Alien Sex: More Like Easter FUNday

I don't know how other people feel about holidays, but I fucking hate them with a passion. Every holiday. I hate Flag Day. I hate Arbor Day. I hate Administrative Assistants Appreciation Day. Christmas, Halloween, Easter, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, my own birthday. You name it, I hate it.

The only holiday I don't hate is Thanksgiving, mostly because of the day BEFORE Thanksgiving, where you get to see all of your old "friends" who you haven't seen in a while. It's the one day every year that I'm willing to be part of the masses and drink shitty beer and pretend to give a fuck about what other people are doing with their lives. Thanksgiving Day itself sucks harder than (insert celebrity cock-sucking joke here), but the night before is always interesting. Not necessarily fun, but always interesting.

I like the day before Thanksgiving because it proves to me how right I’ve always been about the dangers of forced fun and expectations.

Holidays suck because of the sense of entitlement they inspire in us. There are always expectations, and rarely does ANYTHING live up to the expectations you had for it. This is true of every day in a sense. People show up to work thinking "today might not suck," but then it sucks, and they feel even worse than they would have if they just said "today will probably suck." What I'm emphasizing here is the importance of preparation over expectation, and the understanding that “fun,” however you define it, cannot and should not be planned.

Don't ever expect something, good or bad. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” It’s a simple enough expression to remember. But, if that doesn’t do it for you, try this one out instead.

One of the great thinkers of our time, Mr. Mike Tyson, once said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Holidays tend to punch people in the face.

The plans you had for your holiday never pan out, and you've got no contingency, because you had these wild expectations that could NEVER possibly come to fruition, and now you're left sulking and hating your life, job, spouse and children. Why? Because you had a day off, you had unreasonably high expectations for it, and you had no contingency plan for when it punched you in the face.

The expression "roll with the punches" really means to roll out of the way of life's attempted punches to the face. Roll in the same direction that the punch is being thrown, that way it swings and misses just over top of you. When holiday boredom sets in, which it will, just remember that I warned you of the consequences of expectation, and the pitfalls of being unprepared.

If you MUST participate in whatever holiday is coming up, in this case Easter, just remember that bars and holidays are essentially the same thing: sad attempts at forced fun, with an underlying expectation that your life will in some way be changed for the better.

Normally, my interest in including poetry in this blog extends only to Lewis Carroll Jabberwocky style nonsense, but I'd like to leave you with this gem from My Morning Jacket songwriter Jim James, from the song "Golden":

People always told me
That bars are dark and lonely
And talk is often cheap and filled with air

Sure, sometimes they thrill me
But nothing could ever chill me
Like the way they make the time just disappear


Whether it's a dark, lonely, shitty bar or a forced-fun-family-reunion, it's all the same: high expectations, lack of preparation, and the unshakable feeling that you'll never get this time back, no matter how hard you try.

Easter is the one Sunday every year that makes me look forward to Monday morning, just so I can get back to some semblance of normalcy. If given the choice, I'll take the disappointment of the start of another work week over the disappointment of shattered expectations. Maybe that makes me a pessimist, but I like to think I’m just happy with my life the way it is, without needing a fucking parade to march by every time something slightly beneficial occurs.

If you like bars and holidays and parades and trophies, good for you. You’ve found something that makes you feel better about yourself. But if that ever starts to get old, which it most certainly will, try getting closer to your own happiness EVERY day, instead of waiting for these verbal masturbation festivals to come around and make you feel “alive.”

Waiting for holidays is the equivalent of building your house on the side of a volcano and only stepping outside when it erupts. If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’m afraid nothing I ever say will make any sense to you, and for that I’m sorry.


- Sugar

Alien Sex: Rest Stops and Scenic Overlooks Are Creepy

Am I right, Mr. LYT?

I was all over the state of NJ this week, and unfortunately the perception most people have of NJ comes from their one brief stop at Newark Airport 10 years ago, or driving on the turnpike from exits 13 through 18, and smelling the distinct odor of urine mixed with noxious gases.

Look, there are parts of NJ that are awful, and I wouldn't recommend ANYBODY stopping there EVER for ANY reason. But 75% of the state is beautiful, and filled with the hardest working people in the world.

