Thursday, July 31, 2003
CLIFTON HEIGHTS, PA—In a landmark court decision designed to counter centuries of "breedist" prejudice, Pennsylvania Circuit Court Judge Israel Zionberg has determined that canine IQ tests unfairly discriminate against certain dog types.
"Dog intelligence, like human intelligence, is strictly in the eyes of the beholder," Zionberg explained in his ruling. Noting that the dog-IQ tests were almost entirely based on a breed's ability to understand and obey commands, he wrote, "Some dog cultures simply don't value obedience as highly as other dog cultures, and we need to respect this fact. Some dogs would rather chase cats or sit around and bask in the sun, and it isn't our right to judge them for this." Zionberg also said that three of the breeds rated in the Top Ten according to intelligence—German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweilers—were "Nazi dogs," implying that a sinister "Purebred Aryan Canine Supremacist" cabal ruled the dog-intelligence industry. He also pointed out that the ranking of the Afghan as the least-intelligent breed reflected "rampant anti-Muslim prejudice resulting from the War on Terrorism."
The ruling will likely lead to an Affirmative Action program resulting in more jobs for low-scoring breeds such as Chihuahuas, bulldogs, and basset hounds in police-detective work.
Posted by jg @ 03:45 PM PST []
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
After much somber reflection on the world's sorry state, plus several sweaty, agonized, Gatorade-deprived hours praying in the Garden of Goadthsemane, I have concluded that there is only One True Path to Enlightenment:
We'll have to kill everyone who doesn't agree with me.
I have tried, Lo, have I tried, to persuade the dumbkopfs to see my way, but only recently have the scales fallen from my eyes—yea, only recently have I "gotten it" that if they haven't "gotten it" yet, they're never going to "get it."
They are beyond redemption. And they have caused me way, way, WAY too many fucking hassles for me to show compassion.
I am a forgiving Goad, but you can only piss on my shoelaces so many times before I get all colicky. Plus, it's hot as SHIT today, and I don't have air-conditioning.
+++++++++
Another Trucker Fags is upon us, plus what people are telling me is the funniest thing I've ever written.
Posted by jg @ 08:43 PM PST []
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Tell me what they did to you. I want to hear all about it, as do my friends, as does EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD. Please, don't spare any of the ugly details—even if you have to make things up. I'm not lying when I say we want to hear everything. I'm not kidding when I say there's nothing more fun than a victim.
You've been mistreated, you poor, bruised, sour-tempered pup. You've been done wrong. You've been fucked with. You've been kicked around. You've been hurt, and you continue to incubate and nurse that hurt as if it were the only significant thing that ever happened to you, almost as if there's NOTHING INTERESTING about you otherwise. But we all know that your victimization—which you can never stop thinking about or talking about or reliving in an endless loop being projected on the back of your sad little brain pain—is the ONLY thing which has kept you from becoming, say, an astronaut, or a Senator, or anything more than the insignificant, replaceable wage slave which you are and will continue to be until death or welfare, whichever comes first.
We all know that it isn't your awful personality, or your gasp-inducing stupidity, or your sluglike laziness, which set you up for victimization and has kept you down ever since. I mean, that's ABSURD. Let's just strike those possibilities from the record, OK?
It's all their fault, so don't ever blame yourself.
Posted by jg @ 04:46 PM PST []
Monday, July 28, 2003
You're whizzing down the highway on a day so hot you can see waves rising from the asphalt, cool in your air-conditioned cabin. Insects ... so mechanically dumb, yet free ... fly straight into your windshield. With an inaudible splat, their meaningless lives are instantly over. The only remnant of their existence is a smear of blood and guts. You feel nothing and continue driving.
It's as close to being God as you'll ever get. One squirt of washer fluid, a few swipes of the wiper, and everything's erased.
Does the ugly, worthless bug have a rudimentary consciousness which feels existential terror at the moment of impact? I'm sure that humans feel a vast, empty dread during that final instant when you realize the rest of eternity will chug along just fine without you. My idea of hell would be to have that moment stretched out interminably ... never arriving at death's ultimate peace, only strung across limbo and teased with a false promise forever.
In a sense, that's the primary condition of being alive. We all know that the windshield's somewhere down the highway, speeding toward us.
Posted by jg @ 08:59 PM PST []
Sunday, July 27, 2003
While fetching my "coloreds" from the dryer in my apartment building's scary basement laundry room a couple weeks ago, I noticed a pair of dark-grey underwear amid all my new jeans. I figured a pair of my tightie-whities had crossed over to the other team, only to be bled on by a gang of blue denim. I placed the grey briefs in my special underwear drawer, a lonely colored boy in an all-white classroom.
