I walked into the Kum & Go on 24th and Leavenworth on a mission. That mission was a simple one- a trip for beer. But every trip on foot through my neighborhood becomes memorable for some reason.

I was wearing a blue ‘Rex Pharmacy’ polo. I set my beers up on the counter and the lady working asked me for my ID.

‘So you work at the Pharmacy?’ she asked while examining my Iowa License for the expiration date (a task no one in Nebraska can do in under sixty seconds for some reason).

‘No, that’s my name,’ I said.

She looked confused for a moment. Then looked back at my ID. Then looked back at me. And then looked back at my ID again.

And finally figured out that I was joking. Comedy gold.

$3.45 later, I am home again.

Book reviews for Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code:

‘This is the best book about Jesus since the Book of Mormon.’ -Oprah Winfrey

‘Dan Brown is very brave for writing about the alien powers that have been running the Vatican since fifth century C.E.’ -The National Enquirer

‘International intrigue- the best work of biblical fiction since Revelations.’ -The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

‘I’ve sold so many ****ing copies of this book it’s ridiculous.’ -Peter Olson; Random House Chairman and CEO

‘I said I’d rather get a body massage than read this book, but then I got in a boating accident and became a quadraplegic. So I got the book on tape and what I remember of it was less painful than the boating accident was.’ -Wally Poppenfresch; Duluth, MN

‘It’s kind of like what happened when Norman Mailer became impotent.’ -Playboy Magazine

‘This is why I burned down St. Patrick’s Cathedral.’ -Unidentified Amish girl, Age 9

About the Author:

Dan Brown, author ‘My Fight’, ‘Zweites Buch’, and ‘Digital Forest’ will wrestle a gorilla dressed up like a hooker for a few good lines of blow. He’ll also tell you that he’s giving you the reach around, but really, he’s just looking for your billfold.

Dan Brown lives in New England with his wife, Blythe, an art historian and National Socialist, who collaborates on his research and accompanies him on his frequent research trips. For more information, visit http://www.danbrown.com or http://www.davincicode.com.

Last night, Iowa City’s Miracles of God played at O’Leaver’s. That was a really good show. I haven’t seen Sam play since the Eggnogs were still a band. They had riffs all over the place and just when you thought that the songs couldn’t build anymore they got faster and louder.

Check out ‘Rape City’ by Miracles of God.

Simon Joyner also played and with a full band. I haven’t seen Mr. Joyner play with a full band in quite some time and it was very good. Lots of layered sounds and riffs and steel guitar and organ parts. Very easy to get lost in. Very easy to get caught up in. I dug it. The magazines may like to call THIS GUY the next Bob Dylan, but I’ve yet to hear any songs by him that completely capture the singin’-outloud-wailin’-away-feel of Dylan songs such as ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ or ‘Positively 4th Street’. The version he played of ‘For the Catholic Girls’ last night totally had it.

Coolzey opened the show along with some participation from other Sucka MC alumni, and a preview of a new group of some sort (?) called ‘Das Uncles’. It was pretty funny and I enjoyed it, but looks from the crowd either seemed completely into it or totally against it. Oh well- fuck the crowd.

It was a good night out. I had no complaints.

I kinda think that this Darth Vader looks a little bit drunk.

Check comes on Friday. The rent is covered. What will I do next? I don’t know. I should have done this a long time ago.

And here are some of the starting points:

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Hare Krishnas

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints(

Mormons

Cult Apologists

Seventh Day Adventists

Jonestown

The USSR Version of Jonestown- for the conspiracy buffs.

Synanon

Philip K. Dick

Too many people singin’ ‘punk rock saved my life’

go put it on a t-shirt mother fuckers-

like the things that kept us sane back then

weren’t fuckin’ crazy.

I had to make my own mistakes.

I had to dance on my own grave.

I was baptized in beers and reborn-

again and again.

Just like St. Paddy said-

‘If the me of then could see me know.’

I wouldn’t have listened up

back then either.

We grew up together.

My parents were public school teachers. His father was the Dean of a community college and his mother a Vice Principal. We grew up in Council Bluffs, IA- a slice of the midwest that isn’t any different than any of the other slices.

He was a track star, straight ‘A’ student, and went off to college to graduate in 4 years. That’s the American dream, right? The American dream for the all American boy: athletics, honor roll, and the big state university.

I was never one for sports. Perhaps I am not a ‘team player’? I’ve failed at soccer, failed at basketball, failed at football, and failed at competition, but I have no regrets there. I’ve failed at schools. I’ve failed in love. I’ve failed in life. But I’ve succeeded too. And I count the near misses and the ‘you’ve sunk my battleships’ with a grin and a cigarette and a dry sense of humor that hits people moments after words leave my mouth. I notice the delayed grins and the evil laughter that realization causes to sink in.

