I have to teach this woman's children...

and people wonder why American kids are such morons. I mean, how am I supposed to work with a woman like this? I bet she's related to the "Extreme Makover" foreclosure family.

Land of the Free, Home of the self-entitled...

I sold my car the other day to a fifty something year old woman. After procuring her loan and passing the cashiers check ("free money") over to me she promptly told me:

"The American dream now isn't about owning your own home or car; it's about making enough money so you can purchase it on credit. You'll be very lucky, young man, to get through life without debt. We're a nation of consumers, but we don't really produce anything of much value. All we have is our purchasing power. It can't last that much longer if you think about it. I'm glad I won't be here much longer, relatively speaking."

I'm glad I've never had much of a greedy soul, at least in terms of acquiring excessive amounts of material possessions. Then again, I grew up in Nebraska, which is a microcosm all its own.

Unfortunately, the mentality that's eating us alive from the inside is spreading like a disease courtesy of Hollywood! I laughed my ass off to the point of almost puking when I saw that one of the families on Extreme Makeover Home Edition put up a 450,000 loan on a home that they otherwise couldn't afford in their wildest dreams without the help of the dream machine. Well, I'm sorry to say that's why they couldn't afford to buy a house in the first place-they're dumb, lazy, undereducated, overweight, self-entitled, greedy, All-American fat asses.

And who in their good conscience would allow that family to take the loan out in the first place? Never-mind, I didn't ask that question.


One thing that's exactly same about the real America and Hollywood is that they're both built on make-believe. Or maybe credit? At any rate people are going to have to pay their bills at some point, one way or the other, sooner or later.

Feist at the Hollywood Bowl...

So, Monoli scored us free tickets to Feist on Sunday. It was a blast. Unfortunately, I got really drunk and failed to update my fantasy baseball team. As a result, I'm not kicking the first place team's ass like I should have been if I would have started Jon Lester and Jorge Campillo.


Monoli took this pic from his brand new iphone, lucky bastard.

I think Stacy is laughing at the plumber's butt in the background (she has eyes in the back of her head). Yeah, she's really that cool/talented!

GLOW in Santa Monica

So, these are some of the pictures I took from "Glow" in Santa Monica last Friday. It was rather disappointing to say the least. The exhibits were pretty lame for the most part, and there was way too many people there. The event wasn't well organized, there were no bathrooms (aside from the beach itself), and there was a motley crew of various L.A. freaks from brahs, skaters, bums, gangsters, yippies, hippies, goths, tweekers, teenagers, hip-sters, posers, moms, middle-aged hippies, whole Hispanic/Latino families camping out at the beach, and everything in between. In-fact, that was the most interesting thing about the event-all the different people there. However, from eaves-dropping on various passerbyers the general consensus was that people were very disappointed by the event, and felt very uncomfortable being around so many different types of people. They masked their discomfort by talking shit about the various groups they weren't a member of.

Despite the diversity of the L.A. area, most of that diversity keeps to itself. It's very rare that everyone mixes together like a true community. Most of the time people just talk shit about the different people in the city they don't understand. That's how diversity is celebrated in America. We love to tout it, but we really don't like living with one another (unless we're separated by out suburbs and we're watching it take place on the boob-tube). Putting everyone together for one night turned out to be an interesting social experiment. I'm surprised no one got seriously injured. Oh wait, they did.

All-in-all, it was a fun experience, but I wouldn't do it again. And I doubt the city of Santa Monica will either. It was completely unsafe to have that many people in that area at once. I'm surprised the pier or the small catwalk over the PCH didn't collapse.

Stacy is not "glowing" from the experience of "glow". The lack of restrooms were even more of a problem for the women.

Relaaaax, kind of...

Okay, so I sent out most of my submissions for the time being and I sold my car. So I can relax for the time being in a relative sort of way. Although, I'm sure I'll find something else to worry about soon enough. I'll post my proposals (w/ sample chapters) on here later in the week.

There is hope, it's just that the submission process is really, really aggravating. It doesn't help that I've got three novels fresh on my mind that I want to get started on. Oh well, I guess this is just part of paying my dues. Once I get this out of the way I'll have free reign to write whenever I want, and not have to deal w/ the life and business end of being an unknown who has to pay the bills w/out his writing.

There is hope for the world yet, thanks to me.

PDF Novel

I'll be posting a PDF link to my novel "The Land of Lost Dreams" very soon. I think it'll be easier and more convenient than posting separate chapters on the blog. I suppose I'll post it on my facebook and myspace pages too.

I'd have posted it now, but I want to submit it first. I'm finding the search for editors and agents to be extremely aggravating. I'd much rather be writing or doing something productive. It doesn't help that I finally realized it's a waste of time and money to submit to major editors and publishing houses. As a result of my ignorance I spent way too much time sifting through candidates. I've come to the conclusion that I should limit my submissions to small houses that accept unsolicited, unagented proposals and to literary agents themselves.

I'm not looking forward to going back to the library to look for agents instead of reading and writing. It's like being at a candy store w/out being able to eat the candy. And to top things off all I get to eat is liver. I'm starting to think I should have been an engineer or computer programmer or something.

I really wish my high school English teacher wouldn't have "inspired" me to write. I almost want to go back and say: "God damnit! Why did you have to inspire me? Why couldn't you have been like all my Berkeley professors and have made reading and writing the most boring, anal-retentive, politically correct, agenda driven bull-shit in the realm of human creation! Not to mention, a completely useless skill in the real world. Now I'm stuck slaving away in some godforsaken public school, in some godforesaken city while I look for editors/agents in my spare time. Why couldn't you have told me what the real world is really like?! Most people suck and are utterly hopeless! There's nothing I can do to change that, so I might as well get mine like everyone is doing before this shit-house of a civilization we've created goes up in flames!"

Oh well, I'll quit my ranting and get back to my search.

FYI: The book isn't that cynical. Its just brutally honest. There's some measure of hope for humanity. It's just that hope has a price like anything else. It's going to cost. There's hope for humanity itself, but that doesn't mean there's hope for every single person. Some of us a just fucked in one way or the other, for one reason or another. It usually has something to do with the nature of our dreams.

Fucking Sweet! A WLA Homeless dude bicycle gang!

I wish I would have had my camera a few days before when there were at least 20 homeless dudes on bikes (most likely stolen) riding around the 405 interchange near Santa Monica in WLA. They looked totally badass all hooping and hollering, doing wheelies and downing moonshine while heckling drivers waiting to get on the freeway. Unfortunately, I believe the police confiscated their bikes and now they're relegated to just sitting on the curb in stolen lawn chairs while heckling drivers and panhandling for some spaaaare chaiiinnnnng (maybe so they can buy some wicked new bikes?).