I finally donned Grey Boy today, and while the undergarment initially seemed baggy, I credited it to my bitchin' abdominal workout. While walking around my crib later in the day clad only in Grey Boy, it occurred to me that I should examine his label.
38-LARGE. I wear a 32-MEDIUM.
I shrieked and threw Grey Boy to the floor. Feeling tainted, I remain naked as I type this. I'm considering a long, hot shower while curled on the tub floor in the fetal position.
It sickens me to ponder that my scrotum and anus occupied the tabernacle usually reserved for another, fatter mystery man in my building. Whenever I pass another male in the hallways, I will wince and wonder if we share some genital karma.
Grey Boy remains on the floor like a chalk circle of a crime scene. I'm afraid to touch him.
Posted by jg @ 08:01 PM PST []
Saturday, July 26, 2003
I write, throw, punch, and jerk off with my left hand. As a southpaw, I belong to one of history's most notoriously abused minorities.
Although roughly ten percent of the population is now lefthanded, the quotient a hundred years ago was only about three percent. Some believe this is due to the savage ostracism—and hence lower reproductive rates—suffered by lefthanders.
The modern word "left" derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "weak." The Latin word for "left" is the root of the modern English word "sinister," and the Frogs refer to the my side of the world as gauche. In centuries past, lefthanders were thought to be demon-possessed, and as recently as a generation ago, lefties were either beaten severely or had their left hand tied behind their back in order to discourage them from using their naturally dominant hand. They still tell me to raise my right hand to take oaths and to cover my heart with my right hand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And the world is built with the "right" people in mind.
We are controlled by a different side of the brain than the rest of you. We tend to be more creative and intelligent than you right-wing drones. I count Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, and Charlie Chaplin among my brethren.
Jack the Ripper, too.
Posted by jg @ 11:41 PM PST []
Friday, July 25, 2003
American pop culture has embraced the pimp in schizoid inverse proportion to its demonization of the wife-beater. While smirking hipsters routinely hold "Pimps and Hos" parties, none of them would be caught dead throwing a "Wife-beaters and Battered Women" soirée. That's JUST NOT COOL, dude.
Divorced from reality as they are, it probably hasn't dawned on them that PIMPS ROUTINELY BEAT WOMEN, probably more often and more severely than the most dedicated domestic batterer. And even worse, the pimp sucks money from those women, while the average bitch-smacker is more likely to PROVIDE for Poor Li'l Black Eyes when he isn't using her as a punching bag.
So why do the pimps get off scot-free?
The most obvious answer is that pimps are commonly perceived to be black, and even in the face of all contrary evidence, one cannot allege that any blacks anywhere do anything wrong—EVER—without being tarred-and-feathered by people who wish they were black. Even if there isn't a white man within ten miles of the incident of bitch-slapping in question, we all know that the White Man made the brutha do it.
Another reason might be that the wife-beater simply doesn't go far enough. As Dostoevsky noted, men who only kill once or twice are known as murderers, while those who kill a thousand are called kings.
+++++++++
The Jim Goad Embroidered Pillow Thing is for sale. Thank God I cost more than The White Stripes.
Posted by jg @ 05:48 PM PST []
Thursday, July 24, 2003
From sea to shining sea, from coast to coast and cunt to cunt, female clerks are unhappy with me. I just received an e-mail which read:
At the St Marks Book Shop [in NYC], allegedly a hip bookstore, some female clerk said she didn't stock your books because you are a "racist gender subordinator."
A few months ago, I was asked by the makers of the hilarious film Ape Canyon to write a blurb for their DVD cover. With my endorsement emblazoned on the front, they marched the DVD into a Portland store called Movie Madness. According to Ape Canyon's director, when he called later to see if they wanted to order the DVD, he was assaulted by a female clerk's menstrual fury:
"You know, we don't give a shit about Jim Goad!" she lectured me, "We are so OVER Jim Goad, we ran him out of town a long time ago!"
Got news for you, Toots—I'm still in town, and I won't leave until I'm good and ready. Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't stop me on the street and tell me how much they enjoy my writing. Despite all the organized lynch mobs, I continue to flourish.
There's a reason you ladies are working as clerks while I'm making a living as a writer. It's because I deal in ideas, while you peddle preconceived notions. You can place all the roadblocks you want, and the Goad Meme will slalom around you. And because my ideas strike deeper than your superstitions, they will replicate like an incurable virus...in ten, twenty, fifty years, people will still know who I am, while you'll be retired clerks.
