Chad Fred

Capitalism, My New Hobby: a Post Work Out Ramble

2011-10-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

My latest mini-obsession has become business as an art. I don't really think we're going to see Capitalism go anywhere (I sort of buy into Fukuyama's thesis; at least as far as I understand it) so progressive types are going to have to start building companies that can compete and win against the cigar chomping death culture dealers.

Barring a major revolution where we end up a planet full of Democratic Agrarianists connected to each other by the internet, intent on providing equality for all, that is.

I understand and agree with the arguments from people like Derek Jensen that basically say as long as we have Capitalism we will be screwed. I also get the idea that corporations are basically sociopathic entities (like Skynet).

I'm fairly sympathetic to anarcho-primitive ideas, but I'd say they're more or less a fantasy. I mean, don't get me wrong, I fucking love the idea of folks living in the ruins of civilization as some kind of post-apocalyptic tribe.

When you add in ideas about Social & Deep Ecology, combining my favorite things about Dave Foreman and Murray Bookchin's philosophies to some righteous Ted Nugent style bow hunting, leather clothes that'll last you a life time and hot dred-locked warrior women, you basically can sign me up right away.

After I read The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson my professor, Dale Carrico, asked me whether or not I considered it a Utopia or a Dystopia. My 28 year old self immediately replied, "Utopia". I mean, after all, I was doing Crossfit. I was fucking strong. What could possibly go wrong for me in a post-peak oil wasteland?

My teeth. That's what. I had to get two crowns after major cavities did their handy work. No matter what those paleo diet folks say, I'm happy to have shoes and doctors.

I understand and agree with the arguments from people like Derek Jensen that basically say as long as we have Capitalism we will be screwed. I also get the idea that corporations are basically sociopathic entities (like Skynet). That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change them.

Check this idea out: there's this theory called the Stoned Ape Theory that basically claims that hominids didn't evolve or give a shit about each other until they got a hold of some psychedelic mushrooms. Then they started feeling connected to each other, developed tools, complex social groups and got some traction. If you've ever taken mushrooms, you'll be receptive to this theory (which doesn't mean you have to believe it). If you haven't, go take some mushrooms.

Now think of a corporation as a kind of super organism made up of people. If you have one made out of assholes, you're probably going to end up with an asshole corporation. What if the corporation was made out of people who wanted a more efficient, connected, psychedelic planet?

There aren't too many rad large companies (Patagonia comes to mind). However, there are a ton of cool small to mid sized companies. If we can grow those companies, get them big enough to lobby as strongly as the bad guys. We win.

I work for a pretty big player in the so called Green Capitalism scene (my previous employer was also pretty well known in that circle as well) so I've got a good amount of experience with it. Is it perfect? Fuck no. Could it be better? Fuck yes.

So what I'm up to is embarking on a personal mission. I want to be a very successful businessman. I want to fight people like the Koch Brothers and all the rest of the bastards. I want to crush them, see them driven before me and hear the lamentation of their women.

Here's my plan: I'm going to spend the next two years learning as much as possible using a DIY business school learning plan and I'm going to start my own business using the principles I learn.

This shit is not going to be easy.

Francis Bacon and Tim Ferriss

2011-09-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Work Week and accompanying blog for the last few weeks along with Francis Bacon's essays (as part of my larger project of reading the entire Harvard Classics Five Foot Bookshelf).

At one point I hit a particularly ponderous few chapters in the Bacon about building gardens for grand estates. At near midnight, 16th century descriptions of the proper height for hedges and statuary works better than any sleeping pill.

The next day I had an epiphany, though. Francis Bacon is all about lifestyle design, which is Tim Ferris' whole deal. Bacon is teaching a lord or rich person the proper way to order his household so that he can maximize the work of becoming more enlightened. The assumption is clearly that you are already fucking rich.

I always really respected authors like Charles Bukowski and Stephen King who accomplished their work while slaving away at full time jobs. Bukowski always talked about how you either can do it or you can't (it being writing) and it will burn a whole in you if you don't. There probably isn't a more soul crushing environment than the Post Office).

That said, an awful lot of the best writing was done by folks who were the heads of households, people who didn't have to worry about the minutiae of everyday life.

Ferriss advocates automating as much of these functions as possible. I've found that even on a modest salary, having others do certain kinds of work frees up quite a bit of valuable time. My wife and I have a house cleaner, I never work on my motorcycle. Paying others to do what you don't do well or don't know what to do is a good idea, provided you can afford it.

Affording it is the trick.

Ramblings on the Rich

2011-09-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of the kind of argument people are using when they don't want taxes raised on the rich: if a rich "job creator" works harder than some clown that kicked their feet up and drank Thunderbird and played World of Warcraft all day, they'd probably feel pissed if someone tried to make them pay more taxes.

I agree. If you work hard, you should keep your earnings. If you're lazy, fuck yourself.

But what's missing here is many of these rich job creators don't really work any harder than the people they employ, they were just more willing to take an up front risk and create something out of nothing (or something out of a ton of ingerited wealth). Startign a company takes balls and the number of them that fail prove it's not easy.

Basically when we reward these kinds of people, we're rewarding cocky self assurance and risky behavior. I'm down with both of those things. It's what made that first fish waddle onto land and say "Check this shit out boys!" It's what makes evolution possible (if you don't believe in evolution, you should be barred by law from using it to explain economic theories).

If there's a problem with the current system, I'd say that it's we're too willing too bail out these risk takers and too unwilling to help everyday folks who've just had a run of bad luck. In reality, most of us are not job creators and most of us are not lazy. We're sort of stuck in the middle.

Too big to fail seems to create too small to thrive. The big guys, insured from collapse by the rest of us, make it hard for the little guy to grow.

Ehh.

2011-09-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

I really wish Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t dead and Christopher Hitchens wasn’t sick. Pretty much all we’re left with are talking head class warriors who barely qualify as journalists, much less intellectuals. They’re too concerned with defending the poor or defending the rich. I’d like to see more defending of the truth.

Valencia St. Muscle

2011-09-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about Valencia St. Muscle. The carpet is threadbare and stained. The restrooms have the smell of a bus station. Almost all of the equipment is battered and bruised. There are mirrors everywhere, many with cracks. They have those god awful hexagonal shaped plates that shift about when you set them down when deadlifting.

It's rarely busy, but when it is you will find an amazing cross section of mutants. Lifting gloves are the norm. Personal trainers seem to be fond of every kind of program except those that include the basic compound lifts. Grossly out of shape men flex in front of the mirrors, clearly feeling the pump of their tri-cep pulldowns.
I love this place.

It's basically Average Joe's Gym from the movie Dodgeball.

There are three squat racks, and they are almost never occupied by anyone. I have never seen more than 10 people here at a time and they are almost always chained to the cardio equipment.

No one says anything to you or comments about what you're doing. There are no clowns running around doing Mens-Fitness-Magazine-Crossfit-Rip-Off-exercises.

Planet Granite and Mission Cliffs are both filled with douche bag climbers that feel it is their duty to inform you that squatting deep will ruin your knees and that you really should be lifting in Vibrams, one footed while standing on a Bosu ball (not kidding). The crime is that Planet Granite actually has a pretty good set up (with the notable exception of a power rack). Mission Cliffs is a pit.

Looking for Trouble

2011-08-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

I scan news sites several times a day, always disappinted when something crazy isn't happening. This is an obsession. I'm waiting to read about the event or cause that will wake me up before I die. The thing that I'll burn the candle for or burn for.

Jesus, I need a hobby.

Francis Bacon

2011-08-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back on track with a healthy diet and some kind of fitness strategy, so it only makes sense I climb back on the brain train(ing).

It's not like I haven't been reading, last night I finished Man's Search for Meaning. I just haven't been plowing through the Harvard Classics.

Last night I read about twenty pages of Francis Bacon. It's possible that in twenty years no one will have read what I read last night. Two of the longer essays I read last night were about how to build a home and a garden.

Essentially Bacon talks about how he would design a great big English Estate. No one alive needs this advice. It really is a dead subject. Sure people are building big homes, but they're either cheesey McMansions or super weird high design.

Can't Start a Fire Without a Spark

2011-08-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

Riot Fitness is my new physical pursuit. The goal is to physically survive a break down in society and thrive in a chaotic environment. One thing I'd like to point out is that more than anything else I'm just looking to get moving and not be such an office drone.

Having a goal helps, though. The primary skill necessary for riot fitness is running speed, which is unfortunate for me because I've never really been that interested in running.

From the perspective of riot fitness, running is a practice that not only has health benefits, it is practical and allows me to get more familiar with my eco-system (which is currently the city of San Francisco.

I have three runs a week planned for the first stage. A brisk run of three miles with the eventual goal of doing it in 18 minutes, a sprint session and a distance run to be greater than 3 miles at a comfortable pace.

Before running I'll do Sonnen Mobility Work followed by the Crossfit/American Parkour warm up.

I would probably just do Crossfit if I could afford it right now, but I like the idea of developing this regimen on my own, incorporating the knowledge I've accumulated over the last five or six years.

In addition to this physical performance I am going to work on some urban survival skills. This doesn't mean that I'm going to get all urban camo. This has a lot more to do with social engineering and resource acquisition than anything else.

Today's meager training:

10 pullups
25 hindu pushups
40 air squats
5 leg raises
Samson stretch
x3

2 mile run

It's a beginning.

Training for Civil Unrest

2011-08-16T16:47:00.001-07:00

There are no zombies and the whole 2012 thing is bullshit. However, there is certainly some Children of Men style chaos coming our way soon. A smart person with some money saved would be hiding away weapons on an organic farm somewhere while building a motorcycle with enough gas and rations to get there.

I am not smart, so I'm basically stuck in the city. Bummer.

All is not lost though. There will be riots and a less smart person can get themselves ready for that.

I think the top skills to posess for riot fitness are the following:

1. Running- you need to be fast to get away from mobs or cops. Being fast while carrying weight is really useful for looting and helping injured friends escape.

Sprinting, long distance, fast walking is all good. Cardio is key.

2. Climbing- If you can climb a V3 you can probably handle that dead end alley you just ran into. It also doesn't hurt when you need to get into the second story of a building to liberate some consumer goods.

I'm not saying to lose all your free time in the climbing gym, but having some balance and manly vice grip hands can't hurt too much.

3. Throwing- you might need to open a window and you might need to protect yourself. Either way, being able to hurl a projectile accurately is a great skill to have.

You could get some practice in with a baseball and glove.

4. Judo/Grappling- I don't think you ever want to "go to the ground" when you're surrounded my a mob or a squadron of cops with nightsticks, but you should probably know just enough to get up and move or get someone's hands off of you.

For the purposes of riot fitness most striking arts are pretty useless. Hitting a cop is pretty dumb unless you like jail and one on one fighting is basically non-existent. If you do have to fight in a mob you better grab something and start swinging if you don't want to end up like Reginald Deny.

Ready for Riots

2011-08-14T11:26:00.001-07:00

The Right Wing has already started to create a story about how there are coming race riots.

This story is about to be told over and over again by Republicans because they fear the coming mob. The exact kind of austerity measures they are now proposing are at the heart of the English riots. The working poor, the disenfranchised, good folks who just want to live their life and a not too small amount of hopeless kids have been flipping cars over and burning everything in sight because, well why not? Bankers have been looting everything in plain sight for years and nothing happened to them.

The rioters aren't doing it in solidarity with the Right Wing, that's for sure. The Right is wholly owned by multinationals. That's a fact Jack and if you are one of these Tea Party clowns marching in solidarity with the Right, that's cool, but know that you are nothing more than willing serfs. You will probably never be rich enough to enjoy the tax breaks you are fighting for, but you will likely be poor enough to need the programs you are fighting against.

Realize this:when you start to see riots, what you are seeing is a reaction against income inequality. You are not looking at a race riot. You are looking at your brothers and sisters finally up in arms.

Fox News will want you to believe that darky is rising up against you like some kind of modern slave revolt. This is not what's happening. You don't have to be scared unless you work on Wall St. Then you should run for your fucking life.

They're scared. If you want proof you don't have to look any further than the fact that BART shut off the internet. Imagine if during the LA Riots there was a way to tell all the angry people "we are marching on the rich, meet at this location". That shit would've looked way different.

I suggest potential rioters start buying walkie talkies now.

Knowing the Real Stuff

2011-07-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

I'd argue that you can't really identify authenticity if you don't know yourself very well. Some people I've known in my life were gifted with very powerful aesthetic compasses early on in their lives. These were the guys who were building cars for no one but themselves and the girls that didn’t look like anyone else when they went out on a hot Friday night. I was always envious of their assurance and the talent they developed crafting their own unique vision of self (what other kind should there be?).

Jean Baudrillard wrote a bit about objects as social signs. On one level to simply buy things and build a false personality out of a bunch of junk is deplorable. You probably know a bunch of people that do this. They buy trendy shit because it’s new, because it’s in. What makes it in is based on another person’s aesthetic choices. The look you rock today was on a runway last year and on some Arab kid walking through the desolate suburbs of Paris two years before that. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy and when you don’t know who you are, you just become a frame for a simulacrum.

Sometimes it’s not so easy to critique. I’ve met folks who seemed so perfect, so utterly self actualized in the presence of tragically inauthentic objects that it was almost as if I was looking at a person for whom all culture had been crafted. I’m thinking of a man whose faux hawk and Affliction shirt were chosen with purpose to reflect what was within. This gold chained and ringed fellow could not have been more at home in his protein shake built body.

This isn’t the brand of authenticity I enjoy. What I like are people who create things that evoke the past. Specifically a past that glorifies the handmade, the durable and the honesty of a craft. Ian Barry from Falcon Motorcycles would be a great example another would be the denim makers Immogene and Willie. They are remaking old style objects, but their reason to do so seems to be internal. They are crafting objects that achieve an aesthetic quality held to higher, self made standards.

I’m not sure why it makes sense to have a preference of types of self actualized people, but I do. I’m kind of drawn to old things even though I never spent the time needed to learn how to make them last. I’ve damaged every vintage vehicle I’ve owned with a combination of neglect and use.

I’d like to note that just because a person makes older things the center of their life, does not guarantee any kind of authenticity. The chopper scene is a perfect example. When you look at a group of people wearing the same Vans shoes, plaid shirts and ogling the same machines (rare though they may be) you know someone is faking it. I think true originality is exceedingly rare and when you see such a group, you can be assured that more than a few people are not engaged with their own authenticity. I wpuldn’t say they are faking it, but they are, for a variety of reasons not quite in touch with their own spirit.

The one day of the year I think you can really see a person express their actual personalities through objects is Halloween. Maybe it has something to do with the veil of the spirit world being thinner or something equally as pagan. There is a freedom that it seems people have when they are costumed, free of fashion rules.

I wish that I was more connected to who I actually am. Maybe I would be free of buyer’s remorse. In my mind I don’t own any machines and I wear dashing tweed suits. Sort of a Jim Morrison as 1930s Oxford Professor. Who knows? Maybe that’s just a false self projected like all the others, but I sure look a lot better in my dreams.

Obsessions & Interests

2011-06-28T23:46:00.000-07:00

Some things I'm into at the moment:

Shipping container homes
Offal cooking
Walking at night
Seventies hair styles
Game of Thrones
Business lit
Stand up comedy
Podcasts
Radical honesty
Voluntary simplicity
Rewilding skills
Bouldering
Hindu death gods
Old books
Paul Chek
Horseback archery

"I am Ruth Bourdain" t-shirt available at www.adamsgoods.com

2011-06-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is a t-shirt I made (this is version 2.0) and some copy I wrote for it. I love parody and I thought, "what better way to honor parody than by making a parody of it?". Big thanks to Chris Cosentino and his lovely wife Tatiana. They are inspirational and you should follow them on Twitter (@meatmaven and @offalchris) and buy their excellent pork products from Boccalone.

"Just who is this mysterious Ruth Bourdain? No one knows, but we’re big fans here at Adam’s Goods.

Show your solidarity with the anonymous James Beard Award winning Twitter star by rocking your very own “I am Ruth Bourdain” t-shirt.

If you happen to be Ruth Bourdain, this would be an excellent purchase. You will be shielded by irony. This t-shirt will make people think, “ha, so silly, that person can’t be Ruth Bourdain”. But they’ll be wrong and you can keep slipping through the culinary shadows like a ninja.

Even if you aren’t Ruth Bourdain you’ll benefit from owning this t-shirt. It’s in black and everyone looks good in black. All the cool people who actually know about Ruth Bourdain will envy you. Hell, you might even get better service at restaurants.

Best of all, a portion of each sale will go to Meals on Wheels SF.
Order at www.adamsgoods.com"

Retirement

2011-05-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

I've been a bartender longer than I've been anything. If someone asks me what I do I can say "I am a bartender" with confidence. It's written on my resume and on my hands and across my pale skin.

My worldview is not a positive one. I have been reminded of weakness, pettiness and stupidity almost every single time I've been to work. My favorite memories from work involve horribly mean comments and the look of disbelief on the faces of the recipients of them who thought hey were dealing with an automaton (rather than a disgruntled slave).

In my role as a bartender I have been an awful person and it takes me hours to shake it off when I come home.

The work is not challenging. Sometimes it's ahrd and uncomfortable, and there are certainly degrees of proficiency, but a well trained monkey could do it. Maybe a well trained monkey couldn't be a mixologist, but that's only because even a monkey can recognize that shit is silly.

I'm a year into another career that I achieved from using the only thing I've learned from bartending that is at all useful: fast talking. I talked my way into a job as a copywriter and now I have the option of saying that when someone asks me what I do.

If I had to do it all over again I probably would've joined the military and tried to get into combat medicine. At least that's something worthwhile. But that ship sailed a long time ago and now I spend days writing and nights pouring drinks. One of them has to go.

My main goal now is to pull the plug on bartending by my birthday.

No Country for Old Men

2011-05-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last night at the bar the amateurs were out in full force to hear a new form of bleepy music called Glitch. Tons of bad fake IDs were confiscated, under age drinkers were ejected prompting their bestest buddies to advocate for their re-entry despite immovable bouncers. Young girls wearing suntan lotion as perfume cried, pimply white kids in giants gear and nerd shirts puffed up their sunken chests in an attempt to show how bad they are.

These little tools would probably cross the street out of fear if a black man as intimidating as Steve Urkel walked down it, but in front of a nightclub bound by rules, they act like heroes. Fake Davids standing up to real Goliaths make me sick.

