiful silicon, and many microbrews. We tried to see a band called the “Helio Sequence” but the concert was sold-out. We then proceeded to go to four different bars, like a drunken “Taste of Seattle” or Martha Stewart Living “Beer Bongs.” We managed to stay out until 2:00 when the bars shutdown. I was sitting at a bar stool talking to this hard-living looking woman in her late fifties who was surprisingly a philosophy professor who graduated from Brown, when a wiry old biker comes up and picks up my ¾’s full hefeweizen and chugs it in one gulp. The professor said, “Hey Chuck that’s not my beer, it’s this man’s!” The biker was very apologetic but I decided to add my two cents.
“You don’t have to piss all over her!” I said.
Now what I meant to say, in my drunken state, is that you don’t have to mark your territory. I’m not hitting on your “old lady.”
“I didn’t piss myself!” he replied.
“Hey, don’t be a cheesedick! I’ll get you another beer, man!” the bartender told me.
“You’re a di…, a cheese…, your dick’s made out of cheese!” I mumbled.
Anyway, the biker turned out to be really cool and we ended up talking about Southern rock the rest of the night.
I’m catching a red-eye to Dallas tonight and I start training at the Dallas office tomorrow. I’ve already lost one hour to daylight savings, now I’m going to lose two more from time zones. Anyway, the weather’s quite lovely.
The Sealltites call the area of Shoreline, close to where my brother lives, the ghetto. I’m not sure why but I think a cop once spotted a “negro” walking these streets. The only danger you may be in is if your attacked by a frustrated gang of post-happy-hour computer programmers mad because they lost the semi-final round of Warcraft’s League of Champions because their battle dwarf, Lord Hagar, was killed by a frumpy gargoyle due to his lack of dexterity points.
So I went to a local bar to grab “a couple” of beers. After “a couple” of beers I struck up a conversation with a group of rowdy guys at the beginning of a bachelor party. Real salt-of-the-Earth type guys, mostly sawmill workers and dock man in their flannel shirts and Dickies. I was in the middle of telling them about my extensive array of hair products and my Express credit card, when I was interrupted by a guy sitting behind me.
“Ohh, damn baby, you look good!” he yelled.
As I turned around I said “Why thank you, I just got this sweater on sale at Brooks Brothers and I’m trying something different with my…oh.”
I saw a scantily clad woman walking in the door and I quickly deduced she was the entertainment for this evening. One of the guys knew the bar owner and reserved a back room for the stripper. The lady began flirting with the guys when one of the men’s wives called and said she was on her way up to the bar to make sure there were no “whores” around.
I wanted to help the guys escape from this desperate situation. I wanted to create a diversion of sorts. I thought about telling the stripper to hide in the bathroom and the guys to encircle around me. When the angry wench would walk into the door, I would pull out a book from my man-purse and read like it was an impromptu men’s reading group, called “Prose over Hoes.” I would read, “…and at that point I knew we were no longer little girls…but little women,” my voice trailing off in a fit of emotion as a single tear runs down my cheek. A burly lumberjack named Biff, with a pension for tattoos, motorcycle rallies, and 1920’s French Impressionist Cinema would grab a Kleenex to wipe a tear.
Of course this never happened, and when the butch woman with a bourbon-slur came in the door she called the nice stripper a dirty whore. She created such a scene as her husband tried to lead her out of the bar. I decided it was time for me to leave.
My sister-in-law Kirsten, picked me up and we went out to see some local live music, being the fact that my brother, David had to work all weekend. At this point, I was already pretty sauced from dealing with Biff, my thoughts, beautiful silicon, and many microbrews. We tried to see a band called the “Helio Sequence” but the concert was sold-out. We then proceeded to go to four different bars, like a drunken “Taste of Seattle” or Martha Stewart Living “Beer Bongs.” We managed to stay out until 2:00 when the bars shutdown. I was sitting at a bar stool talking to this hard-living looking woman in her late fifties who was surprisingly a philosophy professor who graduated from Brown, when a wiry old biker comes up and picks up my ¾’s full hefeweizen and chugs it in one gulp. The professor said, “Hey Chuck that’s not my beer, it’s this man’s!” The biker was very apologetic but I decided to add my two cents.
“You don’t have to piss all over her!” I said.
Now what I meant to say, in my drunken state, is that you don’t have to mark your territory. I’m not hitting on your “old lady.”
“I didn’t piss myself!” he replied.
“Hey, don’t be a cheesedick! I’ll get you another beer, man!” the bartender told me.
