Jacking Christmas Snacks

When I showed up at work at noon there was a selection of bagels and crackers and Cold Pack Cheese Spread on the table. When I left work at close the container of Port Wine Flavored Cold Pack Cheese Spread was about half empty. By my own estimates about half of that missing cheese spread was in my own personal stomach. The Port Wine Flavored Cold Pack Cheese Spread is sitting in my refrigerator now, next to its less popular sibling the Almond Swiss Flavored Cold Pack Cheese Spread. I stole it because in the New Year I intend to keep things a whole lot more street around here, and now is as good a time and jacking cheese spread as good a place as any to start. I figure I'm only about a million miles away from being memorialized on bootleg tshirts.

Another list.

Every day my shit job reveals a deeper, sicker example of humankind's basic inability to create anything but horribleness. Yesterday's top three:
3.) "Christmas Melody (sic)" by Ashanti - You always knew Ashanti was a hack. Even if she suckered you in and got you to actually like one or two of her singles, you knew that the Princess Of Hip Hop R&B couldn't give a shit about the music. Her yuletide gift to the world is a medly of Xmas songs produced by a kid who has just learned how to sequence up to three tracks on a Triton that kind of proves she doesn't. The songs (50s honky-crooner chanteuse pop) and her performance (the same) are so white you want to ask her for reparations.
2.) The 30-year-old compulsive liar I work with. Dude is like 5'4" and at least 170, so when he starts talking up the wonders Pilates can work on your abs you have to wonder if "Pilates" is some sort of code for "nachos".
1.) The piss-soaked pair of little girl's tights someone wadded up and shoved under a rack of clothes for someone else to pick up. The work of either one of the turbo-bitch yuppie newlymoms who roam Michigan Ave. with oversize strollers or an especially inconsiderate kidnapper. Either way, I don't want to have to deal with that shit.

Hot air.

Our heat's back on. I came home yesterday from making "It's Called 'Binoculars'" Part Two* flyers and the furnace was blowing out cold air. Some guys came over today and now it's blowing out hot air. Lots of hot air. One night without heat I feel entitles me to engage in some serious all-American-sense-of-entitlement natural gas usage. I mean it's not like we're killing people over natural gas. We're just killing the environment, and the guys on tv say there's plenty of that left. Within the hour we should be reaching our goal of pants-optional hotness levels in here.
*Featuring myself, Jessica Hopper, and the world-famous Tommie Sunshine. Sunday, December 26 at the Empty Bottle, no cover, 21 and over. Dress to impress.

Why Dinosaur?

Looking back at them, I can see my emails with my press contact at Merge Records acquiring an increasingly desperate tone as I reply to the press release announcing their remastering and reissuing (with bonus tracks and video) the first three Dinosaur Jr. records. My request for advance copies reads like a pleadings of a man who facing absolute extinction if he doesn't get what he asks for. I have no idea why this is.

Dumplings

I'm in the middle of an experiment on how many Whole Kitchen BBQ Tofu Potsickers can fit in my stomach at one time. We're currently at 13; feelings of mild nausea, sleepiness, and euphoria.

It's like even waking up right now feels like the most massive triumph. If someone wants to donate enough webspace to make a downloadable version of this, let me know.
The Seasonal Affective Disorder Acceptance And Avoidance Mixtape
TV On The Radio "New Health Rock"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Y Control"
Aloha "the new song that sounds like the Allman Brothers"
George Jones "The Race Is On"
The Nezema Kotoko Family "F. Kenya"
The Ex "Huriyet"
shutting the cat in the fridge when she tries to steal your pie
George Jones "She Thinks I Still Care"
Orange Glass "Feel 500"
Eric's Trip "Allergic To Love"
Nas "American Way"
learning to tie a Half-Windsor Knot
the Rolling Stones "Bitch"
The first song off of the new Holly Golightly record.
Randy Newman, Steve Martin, Martin Short, et al "My Little Buttercup"
Bob Dylan "Don't Think Twice It's Alright"

From our "Comments" section re: South Haven, MI

I've met many a meth dealer in my day. They can look like all sorts of different folks. In fact, I used to be one, once upon a time, but then I went to jail and decided I actually liked my freedom more than I did having no job but loads of drugs and wads of cash lying around. Long story short, meth dealers can look like just about anyone - not *anyone* as in *anyone*, they probably can't look like Queen Elizabeth or Godzilla - but not all of them have flowing mullets or go about in sweatpants. Some of them do, sure. And quite possibly, this dude was indeed a trailer-park dwelling meth dealer or tweaker or speed freak, what have you. But given that meth use and abuse is ever-increasing everywhere in America pretty much (crack for the 21st century, new and improved, and homegrown - or at least Mexican grown - to boot) it's a solid bet that the palette of possible styles and appearances for meth dealers collectively is growing as well. Meth dealers used to just be biker gangs, they owned the traffic pretty much, even up to the early 90's or so. Then the Mexican Mafia muscled in and now they're responsible for most of it, cooking it up in "super labs" out in California and the southwest. The hundreds of localized cooks and labs that get busted in every state year to year actually account for a far smaller share of the finished product that reaches the market, most people are doing dope made by the Mexican cartels whether they realize it or not. They have two cuts - one that's 92% pure on average, high quality and high price - gourmet speed, and one that's closer to 50% purity and is dirt cheap (for the mass market). They both look like clear/whitish crystals and powder, the impurity isn't the result of a sloppy synthesis, it's intentional and so cosmetically they look the same. Of course, as the stuff passes from hand to hand - multiple kilos, to kilos, to ounces, to halfs quarters eight-balls teeners etc., any dickhead who wants to gouge the bag and pad it with MSM or other shitty kinds of cut can and will do so. And by the time it bounces down the chain of distribution, that may have happened enough so that the prices can even out and the quality is diluted (which still makes sense economically, because you can toss less of the high grade stuff in with a bag of cut and expect someone to be relatively satisfied, if you use the low grade you need to put in more actual meth weight etc) - it's at the wholesale level that the distinction in price and quality is a more openly recognized factor, and then shit just gets sketchier and sketchier from there on down until it arrives in your nose. So, in conclusion, the top-dog meth dealers look like Mexican mobsters and if you ever see them chilling in a BP Amoco get their autographs or phone numbers or whatnot, they can make you into a meth dealer too if you want, but I bet you don't want, word is bond. And yes, I'm high right now.
Learning is nice. For the record, most of the meth dealers I've known in the past have been sketchy Camaro dudes from Kalamazoo's satellite townships or 19-year-olds trying to hold down ill-advised rave-gangsta personas. In terms of meth's user base, my favorite individual by far has been the gay ex-Mormon-youth-pastor who kept a loaded AK-47 underneath the bed he shared with a rotating cast of high school boys. He would hang out in our living room, occasionally pulling out an Altoids box full of drugs, politely offering us a bump before he did one.