This young, white techno scene is probably the most disgusting and entitled of any currently darkening the doors of any nightclub. The bar doesn't do particularly well, especially considering the massive risk of allowing the under 21 crowd anywhere near your establishment when there is an aggressive alcohol bureau filled with wannabe cops like the one in SF.

Don't mistake what I'm saying here. It's not the rant of an older man hating on a young generation, not understanding their ways. I've acted like an asshole and have even yelled at a bouncer for nothing even remotely worthwhile. I should've been beaten to a pulp, but the man had enough decency or fear of losing his job to let me be.

My displeasure has a little more to do with the concentration of douchery and its frequent recurrence.

I wasn't raised with what you'd call a high set of morals. Quite the opposite, actually. My family operates essentially like a low level crime family morals wise. What I mean is that they are kind, loyal, but ultimately shifty. There was a kind of code though, do something fucked p if you want, but if you get caught, it's on you.

These little drug addled fucks at the bar last night assumed there are no repercussions for their actions no matter what. Really, all a club has legally is to bar your entrance or remove you. If one of those two things happens, you should at the very least own up to what you did. If you get caught using someone's ID, well, that's it.

I've done the same. Actually, I've done something even stupider. I tried to use an ID I borrowed at the bar where the owner of the ID worked (I didn't know at the time). The bouncer put it in his pocket, I said the predictable "give me my ID back" as if I could do something and then he said "look if you want to meet the owner of this ID, he's our barback, but you probably knew that."

I was defeated, but that was the end.

Last night a dude got his borrowed ID taken (here's a tip kids, if you are a light skinned brother, dark skinned IDs don't work, especially when the ID is from a memorable state, like Texas).

He was caught red handed, but he argued for like 20 minutes. I just don't understand. If you want to go all the way and fight somebody and take your stolen property back, that' s one thing (at least it takes balls), but I've never seen anyone argue their stolen ID back into their wallet. That is, unless you consider dropping a Benjamin to get it back an argument.

Sloth Loves Chunk

2011-05-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

With a new MMA gym a mere 3 blocks from my house, I am still unable to motivate myself to suit up and go hit the bags or throw a gi on and roll. At the end of the day, I just don't feel like spending time learning something I may never use.

I truly love fighting sports, I just don't know how realistic it is to invest a substantial chunk of time in something I will likely remain mediocre at.

I've also made an unfortunate/fortunate discovery: with a few max rep sets of pushups and pullups done randomly throughout the week and a thirty minute evening stroll with my dog I am in essentially the same shape I was in when I was hitting the gym 5 days a week.

Sure, I might not be able to hit the same weights or run quite as fast, but I'm doing about 10% of the work and netting 75% of the reward. I'm back down to my usual weight of 145 lbs from an all time high of 160 lbs (this was when I was my strongest, but also from a period where I was eating so much food I literally could not afford it and found myself charging groceries on a credit card). That's just not good ROI.

This is totally in line with the info you'll find on Mark's Daily Apple and other Paleo type sites. Moderate walking, challenging but not excessively stressful exercise seems to be what we are biologically set up for as a species.

The only downside is that I'm not really doing snything fun and there is a substantial level of satisfaction I get from lifting heavy things.

2011 Goals: Progress Update

2011-05-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was going over my 2011 New Year's goals. The year is more or less half over, but my progress has seriously stalled on a number of these. Many were stupid goals to begin with.

I didn't really set professional goals for myself, but I'm most proud of that aspect of my life. Also, Christel and I have been doing exceptionally well lately and having quite a bit of fun. So the two big measurements of life, career and relationship, are awesome.

Most of these goals look like busy work now. Do I really need to have a garden? Why exactly did I need to learn photoshop? If I were to redo these I'd probably have trimmed it down to 10. Something like:

1. Write full time and phase out bartending.
2. Get a podcast going.
3. Keep working on my book.
4. Stretch more.
5. Drink more water.
6. Save more money.
7. Cook at home more.
8. Walk more.
9. Read more.
10. Quit drinking sodas.

My previous goals are in italic, the progress of each follows.

1. Retire from bartending by December. I reserve the right to work a shift here and there for social purposes, but I'd like to be financially free of the need to work in the service industry by then.

I'm right on schedule for this one. I might actually even be free earlier than expected.

2. Start taking photographs wherever I go. Heidi Slimane's diary web site is my model here. That's setting the bar pretty high, but in Slimane's case the pictures are used to inspire other work (though they are excellent.

Currently this one isn't going so well. I was just in LA with the wife and basically dropped the ball om this one 100%.

3. Learn 10 knockout recipes. This comes from Jamie Oliver. I currently have nothing to go on except my medicinal protein shake recipes.

I'm probably like four into this one. I've got a chili, I can handle a steak, I learned my wife's vegan Caesar recipe and I can make a killer mac & cashew cheese.

4. Get into flip cam filming. My neighbors made a great movie with an HD flip.

I'm scratching this off the list. If anything, I'd rather do a podcast.

5. Pay off all my debt. I'll probably be out of credit card debt by June, but I'll still owe money on my motorcycle (easily the worst financial move I've made in years).

Frankly, I must be insane to have thought I'd be paying off 7K in 5 months. On the plus side, I haven't used my credit card since last October. I may have to spring for a new computer, though and that will be going right on the Visa. So, this one gets a D+.

6. Adjust my eating to a fairly strict interpretation of the paleo diet.

Ouch. Another total failure. I ate half a pizza ast night.

7. Get off of coffee, switch to green tea. Coffee does zero for your health and I'm tired of my teeth being stained and having coffee breath.

Fail.

8. Put together a professional working group of food writers. Share ideas, offer critiques, social support.

Well, I totally forgot about this, but I can get it going, I think.

9. Publish an article for a magazine.

Nope.

10. Get around $1500 a month in freelance writing money coming in.

This one is actually on the horizon. I should be rocking this witin 3 months.

11. Finish enough of my young adult novel to pitch it to a publisher.

I mistakenly referred to his as a young adult novel. It's pretty much my sci-fi book idea. I'm a few pages in, so not a total fail.

12. Start doing Crossfit again.

Jiu-Jitsu and boxing is taking the place of this at the moment.

13. Maintain a sartorial direction inspired by conscious business support and the influence of professional fashions. My goal look is post apocalyptic English professor environmentalist fashion icon. Expect lots of Nice Collective, TOMS shoes and vintage suits.

I'm doing all right here as well. I don't have any suits and TOMS shoes are uncomfortable for me to wear, but otherwise this one is in progress.

14. Move towards beginning an MFA or Design MBA program.

If by "move toward" you mean rethink the usefulness of this path, then yes, I'm doing that. I'm basically done thinking about the MFA, but the MBA is still a possibility.

15. Build a website for myself enabled for e-commerce and blogging.

I've actually got two going now, so yay for me.

16. Teach a class at 826 Valencia.

Nope. Fuck kids and charity work.

17. Reduce gasoline use/driving by 50%. One of the reasons I've been beating myself up over buying that motorcycle is it hasn't been fun to ride it on my morning commute and I don't walk as much as I used to.

Hmm. When I thought up this one I kind of imagined myself taking the train to work. that's just stupid.

18. Get rid of half my stuff again. I do this about every two years and never miss anything I get rid of except books. Not getting rid of any books.

I still don't really own much except for books, which I now have a ton of. So, score?

19. Go see more movies and art shows.

Movies yes, art show not so much.

20. Use the library more. Connected to this is getting my lifetime UC library privileges. I really miss Jstor.

Aamzon counts as the library, right? I do really need to get my library privileges back.

21. Blog more, build more online friendships. It's not the same. It's convenient and I can have conversations about specific subjects that interest me.

I'm pretty consistent with this, but I went about it all wrong in the earlier part of the year. I was on a lot of sites writing about Green stuff and had adopted a kind of false persona. I'm just not that nice of a person.

22. Learn the following: HTML, SEO, SEM, InDesign, Photoshop, App building.

The SEO stuff is coming along, but the other crap isn't really a priority. I did get myself a Lynda.com account, but I haven't logged into it once. I think podcasting and wordpress are better focuses.

23. Make business cards.

So simple, yet another fail.

24. Trail run once a week.

Fail.

25. Climb once a week.

Fail.

26. Get rid of any machines I can't fix myself.

I didn't get anymore machines, so I guess this is a wash.

27. Stop drinking sodas.

I haven't stopped, but I'm definitely way down on consumption. I'd give myself a B-.

28. Scan all photographs and then put pics in photo books.

Nope.

29. Make a quilt. By far the weirdest goal for me. I'm not even sure why I've become so enamored with this.

Maybe "buy a quilt" would be a more realistic goal.

30. Buy a new computer, phone, flip cam, DSLR camera and the programs that make them worth owning.

Probably getting a new computer this month, bought a phone 2 months ago. The cameras are a no go.

31. Go on a real week long vacation with Christel. It should be somewhere we've never been, and there should be no phone service.

We've actually gotten away on the weekends a bit, but the week off doesn't seem likely anytime soon.

32. Grow kale in our garden. We eat a shit load of it and I need to put my UC gardening education to work.

Fuck a garden. Until I'm forced to work in a field to live I'm not digging in the dirt. I can buy as much kale as we need.

33. Make a worm farm. I'm in love with the idea of keeping a bunch of worms as pets.

Yeah, this one is dumb, too.

34. Swobo Baxter. I hate bicycles yet I want this one so bad. WTF?

I actually would still like a Swobo. If I could trade my Merckx I would.

35. Lasik eye surgery. This one might be tough considering my desk job is making my eyesight even more mole like.

I'd still like to do this.

36. Read through all of my old journals and then dispose of them in an incinerator.

I've been reading them, which is painful.

37. Only purchase first editions and small press books. Anything in paperback could just come from the library.

Used book stores, I just can't quit you. Although I did get a set of 1st edition Harvard Classics

38. Learn to accept the public humiliation of walking around in Vibrams. These ugly fucking shoes are pretty amazing to walk in. Currently I only wear them at night while taking the dog for a stroll where I'm sure I will not be seen. I'll probably use them for Crossfit.

Vibrams are stupid.

39. Stop eating all factory animal products. I'm not convinced of veganism from a health perspective, but as far as environmental perspective, it's pretty solid. I know all the arguments for and against so spare me the lecture, folks.

Other than a couple of In n Out burgers, I've mostly kept to this.

40. Contact more authors that I like. Most of the time I've sent out a letter to someone, I've gotten a response and I've always like reading collected letters of famous authors. Who knows, maybe one day my e-mail will end up in a book?

I've contacted a couple of people. Eh, mixed results.

41. Stop arguing in the comments sections of the Internet. I'm reserving all comments for high fiving and complementing. Nothing I can do will stop people from acting like assholes and being willfully ignorant.

Done. Hallelujah.

42. Read more magazines.

I got this one handled.

43. Listen to more music. I've heard a lot of stuff I really liked lately. Christel is on top of this.

I'm on this one, too. I've actually found a lot of stuff I like.

44. Get a manicure. My hands are fucked up and this would be something my wife and I could do together.

Nope.

45. Stay cigarette free. Until I can by purely organic tobacco grown by someone I know, fuck it.

Success.

46. Keep appointments with people for creative projects. I've been really fortunate to have amazing artists try to work with me, but I am a terrible flake. I'm going to make and keep appointments like they are my job.

I've kept the two appointments I made.

47. No computer screens at home. No television with commercials.

Better, but not there yet.

48. Read books everyday. Even if it's just a page.

This is going well.

49. I'd like to become an expert on a specific famous person. I'm leaning towards Edward Abbey or Benjamin Franklin.

What the fuck was I thinking? Well, I listen to the Joe Rogan podcast, so I know quite a bit about Joey Diaz.

50. Stretch. Seriously. I feel jacked up. I need some kind of daily regimen that I can do in the morning. Maybe like that weird Sonnen Yoga.

I kind of do this.

Till Diet Do Us Part Update

2011-05-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are working on a website called Till Diet Do Us Part. It's essentially about the co-habitation of a vegan (her) and an omnivore (me), how we live in a tiny space, life as a modern couple who aren't looking for kids or a home ownership and our individual world views (which are extremely different).

We often laugh about how an online dating site would've never matched us, but I'd say that we're probably going to be one of those couples celebrating 50 year anniversaries.

I think readers will probably be most interested in our arguments, which are at times brutal, but almost always funny. She is a professional salesman and I am a trained rhetorician and we never go easy on each other. It sounds awfully negative, but it really isn't. We fight, there is usually a clear winner and then we go about living a pretty fun life.

Stay tuned for more.

Dream Schedules and Rambling

2011-05-11T11:28:00.001-07:00

My jacked up schedule is certainly putting some salt in my Jiu Jitsu/ Boxing Plans. I'm up too late working on stuff to even think about 6:30am classes and I'm frequently just crossing the Bay Bridge when evening classes start.

Basically I've been able to hit two boxing classes per week and so far just one Jiu Jitsu class. It could be going better, but I'm pretty much an office drone now and have been barely eating (I'd usually rather just skip a meal than eat some trash).

I miss climbing more than I thought I would and have read on a pretty good Jiu Jitsu site that it is considered (along with surfing and yoga) to be among the best supplementary exercises for grappling. Perhaps I'll squeeze it in once a week if I can.

In a post lottery winning world my schedule would look like this:

M-F

6:30am-8am Jiu Jitsu
8am-9am Breakfast
9am-5pm Writing/Research (lunch in there somewhere)
5pm-7pm Relaxing Dinner
7pm-9pm Alternating Yoga/Climbing/Boxing
Sleep by 10:30pm

Sat-Sun

Rest, relaxation, eating decadently, massages, weekend get aways with the wife.

Honestly, that schedule isn't outside the realm of possibility. The biggest hurdles are the expense of a climbing gym membership added to the Martial Arts gym membership, shit my wife has for me to do (laundry, getting food) and the inability to fall asleep when my wife is watching TV till 2 in the morning.

The 9am-5pm Writing/Research thing basically gets cock blocked by my day job. If I could work from home, I'd probably have that shit dialed in.

Kill the TV and I'd be golden.

The slightly overrated, yet mostly on point Tim Ferris recommends figuring out exactly what your dream life looks like and then figuring out a way to pay for it. I used a formula he had on his blog somewhere and I figured out that I could live my ideal lifestyle by taking home 5k a month (around 80K annually pre-tax) and working from home.

This isn't really that insane. If I can monetize my writing a little more I'll be most of the way there. Kind of cool.

Martial Arts, I Just Can't Quit You.

2011-05-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today marks the first day of my return to a fighting gym. Hybrid Training SF is about three blocks from my house, making it nothing at all to throw some shorts and walk over to train.

I took a boxing class that was just me and one other dude and followed it up with a Jiu Jitsu class with just three other white belts. Everyone was pretty cool and I learned a great rear choke.

My game sucks extra bad and I basically have no mount escape to speak of. One good thing is that I'm not quite as spazzy as I used to be.

My plan: show up, take it easy.

Current Inspirations

2011-04-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

Joe Rogan (comedian)

China Mieville (author/socialist)

Zak Sabbath (artist/porn star)

Genki Sudo (MMA fighter/musician)

Buckethead (musician)

Steven Pressfield (author)

Christopher Hitchens (author/debater)

Joey Diaz (comedian)

Chris Cosentino (chef)

Brian Thies (artist/friend)

Adam 5100 (artist/friend)

Armond White (film critic)

Harvard Classics Volume 3

2011-04-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

Warning: nothing argumentative, inflammatory, bartending or MMA related to follow. Last night I started Volume 3 which begins with Sir Francis Bacon. I've always been interested in Bacon, but never really got around to reading him. His scientific method is supposed to have been widely adopted, but he isn't really known for any lasting scientific discoveries. My progress in reading the HC5FBS has been slow for a number of reasons. First, the material is not easy. I'm sure there are some scholars who breeze through Greek Philosophy, but I'm not one of them. To really get a handle on it you've basically got to stop and look stuff up as you read through. Thank god I live in a time with the internet. I can just hop over to the Stanford Philosophy website and look something up when I hit a wall. The philosophy students that went before me who had to go to the library and hope to find something relevant must be jealous of the easy access I have. I also like supplementing my reading by hunting down podcasts of classes that discuss what I'm reading. That pursuit is sort of hit or miss, though. Quality of audio can be a problem and since this stuff isn't exactly popular, there isn't much in the way of reviews so you kind of have to listen for a while and you can end up wasting some time. I was listening to a podcast on Ayn Rand and it wasn't until twenty minutes in that the professor mentioned he hadn't read anything of hers but a few pages of Atlas Shrugged. How can you have any fucking legitimate opinion on someone when you haven't even bothered reading any of their writing. I keep running into this over and over again. Relatively educated people with extremely strong opinions on things they actually have no first hand knowledge of. It has really forced me to re-examine a lot of my own beliefs lately (always a good thing) and I've found that my own experience and education has lead me into conflict with some ideas I thought I was solid on. I'm no longer as pro-Union as I was, I've seriously reconsidered my opinion on the viability of decentralized business models and the more I read the more convinced I am that the wars we are fighting are actually just. The upside ot all this is I feel like I closed volumes 1 & 2 with a very solid understanding of what I read. I was exceptionally happy to have read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations as it has been recommended to me many times before. Stoic Philosophy has a lot to offer a modern man. Second, I'm reading all kinds of other shit too. The lamest thing I find myself reading are corporate douche bag business books. It's not that I'm against being a corporate douche bag (if anything I wish I was a hedge fund working world destroyer right now), it's just I hate being late to the party. I've always felt that once someone has written a book about how great something is and that something is supposed to give you an edge, you're basically too late to benefit. In between volume 1 & 2 I read most of Matt Taibbi's Griftopia, about a quarter of Douglas Brinkley's Teddy Roosevelt bio, Steven Pressfield's The War of Art and quite a few entries in the three or four food writing anthologies I own. Once I finish up the stack of books I've partially completed I intend to start nothing else until I'm on to volume 4 of the Classics. Then I'm going to read China Mieville's new book. I also bought a bunch of those "and Philosophy" books (Mad Men, Terminator, The Watchmen and True Blood). They really remind me of some of the more fun discussions I had at Berkeley, but they're really focused on more modern philosophical work that I'm not as familiar with as I'd like to be. I've read no Kierkegaard, little Heidegger and none of the more obscure Nietzsche. I've always felt like I needed more exposure to the classics before I started with them. I wanted to get through a little more Aristotle and Plato Also, for various personal reasons I've found it necessary to read the classic writing on freedom of speech. I have a list of stuff from a debate that Christopher Hitchens participated in a while back in Canada and it's going to take me a few months to get through that stuff. The reading I mentioned in this post alone is going to take years and I'm sure each book will add even more. It really is insane how little time you have in a life to get any understanding of what to do with it.