And I work like Rick Springfield- ‘workin’ for the weekend.’ My guitar tosses are less spectacular. I avoid spectacle. I wear spectacles. Myopia. Myopia. Look a little bit closer, kid, you’re near sighted- I’m forgetting about the story:

He graduated and manages the Hy-Vee on Center Street. The track star. The honor roll student. The big university grad. And then he moved back home to live the same life that our parents all chose. I’m a foot in the door on that one and dragging my heels the entire way. I can’t judge other people’s choices. Their stories.

His just sounds like a John Mellencamp song, that’s all.

‘Ain’t that America, to you and me?’

I just cracked open a bag of what I believed to be ‘Salt and Vinegar’ style potato chips, but immediately upon tasting and then re-examining the bag, realized to be ‘No Salt!’ style potato chips. And they were only a $1 for a very large bag, so I don’t feel screwed. I just now need dip. Inconvenienced.

Global politics.

What would be the social and economic effect, on a global scale, if a giant axe-wielding deathbot with corpses for arms and chainsaws for legs invaded Norway and ate all the people? If you wish, you may replace the chainsaws with a more advanced giant deathray.

One of the truly amazing things about the 20th century is the increased dependency on exports from other nations to other countries- as well as the profits gained through importing goods from other countries. Many countries are very dependent on other nations for supplies and goods, while other countries make lots of money sending their goods to other countries. It has created a global Have VS. Have Not enviroment. Entire cultures and lifestyles are sold to other countries along with their goods. Americanizing is a very popular phrase thrown around by people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

When answering the question ‘What would be the social and economic effect, on a global scale, if a giant axe-wielding deathbot with corpses for arms and chainsaws for legs invaded Norway and ate all the people?’ I think it’s very important to instead imagine that the chainsaws are accompanied by some of more advanced giant death ray.

For starters, chainsaws haven’t been that scary since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was re-made in 2003 as an art film. As far as I am concerned, chainsaws aren’t that impressive. Any jerkoff can drink an entire case of Old Milwaukee and chainsaw his family to death. And while the idea of a giant axe-wielding deathbot doing so to an entire Nordic nation is much more interesting when it is the one wielding the chainsaw- I think anything with lasers is ten times cooler.

First of all, let’s examine Logan’s Run (1976). The use of lasers in this movie is impressive. There are laser guns. There are laser lights. There are laser plastic surgery machines. There’s also this great scene with a gigantic robot named ‘Box’ who has laser gun arms. Because Box is a robot and he has lasers, he’s a much more interesting character than Nell Kellty as played by Jodi Foster in the 1994 film Nell. Robots with lasers will always win on the cool meter, as dictated by Stan Lee and Tom Defalco.

Secondly, let’s remember the use of lasers in every cartoon show that aired during the 1980’s. I swear to Christ that everything had lasers in it at some point. The Transformers. GI Joe (where they had M16 laser guns). Cyber C.O.P.S. My Little Pony. Jem. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a craze that they’re still trying to force on kids). Alvin and Chipmunks even used lasers. We live in a laser saturated society. To ignore lasers is to ignore our roots. How can we ignore our roots, grounded so firmly in lasers? I ask you to answer that and stay honest.

Thirdly, lasers go very well with different kinds of intoxication. In fact, following that one hyperlink alone can show you a great deal of things that lasers are totally sweet with. Research is very important and so is field study.

Now that we’ve proved that our giant axe-wielding deathbot with corpses for arms and chainsaws for legs should also have some sort of more advanced giant deathray, we can get around to answering the question of What the social and economic effect, on a global scale, would be.

Were you aware that a google search of the phrase ‘Norwegian Exports’ returns 1,420,000 results, yet none of the websites are actually interesting enough to look at. Realizing that I was running into a brick wall, I switched over to the google image search in hopes of finding more interesting fair. Sadly I was greated with a barage of bar graphs, which you can examine below:

I also located what appears to be a plate of sushi:

Since I can make bar graphs in Excel at work, and only occasionally feel the need to eat sushi while drinking Sake- I think it’s safe to say that I won’t need Norway to obtain any of these things. If all the country of Norway has to offer after being grown from a culture of Vikings and Metalheads is bar graphs and sushi, I think it’s safe to say that there would be no global social or economic effect if a deathbot with corpses for arms and chainsaws for legs and some sort of more advanced giant deathray invaded Norway and ate all the people? In fact, I would probably vote affirmatively for a measure that insured this would happen. I fucking hate metal. Hate. Metal. Hate. Christ.