“You’re a di…, a cheese…, your dick’s made out of cheese!” I mumbled.
Anyway, the biker turned out to be really cool and we ended up talking about Southern rock the rest of the night.
I’m catching a red-eye to Dallas tonight and I start training at the Dallas office tomorrow. I’ve already lost one hour to daylight savings, now I’m going to lose two more from time zones. Anyway, the weather’s quite lovely.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Alarm clocks and old Levi's
Last week I woke-up with a shaggy haircut and unsightly, dirty fingernails from digging myself from under six-feet of dirt. I’m glad to be awake. I’ve maneuvered myself into the position where my direction is straight ahead. At work, I was gently nudged on the shoulder and told to go home. Not home meaning my apartment, which confines my portable air mattress, but Dallas. There’s a clone position awaiting me in Texas. Many have already asked about my feelings on this matter.
Texas is a wicked, bitch mistress who claws at my back, and screams she needs me when I walk out the door. But when I tell her I love her she tells me to fuck off and find someone else. She said I haven’t treated her as well as I have in the past and that perhaps I’m suited for another. Texas has a golden tongue but has a nasty habit of preaching Santorian from the mount. For vanity related reasons, I say I don’t believe in destiny until it slaps me in the face when I’m sleeping. Sometimes cold showers and shrieking alarm clocks just don’t do the trick. New places give me an edge in which I can use to carve out a new niche. In Texas, I’m flat-footed from the exhaustion of constantly being on my toes and I’m comfortable like an old, holey yet fitted pair of blue jeans in which everyone tells me to throw away for the sake of appearances.
I miss my friends and the hell-spawn beast we so affectionately refer to as Koko (aka, Meatball). It’ll be nice to see my faithful labrodar-esque friends in Texas. It’ll be nice to be home.
Texas is a wicked, bitch mistress who claws at my back, and screams she needs me when I walk out the door. But when I tell her I love her she tells me to fuck off and find someone else. She said I haven’t treated her as well as I have in the past and that perhaps I’m suited for another. Texas has a golden tongue but has a nasty habit of preaching Santorian from the mount. For vanity related reasons, I say I don’t believe in destiny until it slaps me in the face when I’m sleeping. Sometimes cold showers and shrieking alarm clocks just don’t do the trick. New places give me an edge in which I can use to carve out a new niche. In Texas, I’m flat-footed from the exhaustion of constantly being on my toes and I’m comfortable like an old, holey yet fitted pair of blue jeans in which everyone tells me to throw away for the sake of appearances.
I miss my friends and the hell-spawn beast we so affectionately refer to as Koko (aka, Meatball). It’ll be nice to see my faithful labrodar-esque friends in Texas. It’ll be nice to be home.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Seattle Chronicles 3
One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Washington, is the difference in attitude between Texans and Washingtonitesiansonians (sounds like a dinosaur). In Texas, your greeted with such an annoying, overwhelming kindness you want to tell the next tween who greets you at Radioshack to fuck off!
"Can I top off your coffee? Can I get y'all anything else? How's y'all's day goin? Isn't wonderful outside, I just love this sunny weather!"
"Listen, generic waitress at IHOP, you brought me enough food to feed a concentration camp, I'm only half-finished with my Denver Omelette yet I've already had to fashion a crude extra hole in my belt using this butter knife and the acid from your jet fuel-coffee, and my stuffed French toast is going to make me a "priority" candidate on the heart donor's list. So piss off! Oh, and could you be a lamb and bring out some of those hash browns. Their simply delightful!"
In Seattle, I soon realized that some of the people were avoidant, impersonable, sometimes rude, dry, and ultra sarcastic. Then I realized I had just described my personality. Yet if you retort with a sassy comment they freeze and their eyes dilate like a raver after an all-night ecstasy binge. Here's an example of me sitting on a stool in a local bar.
"Hey man, can I please get a Mac and Jac Ale?" moment of silence while bartender cleans other side of the bar.
"No."
"Umm, why not?"
"'Cause we're out."
Normally, granted, I would have gone with the flow and just ordered something else. But I had been on my sixth interview in five days and I was tired off polishing myself and lying about my extroverted, socially acceptable personality.
"Okay. Let me get a Bass and a cheeseburger, hold the mayo and your sarcasm."
"Hey man, chill, I'll get your beer."
Whatever.
Friday I went on my third interview with a financial company. I was tired being the eighth interview in a week's time. The first interview with this company was mostly factual getting to know the company. They broke us off into two groups of ten afterwards interviewing us individually.
