which is unlike me. but its the truth. therefore here is are some comments and rebutals that took place earlier this week.

Tony

The president is not a retard.

But keep telling people that he is!

And when you’re crying into your margarita on the Wednesday after the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, it’ll taste extra salty.

Go fer it!

Crid

to which i replied:

people dont need me to tell them that the president is retarded.

and me telling them that i think he’s retarded isnt going to make them vote for him out of spite.

people might act like dipshits from time to time but if anyone votes for the president of the united states for emotional reasons generated from an aside that they read in a blog, especially this one, then they are almost as retarded as the president was for invading iraq because of 9/11.

im sorry that the president is a fucking retard. im sorry that he doesnt want to hold press conferences because he knows he can barely speak to intelligent people in public. im sorry he was a coke head and a failed oilman and a deserter and an all around loser.

im sure around fellow retards hes probably one of the more funny. and because he can talk for five minutes straight and know how to pronounce correctly the names or the countries that he is being asked about doesnt make him capable. i can train a dog to stand on his hind legs for a full minute but that doesnt make him a human.

we have a handicapable commander in cheif who has cut taxes during war time, demolished the record surplus and turned it into a record deficit, will probably acheive the dubious honor of being the first president since the depression to have a net loss of job creation, and who sat and read that book about a goat for five minutes after learning the nation was being attacked.

theres an old saying in texas, maybe it’s the same in tennessee

they say call a spade a spade

this retard is a fucking retard

dont get fooled again

tony

to which an anonymous commenter named “jon” said:

fuck you i’m still voting for him. i guess i like presidents that are retards, but then again i didn’t like clinton…

jon

but because he didnt leave an email address and/or webpage, i dont believe him.

then the deputy laid it out:

The President

IS

a Retard

true

~grumbling under breath~

fucking fascist neo cons

The Deputy

and then devoy squared the circle beautifully:

another old texas saying…..

A 70-year-old Texas Rancher got his hand caught in a gate while working cattle. He wrapped the hand in his bandana and drove his pickup to the doctor. While suturing the laceration, the doctor asked the old man about George W. Bush being in the White House.

The old Texan said, “Well, ya know, Bush is a ‘Post Turtle.'”

Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked what a Post Turtle was.

The old man looked at him and drawled, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a Post Turtle.”

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain:

“You know he didn’t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he can’t get anything done while he’s up there, and you just want to help the poor dumb bastard get down.”

devoy

whover invented blog comments, God bless you.

kat + albino chiggers + deputy

who crashed

danielle’s going away party

at the flower stand

when the bad guys just lay on the curb waiting to die, as blood drains between the grates in the sewers and the little kids cry

i sit on the bumper of the undercover smoking the remains of marlboro 100 and i wonder when mi vida loca will be over and not so loca.

im always feeling like im wasting my life, like im blowing some great shot at something big. i see those guys at google, how young they are, how super rica theyre about to be. i wonder what they will do with that power.

if i was a billionaire i know straight up what id do after buying the cubs and tearing down the lights of wrigley. i’d fucking retire. i wouldnt do shit. and i know thats why the lord hasnt given me my financial freedom.

i watch the olympics and i see everyone swimming and i wanna swim. i wanna go to greece where no one is. and i wanna do the breast stroke. i wanna lose to puerto rico.

i see kids coming home from school and i say hey why are you in school its august and the kid goes si and i go but porque and he goes year round school mister and i go when the fuck did i become a mister.

and i see my belly and i know the answer to that one.

and the gray nostril hairs and the gray nut hairs and the gray chest hairs.

sometimes i wonder what this blog be like if i had gotten a job with the la times back when they shoulda hired me when i was coming straight outta compton. i wonder if i would be playing the dumb game of trying to prove that the president is a fucking retard to a group of people who will never admit that the president is a fucking retard.

ever.

the same people who are all, but kerry thought he was in cambodia and he was still in Nam! but kerry took his purple hearts and threw them away. but kerry is a flip flopper.

first flip flopper i ever met was your momma i wanna tell em. she was laying there on my water bed smiling and i said flip that ass over so i can see it.

yeah im glad i was never an la timeser cuz i wouldnt be able to keep it real for your asses and even the naysayers want me to keep it real.

splinky asked me about danielle and i was all, shes just a girl who i work with, and i danielle read it and huffed off in a huff.

i saw her at the flowerstand during lunch and i was all youre the wrong sign baby. and she violently ripped the leaves from the stems of the tulips.

