I changed my main/navigation page. I promise some better posting soon. I move into studio tomorrow. Talk to you then.

Tonight is the first time that I have had a moment to watch TV and look online at the devastation in New Orleans. Terrible. I can’t even believe what the city looks like. Good luck to everyone there.

High Gas Prices Fueling (you clever headline writers, you) Animosity Toward Station Attendants.

I totally know how these people feel. I pulled off of the freeway in Nowhere, CA and all three gas stations were charging $3.17/gallon. I would have just driven to the next town, but who knew how many more miles that was, and my tank was as empty as my stomach. Thankfully there was a Dairy Queen attached to the price-gouging gas station. I nicely asked for one small chocolate/cherry blizzard. I watched as the small town girl blizzarded together the chocolate ingredient and the cherry ingredient and the vanilla ice cream ingredient and marveled at how well she held it under the blizzarding machine. “It’s so nice to have a craft,” I thought that I thought but I actually said aloud. The truck owners in line with me stared at me in a generally unaccepting manner; their craft apparently beating the hell out of Hollywood Elitistsâ„¢. I accepted my treat from the Blizzard Maestro and walked outside to fuel my car.

I placed the Blizzard on my passenger seat and removed my credit card. This was when I realized that the 89Level (the cheap shit) gas was fucking $3.17/gallon. I am a good American consumer and I am fed up. I let that “attendant” have it. When it asked me to insert my card, I put a little extra stank on the insertion. That’s when the “attendant” got sassy and made me input my zip code. “What you don’t trust me? The card has my picture on it,” I quipped with a little animosity. The “attendant” didn’t reply. I was just ignored while we waited for authorization. “Don’t ignore me you metal/plastic smug bastard. You’re glib, you know that? You’re very glib,” I exclaimed pretending to know what glib means. Still nothing from my nemesis. It was evident that I had won with the glib comment. I turned my back and filled my car, watching as the total neared $40.00(American). We didn’t speak as my receipt was printing, but I said something under my breath as I entered my car which was soon forgotten as I looked in the passenger seat:

Mother of fuck, my Blizzard is a flash flood. I hate this fucking town.

But honestly, $3.17 for a fucking gallon of gas? Aren’t we in Iraq getting our oil that our god mistakenly put under their soil? What’s the fucking holdup? Is it all being used to fuel the pump(s) keeping Dick Cheney’s heart going? Or is George W. Bush using is to darken his San Tropez tan? Have you seen that guy in his latest news conferences? He looks like a Puerto Rican George Hamilton. We are at war with Iraq and Mother Nature and our commander-in-chief is sunbathing like a starlet in her introduction scene to the Sean Connery-played James Bond.

Anyway. The night before I assaulted the automated gas pump I stayed in another Microtel. My love affair with the Microtel Brand Motel Chain has kind of cooled. This one, though it didn’t smell like cum, didn’t have a pool (yet). I am doing science-y things to see if the cum smell/pool, no cum smell/no pool is in anyway correlated. So far I have had mixed results though I did make a chlorine baby by accident. But back to my Microtel experience.

This Microtel was in Bellmont, AZ just outside of Flagstaff. The first problem was that the cute, younger-than-she-looked (I’ll get to this later maybe) told me the price:

“$59.99 with AAA,” she said.

“What? It was ten dollars less in Tucumcari, NM [I actually said enn emm to try to sound hip like the young people who speak acronymically]” I expressed, trying to gain some points by knowing where every Microtel in the country is.

“Yeah. This is Flagstaff,” she said matter of factly.

“Exactly,” I said while thinking the French word Touché in my head in German.

She stared at me quizzically.

I stared back at her super-attractively.

“OK. Is this near here?” I replied while pointing to a local travel guide with an obviously photoshopped/airbrushed waterfall.

“No. I don’t think that exists,” she retorted.

“I didn’t tort first, so yours doesn’t count,” I was about to say.

It was then that I noticed that this girl was kind of cute for someone from Arizona and I automagically went into try to get laid mode.

“So, is there like anywhere to go out and get a drink around here?”

“Yeah, there is a bar right across the freeway.”

“Oh. Is it fun?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not old enough to drink.”

“Oh. Umm. I’m gonna go look at that waffle iron while you finish checking me in.”

So. I went to my room and found out the pool was under constuction, no HBO, no Comedy Central and I had gained an hour so it was 5fucking30PM. So I decided to sit around and do what it is that you do in Arizona:

Wish that you were in California.

