tomorrow is opening day, play ball

and im glad it came on a saturday cuz theres always one joker at work who puts vodka in your water glass, or shoves a fish head in your briefcase, or calls your babys momma and tells her you want her back.

because i paid my rent early, a few days ago when my landlord was inspecting my home, i would have forgotten that today was april first if it hadnt been for an email from the one and only mr matthew good, jokester.

the reason i hate april fools so much is because im hypersensitive to the issue of Trust which is what practical jokes feed off of.

in any relationship there are three equally important foundations: honest communication, the desire to keep the relationship alive, and trust. if you remove even one of those the relationship is in deep shit. its like taking one leg off a stool and trying to sit on it.

practical jokes actually take advantage of two of those legs because youre not communicating honestly and youre betraying trust. sure it can be funny, but being punk’d is no fun when youre in it and for some people it can make them untrusting for years to come.

one of the biggest concerns that people have of this current administration is that it has lied to us repeatedly, so much that not only can we not trust it any more but in order to defend itself it has taken the mass media down with them. depending on who your kids learn about this period of time, it might sound like dan rather forged documents, or that US propaganda was an important element in exposing the iraqi links to 9/11, that the press was liberal, or that michael moore’s most popular film was full of lies.

when you cant trust your president, or the congress, when people get caught lipsyncing on snl, when gay male hookers get let into the white house press room day after day for a year, when pro journalists get paid by the ruling party to keep writing good news, when baseball players look at the camera and swear they arent shooting up and then fail drug tests shortly afterward, ashton kutcher’s mtv show just seems like another reality show.

ive had people trust me for no good reason, and ive had people not trust me for no good reason. in my last days of selling tvs on commission i would yell at people who were showing signs of not trusting me as i took it very personally when they told me they were going to shop around or consult consumers reports magazine. of course they shouldnt trust me, i was a freaking sears tv salesguy.

similarily ive had the most innocent young girls strip within minutes of entering my home, or readers of my blog write me the longest emails, or strangers on a train tell me their deepest darkest secrets for no apparent reason other than i appeared trustworthy.

and to keep that appearance alive, as trusting me is the highest compliment i can receive, i place my disclaimer atop my most prized possession, the busblog: dont trust this shit – it’s the interweb.

but alas, people rarely listen to me. and they go right ahead and trust me anyways. and even though they shouldnt, they do, and that makes us all happy because some of whats in here is true, including this list of people who flowed the busblog and got me my new ipod in about 30 hours of me asking for it.

youre all very sweet and i promise to get you what i promised before the fourth of july. gravitas.

james
mr. orange
katherine
f smith
e. kemp
prufrock
debbie
philippe
carolyn
leck
jeneane
peter
tank
dan
jozjozjoz
anita
goose
wild bell
lisa
ian
ian
ian
ian
shellen

if i left anyone off, please please please email me asap.