"Tell me about your experience with annuities."
"Oh, there delicious! My favorite candies as a kid were Skittles and annuities."
After realizing my lack of financial background and meeting the other candidates, I realized my chances were slim. A majority of the people were middle-aged, either bankers or having a full list of serious sounding credentials with numbers besides them that I understood as well as a differential equations class. Oddly enough, I was invited for a second interview.
The numbers were cut in half. The second interview we were given a dreaded personality test. I opted for the physical challenge. At which point a muscle bound, meathead named Malibu, who wore a body suit of spandex and long-flowing blonde hair and a Germanic woman bodybuilder with a ponytail named Ice took me off to the main conference room where they exposed me to a series of grueling yet rewarding challenges. I tied my "strong" tie around my forehead to prevent hairspray-sweat from my eyes and irritable dry skin. Malibu climbed a post where he shot tennis balls at me through a Mad Max-esque pitching machine. After I cleared his obstacles and hit the bulls-eye by hurling my brief case at the target, I was greeted by Ice who dared me to pass her as she guarded the door to the individual interview room. Given my fear of muscular women and my love for animals I took the trap door to the lion's lair leading to a second interview door. I distracted and calmed the great beast with half of my Odwalla bar and the remainder of a flask of hooch in my coat pocket.
I was granted a third interview at which point myself and two others accepted the job. I started training yesterday for my series 6 and 63 exams. Anyway, the weather is quite lovely.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Royale with cheese
At risk of being cliched, it's the little things that make Seattle and Dallas different. I'll spare the completely obvious reasons. There's no need to mention the drastic weather changes.
Seattle: Rainy, chilly, and on the occasion, pure sunlight filtered by the many clouds. (I lifted that last one from some cheesedick local weatherman. Oh, how I so love their witty PC banter!)
Dallas: Really fucking hot or cold and icy. Then April 75-80 degrees.
However I'm not going to be one of those limp-dick assholes, who sits around at bars and talks about how different it was back home or the pretentious bastards picking at all the differences. "Oh the seafood is so much better in Seattle!" Hey, asshole! That big body of water in front of you is the pacific ocean. Turn to your right, there's Puget Sound and behind you is Lake Washington. Yeah, Dallas has better Mexican food because they have Mexicans and Mexican grandmothers. (But I might touch on the latter later. Guess my dick maybe limp.)
I went to Kirkland, WA for an interview this week. A cozy little Microsoft subsidized town right on the lake where eco-friendly mothers are ranked by their free-spirited children and their North Face wardrobe. The little clones hopped out of mom's Hybrid Ford Explorer and ran around trying to find a place where they can express their creativity by rubbing dirt on their Eddie Bauer sweater vests. The eight-year-old boy's hair was playfully tossed about and frozen with hair gel. I didn't own a comb until high school, and that's only because mighty Kong had awoken in my trousers. (More like a playful spider monkey. I'm thinking Curious George.) In the town square, there was an elementary school's collage of individual tiles on the back of a building in tribute of the last mother's day. Little third grade Madison decided to write a surprisingly astute poem about world unity and freedom. Something that had obviously been belched-out by "helping" parent. I remember a poem I wrote in grade school. It was about Kool-Aid, frogs, and baseball cards--things a boy knows.
Dallas parents are equally annoying with their race to consume the most fossil fuels, spackled on make-up, and heavily starched suits. Dallasites pay a lot of money to be quaint. Building town squares in model of "It's a Wonderful Life" era 1940's Connecticut towns, housing Crate and Barrel, William Sonama, and JambyJuice, in place of Ted's Tool Shop and Wilma's Cafe. Feeding their seed with the antiquated rule of the Earth is for our consumption in favor of a strong economy and shunning those who think otherwise.
There both equally annoying in their own way. Life's always better in the middle. No?
So driving in Dallas is about as tense of a feeling as sobering meth-head in the county drunk tank. The freeway is full of time strained business man trying to make meetings, drunk cowboys hiding their small cocks in their jacked up F-850's, uninsured drivers driving 15 miles below the speed limit, and X'd-up, tragically hip, douches in their speedy imports pushing the sound barrier.