Home sweet home.

A couple of days ago Extremist Christian Cleric Pat Robertson first weaseled and later apologized for his fatwa on Hugo Chavez. (I realize that this is old news by now, but I have been on the road, gimme a break. But really I just loved the title that I thought of with the Lost In Space reference, and had to build a post around that.) Honestly, when I heard he apologized, I thought, “Well. OK.” Fine. We all make mistakes and say stupid things. Though most of our slip-ups don’t have world peace implications, and most of us don’t own our own Christian Broadcasting Networks. But, he apologized. He made a mistake. He is human. He just seems to make a lot of them.

I wish the idiotic Bush administration would take a cue from Pat Robertson and admit some mistakes. I think it would help to rebuild trust in them. When everything they say turns out to be wrong, or a lie, it is hard to have any faith in our government. Follow the lead of your Televangelist, Mr. Bush.

But the Pat Robertson flub brings up another point. Christianity isn’t very accepting and respectful to others beliefs. (I’m not talking about your average Christian. Most of them are good people without extremist or prejudiced beliefs. I’m talking about a few very public events.) I do, however, believe that most American Christians think that Islam is a dangerous, extremist religion in and of itself. Osama bin Laden isn’t the face of Islam, just like Pat Robertson isn’t the true face of Christianity.

The extreme religious right vilifies individuals who have beliefs different form their strict core beliefs. Conservative (umm, Doctor) Bill Frist is under attack from the religious zealots for endorsing stem cell research. This is something that could possibly cure millions of people of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s (et. al.), not some weird devil worshipping voodoo trick. Come the fuck on.

I’m going to leave out the Inquisition because it is too far in the past, and things were just fucking crazy back then.

But the prison guards who flushed the Qur’an down the toilet in front of (uncharged) detainees were just wrong. Keep in mind my position; I am a proud and happy atheist who thinks that all religion is nuts, and putting that much importance on a copy of a book, well, crazy. But this is the holiest item in Islam. I have to assume that these guards were Christian, though I have nothing to back this claim up with. It is probably safe to assume that they weren’t Muslim. Te desecrate their holiest item is just a little too much, and really fucks us up in the eyes of Islam, umm, the world’s largest religion. More of a mystery to me is how they got the Qur’an down the toilet. I have a copy of the Qur’an that my friend gave me and it is huge. It’s, like, longer than Infinite Jest, though easier to comprehend. Was it a huge toilet or a super small pocket edition of the Qur’an? I can just imagine the look of disgust on the Roto-rooter guys face, “Goddammit, not this again.” [I realize that this story is disputed. But when we have seen photos of Leash Girl Lyndie England balls deep in a naked Iraqi pyramid, the Qur'an story doesn't seem too far-fetched.]

The other one is almost more of a blatant fuck you to millions of Hindi. In Hindu, (for some reason) the cow is sacred and cannot be killed. A McDonald’s in India told millions of Hindi that their fries were not cooked in any bovine byproducts. They, umm, totally lied. They made that many people eat an animal that is their highest religious symbol. I can just see the McDonald’s CEO (or whatevs. I am also assuming that said CEO is a Christian.) saying “Aww, fuck ‘em. What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em. Beef juice is cheaper than vegetable oil.” Imagine his fate if Hindu happens to be the right religion.

What in the hell is a McDonald’s in India selling?

The only equivalent fucking (umm, literally) of Christian holy items that I can think of is this, which I am definitely assuming wasn’t designed by a Christian.

#24 X-treme Everything

This issue has kind of been done to death, but some road signs I have seen on my drive have irked me into including it in this list. The signs have showcased “X-treme Worshipping”. Unfortunately, I was going 90MPH and couldn’t snap a photo, so a description will have to suffice. The first sign showed kids getting X-treme baptisms; they were fucking bungee jumping to their baptisms. Oh my god it hurts. The second sign showed two teens skydiving with rather large crucifix necklaces photoshoppily floating from their necks. Now I don’t have much interest in skydiving (it’s #3792 on my list of things to do before I die. To give you some context, #3793 on this list is to have my testicles surgically rotated; to see how my left one would look on my right and vice-versa. Also, #3794 is to go snow skiing with Sonny Bono, so the list is obviously outdated.) but I don’t think you would want a huge chunk of metal near your facial teeth when falling at millions of miles per hour. Sidenote: Isn’t religious extremism exactly what we are at war with? Let that one trigger a synapse for a moment.

