with anyone. but especially with my friends. probably cuz im no good at it. and probably cuz we never do it.

but sometimes someone has to call bullshit and often times its me. and often times the other party says my bad, but sometimes they dont and it makes me so mad i want to cry. but i dont know how to cry any more. the xbi took care of that years ago.

i feel feminine when i fight. i hate that. im not a victim but when im upset its usually because i feel victimized or i feel like theres something that i want that was implied or down right promised that didnt come true and when i get the reason why and its bullshit i get all twisted inside because i smell a rat and i hate smelling rats.

but worst of all i hate feeling lesserthan cuz i always feel lesserthan. i just dont like it in my face and so obvious.

i kick ass at pinball though, so back off.

the other day someone said that the greatest living short story writer was in the house and the greatest living poet was talking to him. the fellow was talking about me and pat whalen. which is true. but being the greatest living poet, in my opinion is like being the greatest living hairdresser. its like a thanks, but no thanks.

ashley says that i cant ever be pleased, and shes right, but shes wrong.

its easy to please me.

just follow my dreams, be my friend.

dont make me feel less than.

drink with me when im out.

dont make me feel like a girl.

tell me nice things.

and break up with your boyfriends and molest me with your hot girlfriends as slayer cranks.

raymi + buffoonery + azarok

kids usually have the right ideas. i have to keep remembering that.

i think as time goes on i will start putting in here excerpts of my high school diary. back then we needed a chisel and a hammer to write down our ideas, and sometimes we had to use the skulls of past meals, but the words were laid down, the thoughts were documented.

i find that i follow a lot of the morals today that i promised myself to do back in the day. back when i had star wars stickers staring at me from my bunk bed. one thing i promised was that i wouldnt have sex with anyone who i didnt love. ive strayed from that a tad, but for the most part i understand why i said that and i still agree with it.

strangely i thought that i would lose my virginity to a prostitute. this is where idealism fucks shit up. it was my teenage belief that prostitutes knew more about the love-making process and as long as i made sure that they showered first, then they would be the correct teacher to send me on my way into manhood.

fortunately i didnt follow up on that idea.

i also didnt become the baseball player or baseball manager that i thought i would be.

and today as i got off the bus and back into the office, i wondered if i really wanted to be a superhero any more.

i questioned a lot of things on the bus as i read Moneyball and watched two very affectionate mexican people hold each other and kiss and hug and kiss and hug.

the man was shorter than the woman and he had one arm around her and the other arm on her leg. she was making a cellular phone call. they both had a lot of gold jewlery on. they both appeared to be in their late thirties. the passion they had for each other made me think the worst things:

is she his mistress? is this forbidden love? are they always like this? are they newlyweds?

he had a gold wedding band, and she had a ring on the right finger too, and a diamond on it.

they hugged all the way down wilshire and he never touched her in an innappropriate place and for the most part she looked forward and smiled while he worked on her neck and spoke spanish oh so quietly in her ear.

it was true lust, possibly love. it was early in the morning. they were riding the bus together to work. i couldnt think of anything more romantic. i hated that i had to go to work. i hated that i had to worry about work. i hated that we still havent found the missing xbi agent and that all of our secrets were about to be revelead or had probably already been revealed.

i hated a lot of things on this beautiful morning in the city of angels but i didnt hate that moment.

and i dont hate you.

gweilo diaries + the mighty doc searls + rabbit blog

and amy and leibowitz and others will write books about the daily nexus, the mesopotania of modern writing. and when they do they will point to patrick w. whalen (pictured) who i believe was sports editor his freshman year and then editor-in-cheif his sophomore year.

it was during pat’s sophomore year that i got the courage to write to him and tell him how much i loved reading my college paper and how i wanted to write for it. i included a terrible record review, some poems, and an opinion column.

i believe pat used it to sop up a knocked over milwaukee’s best and he never called me back. i believe i ended up coming into the nexus to meet him weeks later and he said, oh yes, yes, i was just about to call you. i love what you wrote.

all hogwash. but it doesnt matter. destiny has its own timetable and all of us were meant to be together and all of us will be together forever.

the educated will tell the real stories and include the facts and figures. but all i know is pat was my hero. he was the figure and the figurehead. the example and the exception. the eye and the hurricane.

amy followed him and had the impossible job of replacing him, but she did it. despite all the childish behavoir around it, sexism and whatnot. being the ringleader of adolescent genius isnt a task id assign even the brightest people, but amy still steered the ship to victory and while i raise my glass to pat today, please dont anyone think that i dont raise my other glass to amy as well.