Posted by jg @ 03:35 PM PST []
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
I've recently become obsessed with Greenland, as I am with all hinterlands, wastelands, deserts, and slums. It seems more remote than the dark side of the moon. It’s the world’s largest island—three times the size of Texas—but with only one person for every fifteen square miles. Despite its name, there is no arable land in Greenland. It’s almost entirely smothered in ice.
A week ago, after seven years of drilling, scientists finally reached 10,000 feet down through Greenland's ice cap and hit rock-bottom. They expect to find life forms that have been buried for 120,000 years.
The only dream my father ever expressed to me was a desire to visit Alaska before he died. He never made it, but last year I made the trip for him.
I need to visit Greenland before I die. That’s because I often feel like the world’s largest island with 10,000 feet of ice inside my head. I need to know what’s underneath it all.
Posted by jg @ 10:49 PM PST []
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Radical environmentalism is the dumbest folk religion ever devised, the only one where the sinners are assigned the task of saving God.
Despite its pretense of selflessness and anti-humanism, it is egocentric to the core. It places us in control of the earth, which is the opposite of how things really are. It depicts a sick, ailing, victimized planet ruled by vicious humanoid overlords bent on degrading her—almost as if we were all abusive husbands and the earth was a big fat battered wife. And so, preacheth the Crazy Ones, we must atone for our transgressions and take care of her.
But we aren't the earth's caretakers, we are only parasites infesting its lush green hide. No matter how many Big Mac wrappers we toss along the roadsides, the earth will survive much longer than we will. The planet isn't in crisis—we are.
Mother Earth is a cunt. Right now, she only has PMS. Wait 'til the blood starts to flow.
Posted by jg @ 03:32 PM PST []
Monday, July 21, 2003
"Older women are beautiful lovers," runs the lyric to a whiny 80s C&W song, and for the longest time I didn't want to believe it. Most males just aren't tantalized by floppy wineskin jugs, stretched-out chicken-rubber twats, parched-creekbed crow's feet, and thinning grey hair.
But lately, in the spirit of investigative journalism, I've been doing some hands-on research of the topic, and dag-nabbit if the song isn't true! It's TWUE, it's TWUE! Old babes got it goin' on!
Most males are unaware that when it comes to the erotic arts, psychology is at least as important as physiology. Older women achieve their beautiful-lover status through the wonderful synergy of emotional hardness and sexual savvy. They've been through the drudgery of marriage and child-rearing; thus they suffer no delusions about pipe-dreams such as "love" and "everlasting commitment." The "pipes" they dream about are of a much more literal nature. Holy Menopause, do they love to fuck.
With younger lasses, what you gain in perky boobs and taut skin tone is easily outweighed by minuses such as obsessiveness, babyish tantrums, high-pitched voices, that ANNOYING habit of snapping their bubble gum, and woeful inexperience in relationships...and in the sack.
Not only do young chix want babies and commitment and terrifying scenarios such as the Vaginal Exclusivity Clause known as marriage, they can't smoke pole like the older ladies can. Can't puff a peter with nearly the same finesse. Can't gobble a bone with the desperate abandon of a shark in a feeding frenzy.
Although her body may be falling apart, at least the seasoned Woman of Age knows what to do with it. She knows what makes her feel good, and she knows what makes men feel good. Dicks have passed through these hard-working Methuselitas like trains through Grand Central Station. And I'm not bothered by this. I'm not a jealous man. I'm confident of my skills in les arts d'amour. I'm actually turned-on by the idea that their vaginas have acted as airplane hangars for hundreds...or thousands...of penises before mine parked there. I'm not intimidated by the fact that enough cocks have been jammed in their mouths to stuff the Alaskan Pipeline. These are all good things.
Because the brutal fact, the one that younger women would like to keep secret, is that experience breeds skill. One of my Mature Partners manipulated my penis with her FEET while I was orally pleasuring her Venusian Mounds. And I don't mean she just diddled the thing or tapped at it with her toes—she had my rod in a real fuckin' MONKEY grip with her feet and was feverishly pumping the thing! Amazing! No younger chick on earth would even THINK of attempting such a stunt. Such feats of derring-do only come with hard, long, agonizing experience. A decades-long process of sexual trial-and-error stuff's an old bag's Bag of Tricks with innumerable such erotic gems.
