today on the busblog

please hold for the president

tony pierce?

president?

tony, how are you, i dont think ive spoken with you for a while?

i’m doing pretty good, sir, i just got back from aruba.

aruba? where’s that, in the tropics?

yep.

sounds expensive.

it is. but the readers to my site all chipped in and got me out there.

wow.

yeah, then my brother in law flowed me with first class upgrades.

aruba. do they still have those little grass umbrella huts inches from the water, where theres enough room for two young lovers, one who looks hauntingly similar to anna kournikova, the other who looks remarkably unworthy. where the waiter asks you if you’d like anything to drink and you say yes a mai tai for the lady and liter of coke and a bottle of rum for me. and the sandpipers peck at a coconut tree, and theres music coming from the resort and you wonder, how on earth do i deserve this?

yes, they still have those huts.

because that’s funny because someone told me that you were saying bad things about me, and i said, i thought pierce just got back from “aruba”. i wouldnt think a guy who just got back from there would be running his mouth so soon after being treated to such luxury.

sir, nothing in here is true.

you didnt just call me a liar yesterday?

calling the president a liar goes all the way back to calling the king a liar. and no offense, but picking on you, mr. bush, is like throwing water balloons at the traffic, punching a woman, robbing a grave. it’s too easy, and completely unrewarding. why would any one want to do it?

because i’m not a liar.

come on, everybody lies. especially people who have to be in front of cameras and reporters all the time. it becomes flourishes in a new language. it’s accepted. it’s okay.

seriously, ask me anything.

have you ever seen an adult movie?

of course.

can you name a porn star?

yes.

name one.

kelly o’dell.

is that really one?

yep.

did you know about 9/11?

nope.

do you know about 9/11 now?

nope.

that’s funny.

we’re a great team, tony. but you have to be nice for it to work.

okay.

nixon and sammy davis did a lot for each other. sammy told nixon to sign the farm bill.

food stamps? really?

of course. not everyone is as bad as they appear. and some arent as good. do you lie, tony?

no.

impossible.

no, always telling the truth has its disadvantages. girls cry. feelings can be hurt. things are much more complicated. but im too lazy to lie. i barely remember the truth. only reason i’d even make something up would be to make a cute girl in the corner smile when im trying to ask her to the fair.

i love fairs.

im sorry for the things i said, george bush.

do you have any idea how hard of a job i have?

you have all these smart people around you, though.

still, it’s like, hard.

hard? just say, pull me up the live feed of the spy satelitte north north west of kabul. and one in pakistan somewhere.

okay, first, youre talking out of your ass. second, dont you think channel k isnt on every monitor in the building. fuckers hiding. uv cameras, heat sensitive cams, one purple spot in a cave looks just like another. we might have blown him up on the first night of bombings and they took away his body. he could be anywhere. you dont think that frustrates me. dont you think i see the irony of once owning the texas rangers, who are also big time losers despite having money, a new stadium, the best catcher and the mvp in the league and still finishing last place. dont you think i know that im the sherrif in town and i have a wanted man who i cant find?

once again, im sorry sir.

dont you think when i look at the new york skyline, i dont feel completely responsible?

well, you shouldnt. you sorta should but not 100%. dont be so hard on yourself.

please just leave alone on this. i’ll give you money.

i cant take your money.

i’ll get you a pretty girlfriend.

im surrounded by pretty girls.

yeah, where do you think they came from?

heaven.

ehnnn, guess again.

i dont want any of those ill-gotten girls. im getting old. i think im ready for true love now, please.

well i cant help you there.

ok, help get tsar to play for my birthday then.

only if you promise not to start selling the “bush knew” tshirts.

deal!

well, actually the only person who i know who has pull with Tsar is you.

i know, its cool.

good cuz i think its suppertime now.

thats cool. ok bye president bush.

by tony pierce. the busblog is my favorite blog.

i know. i see your IP at all fucking hours.

you do?

dude whitehouse.gov is pretty obvious on my shit.

oh. oh.

kbye

lower east side stories + etienne + peter interviews smelly

the problem is i dont really sleep.

thats not a problem if you always have projects to do and my latest current project was making the best book i ever made ever Stiff.

i also have a worthiness problem.

namely i dont think im worthy to produce the best book ive ever made and put it out there for people to buy and fawn over.

that problem is millions times more lame than the first problem but it feeds into another problem of mine, my procrastination problem.

often im called prolific and dedicated and lots of other generous terms in relation to my productivity, but the truth is for every half-hour that i spend blogging i waste five hours reading all of your blogs.

in many cases waste isnt the correct word, but in some cases its just.

jk.

the truth is, if i actually cut that ratio down by even a little i would be posting 4-5 times a day like a real blogger and i could probably just set up shop somewhere in the tropics and live a comfortable life solely as a blogger who drinks fruity cocktails and has his dick sucked twice a day by hula girls.

but that of course wouldnt jibe with my worthiness problem very well, which is probably why i sabotage pretty much everything im any good at.

which leads us back to Stiff.

Stiff is a collection of my Kurt Kobain stories about the time that i died and got judged and had to pay for my sins.

it was written years ago after i had been transferred from the closed captioning department at E! Networks to the Scheduling Dept.

symbolically i felt like i was going to hell because my boss’s boss told me that the Scheduling Dept was the hardest and busiest place in the whole network and no way would i survive it and no way would i ever have time to think let alone blog and frankly, he said, he didnt think i could hack it.

so i was scared.

within the week i took a walk across the street and i wept because it looked like he was right and it looked like a co-worker was right when he predicted that my new job would “wipe the smile” from my face.

when i was done crying i came back and killed myself in my blog.

and for the better part of that month every entry i made in the busblog was my journey in the afterlife.

i included parts of those stories in How To Blog but in researching that book i realized that i might be able to compile those stories into a little book that could stand on its own.

when i was released from my duties at E! this spring i considered putting out those stories as a way to earn money during my layoff. but a funny thing happened and ii didnt need to come out with the book because some small stock deals worked out in my favor and a particular adult magazine agreed to purchase a very short story under one of my many fake names. so my summer was set.

before i knew it i was employed again, so there was no reason to come out with Stiff since i originally only wanted to publish it for the money. but because i had talked about it people asked questions about it.

and now that i have had a cover contest and all, and because after making a copy to check out, i have fallen back in love with the stories.

however at only 120 pages i felt like it was too thin of a book to go forward with.

so instead of ruining it by tacking on additional stories, i beefed it up with a variety of the poems that i had written during my youthful days at uc santa barbara. these were poems that i also loved but were far too few to ever make it in a collection alone.

so the combo of my best novella and my favorite poems equals Stiff.

because i am constantly making things difficult for myself, last night i made SEVEN different versions of the book. seven different covers and different insides to denote on the title page the artist responsible for the cover art.

when i get the samples back from the printer (probably by the end of this week) i will put them on sale for you.

and yes there will be a limited number of autographed copies that you can order directly from me.

we’ll go into detail about that more next week, but i figured i owed you an update.

p.s. the secret goal is to sell 666 copies, so get ready

flagrant + just one bite + joe mael + eric case