Nostalgia is for Assholes, Fuck the Eagle

2011-04-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

If you really wanted to show your support for the Eagle you should've gone there and bought drinks and helped make it a viable business. But you didn't.

Sure, maybe your bullshit Murder City Devils inspired band played there in 2001 or you got to fist some dude in the bathroom once. Great. You have something to tell your grandkids about but you do not have anything worth protesting over.

What's something worth protesting? Let's see, after you've gone and shouted about how unfair it is for someone to try and breathe new life into a shitty bar that was destined to close anyway try walking up to one of those massage parlors run by sex traffickers. By standing in front of it you could help shut it down, you could take money directly from evil men who are actually hurting people. But you won't.

You could march in support of higher wages for teachers or stand with the Union in Wisconsin. You could help at the SPCA or volunteer at the Veterans hospital. But you won't.

You won't because you're a pussy. Worse than that, you are stupid. Fearful and stupid.

And the rest of you with your futile slacker protesting on Facebook are even worse. You can't even make it out of your house to support the half baked reactionary cause you believe in.

Losing the Eagle is nothing. There's even a new gay bar, Rebel, that just opened. After you stand in front of the Skylark why don't you swing by there and buy a drink? Too far of a walk?

I can hear your pathetic crying now:"ohhh, it's just another piece of San Francisco, gone". "Just another businessman taking over". What the fuck do you think the people who owned the Eagle are? It's not a god damned non-profit. It's a bar. Years ago the Eagle took over the building from whatever forgotten asshole owned whatever unmourned business was there. It happens. Something dies, something replaces it.

If In n Out went out of business, sure I'd be sad, but I wouldn't try and cock block whoever thought they could do something with the drive-thru afterwards. That's exactly what you clowns are doing.

You cretins and your fake causes make me sick. You stand for something, but you'll still fall for anything.

Fuck you all. If you support the Eagle and want to keep it the same, raise some money and outbid the Skylark. Otherwise shut the fuck up and put your god damned ball gag back in your mouth.

Build a Greener Mousetrap

2011-04-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty much done with intellectual blogs about environmentalism. Here is basically everything you need to know:

Some people decided that it was cheaper to build shit that destroyed natural systems than it was to figure out a smart way to do things. These pricks got richer and richer until they had enough money to pay off anyone who might be inclined to stop them.

After perfecting the art of advertising these evil clowns basically convinced everyone they needed to buy more and more. Some people tried to rebel after they did drugs and got some perspective, but their general laziness got in the way and the only ones that had enough motivation to keep fighting were the weirdos and you can't really trust weirdos.

Eventually the crime lords in Washington and on Wall St. had swept so much shit under the rug there wasn't any room to hide it. Then Al Gore came and made a movie that more people say they hate than actually saw it.

After that people started buying shit from good companies, but then the evil pricks figured out how to use advertising to Green up their bullshit and every sad bastard with a blog and a copy of Marx started crying on to their keyboards and throwing their soft little hands up into the air.

The end.

Your Guide to Environmentalist Websites Posters.

2011-04-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

There's a certain kind of discourse that happens at websites more or less related to environmentalism. Someone writes an article, usually about a problem or a unique, often market driven solution to a problem. Then several kinds of posters dog pile on with comments.

They are:

1. Brain dead, rainbow huffing idiots that say things like "peaceful blessings" or "ha:) This is neat-o. I like kale". Every once in a while they'll post a link to some fake ass story like the internet film Zeitgeist or maybe the bullshit propaganda from the so called Cuban Permaculture Revolution. These people contribute nothing to the discussion.

2. Academic pussies that have never worked a day in their life quoting barely read philosophers as evidence to why the proposed solution won't work. These arguments go something like this: "according to my broad understanding of Marx and Nietzsche acquired from two undergraduate courses at the University of Douche this solution will never work because money is involved and until we have a government that guarantees it will recognize my genius we will never be free."

3. Every once in a while you'll get someone who works for an environmentally forward business, or maybe is a farmer. Their posts are pretty quick. Something like "from my experience this does/doesn't work." Generally their opinions are pretty solid, but often enough this poster is actually a version of #1 or #2 that tried to do something, but was unprepared for the reality of the hard work involved, failed, and now thinks it's all imposible. They probably are in the middle of writing a book about how they're going to save the world by growing carrots in Brooklyn.

4. Techno-Geeks make their way in every once in a while, too. They'll usually drop some link to a TED conference or offer some tid-bit of info they got from a thousand dollar conference lead by Venture Capitalists. Most are software programmers that think their ability to sit in a desk and code makes them authorities on everything.

5. Republican Trolls may or may not be Republicans, but they basically do what trolls do: say something controversial that they'll know will stir up argument like "if climate change actually was real, it's probably caused by all the fags butt humping each other". Eventually more trolls are going to realize how easy a target the readers on these sites are and conversation will grind to a halt.

Where do I fit in here? Well, honestly I've been guilty of something like nearly all except the first one. I just don't have the niceness in me.

The most upsetting thing I take away from all of this is that environmental problems are very real and the people who seem to care the most are paralyzed by their own insufferable egotism and social awkwardness.

More and more I find myself on the same page as Green or Conscious Capitalists. Yes, there is definitely a host of issues related to reusing the Capitalist model, but those issues can be surmounted. Basically, in the absence of any other actually proximate solution, this is the best solution and we need to go with it for the time being.

Here are the facts: urban gardening is fun and it's a great way to teach skills, but it isn't going to make a dent, people will not stop driving and they will not stop eating meat. Once you accept them you can start moving forward.

From Plato to Epictetus

2011-04-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been slow going for my Harvard Classics pursuit. I'm about halfway through book 2, just past Plato's Phaedo and about halfway through the Golden Sayings of Epictetus.

One of the best topics I was exposed to at Berkeley was the study of Hermeneutics, which on one hand is difficult and alien, hard to explain and still a challenge, but on the other is incredibly freeing.

Essentially it's the study of study, how not just the words, but the experience of the words effects the truth or untruth of the writing. It's the awareness that you aren't just studying Plato, you're you who has been influenced by a unique life studying Plato. My path is my own and all I'm called to do is pursue it with passion.

All you have to do is be honest with yourself, which becomes easier with practice, but is a constant failure. There was a time when I devoured Philosophy not for my own gain, but to serve as a kind of intellectual armor. I was quarrelsome with people who tried to teach me. My cup was full, as they say in the pajama wearing countries.

These days I've stepped down Socrates's path(note: ancient possessive names ending in "S" can get an "'S'). I am aware that I know nothing, but I'm also influenced by William Burroughs who believed no one knew enough to teach anyone anything.

So here I am, not knowing anything and no one can teach me. I fill my cup and pour it out over and over again.

The more I read, the more I know I am foolish and ignorant. Ever noticed how sure of themselves the ignorant are?

The Enemy

2011-03-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

1. People who permanently destroy natural resources for short term profit.
2. Preachers/Imams/Rabbis/Wiccan Butt Bead Chanters who mobilize any kind of religious influence on people whose message isn't 100% about love.
3. People who sell products that they know will kill people and pretend the products are safe.
4. Single issue voters.
5. Supremacists of any stripe.
6. Government officials whose vote can be bought.
7. Molesters of children.
8. People who think they're gangsters and act like cartoon thugs.
9. People who think they're patriots and don't do shit to help other Americans.
10. Bullshit psychics
11. Corny traditional martial arts teachers who pretend to know Dim Mak death touch moves.
12. Hunters that leave anything behind.
13. Planners of obsolescence.
14. Non-scientists that try to legislate science based on religious belief in the apocalypse.
15. Mexican drug cartels.
16. Small time dealers that prey on weak people's addictions.
17. Rapists.
18. Diamond cartels.
19. Japanese whaling fleets (if you want to kill and eat whales, fine. Just stop lying about it being necessary for science fuck face).
20. Whoever allowed the butterfly kipping pullup to be considered a legitimate method of performing pullups.

No assclown, the Almighty did not smite Japan

2011-03-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

One thing you can always count on after a major natural disaster is a barrage of Bible thumping fools pontificating about how Jesus is mighty angry at all the butt fucking and how he's got a big old lightning bolt for America just waiting unless we act now to stop our babies from being aborted and carrying the gay.

Please. Just stop. This shit is so damned stupid. I know there's a bit of a hole where Jerry Falwell's evil, squinty little face used to be, but Glenn Beck, you don't need to fill it.

Okay, so what do we know about the Almighty and his brand of ass whooping? In the Old Testament it's basically reserved for the enemies of the Jews and the Lord doesn't really fuck around with the small stuff. He floods the planet. He sends an angel with a fiery sword to lop the dicks off the offending parties. He sends plagues and all manner of first born annihilating shit to smash the enemies of Israel.

Now what about the sequel? You know, The New Testament? Not really any smiting. Jesus ran in and kicked some money lenders in the dick for defiling the temple with their profane financial schemes, but the message is clear. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

I know there's the whole Revalations thing, but what can we really make of that? Every single generation of Christians that have lived have assumed doomsday was going to happen right before next payday.

If Jesus was around now I'm pretty sure he'd ride a dinosaur right up to the banks on Wall St. and start unleashing velociraptor fury on every single one of the grifters and schemers that puts profit before people. This entire planet has been taken over by the forces of Mammon and that is probably way more of an issue to the Lord than a tiny percentage of the population getting their swerve on with another dude (remember, lesbianism sort of gets a pass, even in Leviticus).

What do we know about Japan? That shit is built on top of a chain of volcanoes and is very susceptible to plate tectonics. Earthquakes happen all the time. What makes this one a little different is the "possibly not that big of a deal/ oh fuck we're all going to mutate" addition of a nuclear facility.

People die all the time and there has never been a proven correlation between a reduction in Bro-jobs and a decrease in human fatalities globally. This ball keeps on spinning and shaking with the only real massive changes to out comfort on it directly and provably influenced by greedy Capitalists and War. Two things we know God hates.

So, no you simpletons, God is not angry at the Japanese (except maybe for the whale thing, I know for a fact god likes whales). He's probably mad at the millions of tiny selfish actions people take every single day that push them further from brotherhood and sisterhood. He's probably mad at the bombs and the bullets. The theft and the waste. But I don't know that for sure because, unlike some of you deranged cousin fuckers out there, I don't claim to know God's will (except for the whale thing).

Anyone that says they do is lying, crazy or trying to sell you something (probably some combination of the three).

Now go read the Sermon on the Mount and do something that doesn't involve fucking over people that don't look like you.

Volume 1 Finished

2011-03-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished the first volume of Harvard Classics. I've been stuck reading a bunch of Concious Capitalism books on the side for work and my progress through the two books the Quakers wrote in volume 1 was slow.

I liked the Ben Franklin biography quite a bit. There's something about self help/ personal planning books that I've always enjoyed. I like lists and I like plans.

John Woolman and William Penn books could probably stand up to any number of religious, make your life betetr with god books. The language is thick and antiquated, but the message is basically the same.

Woolman mobilized faith based arguments to combat slavery. It would be nice if someone penned a more modern, anti-greed version. If everyone that claimed to be Christians actually acted like Christians, the world would probably be pretty chill.

I'm on to volume 2 now, which starts with the more familiar territory of Plato's Apology. In college I read this and had to approach it much differently. As a rhetorician I looked at every single little thing, dissected meaning, analyzed argument, pretended like I knew what I was talking about in class. Now I can just breeze through it for pleasure.

Both approaches have their time and place, but my mind is turned to trying to figure out the best way to live the short time I have left on the planet and Socrates makes a pretty good case for his method of approaching the twilight years (everything after 30). Anyway, I'm only about ten pages in at this point.

I'm starting to fear I may have to spend a lot of time in the near future reading Ayn Rand.

I have this idea for a long paper/book called Fountainheadland that traces modern Capitalism's utter disregard for environmental considerations to the work of Ayn Rand. Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia, specifically the chapter about Alan Greenspan is the inspiration.

I think most people on the Left would be shocked at how deeply influential Rand's work is. Even modern Concious Capitalists seem to reference her from time to time, which seems absolutely insane to me since the Triple Bottom Line seems totally unworkable in Rand's A=A bullshitaverse.

Anyway, off to read some more, clowns.

Goal Check In

2011-03-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

Looked over my New Years goals.

Man are they fucking retarded.

Defense of Cheeseburger Act: Pretty Gay

2011-03-04T17:44:00.001-08:00

The old, crusty and out of touch Republicans are fired up to back the Defense of Marriage Act. Probably because they don't want to look too gay while cruising the men's bathrooms of D.C.

I just don't get it. Marriage as we know it actually came about long after any of the religions who are generally opposed to it set up shop. It's basically a legal contract useful for oppressing women and in order to grant it universal appeal, priests signed off on it. I'm not saying there was no marriage before, what I'm saying is that the kind of marriage the GOP is defending wasn't around.

The major textual authority used to justify being against gayness, Leviticus, is against all kinds of shit (put that shrimp down! Don't wear a polyblend!). What all the forbidden stuff in this book has in common is that thousands of years ago, in the desert, anything that might slow down the making of more of the chosen people was not allowed. So shooting a load onto your bearded friend's tonsils meant that load wasn't able to make any more Hebrews. It was a willfully defiant act to a people trying to grow.

Fast forward to now. There's enough people. Really. Let's maybe stop blowing semen into these fertile women.

I'm not going to try and convince you being gay is good or bad. What I'm going to try and do is convince you that it doesn't matter if they get married by way of analogy:

Say you make a cheeseburger. The most awesome cheeseburger that has ever existed. It's got heirloom tomatoes and artisan cheese. Hell, it might even be made out of Kobe Ribeye. It definitely has some good bacon on it.

Go ahead. Eat that cheeseburger. Enjoy it. Sing a song about. Try and ignore the fact that more than half the people who get this same glorious cheeseburger get rid of it. That doesn't matter. You love this cheeseburger so much you will do anything to keep the recipe the same.

Now I make a cheeseburger with a different recipe. It's got blue cheese and Dijon or some other kind of French faggotry. Most people don't want it because it doesn't really suit their taste buds, but hey, I dig it.

Now you see my French inspired cheeseburger. Its recipe is different than yours (perhaps you secretly want to try my recipe). You fucking hate my recipe!

Slow your roll, son. If you stop and think for a second, your burger doesn't taste any different because I made my burger. I don't even want you to stop eating yours. I just want to eat mine. Most people aren't even into what I'm eating. It's on ciabatta bread, for Christ's sake. Your kids are not going to want it unless they are so inclined, but they might get curious as to what all the fuss is about if you ban it and then , maybe just try a bite.

How about you keep enjoying your burger and let me have mine and if our patties happen to be on the same grill I won't let my meat touch yours.

Classics Update

2011-02-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

I crushed throught the highly readable Franklin autobiograohy and am now sitting about halfway through John Woolman's book which is wonderful in parts and a bit slow in others.

On the side I started reading a book about reading these books called The Whole Five Feet. It's interesting to see how another person approached the project, but I think I may stop reading that book just to keep a purer perspective for myself.

If I could talk a few more people into this project I'd start a little book club or something.

One day I may put together a five feet style collection of all the leftist post modern, Berkeley style mumbo jumbo I love. Berkeley Classics Five Feet of Books.

Why Feel Good Capitalism Sucks

2011-02-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm deeply mistrustful of any attempts to repackage turds.

The rage these days is for the superstars of entrepreneurialism to sweep us up in the loving embrace of a kinder, gentler, greener Capitalism. The assumption is that the Monopoly Men in charge are going to look through their monacle, past the cigar smoke and see an actual need to start accepting environmental cost as part of their bottom line. Because, you know, it's the right thing to do.

Look folks, it doesn't matter how many CEOs grow their hair and show up to work in flip flops, the system is built for one purpose: profit. Once the power of the Beneficient Dictator/CEO passes on due to retirement, death or boredom there simply isn't any reason for a company to stay on a moral course. Shareholders invest primarily in the hopes of one day seeing a return on that investment and if stocks fall after that groovy dude moves on, it's going to be business as usual: cut costs, lay people off, drive up the value and sell sell sell.

Except in the case of its use for marketing purposes, I don't see Concious Capitalism going very far. Sure, companies will source more Fair Trade, they'll make greener products and they'll give their employees little patches of land to tend and grow organic vegetables (like the serfs of old), but that's it.

Green Capitalists are counting on not just a change in conciousness, but a change in conciousness that will make money. The bad side of Capitalism is actively causing resitence to the change in conciousness. People only change because they see a better way and want to move towards it or shit is so bad it has to stop.

We're well on our way to serious bummer land, but if we hit those benchmarks and all that the doom and gloomers say comes true, that's it. Game over forthe species.

Moving towards a better way is, in my opinion, not possible with slogans and better brands alone. I think the labor movement needs to reorient itself a bit to be more in line with the social goals of Green Capitalists while the Capitalists, if they really do foster worker rights, should sit down with unions and offer a way to include them.

This third way is barely a one celled organism of thought in my mind and I'm sure someone else is going in this direction already, but here's my pitch: If you Green Titans of Industry actually give a shit about people, let them unionize so when you retire to surf, they'll be taken care of. And you union folks, quit living off of cheeseburgers and driving fucked up, wasteful cars because it's the American way of life.

Loving Butt

2011-02-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

Loving Hut is probably the most disappointing dining experience I have ever had.

That said, consider the following:

My wife is vegan, I am not, but love vegetarian food. We cook at home quite often, eat out at all of the veggie spots in town and can even claim to have had some good experiences at Herbivore (the Denny's of vegetarianism). I'm a copywriter for a food company that advocates vegetarianism and veganism. Basically what I'm trying to convey is that we are not unfamiliar with he highs and lows of vegetarian cuisine.