Also. Products nowadays are all extreme, or have bite, or kick or some other shit. It was overly apparent in the hygiene section. I was looking for a new deodorant. I didn’t need an Xtreme smell, my odor isn’t that bad thank you. I want to smell like the ocean, not something with gnarly in the description. It doesn’t need to be xtreme; I’m not looking for it to Backside Smith Grind my armpit, it is supposed to just be there, calmly.

This topic is personal to me because of my history in professional skateboarding. Joe Public thinks that this is the way skateboarders act; all whoa dude! and killer xtreme flick move bro! This entire x-this, x-that campaign was created by Marketing Graduates and not skateboarders. We hate this shit.

This ain’t your Grandpa’s blog entry. Totally gnarly. Grrr.

#25 Liz Phair

But I seriously can’t drive 55.

Today’s drive went pretty well. I was speeding along in the upper-80’sMPH for most of the day. Near Gallup, NM I was coming in real hot when I saw a Sheriff on the other side of the freeway do some truly amazing Smokey & The Bandit spins in the grass median and come back my way. I knew I was caught and pulled over. I rolled down the port window and was surprised when I saw the sheriff go starboard. I rolled down the starboard window and he asked me what my hurry was. I played nice and admitted to going fast. He was a cool sheriff, so I regretted murmuring “cocksucking motherfucker” when he pulled up behind me. He told me I was going 87MPH and asked when the last time I was given a citation was. I told him at least 10 years and then we chatted for a bit. He handed me my license+registration+insurance back and told me not to go over 80MPH. It’s pretty heartening to meet a cool cop who by all accounts should have given me a ticket. As we were pulling off of the shoulder, he does his Smokey Spin through the median and gets someone heading east. This guy is serious about speeders. Godspeed, Sheriff.

I went 75MPH until the AZ border and sped back up for awhile. Then I started seeing all of these yellow signs with silhouettes of miniature elk on them. Because I had been driving so long and was developing cabin fever, I began to get super paranoid that I was going to smash into an elk. Promoting my anxiety, my phone was beeping at me that its battery was about to pass away. What would I do if I had an elk stuck in my driveshaft and couldn’t phone AAA? I relaxed a bit when I thought of an alternate solution. First, I would learn how to wrangle, and then second I would wrangle another elk and ride him or her 60 miles into Flagstaff.

This is an image illustrating what I would do in the worst case elk scenario. Only I would probably be in color.

Lance Armstrong is under fire for testing positive for a banned blood booster. My reaction to this news is the same as my reaction to the news that he won the Tour de France 6 times: I don’t care at all. I truly can’t believe that Americans are pretending to care about the TDF so much. It’s bike-riding. It’s like having a mail-delivering competition, it just seems silly to me. And I am sure you do need some sort of drug to ride a bike through the mountains for several weeks; I would need several uppers just to watch it and read about it without getting bored out of my fucking mind.

Hey, nice pedaling.

Nice gear shift.

Hot ten-speed!

Killer ball!

I have made several little personality/habit tweaks and adjustments this summer, most notably quitting smoking. So my next life goals are to have the greatest credit report in America and to learn to eat breakfast.

At my new favorite place on earth, Microtel Inn Tucumcari New Mexico, they have these 2 shiny waffle constructing apparatusses. I really wanted to figure out how they work, and have a tasty waffle, and see how safe it is to have waffle irons sitting on a shelf in the lobby for guests one and all to scar themselves on. I also wanted to save a few bucks on a free breakfast (see. I’m being money minded, two goals with one stone.)

I actually got out of bed when my alarm startled the fuck out of me at 7:00AM. I showered. I shaved. I dressed. I realized. I am not at all hungry. This threw all of my Microtel plans off. I don’t like working out on an empty stomach, so without breakfast there will be no workout. I don’t get hungry until about 11:00AM. Is there a hunger inducing pill that isn’t made by Merck? Like an anti-diet pill. I have the cadillac of Metabolisms, so I am not worried about getting fat.

On the road again, see you in Bellemonte, AZ.

There is nothing like a cross-country drive to catch up on my music collection. I have probably 25 cd’s that I haven’t listened to, or have only listened to once or twice. Here are some thoughts from 9 hours of music listening.