If you're not living on the East coast above the Mason-Dixon Line, or on the West coast in a major city, you're life isn't all that it could be.

Basically, Texas can go fuck itself right in its righteous asshole. The only thing "bigger" in Texas is the collective ego of the entire state, which spills over into neighboring states who think they know what the fuck they're talking about.



In New Jersey.......

Is there the off chance that you'll run into a homosexual looking for a hand job at a rest stop?

Sure.


Might your "waitress" have an Adam's Apple, and a voice deeper than Britney Spears' pussy?

Possibly.


Are you putting your life on the line every time you drive on one of our highways?

Quite simply....yes.


But, will your life be better off for experiencing such things? Will you have better stories to tell? Will you go home every night with a sense of accomplishment that dwarfs that of every other state in the union?

Absolutely.


(Am I asking too many rhetorical questions? That's debatable.)




It's called "character," bitches. Order some online if there isn't any available to you locally.



Of course, there are advantages to living in the middle of nowhere, underneath power lines, milking cows and goats and trying to scratch out a place for yourself in the world. Just off the top of my head...I can't think of any reasons to justify such a lifestyle, but I suppose it's a respectable living provided you're not a total asshole.

There's a lot of shit in political news that talks about "Blue States" and "Red States." I don't buy into such marginalization, and I don't think we're all that different at our core, but I will tell you this:

If you're living anywhere other than the coasts, and you think you're happy, you really need to stop lying to yourself and face this grim reality: Other than Chicago, there's nothing worth seeing or doing anywhere between NY and LA, (and I hate both of those cities more than anything in the world).

Are there great people all over this country? Absolutely. But they're wasting away there when they could be fulfilling their potential here.

I think that's a marginalization we can all get behind. Just watch who's getting behind you. Especially at rest stops and scenic overlooks.

- Sweetness

Cartography: Huge People

You know what really grinds my gears?.. Little people acting like saying the word midget is like calling a black person the n word. Seriously? I hope they know somewhere deep down that we are laughing at them. I mean, they already thought that, and thats the genesis of the whole little person pc public relations turnaround, but i mean even those of us who would never consider actually laughing at someone for how they are born, are now laughing at them. Whole heartedly i might add.

If we laughed at you before im sure we felt terrible eventually, but now, its remorseless mockery. Not about your size, but the size of your ego. Seriously. You werent stolen from a continent and sold into slavery for hundreds of years, only to be freed but continually subjugated and demeaned in every way especially language. So you were in carnivals and shit. So what. at lest u might have gotten paid. Its so ridiculous to try and compare these two words. And im sure offensive to black people. The word midget comes from midge, meaning a small fly, and was coined in like 1870 something to describe carnival dwarfs. Now i know Stern did a whole row on this and got shit for it, but feel the same exact way. Little people sounds more offensive to me. i know they wanted to subvert the word midget so they went with little people, but the thing about the n word is that its used to describe other things and in conjunction with other meanings all the time. Like when its used to describe lazy behavior or something ghastly like that. No one besides MG uses midget to describe tiny things consistently. Plus im not sure it was ever meant to be disparaging at all. Its actually much less disparaging then the term jazz music. Which is predominantly black music, of african and NOLA origin and influence, and the term Jazz music means, whore-house music. Not because black people are whores, but because its seedy and bawdy rythyms were supposedly fit for a brothel.

Fucking cool it little people. honestly, i know your life is definitely hard. Cant be easy. Fuck people who stare at you and snicker. Really they are scum. but lets get serious, its not the same. i may not have made my point, but the point is clear. You're being pretentious dicks, hangers on, and isolationist. Like you're your own group. I say you're the same. Just born with a specific genetic condition. Usually congenital dwarfism. Should we call u dwarfs? Do we call people with muscular dystrophy musc-dyphs? Or cerebral palsy sufferers palsies? No, cause they're regular just like you. Just say im fucking short, get over it. Cause those of us who are normal will, and those who are fucking assholes are just gonna call you midget anyway. And i swear to god if a little person rapper comes out and starts trying to own the word midget im gonna begin making real mean jokes. You've been warned.

-not me