To start, the service is truly terrible. We sat ourselves, waited, picked up our own menus, waited, flagged one of the anemic looking teenagers that are at least nominally functioning as waiters, waited, waited some more, and finally someone arrived and asked if we wanted anything. There were only two other diners at the time. Our waters never came, we asked, we smiled, and finally we begged.

The food itself is a mess that I would describe as nearly inedible.

No animals were served, but the GMO soy this joint uses (look it up) accounts for massive deforestation and hugely negative environmental effects. Our appetizer was fried in oil that I'm sure was well past rancidation. This is a specific taste and smell that I am well familiar with from years working in restaurants.

I've never met a pot sticker I didn't like until our second appetizer was served. They had a rubbery texture and saturation that is indicative of microwave cooking at its worst. I'm not a hater of microwaves, but in a restaurant staffed with cooks that hopefully are not too mentally impaired there is no reason for it.

My wife and I shared hot & sour soup and a veggie rice dish that were the only meals I have been unable to finish in the last thirty years of my life. I am an adventurous eater and have tried some pretty nasty stuff but nothing was as terrible as this soup. All of the vegetables served had the loose, slimy texture of freezer burned produce.The human body often knows when something is amiss and this dish caused an immediate gag reflex.

Again, I am not squeamish. I have eaten and enjoyed all sorts of offal and fermented vegetarian treats. This food was not only nasty and unhealthy, it wass probably was unsafe.

When we tried to pay for this mess it was nearly impossible to get our bill. The kids behind the counter were staring at the tea drink they made for themselves and appeared to be involved in some sort of cell phone game.

If you are a vegetarian trying to convince someone they can live without meat, please do not use this place as an example to your meat eating friends. They will only think your cause is tasteless and hopeless.

If you are a vegetarian who has no taste buds, a strong immune system, enjoy bad service from likely underpaid teenagers, dislike seasonal vegetables, believe a microwave is a proper chef's instrument and don't care about eating GMOs, then this is the place for you.

All others should avoid this place.

Ben Franklin, I hardly knew ye

2011-02-17T00:01:00.001-08:00

Having just completed the first book in the Harvard Classics Five Footer (HC5F) I thought I'd discuss my method of reading. I sit with my iPad queued to the Oxford Dictionary app, have a pen behind my ear, a notebook open and my iPhone set to a Classical station on Pandora.

I've followed the practice of looking up words I don't know before advancing the page for years, but haven't always been as diligent as I'd like. The idea was originally put into my head by L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. I read that book in high school, but remember nothing about it other than that valuable advice. It's surprising how many people never consider this idea (sure they look up some words, but not every word).

The Oxford app makes it a snap to look up words. There are other digital dictionaries out there, but this one has a feature I like: it keeps a record of the words you look up. I usually can figure the basic meaning of a word out, but this is a poor practice taught all too frequently in school for the purpose of raising test scores. I think if I have the time I will make up flash cards of all of these words and commit them to memory.

The words I sought help with while reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography are as follows: oleaginous, pugnacious, apposite, pulchritude, taciturn, ecumenism, crenellate, mendacious, pastiche, vilify, confute, perspicious, diffident, courante, itinerant, pistole, nuncupative, factotum, pecuniary, scrivener, filial, traduce, inculcate, venery, probity, viz., synod, emolument, inimical, merlon, calumniate, obviate, oft, proselytize, extirpate.

A few of them I knew from context, but would have a hard time explaining to another person.

The notes I've taken will help me form thoughts and opinions on these works. I'm going it alone here and have no one to discuss them with. I've heard Sinatra and the Rat Pack were HC5F readers and would sit up late into the night talking about them. That must've been an interesting set of conversations.

My choice of Classical music is really a pragmatic one. I love this kind of music, though I don't really know much about it and can only identify a few songs when I hear them. The main reason for the choice is I can't read while the television is on or music with lyrics is played and I need to drown out the noise of my wife's TV. We live in a small studio and she likes to watch the silly shows many women enjoy and she deserves the diversion since she works so hard.

I would prefer her to read while I did, but this isn't for everyone and it would be mean to force her into silent evenings. The music serves a great purpose and I've actually found it to be stimulating while I read.

These old books give me a pretty good amount of joy just looking at them sitting on the shelf. My Apple devices give me a good amount of joy as well. The fast and unlimited access they give me to music and information is truly a wonder. I imagine Ben Franklin would've loved them.

Some old codgers complain about them, but they're just tools and can be used for idleness as well as industry. I think my learning benefits quite a bit. I have books of poetry to read at any time I please and can look up all manner of trivia.

So far I haven't really done much consulting of websites dedicated to the Harvard Classics. There are a few I'd like to get to, but for now just takin gin the reading is enough.

Five Feet and Rising

2011-02-16T12:40:00.001-08:00

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a very good place to begin the Harvard Classics Five Foot Book Shelf. I must've been exposed to parts of it earlier in life because his practical methods for self improvement are familiar to me. In about third grade I remember studying his 13 virtues and having a homework assignment where I was made to keep track of violations of them.

I wasn't exposed to the parts about religion. If I had been I probably would've been even more difficult to control in Sunday School. Franklin's views (like many Founding Fathers) amount to the opinion that the virtuous aspects of belief are admirable and to be fostered while the divisive aspects should be removed entirely. He most certainly would've condemned members of the God Hates Fags church. Of course they would've been shitty to him as well since he dared to follow a prayer of his own composition. I think it's quite beautiful and pragmatic (of course I'm ever finding beauty in pragmatism):

"O Powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that
Wisdom which discovers my truest Interests; Strengthen my Resolutions to perform
what that Wisdom dictates. Accept my kind Offices to thy other Children as the
only Return in my Power for thy continual Favors to me."

Franklin claims an extraordinary amount of productivity and in a chart chronicling the way he spends his day it leaves him at just four hours of sleep per day. The only time I've managed that schedule is the dark days of my early twenties.

His only diversions were reading and conversational groups dedicated to the improvement of self and community.

Something I thought about while reading was how the Tea Party canonizes the Founding Fathers while not really seeming to understand what they were all about (which I don't claim to know yet as my reading of their original texts is minimal as of now).

Tea Baggers are always going on and on about freedom as if it is the end all, be all goal of life. In reality it is just the beginning. What is done with that freedom is ultimately what matters. Franklin would probably say that seeking virtue and perfecting oneself while uplifting those around you is the goal and a free society is the most fertile ground for that.

He was quite the entrepreneur and the inventor; consequently he is, along with Thomas Edison, the darling archetype of the Free Market flag wavers. Sure he made money, but what his longest lasting legacy is, and one he mentions frequently, is his contribution to the improvement of the "lower classes".

Take these two public works Franklin "invented": the public library and the fire department. Franklin observed that after the libraries were spread the average man who was a tradesman or shopkeeper (or what we would eventually name the middle class) was better educated and able to form and voice opinions than even the elites of other countries. Reading and study was in fashion and to be seen with a book implied upward mobility as well as intelligence.

The fire department was a really remarkable bit of decentralized socialism. Men of all stripes (though mostly land owners) contributed funds, ideas, skills and sweat to a project that all but eliminated the fear of city destroying fires.

Just look at where we are today. Republicans block efforts to help first responders, the offspring of these early great men, with their medical bills from 9/11. Democrats all but endorse listlessness and sloth with unworkable social programs.

Let's be clear, the flag waving, bible thumping right wing would be far more alien to the Founding Fathers. The veneration of charlatan preachers, the active suppression of science, the reduction of public works and the Imperialism of the military industrial complex is carried out in their names. What would Thomas Jefferson think of a nation that required a President to choose a church? What would Franklin think of a man who was unwilling to look at scientific evidence because of a personal belief in millenialism?

I think at best they would be confused.

I certainly don't claim to have answers, but I think anyone looking to produce change should look in the mirror. Acquitted pedophile Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror would probably delight old Ben Franklin.

I'm sick of factory meat eating environmentalists flying in private jets telling me what I should give up to save the planet. I'm even sicker of Christians calling for war and making money off of it.

I looked in the mirror and the dishevelled yet handsome gent I saw there said "time is a wasting, don't watch TV, read and devote yourself to destroying the two kinds of individuals above."

The Five Feet Have Arrived

2011-02-14T20:19:00.000-08:00

My set of Harvard Classics arrived from New Orleans today in four boxes. They were wrapped in pages of The Times Picayune and the musty scent one would expect from books found in an ancient bookstore in the French Quarter.

I believe they are a first edition, printed in 1909, which is undeniably cool. They aren't in the best of condition, though. The spines are quite faded, the pages are brittle and some of them have visible water damage, likely from Hurricane Katrina.

A few years ago I sat for a lecture about rare books presented by an old school librarian named Anthony Bliss. He was/is the head of the Bancroft Rare Books Library in Berkeley. During thhe talk he showed us a variety of valuable books ranging from vellum manuscripts to pages from a Gutenburg Bible. The subject of late 19th early 20th century printing came up and he was surprisingly snobbish about them, claiming they were ugly, poorly made and relatively uninteresting on the whole.

The only book I owned of that vintage was a King James Bible that had belonged to my great grandfather. I thought it was pretty cool looking, though it was in such rough condition it couldn't be opened without risking the loss of a few pages. I have three or four other versions of it, so it sits in an old cigar box where it will likely remain till after I'm dead.

Looking at this set of books I see what he meant. The binding is fairly poor as is the cloth cover, which is threadbare on many volumes. The print is frequently uneven and faded. To read this you may get the impression that I am unhappy with my purchase, but this couldn't be further from the truth. I am after the experience of reading these old words on old paper; to connect to a time when American exceptional ism was still ascendant.

The purpose of these books was to allow an average man or woman the chance to experience the world of the scholar and they are a fine artifact of the history of the American middle class. By completing these readings I will have read more than nearly all the current graduate students of History and Philosophy.

Today I start book one which includes works by Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman and William Penn. I know nearly nothing of the latter two men, but am excited to read what they have to say.

Charles Bukowski is on my mind at the moment. I'm playing classical music as he always did when he wrote. He was a great student of the classics and spent nearly as much time reading as he did anything else. It wasn't his drinking or his philandering that made him as much as it was what he read, but the three combined made for an outlook unrivaled.

I hope these five feet of dusty old books will awake a bit of something fine in me.

Fear and Loathing on the Fun Run

2011-02-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

On Monday night the enthusiasm of a friend influenced me enough to participate in an activity I tend to enjoy about as much as preparing taxes and doing laundry: group running. I picked up my aversion to running from Crossfit propaganda and the sharp pain it causes in my left knee.

This was no ordinary fun run, though. It was Hashing.

What is Hashing you ask?

It's probably best to begin with the group's slogan: The Hash House Harriers are a drinking club with a running problem.

True enough, drinking is important to this madness, but almost as important is the running and how it's done. The group meets at a different, interesting location each Monday night. This is all anyone running knows about the route which can be anywhere from 3 to 7 miles depending on the sadism of whoever plans the route.

One person, who is called the hare, goes ahead of the group and sets a route by leaving chalk mark clues on the ground. For the most part they are directional arrows that are simple enough to understand, but it is dark, some are easy to miss and there are intentional misdirections to liven things up.

The runners have to figure out the route based on these clues and maintain a pursuit of the hare. The hare usually doesn't get caught, but if they do they aren't killed or anything, they just get their pants pulled down and someone else becomes the hare.

I don't know what I was expecting, but somehow I put the idea that this was a run out of my mind. I sort of imagined a bit more clue searching and a lot less sprinting. It's been over a year since I have run more than a mile and I am in terrible cardiovascular shape. The pace of the group was fairly quick and my smoke burned lungs protested the entire time.

Just to be clear, I am laying the failure to enjoy this activity on the physical degeneration I have experienced over the last 7 months of slothfulness. I believe I may have had a great time if I hadn't allowed myself to become such a pussy.

There was a time when I was fairly fast. I even won a ribbon at a fun run in Oakland. That time is well past. I've spent the last few years doing everything but running. Muay Thai followed by Crossfit followed by power lifting followed by bouldering. I've pursued each new adventure with the declining vigor associated with aging and am now further hindered by an office job.

I have become infected by the attitudes that I used to laugh at while eating hand fulls of raw meat and drinking protein shakes by the gallon. Moderation is a slippery slope and if you are aiming to just go out and "be moderate" your results will be mediocre. I have been stuck climbing v3s at a bodyweight of 150 lbs. for nearly 2 years. I can only remember 2 submissions. I nearly hacked up a lung after running three miles. My shirt size has remained extra medium. This is failure, pure an simple.

Back to the Hashing.

I was dead last the whole time, getting passed by chunky joggers and old farts in short shorts. The route began at the Palace of Fine Arts and I think if I hadn't been staring at the ground praying to survive I may have even enjoyed the scenery. Hanging with a pack of weirdoes doing something athletic is definitely my speed, but not when they are looking at you with a concern in their eyes that seems to suggest they aren't looking forward to carrying you back. Not to worry bro, I have a phone. I can call the wet nurse.

The run was probably no more than three or four miles. It ended at a beer keg (which would have been badass if I drank alcohol). The evening concluded with everyone toasting and circling around telling jokes about each other. For the most part they were lewd, in the manner of a roast. The songs were pretty similar to what you used to hear on the Man Show.

I should've had a much better time, but I left in a black mood angry at myself for having grown a mangina. When I crawled through the door of my apartment my wife (who was in contact with the people I went with) asked me "did you really almost throw up?"

The last time I felt like such a pussy was when I cancelled my membership at the Ralph Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy. This was partially due to a horrifying case of ring worm I caught there that threatened to destroy my whole body, but also because I kept getting smashed an re-injured my shoulder.

More than anything my bad time was a wakeup call. I've been progressively scaling back my training while telling myself I'm just getting older and this is what must be done. This is fucking loser talk and I deserve to have my ass kicked for thinking this way. I am thirty two, and certainly as a person ages they need to take stock of what is realistic, but I have developed a lazy, defeatist attitude.

So here's the deal: I've enlisted the help of a trainer friend who has diagnosed various imbalances and deficiencies I have and is working out a plan to address them. Following this I am going to go balls out in one of two directions: MMA or bouldering.

If I go with the MMA my goal will be to fight in a smoker or jiu jitsu tournament within one year of the join date. If I go bouldering, the goal will be climb a v6 by the next year.

If you see me, feel free to tell me to stop being such a baby.

No more talking.

Harvard Classics Progress: Introduction

2011-02-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

My books haven't arrived yet, but I have begun preparing to take on the Harvard Classics Five Foot Bookshelf. I've discovered quite a few bloggers who dedicated themselves to the completion of the set with varying results. Most people seem to set the rather ambitious goal of a book a week.

I've decided not to set a time goal, but I do want to make reading the books a daily practice. The guy who put the whole set together was Dr. Charles W. Eliot and he recommended 15 minutes a day. This seems pretty doable.

During this project I'm also going to be chipping away at one of my long time goals: reading the King James Bible cover to cover. I downloaded a free copy on my iPad and iPhone and the plan is to read passages instead of playing doofus video games. I've always enjoyed speakers and authors who have a command of religious texts and quotations. The King James is really melodic and quotable and I think reading it will give me a leg up on discussions and arguments with religious types.

Bill Hicks has pretty funny bit about reading a book in a Waffle House. The waitress asks him "what are you reading for?" and he has to stop and explain "well, I read for all kinds of reasons, but mainly so I don't become a fucking waffle waitress."

What am I reading the Harvard Classics for? So I don't have to stay a bartender , but also to save myself a couple of hundred thousand dollars. See, I really want to go back to school for something; MFA, MBA, JD or PHD.

If I was a lottery winner I would pursue all of those degrees. I am not a lotto winner and I'm not rich so I need to look at this realistically. Between wages lost and tuition fees and interest rates I'd be looking at half a million dollars and ten years of my life at least. Instead of getting the letters I'm going to try and do four different things:

1. Write a book
2. Increase my income by 200%
3. Pass the California Bar without getting a JD (this is insane and I will post on how this works some other time)
4. Become a professor through an alternative path than academia.

All four are doable and require only time and books and grit. If I pull off all four I would go to my grave knowing I was a badass.

Today is day one of DIYMFAMBAJDPHD.

I've Gained Fifty Pounds (of Books)

2011-02-04T12:31:00.001-08:00

While I was in New Orleans last week I ventured into a French Quarter book store that I've heard was the place The Harvard Rare Books Library found a book bound in human skin. The story is well documented, but when I asked the proprietor if he had heard the tale he said he hadn't and thought that only Nazis made those kinds of books, if at all.

Binding books in human skin has been historically uncommon. The practice is known as anthropodermic bibliopegy . For the most part these books are either prayer books (often of Saints) or medical textbooks (from skin of the afflicted sufferer of the disease the volume describes).

The Moffat Library at UC Berkeley has one, but the curator/librarian there wouldn't let me see it. He said that it, like many books printed int he late 1800s wasn't very interesting to look at and that it had "an ugly history best forgotten". He really couldn't have said anything that made me want to see it more. This man was kind with his time though, and showed me several extremely rare books including a first edition of Moby Dick and a page from one of the first Gutenberg Bibles.

For years I've been on the lookout for a complete 51 volume set of the Harvard Classics Five Foot Book Shelf. It remains fairly expensive (between $300 and $1500 depending on condition). The idea of the collection is that if you wanted to educate yourself all Good Will Hunting style, you could read these books and have a Harvard quality Classical education. How do you like dem apples?

In my conversation about grisly books covered in dead flesh, the subject of the Harvard Classics came up and the store's owner pointed out a set he had for sale. It was nearly a hundred years old, complete and had a tiny bit of water damage (from hurricane Katrina). I'd say the condition was about a 7 out of 10.

It was exactly what I was looking for. I didn't need a highly collectible version because I intend to read all 22,000 plus pages of it and that will require stuffing it into bags, taking it on trips and threatening it with spilled coffee and pencil notes in the margins. He sold it to me at a great bargain and as soon as it arrives in the mail I will begin what I assume will be a one to two year process of completely reading it (it won't be the only thing I'm reading).

This challenge has appealed to me for a while. Critics of the collection will say that it's out dated and not complete enough for today's society. Fair enough. It certainly is absent of female writers or writers of color.

However, it is a solid bench mark. It's the literary equivalent of a squat rack. It's simple and effective for the purpose it was made and dedicating yourself will increase strength of mind.