1908 she kept mumbling. i was all what? she said louder nine teen ooooooooh eight! cuz she knew that was the only way she could get to me.

i was all keep it up, its one reason i hate san diego and hope it burns in a terrible fire and then causes an earthquake slash tsunami and falls into the ocean.

she was all what does 1908 have to do with san diego. i was all san diego in 1984 got in the way of the cubs and for that i will never forgive them until they apologize like crazy.

she was all, youre loco. i was all so.

then we took pictures and she said ok are we cool then. and i said yeah. and she said are you gonna visit me down in the valley. and i was all no. and she was all are you gonna visit me. and i was all maybe. and she was all are you going to be my friend and take the train and visit me. and i said can we go to mexico and she said si.

so i said si too.

keeping it real + sanity adrift

she will call my cell phone, when i dont pick that up she calls me in Chopper One, something ive asked her not to do as, well, we’re fighting crime. thats what we do.

some of us work for a living, ive been known to tell her.

some of us dont sit on a stool selling flowers to cheating husbands and begging wanna-be boyfriends.

all the conversations that take place on my cell phone or in chopper one are recorded, so i could verify them with written transcripts, but i wont bore you with the details.

so today i told her that i was going to be at my favorite hideout later in the day and that i would take her there for lunch, and if she was good, for the hip hop that will take place there in the eve, as they are having their summer party.

but because she is a drama queen and because everything is either boring as fuck or the end of the world, today when she called me frantically in my cockpit i thought something was tragically wrong at the flower stand.

oh my god, she told me, my mac wont be delivered till next week!

tragedies of tragedies i told her, which didnt sit well with our overly excited blonde girl from jersey.

you dont understand tony, i wont BE HERE next week.

once again overstating the obvious.

i was all, danielle, i can get you your computer, just chill out, im working right now, i will call you before i leave to pick you up for lunch.

to which she said FINE! and hung up on me.

on me!

little did she know but i was flying about a mile above and to the west of her.

i could have very easilly dropped something very irritable on top of her cute little flower stand that would have destroyed the loveliness in seconds, and done much damage to her beatiful locks.

earlier in the day when i told her that flagrant had emailed me and asked about her, danielle was super excited.

what did she say what did she say?!?!? she asked.

i dont remember, i think she said you were pretty.

i bet she said i was fat, she pouted. danielle hadnt gotten her coffee yet.

no, i very clearly know that she didnt say you were fat.

im very happy i wasn’t born a girl.

the prettiest ones seem to have the scariest things running through their cute little heads.

obey pedro + the cub reporter + sk smith

the topic was Phish’s final concert which happened on sunday

it began with Seth:

As I stated before, their musicianship, and consequently, their significance is tarnished by the pathetic sychophants who want to argue that Phish is teh greatest evar or original or even just different than the rest. The reason why it is a joke is because the fans are the fan of the scene. So when these brain dead shroomed out pigpens speak as if Phish is God, then it prevents observers from objectively gauging the musical ability of the band.

The guys can play some instruments. But that is about it, which is why they are jam band. Songwriting? Phish couldn’t write their way out of a nutsack (/cartman). Be instrumental. Instrumentalists can be great. But don’t pretend like you can write a song when the song exists merely as a pretext for a 12 minute jam using things like vaccum cleaners and such. I think Phish catered to their stoned out fans, and, as such, were limited as musicians.

Hopefully, for the sake of the artists, the band members can leave behind that wretched scene and grow musically.

posted by Seth at 5:07 PM PST on August 17

Seth:

Foam

Guyute

Reba

Divided Sky

It’s Ice

Stash

The Curtain

I am Hydrogen

All Things Reconsidered

Slave to the Traffic Light

Fluffhead

Oh Kee Pa Ceremony

My Friend, My Friend

Weigh

The Man who Stepped into Yesterday

All composition, all well done, possibly some of the best composition done (outside of the jazz and classical worlds) in the late 80’s / early 90’s. The improvisational things were spectacular at times, boring at others, but the jams – while a fun and occasionally interesting sideshow, were never what made phish great. What made them great was the composition, and the willingness to compose outside of the 4/4 3.5 minute rock song standard format.

