Click-on Breasts

     
          Here's a question: Why is it acceptable to be deceptive on the Internet? It seems like if a website is not trying to trick you, they're not putting in the work. I think most people have come to accept this as normal. Or they don't even think about it as depraved.
          I'm not saying the Internet should have rules or anything like that. I'm just saying I'm aware of how its affecting my life. I can't even click on a photo of a nice pair of tits anymore. It's disgusting. I'm led down a rabbit hole to a world of horrifying faces and tummy tucks. It's just not right. Nobody asked me if it was okay. Would you like to see our horrible world? No, they just put their foot on the gas and blammo! I'm looking at cosmetic surgery disasters. It's hostage taking that's what it is. And it ain't right.

The Catholic Funeral

     
          I had to go to a funeral. It was a Catholic mass. I've always wondered why Catholic funerals were so long. I grew up Methodist, and the Methodists will sing a few hymns, say a few words and blam, send you on your way. Not the Catholics. They make it last.
          It occurred to me during mass that the church probably charges by the hour. That's why the masses are long. You get the church, the father, the organ player for an hour. And the fathers don't short change their customers so when you go to a Catholic funeral expect to sit for that long.
          I didn't time it, but it felt like an hour. I can only sit still for a little while before I get ants in my pants. At Catholic masses I get antsy about three minutes in. So it feels longer than it actually is.  
          I'm not sure why the fathers still speak Latin. Nobody speaks Latin anymore. There was a whole segment of the mass where nobody knew what was being said. They could have said anything they wanted. They could have made fun of people and said the most ridiculous things. A part of me wishes they did. 
          All I was thinking about, and I'm probably going to hell for this, was Cheech and Chongs' character Sister Mary Elephant. O' felli me fossi a sus dominos.
          

NBA Basketball

         
            I don't usually blog about sports, but this has been on my mind and I need to get it off my chest. There's a lot of generational comparisons of the NBA. Who was better? Would Stephen Curry be as good a player back then? I think he would have been.
            What no one is talking about is the game itself. What is the object of the game? The object of the game is to put the ball in the basket, and to stop your opponent from putting the ball in the basket. Whoever gets the most points wins. The easiest and best shots are slam dunks and lay ups. The hardest and worst shot you can take is a three point shot. It's such a bad shot that you're awarded an extra point if you make it. Simple, right? There's a logic to it.
            When I was growing up, when we walked to and from school uphill both ways, basketball players abided by these simple principles. Sure, players took three point shots, but it was understood that it was a bad shot. Nowadays, players are chucking three point shots as if they were good shots, and that can drive a thinking man crazy. It's hard to watch. Even the best three point shooters in the league miss half of the time.
            When I played on the playground, if someone was chucking threes over and over and missing, we'd either tell them to stop shooting threes or not pass the ball to him. Sometimes I'd look a player right in the eye and pass it to someone else.
            The object of the game is to win. The best shot in basketball is a slam dunk or a layup, the worst shot in the game is a three point shot. That will never change unless there's a four point shot. And let's hope that never happens or we'll have change the name from basketball to bouncy ball. 
             

Drum Circles

           
            I went to a drum circle. I never felt more empty in my life. I got there a little late so I sat outside the circle with some other guy. He had a blank empty look on is face. He could have been a robot spy for all I knew.
            I grabbed a drum and sat on a love seat. A man walked up to me- without me knowing it, I had sat on his shirt. I apologized. His shirt looked like part of the couch to me.
            I started drumming and true to form at most drum circles no one was holding down the bass. I looked around the room and people were frantically drumming away. I was like having a room full of lead guitarists. Whatever, I'll hold down the bass.
         The man whose shirt I'd sat on kept looking over at me. I wasn't sure why. He looked just like a snake oil salesman.
          The hostess brought the drumming to a stop and suggested that people outside the circle find a seat in the circle. I got up to move toward an empty chair. I was reaching for it to sit down when the snake oil salesman cut in front of me and took it. I stood in disbelief. I would have said something if it weren't a drum circle in a respectable home. My idea of a drum circle is good vibes. I let it go, sort of.
           Now I was sitting behind the snake oil salesman, and the energy of the drumming picked up. I was pounding on my drum pretty hard. All the while I was thinking that my drum was the snake oil salesman's head. I'd look at his head and pound my drum left, right, left, right over and over. I really took it out on him. Deep down that's what I wanted to do, I just wanted to slap him silly. We were instant enemies in my mind.
           So much for good vibes at drum circles. Sometimes they're just pure evil.

Ideas

         
            I hit a lull in my writing. I haven't written a song in months and my blog ideas have dried up some. I have ideas, but they're not very good, so I'm letting them slide. I don't like to force things onto paper. It makes me feel funny inside as if something's wrong.
            Lately, I'll have a good idea but it will turn into a bad idea real quick. I'll try to fix it the best I can, but it doesn't always work out. Ideas have a point of reckoning where you have to decide whether to put the work in or abandon ship. I usually abort the mission if I have to try too hard. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that's the way it works.
           I never set timelines or completion dates. Nor do I set quotas for myself. It's not a numbers game to me. I'm amused when I hear someone say I want to write a song a day, or ten songs a month. I never understood that. It seems silly to me. I rather write a good song, however long it takes, then write a bad song in a day.
          Bad ideas tend to eliminate themselves eventually, at least in theory. I've written some horrible things, but at the time they had meaning and seemed to be good ideas. So you never really know. Your mind can play tricks on you. It's best to have someone you can trust to give you their honest opinion about your work. And even then I may or may not listen to them. That's the kind of guy I am, a regular stubborn know-it-all.

John Waters

         
           I saw John Waters last night at the Luckman Theatre. Funny dude. You can't say anything bad about him, unless you're uptight. I laughed for an hour straight. I appreciate the John Waters of the world. He said it plain. He was intellectually gritty without having to say fuck every other word. He talked about assholes and fist-fucking, and glory holes, but he was so eloquent in speech it wasn't offensive at all. It was the complete opposite. He was interesting. I learned about flakka and meow-meow, drugs I've never even heard of before. I feel so much wiser now. Street savvy.
           I know about upper-decks, or how to leave one if someone should mess with you on an extreme level. He talked about his movies and Divine. And at the end of the show he had a question and answer session. 
           It was a great night. Thanks Dana.

I Don't Know Man

         
           I've been saying, "I don't know man," out loud, to myself, in recent days. I'm not sure why. I'm no more confused than usual. I think it has something to do with realizing how cruel our society is.
           I drove through downtown yesterday morning, and I don't usually do that. It was plain to me that people were suffering. I stopped at the corner of Fifth and Los Angeles. There was a man picking through a trashcan. I was almost numb to it. I turned the corner, and there was another man picking through a trashcan. And it occurred to me that most people are numb to it. We're taught to be numb to it. Had he just followed the rules and gotten a good education, some people say. But these guys were bat-shit crazy and it didn't seem right.
           As I drove away I couldn't help but think that the men are victims of a heartless society. I thought about the government. What is government? I boiled it down to one word. Assistance. Now who the government should assist is a matter of debate. All I know is we have a problem and it doesn't go away by ignoring it. In fact, it cheapens life for everybody. It cheapens life for the man picking through the trash. It cheapens it for the man driving by who sees the man picking trash. And it cheapens it for those politicians who are making the decisions about where we spend taxpayer money. It's all connected and I guess that's why I've been saying, "I don't know man, I just don't know."
           Because deep down I do know and that's what makes it hard to understand.