Looking for a mature lady friend? I usually meet mine in smoky karaoke bars. Their husky voices, their whisky breath, their yellowy teeth (dentures?), their hard-luck stories, their pathos-laden attempts at shoveling makeup on their faces and whipping their hair into just-seen-a-ghost enameled perfection...these are all turn-ons for me. Buy 'em a couple drinks, hold them close on the dance floor during "Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong," and in a few hours you're in the bedroom of their spacious homes where they live alone with their cats and a truckload of bad memories, stroking their liver spots with your fingers and sharing tender moments.
And then, after you've plastered their sagging frames with cum a few times, comes the best part: They tell you to go home. They have business to conduct and doctor's appointments to attend, and they have no time for cuddlin' and cooin'. It's what I've always sought in life: a woman who will kick me out of bed when it's all over.
Posted by jg @ 07:34 PM PST []
Sunday, July 20, 2003
I'm tired of Limey shitheads blaming America for imperialism and racism.
More than that, I'm tired of American numbskulls adopting Limey fashion and then blaming America for imperialism and racism.
A quick history lesson, dumb-ass human bulldogs: ENGLAND IS THE MOST RACIST AND IMPERIALISTIC NATION IN WORLD HISTORY. It wasn't the Nazis who colonized Africa, Asia, and America. T'wasn't Germans who ran the slave trade in the New World. It wasn't Hitler's boys who've shit on Ireland for a fucking THOUSAND YEARS. And it isn't the Krauts who are helping the US carve up the Middle East RIGHT NOW.
Because the Germans wore their black hearts on their sleeves, they get demonized. But because the British sipped tea and appeared genteel while turning the world into mince meat, everyone is fooled.
Not this Irish boy.
Great Britain, whose beef-jerky-twatted Queen snorted that the sun never set on her empire. Great Britain, given a black eye—the first of many—by the American colonies. Great Britain, now a second-rate power who adopts the bitter moralistic tone of a loser who's been knocked down a few pegs in the pecking order.
How DARE you rotted-teeth has-beens criticize us? You made the world into your slave dungeon for as long as you could get away with it. And now all that's left for you are sour grapes.
Posted by jg @ 11:27 PM PST []
Saturday, July 19, 2003
While it's debatable whether there is no God greater than Allah, there's no question that there is no God with greater anger-management problems. I've read parts of the Koran, and that is one PISSED-OFF deity. Sure, he's "beneficent, merciful"—unless you don't fall to the ground and worship him five times a day, in which case he'll turn you into a shit stain on the desert sand.
But in the time which has passed after the big 9/11 hootenanny, I'm impressed with the restraint and decorum shown by Allah's most fanatical followers. While US forces have gone over there and subsumed virtually the entire Middle Eastern land mass, there hasn't been a peep of retaliation. We blow the shit out of Afghanistan ... nothing. We topple the Iraqi government ... nothing. Bush is revealed to have lied about his motives ... nothing. Code Red, Orange, and Blue Balls ... nothing.
Those camel jockeys must be taking some Islamic version of the "Cage Your Rage" classes they taught me in the pokey.
Posted by jg @ 09:21 PM PST []
Friday, July 18, 2003
Over the past two weeks, an estimated sixteen dogs have been poisoned after eating paraquat-laced meat nuggets left anonymously in a Southeast Portland park. At least eight have died. It's the same park where I was going to walk Cookie about a week ago ... but didn't. You can read more about the story here.
This is the first news story in a long time which has upset me. I'm probably revealing too much personal pathology here, but after hearing most of the murdered-man / raped-woman / abducted-child news flashes that send most citizens into a tizzy, I can eat a donut and fall asleep. I figure that all humans are guilty of something. If they're not directly guilty of an act that led to their victimization, they're undeniably guilty of something else.
But not dogs. They're as untainted as an Arctic snowbank. I protect my twenty-pound she-pug with the ferocity of a hysterical mother. And this is where I wind up sounding like one of those unhinged crime-fighting proles: "Whoever's doing this better hope the cops catch him before I do."
Because I'd stuff him in a sausage skin and throw him to the dogs.
Posted by jg @ 04:23 PM PST []
Thursday, July 17, 2003
While leading the Duchess of Cookwich on a leash through an urban park today, I popped into a bathroom and proceeded to drain the main vein. As I was voiding my bladder, I espied some NAME THE TIME AND PLACE AND I'LL SUCK THE CHROME OFF YOUR COCK semiotic tile scrawl that no public loo can seem to do without.
I was less than ten years old the first time I encountered such crude crap-room cave paintings. There on the wall, above an unflushed, shredded-cigar-looking turd from the customer before me, and alongside ol' chestnuts such as HERE I SIT, BROKEN-HEARTED/CAME TO SHIT AND ONLY FARTED, was a meekly scribbled "i love the taste of cum." It was surrounded by angry arrows and classically homophobic threats of violence.