Take Guyute for example, go download it – try and count it. Betcha ya can’t.

I’ll save you the effort even – it starts in 21/8ths, drops 3/8ths after the first verse into 18/8th’s back to 21/8ths to 4/4, changes keys a couple times, has a tempo shift, switches to 2/4 to 5/4 back to c to 15/8 to 12/8 to 21/8 to finish the song.

And they executed it flawlessly on stage (ok maybe not everytime, but more often than not) time after time.

Name me a band that writes and plays a wide variety of musical styles, well, with interesting tempo shifts, interesting key changes, executes on stage, and has a care-free attitude centered around having fun – and that’s a band I want to go see (previously, they were called phish, we’ll see if someone else with as much talent comes along. it will probably be a while.)

To get it right, they practiced and practiced. Then along came wives and children and the like and the most time consuming thing they did, practice, fell by the wayside. So they moved away from executing on the complicated compositions and to having fun improvising for a while.

Like I said, sometimes it was great, sometimes it was just plain bad, but for a few years it was a new musical direction. As a big jazz fan, and a big phish fan, I can understand a few bad improv sessions, Miles & Coltrane – they both have some real stinkers recorded, so does phish – it’s ok, its part of the improv ethic. However, the jams didn’t really grow – into new forms nor into new composition, they lost the time to practice, and so they hung ’em up. Wise, not wise? who can say, bands form and disapate all the time, I’m just glad that they formed, played their songs and improvs for us over the course of 21 years, left some great memories and some great music lying around for future generations to dig, ya dig?

posted by kurtosis at 6:52 PM PST on August 17

it starts in 21/8ths, drops 3/8ths after the first verse into 18/8th’s back to 21/8ths to 4/4, changes keys a couple times, has a tempo shift, switches to 2/4 to 5/4 back to c to 15/8 to 12/8 to 21/8 to finish the song.

And that, my friends, is why many people do not prefer the musical stylings of Phish.

posted by eustacescrubb at 6:54 PM PST on August 17

And that, eustacescrubb, is why I went and saw them. Say what you will, but you can never accuse them of being “formulaic.”

posted by kurtosis at 6:55 PM PST on August 17

kurtosis: I’m counting 7 for every bar all the way through that first section of Guyute before the instrumental section. 21’s a multiple of 7, but I don’t think you need to keep counting that long. Heh.

posted by emelenjr at 7:12 PM PST on August 17

it’s scored as 9/8 | 12/8 alternating bars which works out slightly differently than 21/8 or 7/8 for that matter. I was lazy and wrote 21/8 for the sake of ease. The 18/8th section is actually alternating bars of 6/8 | 12/8. i didn’t think anyone would actually take the time to listen and too count!

posted by kurtosis at 7:29 PM PST on August 17

phishphilter + grow a brain + ken layne

went to hang out in front of the Winn Dixie and we saw these girls and one of them was all ‘oh shit aren’t you that guy from round oak central?’

and we were all LOL it wuz pretty cool

then we listened to tool it wuz awesome.

tomorrow im going to a hip hop show at one of my favorite hide outs.

in the xbi the best way to hide out is in plain sight.

alot of the fellas are security guards or meter maids.

me, i like to volunteer at the library or check i.d.s at the viper.

and sometimes those little clubs co-op a gig with a big studio or company or organization.

the thing is, you usually dont bring someone from the xbi into one of your hideouts. but i know how much danielle loves rap.

im going to miss her a great deal.

yesterday she saw how sad i was that she was leaving, so today she wore a plaid mini skirt for me cuz she knows its my favorite.

bananarama said a mouthful when they said its a cruel summer

she couldnt even look at me, nor i she

we made promises of train trips to tj but theyre just pretty things to say

she turned a gay guy straight today i saw it with my own eyes.