Seattleites drive at the rapid speed of the time it takes for an aluminum can to biodegrade. Coming from Dallas, right-on-red and intersection turn signals give me a massive erection. In a moment of clarity, I must admit a moment of fault. It was a cold, wet day, not unlike most in Seattle. The spring was looming in the horizon and a young spunky Illinois Senator was visiting the great city in a rag-tag hope for the Democratic nomination. I was the front runner at a large intersection, waiting for the signal to turn trying to be "Indie" listening to a moaning, baritone folk artist on the college radio station, when somewhere between the radio dial and empty thoughts I heard the honk from a distraught commuter behind me. I looked up at the light only to see it turn from yellow to red like a sunset. I looked behind me only to see dissappointed faces and people giving me the what happened look of disapproval. I was the pot that called the kettle black; the Reverend Jim Baker with a hooker. I wanted to get out and tell the honking driver the error of my ways. I sought redemption. I wanted to say, "You sir have moxy, and I respect that. Me and you are cut from the same cloth!" I cowardly waited for the light. At home, I had to shower to get the nasty feeling off my body. At night, I still wake up in a cold sweat, clinching my fist as I gaze out the window for things that could have been.
Seattle: Rainy, chilly, and on the occasion, pure sunlight filtered by the many clouds. (I lifted that last one from some cheesedick local weatherman. Oh, how I so love their witty PC banter!)
Dallas: Really fucking hot or cold and icy. Then April 75-80 degrees.
However I'm not going to be one of those limp-dick assholes, who sits around at bars and talks about how different it was back home or the pretentious bastards picking at all the differences. "Oh the seafood is so much better in Seattle!" Hey, asshole! That big body of water in front of you is the pacific ocean. Turn to your right, there's Puget Sound and behind you is Lake Washington. Yeah, Dallas has better Mexican food because they have Mexicans and Mexican grandmothers. (But I might touch on the latter later. Guess my dick maybe limp.)
I went to Kirkland, WA for an interview this week. A cozy little Microsoft subsidized town right on the lake where eco-friendly mothers are ranked by their free-spirited children and their North Face wardrobe. The little clones hopped out of mom's Hybrid Ford Explorer and ran around trying to find a place where they can express their creativity by rubbing dirt on their Eddie Bauer sweater vests. The eight-year-old boy's hair was playfully tossed about and frozen with hair gel. I didn't own a comb until high school, and that's only because mighty Kong had awoken in my trousers. (More like a playful spider monkey. I'm thinking Curious George.) In the town square, there was an elementary school's collage of individual tiles on the back of a building in tribute of the last mother's day. Little third grade Madison decided to write a surprisingly astute poem about world unity and freedom. Something that had obviously been belched-out by "helping" parent. I remember a poem I wrote in grade school. It was about Kool-Aid, frogs, and baseball cards--things a boy knows.
Dallas parents are equally annoying with their race to consume the most fossil fuels, spackled on make-up, and heavily starched suits. Dallasites pay a lot of money to be quaint. Building town squares in model of "It's a Wonderful Life" era 1940's Connecticut towns, housing Crate and Barrel, William Sonama, and JambyJuice, in place of Ted's Tool Shop and Wilma's Cafe. Feeding their seed with the antiquated rule of the Earth is for our consumption in favor of a strong economy and shunning those who think otherwise.
There both equally annoying in their own way. Life's always better in the middle. No?
So driving in Dallas is about as tense of a feeling as sobering meth-head in the county drunk tank. The freeway is full of time strained business man trying to make meetings, drunk cowboys hiding their small cocks in their jacked up F-850's, uninsured drivers driving 15 miles below the speed limit, and X'd-up, tragically hip, douches in their speedy imports pushing the sound barrier.
Seattleites drive at the rapid speed of the time it takes for an aluminum can to biodegrade. Coming from Dallas, right-on-red and intersection turn signals give me a massive erection. In a moment of clarity, I must admit a moment of fault. It was a cold, wet day, not unlike most in Seattle. The spring was looming in the horizon and a young spunky Illinois Senator was visiting the great city in a rag-tag hope for the Democratic nomination. I was the front runner at a large intersection, waiting for the signal to turn trying to be "Indie" listening to a moaning, baritone folk artist on the college radio station, when somewhere between the radio dial and empty thoughts I heard the honk from a distraught commuter behind me. I looked up at the light only to see it turn from yellow to red like a sunset. I looked behind me only to see dissappointed faces and people giving me the what happened look of disapproval. I was the pot that called the kettle black; the Reverend Jim Baker with a hooker. I wanted to get out and tell the honking driver the error of my ways. I sought redemption. I wanted to say, "You sir have moxy, and I respect that. Me and you are cut from the same cloth!" I cowardly waited for the light. At home, I had to shower to get the nasty feeling off my body. At night, I still wake up in a cold sweat, clinching my fist as I gaze out the window for things that could have been.
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