i have many heroes from that era and they couldnt be more different and they are all beautiful and pure and have hearts of gold.

the other day at spaceland pat told me the most wonderful things. he praised me for my writing. he told me secret things, personal things that made me beam because i respect him so. in a perfect world we would all get back together and reshape american journalism and reintroduce the concept of rocking out with ones cock out. we would expose the evil doers and love the lovely.

when i tell people about pat i tell them that at the time he was the best writer in a office of best writers. and they ask is he still the best writer and i dont know because he doesnt have a blog, which is good because if he did none of you would be reading this.

pat was the singer of the first isla vista band that i was ever in, the reluctant surgeons. you had jeff whalen on guitar, max on guitar, welch on bass, me on drums, and i think someone was playing trumpet or some shit. we practiced one day in someones living room and a drunk guy came in and took off his shirt and danced for us as we played jumping jack flash.

pat was there with me when his best friend fired me at 3 in the morning after i had busted my ass.

pat was there with me when his best friend banned me during the persian gulf war when i said that i couldnt be responsible for editing any more damn war stories, because that war was killing me. that i wanted to fall in love with jeanine, who i was totally in love with.

pat was there when i rose from the dead and interviewed the chancellor of the university for the nexus’s fake competition in a three part exclusive where i was able to ask all the things that the nexus would have loved to ask but they were the nexus and she wasnt talking to us, but she would talk to me, and answered every damn question i had… whatever.

pat was there when i won the award for best art’s section despite not being entered by the guy who fired and banned me, pat entered me, pat picked out the sections for me, and it was pat who smiled big (like all of us) when i got my award, dressed in a dress, and it was pat who repeatedly yelled “irony of ironies!” as i brought home our first award for that section ever.

he has raised probably the happiest young son that ive ever seen who pat claims is now even happier.

he is single-handedly responsible for the czech republic being one of the newer members of the UN.

he inspires not only me, but his brother jeff, who fronts the rock group tsar, who idolizes pat even more than i do.

pat was the first one to put his tounge down my ear at my first nexus office party, to which i pushed him away in disgust, but then realized later that the wet willie only meant that i was baptised into the family.

people ask why all of us are so close and why we will always be so close and all i can do is say that somethings are meant to be and theres nothing you can do to fight it or change it or alter it.

you cant move away to foreign lands, you cant go off and get married, you cant go off and have real lives, you cant escape it. its there. we’re all blood brothers and blood sisters joined by spit, sealed with a kiss. the gods at mt. olympus look up to something and its called the nexus.

and thor stands above them all.

and may i say, it was a pleasure and an honor to hang out with him these past two weekends.

my best to you, my friend.

i’ll see you at the guns n roses reunion tour at the collesium.

marc brown is always there + amy + dougie

why must they constantly be dicks to me?

why must they go out of their way to make me feel like shit and second rate and the second choice and the first choice to blow off?

dont i do enough for people?

arent i nice enough? positive enough?

the stones are on hbo and mick is asking, aint i hot enough, rich enough, tough enough.

i am too blind to see.

the way i typically handle people who disrespect me too many times or in major ways is never to talk to them again. forever. usually they can make it up by writing a long apology and signing it in blood. childish, perhaps, but for the most part it works.

weird thing is, people who know me the best, know that i do that, and some of those very same people do what the previous people do and suddenly become suprised when im no longer talking to them either.

is everyone high on drugs?

as ive grown older the number one thing that hurts me the most, i realize, is when i put my heart out there for someone, friend or more than friend, and that person takes advantage of that gesture, or spits on it, or disrespects it, or bows to the feet of another instead of being my friend.

i dont know why this affects me so much, but it does. and people know it does, and they do it anyway. sometimes within the same six weeks, sometimes in the same six days sometimes in the same six hours.

and now i feel like highschooler.

i hear youre mad at me.

i am mad at you.

why are you mad at me.

you know why im mad at you.

im so sorry.

no youre not.

yes i am, omg, you dont evenknow what happenend.

i know you didnt even call me.

i know, im so sorry.

fuck you.

tony!

and fuck you for not even calling me the next day. or ever.

now nirvana is on and none of us called him the next day and now we’re stuck with all these pearl jam records.

happy belated birthday, lane

dear raymi the minx,

god i love you.

please dont be sad any more. nobody wants you sad.

maybe you should get oot of canidumb.

move to america where you belong.