and then i went over to the Winn Dixie with Damon and we met those girls and one of them smelled like danielle and i was all is that spirit by chanel and she was all no laughed and snorted

life isnt fair

be glad yr not here.

scary shit (first read the intro) + via in search of utopia + baby i loved napoleon dynamite

so i will have to post this here.

dear anti,

im bummed out that you guys arent getting along. you two were super cute together when i met you the first time. im not picking sides on this. all sides lose anyway in these matters, except those of us who read this as literature.

and as literature, i must say, this post kicked ass.

i will steal as much of it as i can remember in upcoming screeds.

i also found interest in the whole canada/america thing. not until blogs did i ever know there was tension there – or even much difference.

anyway, if i were to describe the day that i met raymi, i would say that it was like meeting a younger, hotter, shorter, brunetter courtney love. the entire world was radiating through her and back out. warts and all as they say.

i think she expresses that pretty well in her blog, which is why we all like her blog.

love, in my case.

she is a rockstar several times over with just as many ways to inspire us as to make us wince. but somehow she has like eight rockstars in her trying to rock their way out.

toplessly.

it saddens me that it has come to this between you because i saw you take care of her when she needed someone and since no amount of pussy is worth that much stress, i knew you must have really loved her.

i’m glad that you posted what you did today and promised not to make more of it publicly (and i know posting this on my blog now isnt making it any less-public, but wtf.) not that life is all gorgeous all the time, nor should be portayed in such bullshit ways. but im pretty sure you will live up to your word. and im glad you didnt trash her.

i like that you explained to us all how you cheated on her.

you two are classic people and excellent souls. it is a absolute honor to be likened to either of you because i have the utmost respect for both of you. you both continue to push the envelope in far more ways than showing green buds and titties.

you inspire me each time i come to your blogs and i want to steal everything.

just remember that no matter what,

you’ll always be my third favorite blooger

hope things mellow out,

tony

i know there are people who lurk out there. i even know that some of them are quite famous and powerful.

some of my friends know these people and they ask me occasionally if i know how badass i am to have these people as readers, but im not impressed.

even the popular and famous need to read something on their internet screens.

hello, all of you: friends, foes, famous, not so famous, and the ignored.

i can understand why certain people would want to leave anonymous comments. some people have an awful lot to be ashamed about. some people play politics regarding what blogs they read and what they dont. some people are concerned by what their friends and associates would think, gads, if they signed their name to a comment on the busblog, or lord help them, agreed with me publicly.

what i can’t understand is why people would leave anonymous negative comments to me regarding my attack on Peeps.

PEEPS!

my happy easter photo essay is one of my favorites.

in it i denounced Christians for allowing their most holy religious holiday to be taken over by chocolate treats, jelly beans, and the easter bunny. i question them for giving their children peeps and letting the american culture water down the day that their messiah rose from the dead after paying for our sins.

and i did it by telling the story of Angus Young, my favorite guitarist of all time, who, like Jesus, also had four brothers. I asked if Angus would appreciate Quiet Riot music on his birthday instead of AC/DC anthems.

as a Christian I would have thought that other Christians would agree with me, but in the two and a half years I have gotten a variety of negative reaction from certain Christians.

last night’s being the most disturbing.

not only was there an anonymous comment that denounced me, calling me dumb, telling me that he didnt understand the Peeps point, but then went over to my friend and yours, danielle’s blog, and told me that she shouldnt be friends with me anymore, infact she should shoot me in the face!

fortunately danielle is a typical sagatarius and you cant tell those people to do anything, so i type to you from the cockpit of chopper one with no bullet holes in my lovely face

but i wonder if the Peeps industry wasn’t behind the couplet of comments that have infested this blog and danielle’s?

i never said that Peeps should be outlawed. Hell, make Jesus Peeps. make manger Peeps. make jenna fucking jamison peeps for all i care, but dont threaten to shoot me in the face because of a photo essay.

that you admit to not understand.

it will not suprise me if one day i do get killed by a gun + bullet + idiot, but i doubt that it will happen over a misunderstanding surrounding Peeps.