200 lbs is always 200 lbs and the Five Foot Shelf of Books is always the Five Foot Shelf of Books.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

A Blighted Crop: the New Cast of Drinkers for 2011

2011-01-29T13:18:00.001-08:00

The wheel of life continues to turn and with this latest rotation a whole new crop of fresh drinkers have entered the nightlife of San Francisco. Turbulence will ensue as we learn the faces of the chronic undertippers and isolate them from the rest of the crowd, doomed to forever stand frantically waving money waiting for the service that never comes.

A sure sign of a new generation of drinkers on the scene is the surge in monofashion: large crowds of young people expressing their individuality in nearly identical ways.

Right now the look for men is skinny jeans, skate sneakers, plaid shirts and flat brim gangster style sports caps. Women have a sort of Manson family if they lived in South Central L.A. and listened to Snoop Dogg look. Feathers, chunky boots, ghetto weaves, gold jewelery.

I don't really hate on this look too much. I've always liked plaid shirts and tight pants (but the team sports hat is not my thing at all). Women look either good or bad to me depending on a variety of things non-fashion related. Plus I'm married, so there's no real call for me to even look at girls. Most of the time I don't even really see them. It's like a gray blur.

The Long Island (and all the electric Kool Aid colored derivations) is once again ordered in large numbers. No matter how high we raise the price on this tool cocktail people still order it. I've been able to charge $13 for it without anyone even blinking an eye. I told one guy a top shelf AMF would be $35 and he just whipped out two twomps and went on his way (breaking stereotype by leaving a $5 tip).

Hennessey is slipping out of fashion and Jameson is ascendant in a big way. That plus all the black dudes wearing Misfits shirts is a super interesting development. To me it means that culture is finally mixing up so much that genres are almost meaningless. You really have to go off the rails big time these days to look original. Being an Irish fixed gear riding old school DJ that is also a fine art painter is unusually common. Even among Latinos.

Every now and again someone rolls through doing their own thing and I must applaud them. Last night this Afro-centric cat rolled in with an Adidas track suit on underneath a full on donkey blanket drug rug. He looked like an extra from the Mexican remake of Wild Style. Very Cool. He was a Sierra Nevada drinker (as is very common in the back pack hip hop scene).

On Thursday this hot sister was wearing a dress that looked like it came from an Austin Powers movie. Super geometric and mod with tall vinyl boots. Now, I've seen this kind of outfit on way too many portly skinhead girls over the years. It always looks bad. However, homegirl pulled it off with Jedi level style.

I still wear the same bartender uniform I donned 11 years ago. Black t-shirt, jeans, converse. Super boring. Sometimes I feel like I want to do it up a little bit and bring a hair of theatricality to my evening. Most people who do this go for the old school bartender with a vest and moustache thing. Personally, I think that shit is played out.

Ironically, that's how my dad has dressed for his last 40 years of bartending. To this day he works in a tuxedo shirt and bow tie. He's even had a Tom Sellick style moustache since the early seventies. How hip is he?

My buddy Scott really cracked the code for the Bay Area hip hop crowd. He dressed up like a Montana Cowboy with a handlebar beard sort of thing and amber aviator shades. He spoke with a drawl and dispensed prairie wisdom upon the crowd of stunner shades and grills lined up to the bar. Those folks never figured his ass out.

Some kind of super tailored soccer hooligan look might not be so bad for me. It's pretty easy to pull off, too. Adidas, Fred Perry, skinny trousers, UK hairstyle. Maybe the occasional skinny tie with Ben Sherman. My wife would probably like this.

If I was left to my own devices I'd probably end up looking like some kind of tragic, long haired Lord of the Rings fan with cyberpunk office worker combat boot style. Lame.

Of course, the spectacle of bartending in a stormtrooper costume painted in SF Giants colors might be a winner, too.

Anyway. I'm off to New Orleans for a week, so don't expect much in the way of posting from me.

Measured and Wanting

2011-01-12T23:02:00.000-08:00

This blog post started as an examination of President Obama's excellent speech at the memorial for the victims of the tragic events in Arizona, how the delirious crowd at the event reinforces my belief that Mike Judge may very well be this century's George Orwell for his eerily premonitory film Idiocracy and how the President's call for us to be better and stand for something made watching the Denzel Washington film Book of Eli seem like it contained a message from a higher power intended to shake me from my slothful decline.

Yeah, I started to wonder what the fuck I was doing, too.

Professionally, I write copy for a grocery store. Since I started this line of work I've probably typed enough characters to equal a novel's length. It's challenging and creative work, but it isn't going to get me a space in Pere Lechaise cemetery or anything.

I average about two thousand handwritten words a day that no one ever sees and clack away at my keyboard with some regularity producing this blog that about twenty people read (including someone in Massachusetts that comes back often enough for me to wonder who it is).

I've started and stopped a destined to be epic if ever written sci-fi tinged farm punk story about a girl with cancer that makes fully functional anamatronic sex robots that resemble Hindu death gods and a boy that is a perfect failure at guerilla gardening and how their romance flourishes in the middle of a plot to create an artificial intelligence scam by a charlatan scientist.

Another project awaiting revision is a story about a true asshole who happened to be born without arms or legs who tells women he is an injured Iraq war vet to get sympathy sex. It is not based on a true story, that I know of.

So I make money with words and I write stories. That pretty much qualifies me to refer to myself as a writer. When I told someone I was a writer, they asked me the question "what do you write?". I actually couldn't even think of what to say. I could've said I write a blog, but that's like bragging about your awesome sex life and then when someone asks you who you've slept with you just say "no one. I'm into masturbation big time".

I've had a couple of travel articles published in a scooter magazine, but that was almost a lifetime ago barely worth considering now.

If I were to make one of those Oprah Winfrey style poster boards that let you visualize your goals so you can attain them it would have pictures of books and famous authors and libraries and bespoke tweed suits and cowboy guns. Sort of a William S. Burroughs meets Eli Cash from the Royal Tennenbaums by way of Indiana Jones deal.

All I've ever wanted to be was a writer and all I've ever really dedicated any time to is my dumb blog. Now don't get me wrong, I love blogging. I think it's an art form like drag performance or cage fighting. To do any of them well it requires dedication, but there's likely never going to be any money in it.

Maybe it would be more accurate to describe myself as a blogger rather than a writer, and really, if you take away the ego, that's not a bad thing. You, dear reader are getting a direct line into my brain that is for all it's failings, as truthful and honest as it can be because there are no editors (not even self editors, nearly everything I've written online has been pure stream of consciousness with little more than a spellcheck) and there is no possibility of making a living from it.

As a blogger I guess my genre would be attempts at critical theory attempts at solipsistic personal meditations on pop cultural fixations as they relate to a relatively uneventful life of someone smart enough to know better but too lazy to care. You'll find this section right over by the self help section.

Sometimes I think about quitting this, but why would I deny myself the simple pleasure of writing something that makes me smile? Just because something goes nowhere doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Besides, sometimes it feels like Christmas when someone leaves a thoughtful comment. As I become increasingly agoraphobic and isolated from all but a handful of people, this is really one of my only self directed acts of socialization. If I didn't do this I'd just go to work and watch TV. Honestly, I really wish more of my friends wrote blogs.

Anyway, stay tuned for that post about Arizona and the Book of Eli.

Also, a quick note on typos in this particular blog: writing on an iPad sucks and I couldn't get the blogger spell check to work.

Denying What You Don't Fucking Even Understand

2011-01-05T22:25:00.000-08:00

Anything even close to an environmental urge I possess is based on emotion and a longing for the sublime I associate with mythological ideas about the freedom implied from the existence of wild places. I get sentimental based on a story I build in my own head (probably based on Boy Scout codes, Star Wars and Christian guilt) which is what really informs all of my decisions when there is an absence of enough information to think critically.

What the fuck did I just write?

Okay, here's where I make myself sound like a know nothing climate denier. The only thing I have to go on informing my belief in climate change is a chart that Al Gore stood in front of and a bunch of politically motivated news websites and their glorified bloggers continuous, droning calls that something must be done. I am not a scientist and am forced to take other people at their word. In my experience, most people will try to fuck over the ignorant when they can. Just ask your mechanic.

So some scientists want you to make a few changes. For the last few years my reaction to those requests was change out light bulbs and be afraid of Peak Oil.

Now I happily changed all of the bulbs in my house as they went out, but there are still some regular ass bulbs in my bathroom. The thing I find really curious is that I've changed all of my new fangled bulbs several times, yet I still have a few old bulbs going strong. Wasn't the point of these doubly expensive bulbs that they would last longer and therefore create less waste? If the new bulbs aren't lasting as long as the old, then what the fuck is the point of switching over?

There's probably some toxic shit in the old bulbs that's way worse than the new bulbs, but really, if something lights up when you run electricity how good could be for the environment anyway? What I liked about the bulb changing was what I liked about the best Green design. It made sense even if the environmental threat was removed from the equation necessitating its existence.

The design of the bulb made sense because it was more efficient and over time would save money on energy bills and the cost of replacing bulbs. The energy bill is a game that's fixed. If you ever start saving, just wait, soon enough prices will rise and you'll be screwed again. But the bulbs, those curly little miracles, are supposed to work.

Maybe I got some bad bulbs or something, but it's not like I bought all these bulbs from some Ethiopian on the sidewalk selling dodgy Indian made iPhone chargers that will melt your touchscreen. I picked them up at reputable stores like Whole Foods and Rainbow Grocery and the little Green looking corner store down the street. They should be working.

I've had a similar experience with Peak Oil. All the literature I read three years ago made it seem like $200 a barrel prices would be driving us off a cliff into Lord of the Flies territory by now. As of today the price is around $90 a barrel and it's still less expensive for me to drive my motorcycle to work than it is to take the train.

I'm more or less on the side of the Green Progressives (except for the motorsports, the belief in violence as a solution, my despising of entitlements and my love of firearms). I eat organic food, I work for Whole Foods, I recycle and I try not to fuck people over for profit. Yet I am constantly being forced to reevaluate the messages and information I am fed because of my own observations. Everyone should do that, but at a certain point you're going to be at the mercy of someone with a little more knowledge than yourself. That's basically where I'm at as an environmentalism minded person trying to understand climate change.

Even with having had the luxury to be around really smart people and being able to read and study considerably more than the average person, I still can't really explain to a layman why climate change is real and why it is caused by humans. I know all the soundbites: cars produce carbon dioxide which creates hotter weather which fucks everything up, but I can't tell you how any of that was concluded

Now I'm not an idiot. When that retarded corn syrup comercial tries to show that some actor playing stupid can't answer the simple question "what exactly is wrong with high fructose corn syrup?" I have answers:

High fructose corn syrup fucks up your insulin resistance making you more susceptible to bad shit like getting fat, it's proven to be addictive and it's low in nutrients which means you will consume it in place of real food the way a crackhead smokes rocks instead of eating. It's a monocrop that depletes soil of minerals forcing a reliance on foreign oil for fertilization. This puts money into the pockets of religious terrorists that want to kill us. The owners of these companies are the receivers of government welfare that makes it difficult for real farmers growing a variety of food that actually nourishes humans to compete with these giant corporate farms. Those are facts, Jack, and I can back every single one of those statements up with personal observation, professional studies and expert opinions from proven sources.

With climate change I get a little fuzzy. Sure, science isn't easy, but I get anatomy and physiology and can explain how insulin works in the human body and have seen people get fat from eating a bunch of shitty food. Climate change is harder to explain and the most vocal of the people warning us about it are constantly wrong about the timetable of when the shit is supposed to hit the fan.

If I was an average Joe who wasn't really convinced I needed to do my part to save the environment I'd look around at my burned out super bulbs and my relatively inexpensive gas and think that someone was trying to trick me, or at the very least I'd been listening to morons.

The same scientists that are backing the climate change story are probably about as educated as the people who deal with physiology and nutrition, and those clowns are not too infrequently way off the mark.

The average nutrition science person will tell you all about how eating red meat is bad for you and a vegetarian diet heavy on whole grains is good for you. They'll site some shitty correlation based study (basically a questionnaire) that's been passed around since the fifties and talk about how vegetarians have lower disease rates.

What they don't look at is what people who eat primally and organically are experiencing (meat, nuts & seeds, fruits and veggies, basically a ketogenic diet). I can name twenty people who have been on some kind of weird paleo-diet and become fitter, stronger and healthier. These people are eating like two pounds of fatty red meat a day and their bad cholesterol is way down and so is their body fat (the two biggest indicators of potential heart disease).

I know at least as many vegetarians and vegans that are not what I'd describe as pictures of health, but are eating they way scientifically informed nutritionists tell them they should. I've tried both methods of eating myself and as far as my own health goes, I thrived on a paleo diet (more muscular, no allergies, more energy) and suffered as a vegetarian (constant colds, flabby muscles, constant exhaustion).

Before any veggie true believers get on my shit about how I didn't "do it right", I know how to eat. I bought into all the shit about proper food combining and took a small fortune worth of supplements and still experienced poor health.

Maintaining a paleo diet is actually a lot more complicated than being vegan, requires no supplements and left me feeling like an eight cylinder, double carburated beast of a man.

That whole not doing it right argument is weak. How is it that I was able to follow a stricter diet without taking supplements and thrive if I was so incompetent as to not understand how to be a vegetarian?

Anyway, this whole dietary rant is really here just to illustrate a simple point: the majority of experts on a subject agreeing on something doesn't necessarily mean they are correct. The vast majority of scientists believe climate change is caused by humans and will have dire effects. I'm willing to accept this basically because there is no net harm for trying to reign in excessive waste. If they're right, we need to do something. If they're wrong it doesn't really matter, does it?

I guess the whole point of all this late night writing is that I think people involved in environmentalism should be willing to take a hard look at their sacred cows and think critically about them because the enemy is. Oil prices are not spiralling out of control like Peak Oil theorists predicted they would. It's still possible these doomsday prices will arrive with the bird flu and the killer bees, but this track record of inaccuracy is exactly why teabaggers have gained any traction with their efforts to halt Green initiatives.

The post Silent Spring environmentalists have basically created a Green scare and people are so used to being scared they aren't actually afraid anymore. It's like watching all of the Friday the 13th movies in a row. The first couple of them are kind of scary, but you can only experience so many machete murders before you get kind of desensitized to the whole thing.

I liked the way early conservationists framed their arguments for their agenda. The wild places were seen as somehow important to people from a narrative perspective. Without wild places there could be no pioneers, nor rugged individuals. Without the wild, we would not be tested by life, we would not have anything to stand in awe of. We would be diminished.

Nature has a kind of sublime quality to it. You can't really put your finger on why standing at the Grand Canyon is as awe inspiring as any cathedral, but it is.

The best Green ideas make sense from this perspective. Solar power and electric cars and the disbanding of factory farms helps rewild the world allowing us to reclaim the kind of human spirit that drove the most noble ideals we've had as a species. Waste, cutting down all the trees, blowing the tops of fucking mountains and eating everything that swims makes the world less efficient, less magical. It expands the banal aspects of the urban experience and depletes the world of the glory of nature.

The same drive that makes you want to keep your house or car clean and in good repair should be influencing the decision to support Green efforts and products. I don't want some morbidly obese politician or frail shrubbery eating old lady to try and scare me into giving shit up. I especially don't want them holding on to incorrect data for the good of us all.

I want a better group of Green leaders who inspire me to recycle because I'm going to be building something better or keeping something valuable.

If you keep telling me we're about to run off the cliff, but I see miles and miles of road ahead of me I'm going to stop listening. And I'm already on your side.

Who You Gonna Call? Ghostbusting in 2011

2011-01-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

Ghostbusters is on Comedy Central (how horrible is the new logo, right?) and it got me to pondering what it would be like to run a business like theirs in today's climate.

Aside from Zuul, the real villain of this story was the Environmental Protection Agency. This meddling government organization believed that the Ghostbusters were charlatans and their unchecked technology was potentially dangerous to the lives of New Yorkers. Why would any American want an organization make sure a company wasn't just dumping toxins into their backyards? What a buzzkill!

The Ecto-containment unit even got to the point of being too big to fail. It was filled up with enough spooks to make it a spectral A-bomb if it was shut off. When the EPA showed up, doing their job to protect New Yorkers from environmental dangers, Dr. Venkman (with a PHD in parapsychology) refused to cooperate. Of course, in the real world owners of shady businesses never block

The EPA agent was simply searching for potential noxious or dangerous chemicals. The Ghostbusters refused to allow their facility to be searched. Imagine if Wikileaks was around then, or the Huffingtonpost. This would be the headline:

"Paranormal Researchers Block Investigation into Potentially Lethal Explosives Stored in NY"

Teabaggers would line up to defend these "entrepreneurs" from the government. These Ghostbusters had the vision to create a new industry. Why would the EPA want to stop the economy from growing? So what if they constantly abuse their secretary? She's just a woman, and not even a particularly attractive one.

What about the ghosts? The ACLU would be all over the Ghostbusters for wrongful discrimination against Deceased-Americans. Christ, imagine the litigation that would surround the already complicated issue of inheritance taxes.

Of course, then you'd have the Christian Right weighing in. Since these ghosts are obviously not in heaven, they must be bad people or demons. Who let these specters in our country? Send them back to Hell or lock them up in a box!

Obama would probably praise the Ghostbusters for their contribution to technological development in America (and his campaign finances) while simultaneously voicing concern over the treatment of the undead (who have been voting in Chicago for years), but refusing to sign an Executive Order that would protect them right away.

Imagine the possibilities for iPhone and Droid apps. Or what about TV? The Real Housewives of Arlington National Cemetery would be a huge hit.

Imagine the awkwardness of the Kardashians when their dead father is thrown into the mix. Do you think he'd help Bruce Jenner fly his toy helicopters?

Lifestyle Design

2010-12-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

I ran across the blog of an old friend I had a kind of low speed, long distance falling out with (my fault, probably, as a girl was involved). He's among the most self actualized people I've known in my life. Currently he's raising his son while building vintage inspired furniture and cars of his own design.

While I was watching TV and chasing ass and filling my head with melancholic thoughts from reading all the books you're supposed to read, he was thinking for himself and getting up early and staying up late working on his own projects. At the time I wasn't able to fully appreciate the originality of his thought or the determination with which he pursued anything he was interested in. I haven't really thought much about him since the last time we saw each other, but this voyeuristic one sided reunion has been a little more emotional for me than I would have imagined.