But how can I be sure of this? I tried to ask Jeeves, but found out that he is no longer associated with Ask.com and am wondering if perhaps P.G. Wodehouse came back from the dead and kicked the shit out of the owners for misusing his butler that way. Regardless of the fate of Jeeves, I still asked ask.com and all it had to say was ‘Make sure all words are spelled correctly’ and ‘Try different keywords’. Ask.com also suggested to ‘Try more general keywords’ and ‘Try fewer keywords’. I accused ask.com of avoiding my questions and instead it responded with a string of total bullshit about things that had nothing to do with Norway or deathbots.

I’m working on faith with this one and for a very good reason- I have seen what the deathbot looks like and it looks like this:

Only it also has corpses for arms and chainsaws for legs and carries around some sort of more advanced giant death ray.

Summer’s almost in full effect again. Around my stereo that means the punk rock records are back in rotation. For some reason when the snow and the dark go away, the brooding music gets put away for another year. LOUD FAST RULES is the law of the land.

So here’s what’s been on the player again lately.

1) Cleveland Bound Death Sentence; Discography; Lookout Records! 1999

I bought this album in 1999. It features St. Patrick from Dillinger Four and Aaron Cometbus of Cometbus fame. It’s 14 songs in 18 minutes and perfect to the core. The vocals are traded back and forth between Paddy’s growl and Emily’s ’snotty tough girl’ spitfire. I keep bobbing my head around the office while mumbling lyrics to myself. ‘What about the nights drinking down at passout? Tasha found a hundred dollars wet on the sidewalk. Split three ways enough for two bags of speed and five hundred copies of my motherfucking fanzine.’

2) Leatherface; Horsebox; BYO Records 2000

This album came out my senior year of high school and is still one of my favorites. Frankie Norman Warsaw Stubbs is an English hero. I had the pleasure of seeing Leatherface twice while I lived in Iowa City. The music was amazing both times. They had a lot of energy and a lot of passion and Frankie’s voice cuts through a song like a hot knife through butter. I guess I like a good raspy voice and he certainly has one. A dry throat for dry liquor soaked humor gems like this: ‘He bought you flowers, but I bought you drink. You can’t drink flowers, but flowers can drink.’

3) Jawbreaker; Dear You; Geffen 1995

I thought Jets to Brazil was an amazing band, but my favorite Blake Schwarzenbach album to date, is still Dear You. I love the earlier albums too, but there isn’t a lyric that makes me cringe on this record. The guitars are great and while production isn’t the first thing we used to talk about with punk rock records (the ‘we’ being ‘me”), it truly is stellar as well. I guess that’s to be expected with a major label budget. Excellent. ‘There is plenty to criticize. It gets so easy to narrow these eyes. But these eyes will stay wide. I will stay young- young and dumb inside.’

4) Dillinger Four; Midwestern Songs of the Americas; Hopeless Records 1998

I started adding up the dates on some of these and noticed that time is passing me by. I was 16 the first time I saw Dillinger Four. And then they were back around again at 17. And 18. And 20 was Iowa City. And then 21 was in Omaha. And I love the shit out of this band to this day. I remember one time in Iowa City (well, I remember being told about this story) when I called Mike at KRUI to request doublewhiskeycokenoice from this record. I was shit-housed drunk and missed the song and then called him back and accused him of not playing it. ‘I have eyes that see. I have a mind that thinks. I have a mouth that speaks and god damn, it will, because I’ve had enough of all this shit about ‘making do’ & ‘playing ball’;'the way things are’ &’dealing with it’. Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is. I’m not into making excuses. And I’ll die the day I find I’m fucking useless.’

5) Routineers; Routineers; Dischord Records; 2004

This record makes me feel ok about getting old because everyone in the band is over 30. Some of them well. Aw, I kid. Anyway- this little gem was added to my collection at the suggestion of the infamous Dave Sink. I have no complaints. This was added to my summer collection last summer. I rode my bike around the Council Bluffs bike trail and listened to it a lot. ‘I’m a statistic; the kind with poise and taste. Don’t bother waiting for me at Peter’s Gate. Do what the Damned said: ‘nick the collection plate’. And if the cops come, you know it’s one step/two steps back around…’

6) Hot Water Music; Fuel For The Hate Game; No Idea Records 1998

‘Raise your voice in swells. Find your meanings then use your signs inside to relive, and live again.’

I’m noticing a trend on this post of bands I saw multiple times a few years back and haven’t seen in a long time. Hot Water Music is one of those bands. This was also the album that I listened towhen I did dishes at David’s house. (The winter equivalent being Hum’s ‘You’d Prefer An Astronaut’- appropriate since it was Mr. Edrington who got me into both of these bands). Anyway- I hate driving a whole lot, but this is one of my favorite albums to drive to. Go figure.

7) The Minutemen, Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat, SST 1983

‘Dreams are free, mother fucker!’

Nuff said.