But I'll bet more than one of those fag-bashers left the violence at home, showed up on time, and did more than get their dick sucked.
Posted by jg @ 10:28 PM PST []
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
My Summer of Good Clean Fun continued this evening with a stroll through the Multnomah County Fair here in Portland. Amid the cotton candy and mini-choo-choo ride and elderly lesbian marimba band, even the minorities looked wholesome.
The wafting smell of animal poop led me to the "Livestock" exhibit. From stable to stable and into the petting zoo, I was surprised to find that goats were the friendliest creatures of all. The cows were aloof, the pigs were skittish, and the rabbits frightened me as always. But the goats kept rubbing up against me, nibbling on my dungarees, and staring at me with their crazy-beautiful eyes.
Then, when I heard one make a "baa-baa" sound, all the grade-school trauma came rushing back.
"Baa-baa, Billy Goad" was one of the taunts I used to endure, along with "Goad the toad took a load on the side of the road." I used to hate my surname. I thought it was ugly-sounding and conjured all the familial sludge which I'm perpetually trying to flee.
A 'goat' has many symbolic meanings, none of them positive. A 'goat' can be the opposite of a hero. A 'scapegoat' gets blamed for things it didn't do. And no other animal is cast as the Devil as much as the poor, gentle goat.
But over the years I've taken my last name, digested it, and shit out something better. I no longer hate it. And tonight I discovered that the goats don't hate me, either.
+++++++++
I'm mentioned briefly in this new book, as is Cookie.
Posted by jg @ 09:51 PM PST []
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
...after being down for about 15 hours.
The bungling web ferrets who run the server down in Arizona switched my IP address last night, and some code got chewed up in the process.
I went in and fixed the code myself.
I felt so naked and alone.
But instead of crying, I buckled down and addressed the humiliating problem.
So stop bothering me, or I'll tell the two guys on the right to beat you up.
Posted by jg @ 02:21 PM PST []
Monday, July 14, 2003
Overlooking their infantile emotions and susceptibility to kindergarten-level superstitions, I'm not sure whether women are any dumber than men. But though popular depictions of doofusy men abound, it has become heretical to imply that women can be dumb at all.
To help counter such widespread ignorance about widespread female ignorance, I offer you three real-life stories—two which I witnessed and one which was told to me by a woman.
The first involves a freckle-faced, mouth-breathing co-worker from Secaucus (pronounced "SEE-kawk-iss"), NJ, who toiled alongside me on the night shift at a NYC print shop back in the mid-80s. While struggling to comprehend the simple ad copy she was typing into a computer, she suddenly blurted out, "What does 'un-durfd' mean?" Helpful as always, I sidled up to her cubicle and realized she was trying to wrestle with the word "underfed," which is an apt description of her brain relative to oxygen.
The second concerns my sister's former mother-in-law, a jaw-droppingly dim-witted woman who was later blamed by our side of the family for being the primary gene donor for my niece and nephew's learning disabilities. We were sitting poolside at a Jersey shore motel when she posed this riddle: "If the pool is eight feet deep on one end and three feet deep on the other, how come it's even on top?"
Today's final story conveys a similar instance of aquatic-perception retardation. While standing at the beach looking at the ocean with her family, a doltish matriarch asked, "What's the elevation here?" After an embarrassed pause, someone quietly answered, "sea level."
Posted by jg @ 09:42 PM PST []
Sunday, July 13, 2003
Y'know, I've decided to come clean and admit that my gene pool is more like a cesspool. Yer right, ladies and enlightened Birkenstock-shod men—I'm solely responsible for everything that's wrong with the world. All the poverty in Africa, all the suffering of disabled folks, all the howls and shrieks of every woman everywhere—it's solely my fault.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE forgive me. I'll cut it off. I'll apply blackface. I hold TWO candles at Take Back the Night Rallies. I'll let you extinguish cigars on my nipples. Whatever it takes. Just don't be upset with me anymore...OK?
As part of my lifelong quest to apologize and be re-educated, I'm offering a simple poem. A lowly bastard poem.
BAD, BAD WHITE MAN
Bad, bad white man
White man very bad
Make us very angry
Make us very sad
Racist fascist sex pig
Ruler of the earth
Palefaced penis privilege
Accorded you by birth
Calling all the women
Calling all the Jews
Calling all the black guys
White man's gonna lose
Let's go kill that white man
Shoot him in the face
Cause that stinky white man
Destroys the human race
We'll take all the money
We'll have all the fun
The time we act like white men
Has only just begun.