where we all belong.

maybe you and i should trade spaces.

like exchange students except we’ll be exchange bloggers.

you say you have writers block:

“i have what you call writer’s block these days. i just can’t put words together. i don’t know what to tell you. and what to not say. i want to tell you about how i went mad but maybe that is meant for the book.”

writers block happens when you block yourself from writing.

youre raymi the minx, you dont have to worry about what to not say. if minx’s dont say the things others would not say, then how minxy is she any more? i say it would be negative minxy. bordering on republican.

and the book they will buy.

write the book in the blog. i did it and people were happy. if you do it people will be even happier because you will include cds of never before seen photographs in the book.

youd make millions.

canadian.

oh raymi. can i call you raymi? hold on to your skateboarder boy and fight the demons who say youre not this or not that. youre it. theyre just jealous. and ugly. and not saved. like us.

twenty is a tough age. youre probably not listening to let it be enough.

its ok to cry when youre twenty. and feel like a failure. and be confused.

just remember to have a lot of sex.

and write: a ton.

i love you raymi.

get well soon.

stop taking the meds. those fuckers would have shock treatmented your ass fifty years ago. and thrown leeches on you back in the day. or burned you.

they dont know shit. they make me sick.

give your boy anti a lick.

blonty fierce

I link you, sorry to tell you.

Tommy , 21mm

Dear Tommy,

have you not seen that ive been linking you on my upper left hand link deal?

dude, your blog is everything i wish the busblog was.

i love your pictures and your stories and your opinions on things.

how many times have you heard me say that i wanted to learn more about the towns around the world and peoples real lives and peoples real thoughts and see the pictures and get the feelings and feel the rock.

you do that every post and im so grateful.

not until the web could regular people see what life is like in other peoples towns every day around the world, and there you are busting from all the way around the other side of the planet.

well hello my friend from china, greetings from america.

i went back in your archives a little and you have great pictures and im grateful, thank you. you inspire me. you make me want to take more real pictures of the people of los angeles. not just of my friends.

i was suprised when you took offense at the Human Rights report that was critical of china. you say, “In response to the Human Right practice report by the U.S, China released its own survey of the U.S Human Right report, and revealed the U.S’s pride and prejudice. A question has been in my head since, why serious?”

and you know what, if youre saying things are cool. then good. you probably know better than me. shit.

anyways, im glad you take the subway and you take pictures from the subway. i like your english. i like your energy. i like your lo-fi design, and your captions, and your realness.

i hope you keep it up.

but please dont worry so much about america. the bush administration is scared of china. and it wants all your money, which means you can get away with whatever you want.

which is only fair since we get away with whatever we want.

our president got away with stealing an election. as fucked as it is, it was a pretty good trick.

a fuckhead, true, but a successful one, and we didnt even vote for him.

yes we are proud and we bully, and are ignorant, etc. and the guys running the show are some of the worst of us.

al gore wouldnta started blowing the shit outta iraq, trust me.

and he definately wouldnta lied about it to get the ok to do it.

hey, i thought the internet wasnt gonna be allowed in china. what happened?

anyways, happy hello my friend.

i love chinese food.

i love yao ming.

i love jackie chan.

ive kissed three chinese girls. maybe four. maybe just two.

i suck at using chop sticks.

anyways, thanks for the nice letter from another world. thanks for having me be your only link. thanks for taking care of business on that side.

i’ll do better to take care of business on this side.

your pal,

tony pierce

hollywood, california

united states

huge fan of 21mm

oj’s number. franco harris’s number. and magic johnson’s number.

for his entire career karl malone has played for the utah jazz.

now that he is a los angeles laker a situation has arisen where karl cant really wear #32 because it belonged to magic and when magic retired the lakers retired his number.

the purpose of retiring a number is to pay homage for eternity to the legendary athelete.

magic, being the sweetheart that he is has given permission for malone to use #32, to which, i assume, the mailman has graciously accepted.

to me this is wrong.

to me so many things are wrong, but i think im pmsing today because lots of things that normally dont irritate me are irritating me.

karl malone shouldnt take magics number and the lakers, and magic, who is part owner of the lakers, shouldnt want malone to have the number.

the lakers should want kids and adults alike to want to buy karl malones la laker jersey. but what kid is going to want a laker #32 jersey that says Malone on the back?

not me.

if im going to buy a laker #32 jersey its either going to say Magic on the back or Ervin or Johnson. it will not and it should not say Malone on the back. ever.