He was the person who conceived the trip I took that lead to my move to New Orleans. He was the first person I ever heard call bullshit on bottled water. His band didn't sound like anything anyone else was playing and they played guitars and drums they made themselves.

The guy had his faults, though. No man I've ever met was as starved for attention as he was. He could be loud. He possessed the unbearable self righteousness of the non-drinking Fugazi fan. He could not tolerate another person having a better idea. He could be a manipulative horse trader. His worst fault, from my point of view, was that he lived off of women (at least according to the women who claimed to support him).

All that said, to see the plans he would talk about while the rest of his friends did drugs and drank and declined around him actually manifest is powerful. He set a course early in his life and pursued his dreams without waver.

If there is a lesson I could impart to my younger self it would be to pick the things you want above all else and pursue them relentlessly. Over the years I've blasted myself across a virtual pinball table of indecision and false starts. Nothing happens in a vacum, of course. Some turns I've taken in my life have ended being surprisingly fortuitous and I'm currently in what I would consider a really good place.

Unfortunately, to rest on my laurels now would invite disaster. I've always wanted to be a writer and a professor and to develop a lifestyle suitable to surviving The End Times. The path that links all of these together is actually fairly clearly laid out in front of me.

Now all I have to do is walk down it.

What Came First, the Bitching or the Moaning?

2010-12-28T16:36:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for proof of how damaged our food system is or how inept our response to dealing with the corruption a handful of shit lipped greedy old codgers have wrought has been, look no further than the humble egg.

As far as food sources go, they're theoretically pretty awesome. They're full of nutrients, are a cheap source of protein and are more or less constantly available with minimum effort. Chickens don't really need much besides some feed, a place to sleep and to be defended from raccoons and coyotes.

Just about anyone who had the space could probably benefit from the keeping of chickens and if you're a vegan radical type you can easily acquire rescue chickens to foster. It's pretty win-win. You won't be 100% vegan, but you're chicken buddies will have a bodyguard and you'll have a non-chemical source of B-12 at your disposal.

There are plenty of websites out there that can show you how horrible egg production is. The people over at PETA are basically the Eli Roth of animal rights videos and you can put yourself off egg salad within about 10 minutes of browsing their site.

Austin DeCoster is probably the most visible hell spawned capitalist pig (I don't mean to demean either capitalism or pigs here) involved with eggs and his crusty fingers are in almost every disease ridden pie. The New York Times did a pretty good job of covering this Satanic geriatric a while back and if you want to learn what being a real asshole is all about you can read an article by Grist here.

If you eat regular old eggs, you're putting money into a system that poisons workers, depletes our natural resources, encourages illegal immigration, treats animals inhumanely, scams the government through subsidies (welfare) and produces an inferior product. If that's your thing, don't let me stop you.

Now say you manage to muster some short attention span outrage and want to stop lining the foul and inhuman egg magnate DeCoster's pockets. What next? Well, that's where the waters get murky.

Most of the various designations that are supposed to be improvements matter little. Cage free just means not crammed into the tiniest of cages. Free range chickens don't necessarily get to go anywhere. Brown eggs are just a genetic type and are no indication of quality. Organic is well regulated, but chickens, like nearly everything on the planet, don't do well on soy, which is the main ingredient in the only affordable to use in any sort of quantity chicken feed.

What's the gold standard of the ethical egg? The egg that no one could bitch about (ETNOCBA) would be laid by a chicken that came from a hatchery that did not grind up baby male chicks, was fed table scraps and non soy feed derived from a local source and was allowed to trot about wherever it pleased scratching about and supplementing its diet with bugs. The chickens would then be allowed to reach the end of their lifespan naturally despite having long since stopped producing eggs.

There is no commercial source of eggs like this anywhere on the planet. I personally know of only two farms that produce eggs anywhere near the above fantasy standards. They definitely kill and sell or eat the chickens that no longer lay eggs. It would be impossible to operate a farm and sell eggs at a reasonable price if you had to feed and care for every chicken that ever laid an egg on a farm. As it is, the eggs that come closest to the ETNOCBA sell for between 6 and 8 dollars a dozen.

Even at that price there is not even close to the supply to meet the demand. I've sold pasture raised eggs at farmers markets and I believe we could have raised the price by up to 70% and still sold out every week.

So when I see whiny little bitches complaining about large scale organizations like Whole Foods Market not carrying only "pasture raised" eggs it makes me want to choke someone to death. Not because they're picking on a big business, though.

What enrages me is that these self righteous shitheads with their fake boycotts and convenient causes employ no critical reasoning skills. Yes, it would be nice if every single Green grocer in America carried real deal pasture raised eggs, but even if you turned every single egg operation into the perfect case, there would still be far more demand than supply.

Now here is where anti-organic and anti-small farmer rhetoric gets to be convincing to some. Can the current model produce enough eggs for demand using the best standards? No. Does that mean that we should automatically make our goal to be feeding the most number of people as cheaply as possible? No.

These factory farming martyrs don't give a shit about feeding the world. I heard some clown go on and on about how chemical fertilizer and battery cages were basically god's gift to the poor.

Bullshit. Condoms are god's gift to the poor.

So here's the deal. If you've got a problem with factory eggs, you've got to decide if it's enough of a problem for you to do one of the following:

1. Stop eating eggs. The joyless route of the vegan (which is also the most syllogistic; All commercial eggs are bad. No longer eating eggs is the only way to keep money out of that system. Therefore, if you want to stop supporting awful factory egg farming you should stop eating eggs).

2. Adopt a chicken and take care of it. This is what I'd like to do, but the little French Bulldog my wife pals around with turns into a snarling werewolf when anything with feathers comes close.

If you can't do either of those, but you still need to have eggs, you need to look for the best choice you can afford and stick with it. Your limp wrist protest against the people who are trying their best to produce a better egg is not helping anyone.

Fucking hippy, you shouldn't even be on the internets.

Standing Upright.

2010-12-27T16:51:00.000-08:00

My previous post regarding the 2011 things to do list requires an update. As is usual in life, a very minor acquisition of an item has caused a major directional shift

Goal #49 was, I thought, rather pedestrian: become an expert on a famous figure. I was set to focus my attention on Edward Abbey, the author and dessert anarchist who is the philosophical father of Earth First! and all the monkeywrenchers out there. I'll have to get to him later.

While browsing in a bookstore in Calistoga I ran across Douglas Brinkley's newish biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Wilderness Warrior. One of my favorite things about going through a small bookstore in an out of the way place is how the shelves are arranged and how alien geography can influence my decisions. This lengthy book sat on a sale rack in the middle of a relatively bare wall. This store's cast off books were placed roughly where I usually find realtively new books at my most frequented bookstore in SF. My habit is to walk in, veer left and drift through the store in a clockwise direction. Always.

So here's the deal with T.R.: he was basically the raddest environmental president we've ever had. The book chronicles not just Roosevelt, but the rise of the ideas of conservation and environmental politics. Areas I've flitted about more or less cosistently in over the last four years. My politics and passions are luke warm in some ways and my motivation and interest in these things has been largely literary and aesthetic.

I like apocalyptic narratives and I like Green design when it is clean and almost Elven. What I've always lacked is passion. My demeanor oscillates between angry and detached because, well, that's how I am.

This book, the Patti Smith book Just Kids and a rather demoralizing Facebook spying session have left me at a bit of a crossroads. I've got a bit of a trajectory right now that's more or less oriented towards writing and what I'll clumsily refer to as All That Green Bullshit. If I were to just be handed a career I'd probably want to be a writer full time.

No one makes it in this field without serious work and I've just become fully aware of how little actual work I've put into it. The kinds of writers I've always been most fond of are the ones who have very little separation between who they actually were and what they wrote. I'm thinking of Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Henry Rollins, Patti Smith, Anais Nin, Charles Bukowski.

The ingredients for this type of success are constant work, raw talent, luck and an interesting life lived with very little compromise. Upon measuring myself to these giants I find myself falling short, but this isn't a pity party and I'm aware of varying degrees of success that are attainable.

This is the year that I need to get serious. It's the year that I can not afford to compromise even the smallest amount. It's the year that will require grit. It is the year that everything will change. I just hope I have the stomach for it.

No one gives good advice for those who are looking for extremism.

I'm at a point where it seems I've either got to risk a strong move and get motivated about the moral and political dimensions of where I have lazily aimed my dilettantism or buckle down and press the pedal to the floor and head right off the cliff of suburban consumerism all American lives are pullled towards so magnetically.

I've always believed that fortune favors the bold and when I've let daring and calculated risk into my life I have been handsomely rewarded. I have no reason to think my current situation would be any different.

So here's the plan. Complete and total immersion in the project of writing prefessionally on the subject of environmental culture, histiry adn solutions. I'm headed home right now to walk the walk.

To Do List: 2011

2010-12-19T23:14:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Eve resolution is the same every year. Drink more water. This year I'm adding two to that old standby. Eat more kale and walk more.

In addition to my triumvirate of self improvement goals above, I shall now set forth my annual to do list for the year 2011. If I get through half of them, I'll consider the year a success. Some are fairly low hanging fruit while others are life time pursuits. They're more or less related to my general goals of doing more creative work, building and maintaining friendships (something I am terrible at) and just looking better and healthier. Marc Jacobs is sort of my inspiration here as he has managed to combine fitness, financial success and creativity into a single busy life.

Here's the list:

1. Retire from bartending by December. I reserve the right to work a shift here and there for social purposes, but I'd like to be financially free of the need to work in the service industry by then.

2. Start taking photographs wherever I go. Heidi Slimane's diary web site is my model here. That's setting the bar pretty high, but in Slimane's case the pictures are used to inspire other work (though they are excellent)

3. Learn 10 knockout recipes. This comes from Jamie Oliver. I currently have nothing to go on except my medicinal protein shake recipes.

4. Get into flip cam filming. My neighbors made a great movie with an HD flip.

5. Pay off all my debt. I'll probably be out of credit card debt by June, but I'll still owe money on my motorcycle (easily the worst financial move I've made in years).

6. Adjust my eating to a fairly strict interpretation of the paleo diet.

7. Get off of coffee, switch to green tea. Coffee does zero for your health and I'm tired of my teeth being stained and having coffee breath.

8. Put together a professional working group of food writers. Share ideas, offer critiques, social support.

9. Publish an article for a magazine.

10. Get around $1500 a month in freelance writing money coming in.

11. Finish enough of my young adult novel to pitch it to a publisher.

12. Start doing Crossfit again.

13. Maintain a sartorial direction inspired by conscious business support and the influence of professional fashions. My goal look is post apocalyptic English professor environmentalist fashion icon. Expect lots of Nice Collective, TOMS shoes and vintage suits.

14. Move towards beginning an MFA or Design MBA program.

15. Build a website for myself enabled for e-commerce and blogging.

16. Teach a class at 826 Valencia.

17. Reduce gasoline use/driving by 50%. One of the reasons I've been beating myself up over buying that motorcycle is it hasn't been fun to ride it on my morning commute and I don't walk as much as I used to.

18. Get rid of half my stuff again. I do this about every two years and never miss anything I get rid of except books. Not getting rid of any books.

19. Go see more movies and art shows.

20. Use the library more. Connected to this is getting my lifetime UC library privileges. I really miss Jstor.

21. Blog more, build more online friendships. It's not the same. It's convenient and I can have conversations about specific subjects that interest me.

22. Learn the following: HTML, SEO, SEM, InDesign, Photoshop, App building.

23. Make business cards.

24. Trail run once a week.

25. Climb once a week.

26. Get rid of any machines I can't fix myself.

27. Stop drinking sodas.

28. Scan all photographs and then put pics in photo books

29. Make a quilt. By far the weirdest goal for me. I'm not even sure why I've become so enamored with this.

30. Buy a new computer, phone, flip cam, DSLR camera and the programs that make them worth owning.

31. Go on a real week long vacation with Christel. It should be somewhere we've never been, and there should be no phone service.

32. Grow kale in our garden. We eat a shit load of it and I need to put my UC gardening education to work.

33. Make a worm farm. I'm in love with the idea of keeping a bunch of worms as pets.

34. Swobo Baxter. I hate bicycles yet I want this one so bad. WTF?

35. Lasik eye surgery. This one might be tough considering my desk job is making my eyesight even more mole like.

36. Read through all of my old journals and then dispose of them in an incinerator.

37. Only purchase first editions and small press books. Anything in paperback could just come from the library.

38. Learn to accept the public humiliation of walking around in Vibrams. These ugly fucking shoes are pretty amazing to walk in. Currently I only wear them at night while taking the dog for a stroll where I'm sure I will not be seen. I'll probably use them for Crossfit.

39. Stop eating all factory animal products. I'm not convinced of veganism from a health perspective, but as far as environmental perspective, it's pretty solid. I know all the arguments for and against so spare me the lecture, folks.

40. Contact more authors that I like. Most of the time I've sent out a letter to someone, I've gotten a response and I've always like reading collected letters of famous authors. Who knows, maybe one day my e-mail will end up in a book?

41. Stop arguing in the comments sections of the Internet. I'm reserving all comments for high fiving and complementing. Nothing I can do will stop people from acting like assholes and being willfully ignorant.

42. Read more magazines.

43. Listen to more music. I've heard a lot of stuff I really liked lately. Christel is on top of this.

44. Get a manicure. My hands are fucked up and this would be something my wife and I could do together.

45. Stay cigarette free. Until I can by purely organic tobacco grown by someone I know, fuck it.

46. Keep appointments with people for creative projects. I've been really fortunate to have amazing artists try to work with me, but I am a terrible flake. I'm going to make and keep appointments like they are my job.

47. No computer screens at home. No television with commercials.

48. Read books everyday. Even if it's just a page.

49. I'd like to become an expert on a specific famous person. I'm leaning towards Edward Abbey or Benjamin Franklin.

50. Stretch. Seriously. I feel jacked up. I need some kind of daily regimen that I can do in the morning. Maybe like that weird Sonnen Yoga.

Trickle Up Ethics

2010-12-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

Coming to grips with your existence as a consumer is a very important step in the evolution of a modern identity and a modern environmentalism.

What you buy matters. Who you buy it from matters. You will never stop buying stuff until you are dead (unless of course you're some mutant that lives in a tree in Berkeley that's figured out how to live off of compost and dress yourself in the skins of euthanized cats you find in the dumpster behind the PETA offices).

You can make a difference in the course of history just by paying a little more attention to what you buy. Now I'm not talking about locavorism or being Green. I'm talking about not giving money to people you think are dickheads. If I came to your house and left you with an upper decker and then tried to sell you insurance you'd tell me to eat a dick.

British Petroleum has pretty much been on my shit list since they rolled out that massive greenwashing campaign a few years ago. That little fiasco in the Gulf certainly didn't warm me up to those ass clowns. It's a no brainer for me to want to resist giving those assholes money. I still use gas because I'm hooked on motorcycles, but with a little Google Razzle Dazzle I can quickly identify who doesn't use BP oil at the pump. Well, shit. it looks like the oil goes to refineries and that gas goes all over the place and is nearly impossible to trace.

Clearly the answer to my moderate rage is a bicycle, but since I'm not ready for that step, I see that BP straight up owns Arco. So fuck you Arco. My KTM will never drink at the teet of your petrochemical bosom.

Okay. I need a new pair of shoes now. Chuck Taylor's have more or less been my standard for several decades now, but who doesn't need a little change? I look up ethical shoes and lo and behold, there's Toms Shoes at the top of my search. Cheap, flat, kind of hip (like one of my old girlfriends). I buy a pair and move on.

If I perform a smartphone search before I buy anything I can probably keep quite a bit of money out of the hands of cigar chomping motherfuckers who hate gays, want to oppress blacky and fuck up the environment.

The way those disappointing clods that vote against the causes you love or betray your trust after you voted for them keep getting elected is your money. You gave it to those caviar-eating-monocled-old-haters and they picked their team with it.

Consider what may happen when you make every point of purchase a chance to investigate a business or product and then make a decision on whether or not to buy the product based on whether or not you think that product puts money in the pockets of assholes.

You're not giving anything up, hell still buy that six pack, but know that if you're buying Coors you're supporting Union Busters and maybe pick something else. Over time the net effect would be, not a reduction in spending (oh lord, don't hurt the economy!), but a shift towards ethical companies.

Your ethics would trickle up the economic chain and dethrone the Sith lords that own everything.

This is not hard. Try this just once. The very next time you are about to buy a single object, whip out your smart phone (if you're reading a blog you likely have one) and google the name of the company and the word "boycott" someone will probably have done the investigation for you.

If you read the results and think "wow, these guys are assholes" pick something else if possible. You're not changing your habits, you're using them to your advantage and in the end you'll probably look cooler because good guys make the good shit.

Brand Self Identity Assessment

2010-12-05T16:49:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years I've picked up and put down Naomi Klein's No Logo so many times that I can barely look at the cover. I like the idea of Klein's work, but there's just something about her earlier work that annoys me.

Maybe it's that I just don't really dislike corporations and branding. A reviewer of this book on Amazon sort of gets close to how I feel:

"If Klein is to talk about true freedom, then she shouldn't dismiss corporations, yet advocate states...After all, whether a corporation or a government dictates my life, if the decisions are not mine, what is the difference?"

At this moment I'm also reminded of a funny line from the film version of High Fidelity:

"It's not what you're like. It's what you like that mattters."

On academic blogs I like there's often a sort of author roll call somewhere that lists writers the blogger admires or has studied. Sometimes they use the old fashioned word "canon". I've had a similar roll call of people I've been influenced by in earlier versions of this blog, but I always sort of felt like it didn't suit my project somehow.

I've always really appreciated seeing a list like that because I've been turned on to all kinds of rad books I probably wouldn't have known about otherwise. At this point in my life I feel like the products I consume are probably realistically as influential on describing who I am as much as the smarty pants books I read.

So without further ado, here is a list of companies that I have purchased products from over the last few years. It's in no particular order, but I've excluded companies I like, but don't own products from. For example, I love the Mercedes G-Class, but since I don't own one, I didn't include it. To me that would be sort of like claiming to like a book you didn't read.