Posted by jg @ 07:56 PM PST []
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Even if you offered to give me a free haircut, I couldn't tell you what the top ten current news stories are. Even if you threw in a free blow-dry, neither could I cough up the top ten albums, movies, or celebrities. I'm a Mongolian idiot when it comes to the squishy, swirly world around me, and it bothers me not a bit. Not even a whit.
A long time ago before I learned to be ashamed of such things, I was reading a book by unforgivably happy 60s fossil Baba Ram Dass—Journey Inside My Anus or something like that. He wrote about returning to the USA after a year spent meditating among India's fly-swatters and scab-pickers. Soon after arriving home, Ram Dass realized he had no idea who the current US president was. Back when he was a Harvard psychology professor named Richard Alpert, a wrong answer to the question "Who's the current president?" was considered diagnostic proof of mental illness. But Ram Dass never felt happier in his life.
The acid-drenched greybeard was on to something there. Let's hear it for solipsism. The less I know about other things, the more I learn about myself.
Posted by jg @ 06:40 PM PST []
Friday, July 11, 2003
I've been so busy cleaning lint from my belly button and sucking my own dick, I've neglected to answer your questions, you snugglebunnies.
Here goes...
Did you get my email?
I must have misplaced it.
Do we know each other?
No, and let's not start.
Merle Haggard or the Sex Pistols?
Dave Dudley and Slade.
Why does KD Lang intimidate you?
The same reason that Shemp Howard intimidates me.
Are you predisposed to fall in love with Jewish girls?
Yes, but I always catch hell down at the Klan rallies for it.
Sickest joke you've ever heard?
The most offensive is:
Q: How long does it take a black woman to take a shit?
A: Nine months.
Are you a Nazi?
No, but you are for asking.
Will you read my stuff?
I won't even read your questions.
What can I say?
Not as much as I can, and not nearly as well.
Dumb or brilliant?
Dumb in personal matters, brilliant otherwise.
I didn't upset you, did I?
You couldn't if you tried.
Why can't you just tell me to fuck off?
OK, fuck off.
Posted by jg @ 11:48 PM PST []
Thursday, July 10, 2003
When a kid grows up being told that they're bad, they spend the rest of their life either running away from it or trying to prove it.
Despite my parents, and the women, and the prosecutors, and the critics who've told me I'm bad, I never felt as if the shoe fit. Something rang false about it.
I make a clear distinction between being a badass and being a bad person. I've survived more scrapes and abuse and scandals and trauma than anyone I know, so I'm satisfied that I'm a badass. I've also felt confused and twisted and fucked-up and morally weak sometimes, but never truly bad ... not nearly as bad as the ones who've told me I'm bad. They're all foul in so many ways I could never be.
But I've spent my life trying to prove things to all the wrong people. It's only lately that I realize that one is only a coward if he cares more what others think than what he thinks about himself. The purest form of hatred is indifference.
The toughest and most charismatic person I've ever known was a convict whose prison handle was Snake. He told me that the authorities were afraid of him because he'd figured out their game, but they were more afraid of me because I could put it on paper.
It's the best way to scare them.
Posted by jg @ 11:16 PM PST []
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
I wrote the above headline in 1990 while working as an editor for the Los Angeles Reader, which was a free "alternative weekly" distributed throughout LA. The headline was for a pair of book reviews—one about fabrics, one about home furnishings—by another writer.
I thought the "cloth-bound books about cloth" and "coffee table books about coffee tables" thing was a cute turn of phrase. That's why I wrote it—I can be nauseatingly cute.
Apparently, one of the writers for Seinfeld thought it was a darling idea, too, because a couple of years later, Kramer proposes to write "a coffee table book about coffee tables," and the joke was stretched out for more than one show. Seinfeld began production in Los Angeles a few months before my super-cute headline appeared.
Now I read that THIS guy is claiming that the Seinfeld writers stole the idea from HIM, but I'm thinking he was merely an agent in the Chain of Infection—he saw the headline while buying a latte, filed it in a cranny somewhere in his brain, and it popped out a year or two later as a "new" idea.
Ironically, Kramer's character was always having HIS ideas stolen, such as the one for a cologne that smells like the beach. And in an episode years later, Elaine's former boss rips off her scheme for a store that sells only muffin tops. Here's the dialogue from when she confronts him:
Elaine: This was my idea—you stole my idea.
Mr. Lippman: Elaine, these ideas are all in the air. They're in the air.