some players have been known to flip around the numbers when they move to a different team.

i think Karl should konsider this. #23 is the reason the karl doesnt have any rings right now. #23 is the reason he had to jump ship and join up his enemy (since he couldnt beat them). #23 is a number that the lakers have available. #23 should be karl malone’s last number in his storied career.

meanwhile the entire nba should just retire #23 like they will once mj gets old and sickly or dies or flies away into the stratosphere after he retires for the twenty-third time.

jaime + bukkake + moxie

No. 1 Convenience Retailer To Serve Free Slurpee™ Drinks, Beverages, Snacks on 7-11 Day

Dallas, TX, July 7, 2003 – Friday is July 11, but at 7-Eleven, Inc. (NYSE: SE), it’s better known as 7-11 Day, and the day the world’s No. 1 convenience retailer celebrates its birthday. This year is no different. To celebrate its 76th birthday in 2003, participating 7-Eleven™ stores across America plan to serve more than 5 million free Slurpee™ drinks and samples of several tasty new products while supplies last this Friday. An extra big bash is planned at a north side Chicago store, where the company will celebrate the milestone of opening 25,000 stores.

On Friday, each participating 7-Eleven store will offer 1,000 customers a free 7.11-oz. Slurpee drink of their choice. The new featured Slurpee flavor this month is Mountain Dew Live Wire. Participating stores also will be sampling Big Eats Bakery™ Dreammm Donuts™, new beef enchilada-flavored 7-Eleven Go-Go Taquitos™, Chipper Snacks™, Briar’s Premium Root Beer and DefCon3 Energy Drinks.

“For 76 years, our customers have made us the world’s favorite neighborhood retailer,” said Jim Keyes, 7-Eleven, Inc. president and CEO. “7-Eleven stores plan to celebrate this anniversary with a special thank-you to our more than 6 million customers that shop our stores each day.”

Convenience retailing began simply enough in 1927 when a Southland Ice Company employee started selling milk, eggs and bread from his ice dock in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. Since that inauspicious start, “convenience” has become a big business. The small ice company has grown into a major international retailing chain with 5,800 7-Eleven stores in the United States and Canada, and more than 25,000 stores worldwide.

“7-Eleven was the first to introduce the concept of convenience shopping to the public and has grown to be the largest convenience store retailer in the world,” said Keyes. “We look to maintain our leadership position as consumers’ store of choice by meeting and exceeding the changing needs of our customers’ lifestyles.”

Not only did 7-Eleven create convenience retailing, the company also has set the convenience store standard with numerous firsts since 1927. 7-Eleven was the first convenience store to: advertise on television, operate 24 hours a day, sell gasoline, offer fresh-brewed coffee to-go, self-serve fountain drinks and giant drink cups, and sell pre-paid phone cards.

The company’s branded proprietary products like Big Gulp™ fountain drinks, Big Bite™ hot dogs, Big Eats Deli™ sandwiches and Slurpee™ frozen carbonated beverages, also unique in the marketplace, have become part of popular American culture.

“Customers have high expectations of us,” Keyes said. “When they shop at 7-Eleven, they want to find what they need easily, pay a fair price, and get in and out quickly. That’s our challenge, day in and day out – to provide exceptional convenience, product assortment, quality, value and service. A lot of things at 7-Eleven have changed over the years, but our commitment to keep that promise never has.”

it looks like the lakers will get that back to back to back to back championship after all.

i must say that it is hard to root for the lakers since i grew up constantly rooting for the underdog.

pulling for the overdog, and in this case, now, with the uber-overdog is like chanting u-s-a as the american olympic dream team battles the likes of cameroon in hoops.

do i think what the lakers have been able to amass this morning is cheating?

i dont think its cheating, but if i was the commisioner i wouldnt allow it.

it really isnt right.

if you remember, everyone went nuts when shaq left orlando to be a laker and that was pre-kobe, and everyone was expecting dynasties out the ying yang and so far its only been out the ying. but still i dont think its right.

its unfair to the less glamorous teams when superstars say they’ll play for a sole million bucks in order to dish the ball to kobe and shaq.

but i’ll take it.

mostly for my buddy sam who has laker season tickets which have instantly tripled in value, which i will hit him up for next season, since i didnt last season, but i will next season, so get ready, buddy.

and at this time let me tell the lakers that i am willing to play for the lakers for a mere million too.

because i too am old.

and i really would like a ring as well.

your pal,

tony

pathologically speaking + krix + buzz machine