Louis Vuitton
Nom d Guerre
Bumble & Bumble
Palladium boots
KTM motorcycles
Nice Collective
Apple Computers
Shoei
Redwing Boots
Alternative Apparel
Whole Foods Market
Derco Jewelers
Crossfit
Held Gloves
Clarks Boots
Sony
Borderlands Books
Chrome Bags
Triumph Motorcycles
T.A.D. Gear
Lululemon Athletic gear
Levis Jeans
Gibson Guitars
Converse
Cafe Du Monde Coffee
Prather Ranch Meat Co.
Vanson Motorcycle Jackets
Olympia Motorcycle Gear

Looking over this list is kind of interesting because it's actually kind of comprehensive. I don't really buy that much, but when I do, I blow some serious cash (liek the $1,500 I spent at the Nice Collective sample sale or the $13000 on my new bike). Other than my motorcycle, everything I own would fit in the backseat of a car.

I CAN HAZ ERGONOMIC CHAIR?

2010-12-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

It's official. I'm an office dweller.

The weird thing? I fucking love it. Seriously.

I like the dumb inter cubicle emails (I have my own office right now, just sayin'), the forwarded videos, the constant Facebook updating. I like that I am being paid well for a skill set that I thought would have never made me a cent (decent grammar abilities+odd ball ideas+resiliency=copywriter).

This shit is way better than having some drunk retard stiff you repeatedly in a loud club.

Everyone has something to say though:

Clown: "How is it working for the man?"
Me: "Fucking awesome. I get a good pay check, people appreciate my work and if I'm sick I just call HR and don't have to beg someone to take a night off drinking to cover my shift."

Well Meaning Idiot: "The novelty will wear off soon enough."
Me: "You mean the novelty of going home from work dry, at a normal hour or the novelty of having health benefits and Paid Time Off?"

Been There, Done That Guy: "I hated working in an office."
Me: "Sure, being a temp probably sucks and you might've had to work for evil pricks, but it still beats serving food and beverage."

Misguided Imbecile: "I think I may try bartending, I'm tired of flourescent lights."
Me: "Live the dream, dude. Let me know how that career change works out for you when you're forty."

Consumer of Leftist Propaganda Devoid of Critical Thinking Skills: "Whole Foods is the devil."
Me: "Really? It's too bad the devil pays his employs better than any do-gooder operation, works with more local producers than any farmers market, and has an upper management largely populated by people who came up through the stores. But he's evil, right?"

Upbeat Slow Wit: "Working in the stores must be so fun with all that yummy food!"
Me: "Yeah, I actually don't do any real work unless you consider eating raw vegan food and doing yoga work."

Person Who Knows Me too Well: "What happened to Law School? Isn't this just another thing you'll give up on?"
Me: "I don't think so. I'm actually good at advertising. Who knew watching all that TV would pay off?"

The only bummer is that office butt is a very real threat to most that sit for work. I'm going to have to figure something out.

I'll probably go to Crossfit Oakland and become one of those 150 lb. office dweebs that all the fat guys stuck doing manual labor (but played football!) complain about.

Money in my account and kweer abs? Count me in!

Do Hot Toddies Work?

2010-10-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yes and no.

The alcohol in a toddie will do what alcohol always does, dull the pain of your existence temporarily. A well prepared version will almost certainly taste better than Thera-Flu and as an added bonus, you can actually choose the ingredients. If you wanted, you could go all Saint Alice Waters style and make one with locally grown ingredients and some kind of organic spirit.

It will not cure you or actually speed your recovery. If you are sick enough to require a hot toddie, go the fuck home. No one wants your funky ass disease.

A bartender's goal should be to ensure the customer is pleased enough with their experience to do some or all of the following:

1. Tip
2. Have sex with someone they fancy
3. Return with friends
4. Have fun
5. Enjoy what they're drinking.

The last point is the one I'd like to end on. If your bar isn't really set up to create a certain drink, be honest, explain why you can't make the drink and offer an alternative.

An example using the hot toddie:

Customer: "*cough*, uhhh, *sneeze*, can you make me a hot toddy?"

Bartender: "Not really. The water gets luke warm at best, I have no cloves and the only sweetener I have is the remaining sugar in this crusty glass rimmer. I would recommend you drink a staright shot of something with a high proof at room temperature or take your sick ass home."

There is no sick pay and there are no sick days for bartenders. You work or you don't and if you bring some kook plague onto a bar staff you deserve a beating.

The Bartending/Farming Analogy

2010-10-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

"Eh, uh, sorry mate. I'm from , uh, England and we just don't tip over there"

"Sure. I get it. Do what you want mate, I'll just be over here stirring your Guinness with my dick."

I really don't like writing about tips except in the most factual way. Example: credit card tips seem to be hovering around 8-9% these days instead of the expected industry standard of 15%. This is certainly a negative trend, but bitching about people not tipping and writing whiny bitch blog posts about what customers should tip isn't my deal (when I was younger, sure, but we all make mistakes).

I like to look at tips from a perspective of yield. Farmers don't spend hours complaining about the few plants that don't grow. They just look at the crop, figure out how to make more shit grow with less resource output. If the yield is bad, you've got to reexamine your soil or your methods.

Hip-hop crowds used to be what I consider infertile soil. You could bust your ass, be sweet as Ghandi and still receive little compensation for your effort. Rocky, fucked up soil. This has changed considerably in the last few years. I now consider the least fertile soil to be non-profit worker fund raisers and meet and greets (I'll get into why some other time).

Let's continue with my farming analogy for a bit. When you have shitty soil you can basically do two things: improve the soil quality or relocate. If the crowd at your bar is particularly bad, I recommend bouncing. There are more bars out there, trust me. As long as you aren't too incompetent you should get rehired. Don't even worry. Life is too short to do something you hate. Unless you've got kids and/or a mortgage; then you pretty much have to do something you hate.

Now say you decide to stick it out and want to improve the soil. What does this mean for you as a bartender?

First, stop being a little bitch. Everyone vents from time to time and I'll always laugh at a good revenge story, but no one needs a nightly reminder of how little money is being made. Morale must be maintained.

Second, stop looking at the customers as the enemy. Some customers actually are the enemy and must be dealt with, but they are the exception. Imagine that sweaty mass of sad bastards out there drinking across your bar is a herd of cattle. You want to make as much as you can off of that herd. Keep them happy, manage them efficiently. Of course sometimes a cow must be culled from the herd when it goes mad or becomes a resource suck.

If you've got a problem customer, all the time you spend dealing with them will cost you money. Your goal should be to eliminate this person from the herd or minimize your interaction with them.

For the record, I define a problem customer as someone who by their actions or influence interferes with the steady flow of drinks or the accrual of money.

The degree to which a customer may be a problem will influence whether or not they must be culled or ignored. If someone is exceptionally douchey, I think early removal from the establishment is always a good idea.

Now listen here young bartenders, not tipping, by itself, is not grounds for removal. You don't know that person's story. Maybe it's their only night out in two years and they found a twenty dollar bill on the ground and decided to celebrate. Tipping is not mandatory.

You are certainly within your rights to ask a repeated non-tipper something like the following: "is there a problem with the service you're receiving, because unlike most of this satisfied crowd you haven't tipped which is usually a sign of patron displeasure? I'd like to make sure you're okay."

It's amazing how well this works for turning someone around.

However, sometimes you will get an answer like this: "I don't tip because it isn't done in my country/ I don't believe in it/ I suck/ this is my first time out of the house."

At this point you can calmly deliver a response such as: "that's cool, but I'm going to have to reduce my efforts at serving you because there is nothing to correct service wise and dealing with you instead of another customer actually costs me time and money. Also, please be advised that the department of weights and measures doesn't exactly oversee the amount of alcohol that makes its way into your cup."

This is usually a fairly polarizing statement.

If the person pulls the "I don't tip in my nightmare of a socialist homeland so I'm not going to here" card you can feel free to say something like: "oh, I see, you aren't interested in experiencing American customs. You'd probably be more comfortable with a European bar experience, therefore I will serve you as slowly as possible (if at all), give you the least amount of alcohol possible and raise prices suddenly because I think you won't know any better."

Remember, though, negativity of any sort will not increase your tips. That's pretty much the only reason to do this stupid job, so whatever route you take in dealing with a problem customer it should allow you to maximize contact with and good service to your clientele.

A bartender's main job is to sell as much liqour to people as possible and create a space that is enjoyable to visit. Most people's lives suck and a night out drinking is basically the only relief a lot of people have from the soul crushing drudgery of their existence. I think it borders on the morally reprehensible to actively seek out ways to bum people out while they're spending their increasingly hard earned money.

Of course, if it's some rich asshole from England that doesn't tip, you should basically tell him to fuck off.

My moral compass is flawed, I know.

Rules for Hiring/Training Barbacks

2010-10-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

My work load is pretty massive these days and the last thing I want to do when I get home is stare at a screen and type, so posting here has taken a considerable nose dive. Since all five of you that read this have been without for so long, here you go.

This last weekend we started out two new barbacks. They each represent the ideal of what I consider are the two best choices you can make. One of them is a competent, eager, intelligent kid without experience and the other is a dude who used to bartend, was good at that, and sort of got out of night work, but is looking to get back into it.

I'll get into the specifics of the pros and cons of each choice below. Here are the rules:

1. DO NOT hire a friend that has never worked in a bar before. If they suck, it will strain your friendship and their incompetence will forever shadow your interactions. I'm not saying hire strangers, but a busy nightclub is no place to bring an inexperienced person you do not feel comfortable screaming at.

2. You can hire a friend with bar experience, but they should be at least as good, if not better than whoever they are replacing.

3. If you can't lift the keg by yourself, you can't be a barback. This goes for women, too. If you can't move the keg you always have the option of cocktailing or fucking the owner to get into the business.

4. Immediately let go anyone that can't cut fruit the way you showed them the first time. This is a strong indicator of their ability to take direction and pay attention. If you tell someone to score citrus, and they don't, chances are they are either not going to listen in the future or are mildly retarded.

5. Barbacks have a 12-18 month shelf life. When you hire someone you have to factor in all the time they've barbacked in the past. When they hit the wall and feel they're ready to move up, a barback will decrease in effectiveness by about 25-45%.

This is the case for hiring someone without bar experience. You will have at least a year with them and they will not be spoiled by the knowledge that they are making a substantially smaller percentage of tips. You can just see the mixed look of happiness, shock and betrayal on a barback's face when they pour drinks for the first time and get that fat tip. This is a natural progression and the decline in performance must be overcome, but know that it does have a reason.

6. If you're going to hire some barbacking savant from another location be very clear about the minimum amount of time it will take for them to start pouring drinks. The job may be new, but barbacking is basically the same anywhere and it bears repeating, once a barback is tired of barbacking, they need to move up or out within two months.

7. If someone helps themselves to pouring drinks before they are given permission to, they should be fired immediately, no matter the circumstance.

8. Barbacks should never receive full tips until they are capable of doing the full job after being trained. Bartenders are paying for a specific set of services and if they are not performed, they should not be paid for.

9. Do everything possible to sabotage a friend of the owner who has no experience if they aren't immediately exceptional at the job. They only get worse with time.

10. If someone is barbacking as a means to make money while they learn another trade (say, cutting hair) their performance and commitment need to be honestly appraised after they begin working in their field. Nothing takes the wind out of a barback's sails like steady income from somewhere else.

11. Bartenders should be 100% honest with barbacks about their needs for improvement, praise and the method by which they are tipped out. Tipping out is an area that I feel needs more transperancy in general. Barbacks should know the method by which their money is calculated. It is completely the perogative of the bartender whether or not they choose a percentage or sliding scale method.

12. There is no such thing as bartender side work. Anything I ask a barback to do should be done. If I ask you to clean my wells, fucking do it. That said, when you ask your barback to do extra work, it's the decent thing to kick them a little extra. Optionally, you can use this as punishment for dragging ass all night.

13. A barback is responsible for every single thing that is not pouring a drink or handling money.

14. Two weeks is the absolute longest period of time you should give a new barback to prove themselves.

15. Always try out several barbacks at once. Let them know they are in competition with each other and there can be only one. Hunger is a strong motivator.

16. Do not hire a person who has been bartending for a long period of time.

17. Drop hints about drug use and see how they respond. If they seem eager to disappear into the cooler with you to do coke they need to kick rocks.

18. Barbacks aren't done until you release them from duty.

19. Bartenders are ultimately responsible for barbacks. They may be in the industry for a very long time and how you train them will always be a factor in how they work. Do a good job.

20. Don't have sex with barbacks.

Office Butts Drive Me Nuts

2010-09-21T16:35:00.001-07:00

The manufacturer of my office chair needs to come clean about the enthusiasm sapping materials leaching into my system. Once a week at the gym is sad, sad, sad.

Portfolio Careers are the Latest Scam

2010-09-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

On November 7th I'll be participating in an alumni panel at UC Berkeley. The topic will be the latest scam the reptilian corporate masters of the Great Satan are trying to pull over on us: Portfolio Careers.

If you're not familiar, and I wasn't until I read the invitation, the term refers to working professionally at two different careers simultaneously. For example, your humble blogger here works as a copywriter during the day and as a bartender at night. The former is pretty rad, the latter is pretty sad.

If this sounds an awful lot like the familiar "I work two shitty jobs to make ends meet" repackaged for the existential and financial difficulties of the newly graduated, then you probably aren't too simpleminded.

I can not wait to lay into whatever guidance counselor/Motivational speaker/Asshole is advocating this lameness. If your 50 hour work week (thanks Capitalism) is divided into two careers, you aren't full time anywhere and probably receive zero benefits (other than 10% off of whatever bullshit you're selling).

There are a ton of little known up-training programs sponsored by the gov'ment and if you don't breach 35 hours a week at one job, you probably don't qualify. Example: there are a ton of trade schools in the Bay Area that teach computer skills ranging from "grandpa gets his first e-mail" to "Now you're like the kid in Wargames". The State, with an interest in retaining at least some shadow of a tech industry, will pay almost 80% of the cost of these classes on behalf of your employer. The only catch is you have to work mre than 35 hours a week at the job your skills will seek to advance. Bummer for the Portfolioed.

If you do a Google search for portfolio careers you'll find a bunch of people trying to give information about how you can live this, like totally free, cool life. They advise you make lists of the things you like to do or would like to do and pick two jobs that have overlap.

I haven't really figured out two jobs where my interests in reading books, riding motorcycles, practicing martial arts, rock climbing and travelling will be fulfilled.

Well, technically Indiana Jones figured it out. Now that I think about it, his dual careers of Professor/grave robber were pretty cool. Sign me up.

Twilight Should be Renamed We Suck

2010-09-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

To have been young and goth before the ubiquity of digital cameras and media share sites is something I am grateful for (I think this is a dish at Cafe Gratitude). Thankfully, there is little record of my heinous fashion sense and deplorable taste in music. The sinks I ruined with black hair dye have long since been destroyed by hurricanes and whatever high buckled boots I may have worn are undoubtedly deep in a landfill.

If there's any redemption to this dorkery and darkness it's that a relative amount of seclusion and the presence of weird friends shaped my preferences in film and literature (areas where I believe I have excellent taste). To the mutants who introduced me to Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs and David Cronenberg, I am forever in your debt.

This period of my life occurred in the late nineties. That means that the mediocre gothic action flick, The Crow, loomed large. Like many uneducated proto-goths of this period, I was really smitten with it when it came out and spent at least two Halloweens in leather pants and clown make-up. Other than an epic fail in wardrobe, this movie hasn't had much of an influence on my life. The "Don't Dream it, Be it" ethic of The Rocky Horror Picture Show left a much deeper stain on my psyche and fanned the fires of my own deviancy and coupled with an all to common late twenties Beat Poet obsession, lead me West, where everything changed.

I have The Rocky Horror Picture Show to thank for all manner of Liberal devilry.

All of this is coming back to me because I've just lost an hour to the first film in the Twilight series. I truly feel sadness for the young and black hearted flock of up and coming tween goths that have this Mormon idiocy to look to for entertainment. I read the book on a plane and was terribly irritated by it. I like my vampires amoral and violent. Give me the vagabond terrors of Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls or the similarly nomadic blood drinking hicks of Near Dark anytime. Thankfully there's True Blood to attempt balance of this massive trend towards pussy vampires. I mean, come on, if you can't kill and fuck anything with a heartbeat, what's the point of being undead?

The only redeeming quality of this film is the pale green tones of the Pacific Northwest. Maybe it's because it reminds me of The Goonies.

I actually didn't expect to be so let down. There's been a few movies over the last few years that actually transcend the shittiness of their source novels. The previously mentioned True Blood (though a TV series) blows doors on the books and two unlikely choices for me, The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic were totally enjoyable, despite being written by retards. There's actually a lot of talent out there these days and a bad story can be saved by a slick director. Not this time, though.

The flirtatious sexual tension at the heart of this vapid tale never comes across as anything other than pensive dry humping. To see an excellently sweet courtship amid fantastic monsters check out Zombieland. The moment just before the "cock blocking robot" Woody Harrelson interrupts Emma Stone and that kid that looks like the kid from Superbad's kiss is actually a very tender portrayal of young love.

Even the action scenes in Twilight are boring. What I wouldn't give to have Wesley Snipes come on screen and shout "Edward, I'm gonna lop yo motherfuckin head off!" or that sex machine from Underworld empty a full clip into that chest waxing werewolf. Why am I never consulted, Hollywood?

Thank god for lasers

2010-09-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

You know that moment on the tattoo reality shows where the art is finally revealed and the person squeals and hugs the tattoo artist? Yeah. I didn't really feel that way.

I looked down at my wrist, around at my friends (who all just got the same tattoo), down at my wrist again and immediately thought, "this is fucking retarded".

Foreshattering at 32

2010-09-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

There is no meaning. Serendipity and synchronisity? Simply the pronounced tendency of pattern seeking primates to arrange observation to suit imagination.

This is the year I finally stopped believing in magic/k.

The Good: I'm free to say what I want, walk under ladders, chase black cats, break mirrors, skip church, spill salt, work for what I want instead of wishing for it.

The Bad: It's all me. Where I'm at? I did it to myself. No Pearly Gates, no comfort, just vastness. Ever expanding possibilities influenced by infinite variables.

It took 32 years for me to figure this out, but I'd never go back. I know, not feel, that time is very short. We are here and then we're gone. Same for the people we love. Hold them tight, tell them you love them now because that body, that dust, it can't hear you.

Life is messy, disappoinitng, uplifting, impossible, rewarding, hard, tragic, beautiful. Yet, you are perfectly evolved to navigate this chaos. If there is a miracle, that's it.