Elaine: Well, if that air is coming out of this face, then it is my air and my idea.
I know how you feel, bubeleh.
Seinfeld remains TV's greatest sitcom. But I wonder how the writers of America's Best-Loved Jewish Comedy would feel to learn that Mr. Supergoy provided them with one of their gags?
Posted by jg @ 07:21 PM PST []
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
There's a small quadrant in downtown Portland roughly the size of a pig farm that hosts most of the city's transients. Grey-bearded drunks push shopping carts and Mexicans sell chiba under the bridge.
When I run across someone I remember from prison, it's nearly always in that blighted little sector. It's almost as if they're commanded to stay there once they spring free. And for most of them, it's only a waiting station on their way back inside the tall grey walls.
I'm always glad to see that they're free. And I'm usually shocked at how severely their looks have deteriorated since prison. The muscles are gone, replaced by wrinkles and scabs. The clear, piercing eyes are now yellowy and distant. Men who didn't age one day during the two years I knew them on the inside have aged twenty years since being freed.
Much of it can be blamed on full-tilt backsliding with the speed, crack, or heroin which was denied them on the inside. And much of it, sick and sad as it is, can be blamed on the fact that no one—especially themselves—ever took care of their basic needs as well as the Department of Corrections.
I vow on every drop of blood within me to take care of myself.
Posted by jg @ 03:51 PM PST []
Monday, July 7, 2003
A slut, as commonly understood, is a girl who can wantonly have sex without attaching meaning to it. Sluts are thought to be like males in this respect. But except for the promiscuity part, all the sluts I've known before—and it'd take a calculator to tally them—embody the near-opposite of the stereotype. They attach more nonsexual importance to sex than the most romantic-minded "nice" girl could ever conjure. I've known a few nice girls who can have sex simply for pleasure, but the sluts never seem to have sex for sex's sake alone.
Every time they stick a big pink dick in their mouth, it's almost as if they're screaming PLEASE LOVE ME! into a microphone. Whatever it was that warped them—daddy's cock, mommy's backhand, or just a choking cloud of lovelessness and abandonment—left them with a bottomless hole in their heart and the unshakable notion that all they can offer to others is a pair of spread legs. They seek to fill one hole by constantly filling the other.
And over time, both holes get bigger.
+++++++++
Here's the new Trucker Fags and an article about my favorite album.
Posted by jg @ 10:57 PM PST []
Sunday, July 6, 2003
I saw my first rodeo today under mild summer weather so perfect, I felt like reaching into the clear blue sky and brushing God's hair for him. Peckerwood throwbacks with names such as Brock Brady and Rod Rimmer (sounds like a homo porn star) rode horses and roped doggies. The "riding" of horses is a barely concealed rural potency ritual—a Reno hooker once told me that of all the white dudes she's serviced, the rodeo boys always had the hugest wang-diddy-dangs. In between such tight-jeaned displays of cocksmanship, a rodeo clown made fun of hippies and referred to Will Smith's "Wild Wild West" song as "disco." I ate a nut-covered, chocolate-dipped ice-cream bar that was so good, I may have involuntarily emitted some seminal fluid. I only saw one black man, possibly because blacks don't like to be around white people swingin' rope.
A cool green ride through a thicket of Northwestern timber takes you from Portland to Molalla, where I once bought a chihuahua. It's only forty miles away but is the proverbial "worlds" away culturally. The road passes through the logging town of Estacada, whose main bar/restaurant features a giant stuffed polar bear in a glass display case. Cruising through these dusty farm towns, with their feed stores and wholesome, clay-eating folk, I resolved to make good on my ancient threat to one day flee the city for good.
Posted by jg @ 10:15 PM PST []
Saturday, July 5, 2003
The word "bogeyman" is said to derive from the term "bugis," used to decribe Indonesian and Malaysian pirates who terrorized French and English sailors. The word was brought back from the seas, inverted into "bugisman," and used to frighten Euro children into squirming compliance—"If you're bad, the bugisman will get you!"
When I was a kid, my parents and older siblings would scare my obsessive, nightmare-prone mind with threats that if I didn't obey them, the bogeyman would get me. I was told that he'd come into my bedroom at night while I was sleeping and "get" me. Maybe because the word "boogie" was one of the countless racial slurs our family used for blacks, I pictured the bogeyman as a fat, middle-aged black man with bulging eyes.
What did they mean, though, that he would "get" me? I had no conception of sexual abuse, so I don't think they meant he'd ass-ream me. And if they meant he would kidnap me—taking me away from them—I really wouldn't have minded.