and if i do go down that way,

promise me that you will avenge my wrongful death

with an unrelenting barrage of Pez.

koganuts + sceinthire + rabbit blog

my hero. the greatest writer of all time. the reason for everything.

tonight i write to you from hollywood california, where the king of the world once lived. lived for a long time. drank mostly but lived a lot too.

bukowski, savior to the underclass, defender of the forgotten. hope to the ugly and the scarred and the uncool and the sick.

proof that poetry can come from everywhere, even the drunkard in the corner with the bag around his bottle.

like most great things, the Lord showed me bukowski in a library. procrastinating as always i roamed the 8th floor stacks in santa barbara and found a tidy little row of one bukowski novel after another. mixed in were poems. quick little ones, longer ones.

lines that floated in space

gave you time to think about them

everyday language in everyday settings like diners and hotel rooms and train stations and factories.

bukowski showed us that the hero of the story could have a nickel to his name and bad breath

and maybe not even the best intentions even, but he was alive and therefore somehow important, and the story would explain what first glance couldn’t.

the lesson of bukowski is the lesson for anything: don’t give up, you might not be an american idol at nineteen, you might not be born with the looks of a kennedy, you might not always have the luck o the irish, you might not even ever have a number one best seller on the ny times list. but you still have a shot at being the best because being the best isn’t about movie star looks, units moved, or luck.

being the best is about banging it out every day and every night better than the next guy, and definitely better than the pretty boy. its about taking back the night. its about picking fights until everyone knows that you’re in the ring and you might not be the king of each battle but you’re a force to be reckoned with. somehow.

bukowski didn’t have to speak french in his novels the way hemingway did. he didn’t have to tap dance around his drinking or stick his pinkie out or have to use the right glass or be international. he just fucking drank.

hem talked about wars and signed up and fought and buk fought too except he didn’t have the luxury of leaving after a few years, hank fought for decades. and lost for decades.

hemingway was 24 when he wrote the sun also rises and it was published immediately.

bukowski never had a steady publisher until he was nearly twice that, hell, he didn’t even start writing seriously until he was in his late thirties, but as soon as he started writing he never stopped. not even his mindless fulltime job at the LA post office that nearly killed him after his third year got in the way of his writing. in fact, when he returned to the grind and stayed there 12 more years, he finished his run by knocking out one of the finest novels of the american working class “Post Office.”

As a matter of fact, once John Martin launched Black Sparrow Press out of his own pocket, pretty much just to allow bukowski to quit his job and write as much as he wanted, he reeled off an impressive string of novels and poetry collections of high quality, creativity, and depth.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man, 1969

Post Office, 1971

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, 1972

South of No North, 1973

Burning in Water Drowning in Flame, 1974

Factotum 1975

Love Is A Dog From Hell, 1977

Women, 1978

Play The Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit, 1979

Dangling in the Tournefortia, 1981

Ham On Rye 1982

Hot Water Music, 1983

i like bukowski because he barely bitched about his lot in life. he didn’t run around saying oh woe is me. he didn’t write about how ts eliot was kicking his ass in book sales. he didn’t whine about how a certain young lady said she wouldn’t f him even if she lost a bet.

one thing bukowski did that i wish i had the guts to do was send his shit out to the world. he mailed off his poems and his stories and his everythings out to the publishers and magazine editors and newspapers and they mailed pretty much everything back.

far too punk rock for the good paying literature mags of his day, bukowski was forced to write for sex papers underground magazines and collections of unheard poets and writers. but unlike van gogh he kept at it. getting little nibbles here and there. writing regardless. telling the stories of everyday life in americas lower class.

he married a wealthy five-foot tall texan with a stiff neck, divorced her, and then married two other times.

late in his life good luck found him and not only did he die wealthy and famous, but he lived the last decade of his life respected for staying true to himself, never selling out or changing for the times or for the big bucks.

his stories and novels live on. his poems resonate stronger now than ever. theres not a writer alive who match him with the one-two punch of poetry and fiction, longevity, and production.

and unlike papa hemingway and the other quote unquote important american writers other than twain, bukowski could make you laugh.

kyle + kevin m. + xtracyx