If they dehydrated the coffee at my job, turned it into a powder, popped it in gel caps, and sold it in gas stations, it would be stronger than any trucker speed on the market. I hardly drink the shit anymore because it keeps me up waaay too long when I do.

But I had some the other day. I was tired and needed a kick in the head that only the office coffee could give me.

That was around the time I got this e-mail from my buddy Kevin back in Omaha:

“Please go on a conspiracy rant for me. Just about anything. I have zero internet. No email to read and this guy here who is a glory hound and a pain. And the system wide issue we have is dns issues so it is the same simple fix over and over again or sending them to their router oem. I am so damn bored. I’m going crazy.”

Well, that was all I needed. See, Kevin and I have been shooting e-mails back and forth lately about David Icke and the Reptilian Humanoid Conspiracy and the entertainment value found therein. Which inspired the following rant.

Perhaps it’s time I start telling you about the international
conspiracy of money borrowers that resides in my neighborhood just on
the edge of the University of Texas campus. This is far more
disturbing than an international conspiracy of money lenders as I am
not caught up in any of their shenanigans (I don’t borrow, after all).

The money borrowers mostly look a lot like that character in the movie
“Into the Wild”. All of them are generally a little bit younger than
me or maybe just a hair or two older. They dress in rags and have pit
bulls and Rottweilers. They sleep on the streets or in the forests,
as is their want. In fact, many of them may even come from far more
privileged backgrounds than I am familiar with (and will readily tell
you things like “my dad’s a doctor”). But they dress in rags, have
white boy dreads (which cost upwards of $200 at a salon because, haha,
they don’t grow naturally on whitey) and sit on every street corner
asking for my cigarettes and change. Sometimes they don’t even ask.
They feel entitled to whatever I’ve worked for & provided for myself.

South By South West is approaching and they’ll be out in greater
numbers. Last year one of the money borrowers said to me “buy me a
sandwich with your money!” as I was walking into a deli. Not “please
buy me a sandwich”. No- “BUY ME A SANDWICH WITH YOUR MONEY!” A
command. I instead suggested he try dining on his dick.

The money borrowers fail to realize that we recognize them on a daily
basis. They also seem to fail to realize that most of us can’t afford
to hand out dollars that we work for to pay for such luxuries as “a
roof over our heads” and “dinner”. They fail to realize that the
money we work for that goes to such luxuries as “beer” is our luxury
because we worked for it. Not because we harassed it out of them.
They get offended when you give them detailed directions to food banks
& homeless shelters as though those places are beneath a person in
their circumstances.

What I’m getting at is that there is an international conspiracy of
money borrowers that inhabit the streets of Austin and they think
we’re stupid. However, we’re not the ones that die from exposure
living some sort of alternative lifestyle in the middle of December or
January.

I’ve taken to quoting gangsta rap lyrics to them rather than debate
the contents of my wallet. Says the poet Scarface “IT’S MY MONEY AND
I WANT IT EVERY MOTHER FUCKIN’ DIME!” Indeed. It is my money and I
do want every motherfucking dime of it that’s mine, money borrowers.
I’m sorry you have a dog to feed, but maybe that’s your fault for
getting the dog in the first place and trying to live out some sort of
1940’s trainhopper fantasy. You might as well get your asses to
California and start picking fruit like the Joads. Granted, of
course, that would entail getting a job, which seems to be against
your luxurious dreadlocked, multiple tattooed, lifestyle. Alas- while
I do not wish to sound like anybody’s father screaming “GET A JOB,
LOSER!” there are benefits to having a little bit of scratch. Not to
mention they kill time and you even get to spend time in doors when
it’s pouring down rain in central Texas.

The International Conspiracy of Money Borrowers seems to not realize
that cigarettes cost five bucks a pack on average in Texas. I’d like
all twenty of them, please. They cost me almost a half hour’s work.
Same for my pitcher of beer.

The International Conspiracy of Money Borrowers also seems to fail to
realize that I am not without sympathy for homeless folks. It’s just that                                                        they can visit the ARCH center. I am not a charity. ARCH is! They have
buying power!

I’m working out a more detailed plan for dealing with this vast
conspiracy, but unfortunately, the best solutions are the hardest ones
to actually put into practice. Especially when one lives in a city
where people are loath to make laws against pan handling at crowded
multi-lane intersections or do anything about it. Know what that
means- THE CITY GOVERNMENT IS IN ON IT TOO! Jesus Christ. It may go
even higher than that since this is the State Capitol. I bet Governor
Rick Perry regularly holds meetings behind closed doors with these
dreadlocked, tattooed, young, semi-homeless/positively homeless,
grifters. I bet they have their own voting district out in the woods
somewhere.

I don’t know how to handle this besides listening to that incredibly
sincere Dead Kennedys song “KILL THE POOR” on repeat for days on end.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I haven’t linked them to the Reptilians or the
Grays yet, but I bet they’re in it too. Christ. I probably won’t
find out until I’m being anally probed by all of them at the same
time.

I dreamed I woke up late for the bus. For some reason I was already
dressed and ran to the stop to catch it. I got there just in time,
but the bus passed me by even though I waved at it.

So I chased it down town. For some reason I ducked into a building
(on the ground floor, might I add) and then immediately found myself
on the top floor of the building in a museum. There were armed guards
everywhere and I found a stairwell and walked down it and came into an
office where my friends Krin, Melissa, and Dan (the Bassturd) were all
busy at work.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Melissa told me. “They shoot outsiders.”

I hopped back in the stairwell and came out in a locked Target store
on the ground floor. All the doors were locked so I opened a fire
door to escape. A lady I used to work at in the Target in Council
Bluffs (who’s name I cannot remember for the life of me) told me “You
can’t do that.”

But I did. And walked out into the streets. Out on the streets some
children asked me why I was staggering around.

“I’m drunk,” I said.

That’s when I woke up. It was 5 AM. I was mostly just relieved that
I wasn’t late. I dream about being late a whole lot. I wonder why
that is.

I was walking to the bus stop this morning and a wino wearing a
mechanic’s coverall, a dirty yellow blanket, and a long ratty beard
stopped me to ask me for change. He was sweating booze and it wasn’t
that warm out- all red faced and blurry eyed and staggering about.
Before I could say no and keep on walking by he exclaimed “you look
like an astronaut”. He looked really sincere for someone who was piss
drunk at 8 AM on a rainy friday morning.

I could have cried, really. That was the best compliment that a
person wearing a blanket as a piece of clothing has ever given me. I
gave him some change.

I think this is going to be my personal mantra from now on. My self
help platitude of sorts. “I look like an astronaut.”

Hot damn!

I was meeting all of my old room mates from the Simms house in Council
Bluffs for dinner at an Italian restaurant. All of us (Mike, Yohe,
Devin, and Ben) were outside talking and smoking cigarettes and Ben
went inside to get us a table.

Ben went inside and Matt and Mike got worried.

“The last time we ate here, Ben got food poisoning and beat up the
waiter,” Mike told me.

Somehow, according to the logic of the dream, food poisoning happened
almost immediately in the middle of dinner.

“I hope they don’t remember us,” said Yohe.

We went inside and the restaurant already had a table set up. But it
was a long table, sort of like the head table at a wedding where
everyone sits side by side facing a big room. There were pizza boxes
in front of each seat and they were filled with spaghetti.

I don’t remember anything after that.