The word "get" has several meanings, one of which is synonymous with "understand." Maybe my family members were really saying, "I don't understand you—maybe the bogeyman will."
Posted by jg @ 10:21 PM PST []
Friday, July 4, 2003
SUMMARY:
The savage mutilation of male infants' genitals comes back to haunt a major American city in this exciting new horror film by screenwriters Jim Goad and Shlomo Schmeckelman.
In a dumpster behind an inner-city hospital which routinely performs circumcisions, a bag of discarded foreskins mutates into a giant penis which terrorizes the city of Detroit. Citizens run fleeing for their lives as giant gobs of male ejaculate rain from the heavens.
Scientists are powerless to stop the stampeding mutant penis until a mischievous street thug, played by Gary Coleman, devises an ingenious plan using klieg lights and a giant overhead projector to broadcast the Lifetime Channel onto a backdrop of dark clouds, eventually causing the penis to go limp.
Features a cameo by Eminem as a sperm.
Posted by jg @ 10:46 PM PST []
Thursday, July 3, 2003
In Biloxi, Mississippi, it is illegal to insert a firecracker in your anus without lighting it.
Up until 1973, the city of Davenport, Iowa, would celebrate Independence Day by scalping a live Indian in the Town Square.
For fear of upsetting his slave mistress, Thomas Jefferson removed the phrase "None of this applies to niggers" from the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
After signing Jefferson’s revolutionary document, the Founding Fathers ordered out for Thai food.
On July 5th, Ben Franklin was still drunk.
Posted by jg @ 07:48 PM PST []
Wednesday, July 2, 2003
While shopping today at a local health-food store (shut up—I'll outlive ALL of you), I found myself drawn in by the almost-subliminal Muzak system which normally plays whale songs and, I don't know—the sound of placental sacs softly bursting or something. A mellow-sounding pre-recorded male voice was touting the virtues of the store's free-range earth-friendly chickens vis-a-vis Evil Corporate Chickens.
"Our chickens hang out in stress-free environments," said the voice—I swear on my life, those were his exact words. Setting aside the anthropomorphic silliness of chickens "hanging out" at a health resort, soaking their pain away in mineral-enhanced whirlpools, and receiving Shiatsu claw massages, this startling announcement set the gears spinning in my head.
I believe I read somewhere that the bodies of animals whose last moments are intensely stressful—such as those of Corporate Chickens—release stress-related chemicals which ruin the meat's taste once us grubby humans shove it in our mouths.
But even though the health-food robot-man's proclamation superficially appears to be chicken-friendly, the chickens get still get KILLED in the end. Not that I'm bothered by the mass slaughter of chickens—birds are merely reptiles with feathers. What DOES bother me is the pretense that these people give a fuck about the chickens, and by extension, the planet. Their only concern is that the meat tastes better. If they cared about the chickens, they wouldn't be feasting on their carcasses in the first place.
No matter how hard we try to be nice, we're still clawing each other to death in the pecking order.
Posted by jg @ 03:39 PM PST []
Tuesday, July 1, 2003
I seem to have misplaced my Guidebook, so will someone please explain to me the difference between hippies and punk rockers? There seems to be an equal amount of each in Portland, which is another way of saying there's an equal amount of the same thing.
Behold the similarities:
1) They both smell like rancid turnips.
2) They both are afflicted with the same anemic leftoid politics which cause them to be outraged by the same, uh, outrages—you know—racism, sexism, and racism. Did I mention racism?
3) They both are ignored by black people.
4) They both believe their cookie-cutter lifestyles are somehow a threat to "The System," while The System chugs along, powerful as ever, smashing everything in its path.
Seriously, I can't tell the difference. The hippies probably wouldn't be nearly as offended by my analogy as the punks, who somehow are able to convince themselves that they are hippiedom's antithesis.
There was a brief—shockingly brief—spell in the late 1970s and early 1980s when punk rockers risked physical harm for their fashion choices, but this was usually only at the hands of metalheads at their high school. But there was a long stretch during the Vietnam War when hippies risked physical harm from almost EVERYONE who wasn't a hippie. So on the rebel tip, I'll give the edge to the hippies.
Now it's 2003, and punk rock is older than frickin' ROCKABILLY was when punk rock was introduced in 1976 or so. Can't you white kids come up with something new?
And do I need to remind you that Sid Vicious killed—not beat up, but KILLED—his girlfriend and routinely adorned himself with swastikas? How come you losers cut HIM so much slack? Oh, I know—because, like you, he nodded out before he was able to string a sentence together.