there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

Getting ready for a pool tournament.

Being up this early on Saturday is unheard of.

Drinking my second Miller Lite of the morning.

About to switch to coffee.

Going to be playing pool for about 12 hours.

Coffee seems like a good idea.

Gonna have a pocket full of ephedrine just in case.

If I play like I played last night, I should be in good shape.

This should be interesting.

Yeah…I’m full of shit. So sue me. Nice thing about having an SQL database as a back-end is that you can’t get rash and delete everything very easily. Although, some part of me still wishes I had.

Incidentally, my HUGE FUCKING PILE of vinyl finally arrived today. Consider me locked inside, drinking, and listening to vinyl until further notice.

If I feel like an asshole later (which is, in fact, quite likely) I’ll type up the list of awesome shit that came today.

We’re sticking the next generation with debt and an unjust war. Solution: We must cut healthcare for people with “Bush-Cheney” bumper stickers.

YES! What a phenomenal idea! The rest of the very great article can be found here.

It dawns on me that my Minnesota Twins do better if I’m not there cheering for them. I leave town and they have a big winning streak. I go to a game, and our pitcher gets in trouble right away, our clutch hitters hit into double plays with the bases loaded. The team rallies when I go out for a bratwurst, but once I’m back in my seat, our relief ace gives up a cheap home run. This is humbling.

But any parent knows about humbling. Children grow up, and your influence over them declines precipitously. You begat them because you pictured yourself as a wise and beloved patriarch, but instead you become the warden of San Question. Your offspring yell at you and bang their tin cups as you walk through the cellblock. You try to enforce a few rules, and they ignore you. They become painted women in tiny shorts and tank tops and lascivious boys dancing in dim basements to bands with names like Stark Raving Idiots and Degenerate Thrombosis.

Either they will slide into a life of crime and addiction or they will awaken in time to get into medical school and become pediatricians. One or the other. Either they’ll wind up in the Big House, sullen, chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, or they’ll be making the rounds in a starched white smock, placing a stethoscope against the chests of tiny infants. And you, Mom and Pop, will have had mighty little influence on the outcome.

 Garrison Keillor writes about being 64. Well worth the read.

“Alright kids…thank you for coming out tonight. We appreciate every time we can drive up to Cleveland, we like it. We bring all of our Daytonians with us….all of the sick fucks. They get up here and stand on the stage…on the side of the stage…and every once and a while, one of ‘em will run out here and grab the mic from me. Last time somebody did that was my sister, in Cincinnati, and I punched her.

Bitch.

No…she’s sweet, she is sweet.”

So tonight…I went to the Robert Pollard show in Boston..and actually met Robert Pollard.

I was shopping in a record store down the block from the show…and he came walking in…I ignored him for a while, while pointing out to my friends that we were now shopping in the presence of greatness.

Then I couldn’t resist anymore and had to go talk to him.

So..here is me looking like a total fucking moron standing next to my hero.

That’s right bitches. I shopped for records in the same shop in Boston that Bob shopped.

And yeah…the record you see in my hand is the 13th Floor Elevators, “Easter Everywhere” for those that care….

PS: I just want to take moment to mention that Uncle Bob rocked the hell out of the place tonight. I literally walked out of the place feeling like I had never actually seen a live concert before.

I guess the real truth here is that you MUST GO SEE ROBERT POLLARD LIVE. If you have the opportunity, and you choose not to, you might as well never go see a rock band again as long as you live.

That really is as deep as it gets. RP and the Ascendent Masters were fucking IN-CRED-I-BLE…tonight.

And no..I’m not just saying that because me and Bob happen to shop the same Boston record stores.

I don’t really care about St. Patricks Day, honestly. My name is Colin, yes, but I am not Irish. I had to explain this to countless people on Friday night…and they would all look at me baffled like “what do you mean? your name is Colin is it not? You must be Irish.” No..I’m not. Sorry.

I and two associates in debauchery went downtown to check out the madness at about 4:00pm. Our obviously flawed plan was that we would all go do the happy hour thing, and then get home before it got too crazy and the sobriety check points were set up. Well, as you can imagine, it didn’t turn out quite that way.

First we went to some bar I can’t remember the name of, because they have 9 foot pool tables. Unfortunately, the tables were all taken, and we didn’t want to wait around. So we had a black and tan, and then left for City Steam. At City Steam, I confirmed my prior assessment that their beer has gone to shit. Seriously, for a brew pub, their beer SUCKS wind. It was terrible. But we still played pool there for a while, and suffered through the terrible beer. I played one of my most dominating games of pool ever, right after my cohort made fun of me for how I break.

He was like, “why do you always break that fucking lame way, man? You are supposed to hit it dead on the center.” He was totally wrong, as just after he said this, I broke in my normal fasion, pocketed 5 balls on the break, and proceeded to run the table without giving him a turn. Out of 15 games with my two cohorts, I lost one…and only because I scratched on the 8 ball. Yes, I am awesome. You don’t have to tell me.

Then we left and walked down the street to some Irish bar that was packed to the gills. I hate standing in crowds. About the only way I can tolerate it is if there is a band playing that I really want to see, or hot girls that seem interested. Fortunately, we ran into a few of the latter. After a while though, we really needed to get out to the parking lot so that my one friends could run over my other friends foot. True story. Sounds reckless and dangerous, and probably was, but terribly funny none the less. It probably would have been less funny had he whos foot was run over actually been hurt…but he was ok.

We then stopped by the biker bar. Those of you who know me very well will know what that means.

We chilled at my place for a while, then went to the Pool Factory so I could continue my dominating of pool. By this point in the evening however, my beer goggles were firmly attached. Now, a little known side effect of the beer goggles needs to be mentioned here. While yes, they make females look more attractive than they otherwise would be, they also make rather poor shots at pool look much more attractive. So I couldn’t really crush my opponents the way I would have liked to. And besides, at this point it was about midnight, and we were all starting to wear down after our nine hour “happy hour”. So we called it quits, and all went home.

Good times for all…except my friend who had his foot run over I guess.

PS: Wow..I typed all that and didn’t make a single spelling mistake according to my spell checker!