Though it breaks your heart
We had to sell the farm
Back to California where it’s warm

Low The Great Destroyer. I hadn’t listened to this cd at all, despite Low being a band that I listen to a lot. I just hadn’t incorporated it into my rotation. This album is different than the other Low albums. I am not sure exactly how it is different, but it is. Mimi Parker seems to leave all of the singing to her husband on this one, which is kind of a shame because my favorite low songs are (mostly) songs that are primarily Parkers beautiful voice and not much else; think Laser Beam, Two-Step, Point of Disgust, et. al. I need to give this one a few more listens.

King Saul fell on his sword
when it all went wrong
and Joseph’s brother sold him down the river for a song
And Sonny Liston rubbed some tiger balm into his glove
some things you do for money, and some you do for love, love, love.

The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree. Much of the music I listen to is lyrically driven, the rhythm and melody takes a secondary role. John Darnielle is the finest songwriter I have heard in a long time. His lyrics are filled with odd (for songs) references to things like Travelodge, Saint Josephs Baby Aspirin, La Cienega etc. Instead of sounding post-modern and trite, he makes these references endearing and sensitive and sad, somehow. That isn’t easy. While listening to The Sunset Tree, I had the idea that Darnielle should do a concept album on the deaths of celebrities from their points of view. So many celeb deaths have such bizarre, sad, and twisted endings and for some reason I can see him giving them a unique story. Imagine the last minutes of Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Sal Mineo, Belushi, the woman who dove from the Hollywood Sign, umm, Michael Hutchence; wouldn’t that be interesting?

Drivin’ by, wavin’ my fist
Makin’ ‘em mad when I’m goin’ like this

Public Enemy Rebirth of a Nation. This one kind of hurts. Public Enemy are in my top 5 favorites of all-time. I can remember hearing It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back for the first time, and I really think it changed me forever. I also remember wearing out the cassette single of Welcome to the Terrordome because I never took it out of my tapedeck. But. This new PE album sucks. It is so bad. And it hurts worse because of how perfect I think their first four albums are, and I wish they wouldn’t tarnish their discography with records like this. The beats sound like they were produced with a toaster or something. And Chuck D’s voice, once so powerful and life changing, just sounds kind of old, maybe. Just not good. Not Chuck D. (A little aside: This reminds me that my friends and I this year might be Professor Griff and the S1W’s for halloween this year).

We can drive, we can race, we can celebrate space.

The Delgados Universal Audio. I just found out yesterday that The Delgados broke up. This album is pretty good, but it is no The Great Eastern or Hate. So maybe it was time for them to throw in the towel. That being said, “Everybody Come Down” is such a fun song. It reminds me of those early-to-mid-90’s-poppy-alternative-girl songs a la Juliana Hatfield or Tanya Donnelly. I am really loving that song.

No one’s gonna tie me down
Nobody tell me what to do
Don’t you see I’ve got to be free
Sorry baby that’s the way it is with me

Paul Weller Solo Discography. The Jam is my favorite band ever, but I have only ever been a lukewarm fan of Weller’s solo work. I decided on this trip to give it more of a chance. My first thought was that for the guy who wrote those lyrics above this paragraph, he sure does sing about love a lot. Every song is about love. I understand people get older and lose their youthful thoughts, but it is just strange to listen to The Jam’s rebellious, fuck you lyrics and Elder Weller’s sweet love songs in the same sitting. People age faster than their work. Some of it is really good, but it just sounds like easy adult music; and I am not quite ready for that.

There’s a hole in my soul that will never complete, just waiting for someone to marry me. Broken hearts are overrated, you died alone because you’ve waited. It’s a great time to be alive and alone.

Troubled Hubble Making Beds in a Burning House. Pretty good. I need to listen to it more. “To Be Alive and Alone” is a fun song.

Don’t believe the lies you hear about fishes in the sea.

The Tah-Dahs Le Fun. The best live band I have seen in a long time. I saw them at The Cavern on Lower Greenville without having ever even hearing of them. By the end of the show I was a fan. I don’t think that that has happened since I saw The Long Winters open for Centro-Matic. When I first heard the album I was a little disappointed, because some of the live rawness isn’t there; but it really never is, so that disappointment is unfair. After a few more listens, I started to love the album. I have listened to hit dozens of times this summer and it is one of the most fun, tongue-in-cheek, pop records I have ever heard. See them live if you get a chance.

(continued tomorrow probably)