Fuck the Secret.

Slow Research: Farmpunk

2010-09-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

An article I've been cobbling together from skewed observations, close readings, old friendships and the always entertaining internet is finally taking form, moving past the blastula stage, knitting little fingernails together from proteins and time.

Farmpunk is an embryonic genre awaiting a manifesto. I believe it will probably come from this person I know nothing about (except she is paying more attention and thinking deeper than I did at what I imagine her age to be).

I imagined the word farmpunk, sourced it from the ether. But I wasn't the only one and my vision wasn't the strongest. While I'm no real deal farmpunk, I've been around long enough to recognize what it might be to be one.

An initial reading list (based on recent readings/re-readings) for would be Farmpunks:

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark
Eaarth by Bill McKibbens
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller

Kill 'em All, Let Permaculture Sort Them Out

2010-08-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

The first half of Bill McKibbens' latest book, Eaarth, might go down as the most depressing read of all time. His thesis: the planet is well past the point of being fucked and would require more than humanity seems to be able to give to survive. It seems like those tycoons just don't want to turn off the big coal burners because they aren't paid for yet.

Consider this bit of horror. At a certain point, glacial ice covering methane gas pockets will no longer exist. As this gas seeps out, it kicks up the speed of global warming, eventually resulting in unlivable conditions for humans. Even if global emissions are brought to zero, once we reach this point, it's over.

No amount of Prius driving, organic cotton wearing, farmers market shopping, locavore bullshit is going to stop this. Even if the entire agricultural system was switched to small organic solar magical fairy dust wonderlands overnight, the burning of coal will eclipse all.

The amount of capital invested in coal and oil infrastructure is valued in the trillions of dollars. Most of it purchased on credit. The cigar chomping evil doers who own this life choking system are always going to be unwilling to do anything that will restrict their return on investment.

Kill all of the fucking corporate overlords you say? Nice start.

Here's the catch. They aren't the only folks burning coal. Every grass hut living stone ager with an online wire transfer scam is cooking up the black stuff. Maybe they need to die, too?

Get real. Who are you to tell a rural farmer in China, a man with a nearly invisible carbon foot print, that he can't keep his family warm in the Winter? Are you going to take his coal burning stove away and compare that to the vitally significant act of switching your bathroom lights to eco-bulbs? Come on. Don't be so smug.

The answer? Not clear, but it seems to have a bit to do with actually teaching these primitive brothers and sisters of ours that there is a third way. A whole new field of agricultural engineering has grown up while we weren't looking. Permaculture is almost universally bad ass and is a real way to shift from time bomb planet, to high mileage fender falling off but held on with duct tape planet. Look up permaculture and be amazed. Then look up its critics and more importantly, which shitty chemical/agriculture giant the critics work for.

The rad thing about Permaculture is that it's actually a scientific advance based on old practices. Pesticides and franken-seeds got so prevalent because they make more food for more people (at least in the short term, but only in theory). More plants grow, but there is less variety. Old news, look up monocrops for the background info.

Permaculture goes, wait a sec. Let's not go bigger, let's go more efficient. What plants that we can actually use to make more stuff to eat keep bugs away? Scientists figured this shit out and now even the most backwards shit holes are using these high tech/low infrastructure solutions.

What's not to like? Well, if you sell genetically engineered seeds, or giant tractors, or deal in farm loans, sell ethanol you're probably not going to like that these little brown folks are going to be able to crawl out from under your thumb. When they do, that means that yacht might have to go.

Your homework? Look up Permaculture design and philosophy. It works and the methods can be applied to every system currently fucking shit up.

Down With the Mixeratti/ Against Re-enactment-tenders

2010-08-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

HBO's latest series Boardwalk Empire looks like a good show, but I can guarantee there's going to be an immediate rise in ambitious young (clueless) bartenders trying to capitalize on this trend.

If I have to endure any more "my bar has a Prohibition feel to it with cocktails inspired by my bullshit collection of clown ass books and corny snake oils" I'm going to kill someone. Probably the first dude in a fedora and t-shirt I see.

Look people, the prohibition era was fucking lame. Are you going to have a "coloreds only" entrance? Will women be barred unless escorted by a man? Gays jailed?

Fine, you want to make a special fancy drink. Knock yourself out. But know this, the reason we have so many bullshit retard cocktails like Blue Hawaiians, Mai Tais and other coconut puke scented drivel is that there was a period in the not too distant past where tropical themed bars were all the rage. Dipshit bartenders of some long forgotten tiki bar dedicated themselves to island flavors and now they're in the canon of drinks. Think before you introduce some complex asshole drink to the yuppies that will invariably become your biggest fan.

The pomegranate martini was birthed by some cock head just like you. Now we're all stuck with it.

You people with your Cherry Poppin' douche bag outfits and obscure lore are no better than fucking Civil War re-enacters. Why not turn the clock even further back? I'm going to open a god damned Roman themed bar. I'll dress like a centurion. Or what about a viking bar? All mead all the time!

Fuck you. Fuck you and your hat.

What Your Drink Says

2010-08-12T14:36:00.001-07:00

Long Island Ice Tea: I live at home with my parents and would very much like to throw up in their bathroom later tonight.

Kettle One and Soda: I really like cocaine

Red Bull and Vodka: Everyone wishes I would just pass out

Jaeger Bomb: The world would be much better off if I was sterilized

Fernet: I ruined my life working in the service industry

Maker's Rocks: I somehow escaped the service industry but am one paycheck away from being a busboy again

PBR: I celebrate mediocrity

Bud Lite: You should've seen my abs back in college, bro

Liquid Cocaine: My family hails from Vietnam

Pineapple back!: I am a worthless pussy

Adios Motherfucker: I live at home with my parents, want to throw up in their bathroom later tonight, but I'm thinking blue might be a nicer shade of vomit

Patron chilled: I want this bitch to think I have money, but I don't want her to see the pitiful face I make when I drink something other than a wine cooler

Red Stripe: I'm so stoned I'm just going to hold this bottle that reminds me of Bob Marley all night long

Lemondrop: I really like a poorly made cocktail rimmed with sugar that basically comes from a dish that provides nourishment for cockroaches and fruit flies

Champagne: Seriously, if someone doesn't get me some blow right now I'm going to fucking die

Mimosa: I'm still awake, is there any semen in my hair?

Beautiful: I know all those rappers like Hennessey, but I prefer the taste of cough syrup

Johnny Walker Black: I am a tech worker from India and I am here to prove that there are worse customers than lawyers

Change a Comin'

2010-08-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

My old blog was loosely organized around preparing for the end of the world by reading doomsday novels and doing Crossfit. The readership was much broader than this current incarnation, perhaps owing to a corollary rise in the popularity of Crossfit and the appearance of several major apocalyptic works (Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the Will Smith vehicle I am Legend are notables). My finger was on the pulse.

Enhancing the writing was an assload of academic reading on the subject of apocalyptic literature and a relatively stressful thesis project. Environmentalism was popping up here and there, but I was still prone to the very thinking I would eventually criticize: a reliance on the messianic narrative whereby the world gets saved at the last minute by some awesome dude.

The more you learn about climate change, banking systems, resource reduction, peak oil, and the rest of the looming eco-catastrophes the more you get depressed. I put the whole thing away, deleted all the writing and moved on with my life.

I returned to what I knew best, bartending. Now, don't get me wrong, when I aim my writing at the booze industry, I'm usually at my best. However, I think a shift of perspective along with a reorientation of life is in order.

Where are the Castro's Sex Offenders?

2010-08-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

You hear the inbred-cousin-fucking-yokel-not-actually-Christian-in-behavior-Christian-Right constantly going on and on about how Gay is an abomination that will lead to sexual deviancy and the end of the world. I'd like to propose an experiment:

Go on your computer or iPhone or whatever and use one of the many sex offender locating apps. I like the one for iPhone because it shows you in little red dots where all the convicted sex offenders are. Now search for San Francisco and zoom in on the Castro neighborhood. You'll be shocked.

This is arguably the gayest place in America. There are shops with cockring window displays and Hardware stores that carry anal lube. Yet there are hardly any registered sex offenders anywhere. Now go over to the Mission (traditionally Mexican) or the Marina (rich Crackers) or Hunter's Point (traditionally Black). There are little red pervert dots everywhere. Try this out for your hometown, too.

Blacks, Mexicans and Rich Crackers sort of got the blame for helping Prop 8 on its way to legitimacy (this is, I know, very debated and I'm not actually even sure where I stand on agreeing with those criticisms except I have personally observed, in the restaurant business at least, these three groups to be the most openly homophobic). If the concern is stopping sexual predation and dangerous deviancy, it seems that criminally speaking, the Gays are innocent.

It's those Priests and Preachers you've got to look out for. And really just about anyone loudly proclaiming their own righteousness.

Last week Christel and I joined the tale end of the Prop 8 decision victory parade and stood with a smaller than expected, but genuinely emotional crowd of celebrants. There were at least several hundred people gathered at the steps of City Hall. It was moving to see so many couples holding hands and so many quick little cheek kisses.

Any need to bring an issue like this to court, to have ever needed a vote or to have ever even spent time denying people an eternal bond with the one they love should be remembered as the great American hate crime that opened the 21st century. Only the most insecure or willing to profit from misery (has anyone traced donations from insurance companies to pro Prop 8 orgs?) could possibly commit such a violation of decency.

My wedding was the best day of my life and to deny anyone the joy I felt from even our modest wedding is a motivation so alien to me that I can only feel the mentally ill would advocate it. If anything, I would want as many people as possible to experience that kind of happiness.

I may be softening in my old age, but I am more and more affected by the possibility of global transformation through the spread of Love than anything else. Every act that is begun with the intention to spread Love brings us all closer to a universal state of happiness.

Can anyone but the chronically miserable share a position that literally makes middle aged church folk scream obscenity and carry banners of indecency in public? Who would join these miserable fucks, but the failed and broken mass of retarded sister fuckers?

As time goes on I feel more and more comfortable with identifying myself as a Christian. By that I don't mean a belief in the supernaturally miraculous, eternal punishment, or Manifest Destiny. I share no allegiance to His Pointy Hatness or the Boy Fondling Priesthood.

What I believe, as a Christian, is that an operating system of human behavior capable of radically changing Hate into Love and raising the consciousness of all mankind is encoded in the tale of Christ, specifically the Sermon on the Mount (it is historically not unique for this). I wasn't at the Crucifixion, don't read Aramaic and have a deep distrust of all acts of translation. Therefore, I do not know if all the miracles are true or not.

I'm also not interested in false hope, wishful thinking or an afterlife of harps and clouds. If you are not acting as close as possible to the radically non-violent, anti-hierarchical, essentially Good ideal set forth by Jesus you are disappointing as a Christian.

No one is perfect, but if you are so enraged by the thought of a man sucking another man's dick that you take to the streets advocating murder, you need to reevaluate your Christian ideals. Look at your own life. Try to make your wife or lover happier. Stop thinking about yourself and become a model of strength.

Down with the Mixeratti

2010-07-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

The New York Times Food section continues to earn more and more of a place in my heart for their remorseless anti-mixology agenda. In a recent review of the Commodore (a Brooklyn bar) the bartenders were described lovingly as not the type to "make their own bitters or collect first-edition bar books".

A desire to make one's own bitters or collect old books doesn't make a person bad. Obscuratanism, elitism, snobbery, pride; these are negative characteristics exemplified by the fedora and bitters crowd. An enthusiastic bartender eager to share a creation, a labor of love, gets a pass here.

The product of these efforts can be cool. The posturing assumed is never cool.

Most succesful bartenders distinguish themselves by their consistency, their speed

Bikes and Booze

2010-07-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

Moto GP weekend in Monterey has become a recurring personal holiday. I take the weekend off and drive down with my wife and small, inbred dog and meet up with what is basically an extended family of booze merchants. Christel is there for business (her employer is the title sponsor), but we both manage an intensely fun time every year with some great people we don't see often enough.

My opinion of the liquor industry is an uncomplimentary one. Often populated by the misfit spawn of the failed American Dream, there is no other place where a person can suspend above the pitch black hole of mediocrity and uselessness in relative comfort for so long. An affable character from the film Cocktail described the bartender as "the aristocracy of the working class." I would agree, but for contrary reasons. Bartending allows for all of the idleness and lethargy of a born to wealth aristocratic life while providing the ennui and physical degeneration of the blue collar wage slave.

It's too easy to buy into success and all too rare for a worker to bootstrap into ownership with honest effort. Labyrinthine bureaucracy, soul crushing governmental intervention and high operating costs make opening a bar in any city worth living a test of mettle for anyone unencumbered by a trust fund or other ill-gotten funding. So many bars and nightclubs fail due to implosion of partnerships unavoidably entered into by economic necessity.

A piece of free advice for anyone opening a club with partners: Don't. You can guarantee that at least one or two people out of the group will be crushed by the lifestyle of nightclub ownership. The best case scenario is that the smartest, most level headed person will be able to sell their share at a profit and open a worthwhile corner bar.

The people I go to Moto GP with every year are an unusual bunch, industry speaking. Each one, despite a myriad of personal demons, is a truly decent person. They're all very successful (having gone through and survived a host of different nearly avoided disasters) despite an aggressively anti-business city government and seem to know how to treat their employees.

Other than a love of motorcycles, this group is united by the common experience of actually running, not just owning, liquor operations. They have all gotten their hands dirty carving out little pieces of the night life as bartenders or salesmen and they are, I think, uniformly rare.

They're my kind of people. By this I don't exactly mean people I like (though I do). I mean something more like they are the kind of people I came from. It's sort of like being a gypsy or some kind of hereditary edge-dweller.

As I sit in an office bathed in fluorescent buzz, I feel a magnetic draw to the sunless world of bartending. Of course, that pull seems foolish with a towel tucked into your back pocket and hordes of drunken subhumans screaming for more of everything bad.

The race itself was excellent.

Bee Killing Assholes Should Be Stomped

2010-07-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

An otherwise lovely evening at the Hayes Valley Farm movie night was marred by an act of profound shittiness. Some subhuman clown sprayed Raid all over the farm's two beehives, completely exterminating both colonies.

Both colonies were European in origin and really quite docile. Since the farm has been in operation, only two people have reported being stung, and both were basically working right on top of the hives.

The bees were key to the open pollination of most of the crops and without them, an estimated 1/3 of the plants will not produce. Imagine if this had been done to a farm that relies on crops for money. Such a loss, brought about by one can of insecticide, would basically cause a financial loss so devestating that it would be difficult to recover from (farms operate under notoriously tight margins).

Never underestimate the power of one asshole bent on fucking it up for the rest of us.

People who were gathered for the film asked why, but there really is no answer. Perhaps one of the neighboring condo dwellers is allergic and panicked when they saw a bumblebee flying past, looked down and saw the source of all their fears. Maybe a developing serial killer is just warming up for those tranny hookers he plans on poisoning because Jeebus told him to. It's likely no one will ever really know unless there is a recurrance.

The workers at the farm were still in shock. To a Permaculture operation like the Hayes Valley Farm, such a loss is closest to the amputation of a limb or failure of an internal organ.

It really is quite shocking how much vandelism hard working agrarianists have to put up with. Soul Food Farms was victim to arson less than two years ago. They survived, but only through a remarkable outpouring of communnity effort. It's bad enough there's predatory banks and duplicitous businessmen and Genetically Modified Ogres actively trying to kill small farming. Now you have the ignorance of San Francisco dip shits (often identified by their head to toe Giants regalia) to deal with. Christ, it's a wonder anyone farms.

Green Advertising Concepts

2010-07-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

My stack of copywriting books has expanded quite a bit. I've got most of the big name how-to books, but also quite a few less obvious picks of my own choosing. George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant is geared towards political argumentation and framing, but for the type of work I do, it's been a worthwhile read.

When you're coming up with an ad, stating a benefit is key. Anyone who's been in advertising for more than twenty seconds knows this and it's pretty basic (so basic it appears in every single first chapter of every book I have on the subject). The tricky part is picking a benefit that's gong to matter.

To the eco-fanatical, sustainable features of products like solar power use, recycled materials, and fair wages are benefits. To the rest of the world, they are not. This doesn't mean that consumers don't care if some radioactive mouth breathers are pouring nuclear waste all over their grapes. It just means they're either conscious enough to expect it to be like that or uneducated. The former is an easier advertising problem to address than the latter.

For example, choosing between two equally Green toothpastes comes down to classic benefits; makes your breath nicer, whitens your teeth better. Green product to Green product marketing is largely narrative. Do you want the hand made peanut butter from farmer Joe down the road or the all organic peanut butter from the sustainable wind farm powered operation over in Pescadero? My job in these situations is to build a sense of connection to the producers. The "know your farmer" locavore rap is basically a clever marketing tool. Sure, it's based on ideals, but so is the idea of having a nice car or a pretty smile. Green Dream, American Dream.

The uneducated masses, largely huddled together sipping moonshine and fucking their relatives, is an entirely different animal. Sustainability is a complex set of interrelated issues that are nearly impossible to reduce to selling points without time and community effort. There are some terms that people are now just beginning to get their heads around as benefits: grass fed, cage free, pesticide free, rBST free, organic.

It's taken a long time, but this education is finally taking hold. The bummer is that the giant assholes producing all the disease inducing shit basically snatch these up after they've been incubating for a while. Example: Wal-Mart is now the largest global supplier of organic foods. Remember all those BP adds with the windmills?

Now the debate over whether or not Wal-Mart's role is good or not has been going on for years. There's probably at least twenty books on the subject. The idea is to reduce harm. Assuming the products being sold are actually what they claim to be, there isn't a problem. The Sith Lords of Marketing are very good at what they do and have managed to fool most consumers. This is a problem.

No matter if you work for a more or less benign company like I do or a massive death producing one (like Harris Ranch) you have to get around the extremely short attention span of consumers. There are very few tools that work on the uninitiated consumer.

Companies more than fifty years old were able to do and say whatever the fuck they wanted in the Golden Age of Advertising. Cigarettes were good for you. Coca-Cola was better than water. Factory Pork was the other white meat. During that unrestricted time they were able to cement all of these concepts into the consumer brain. Sustainable companies are relatively new and are extremely regulated.

Corn fed beef tastes great! Until it rots your ass with tumors.

My dream ad for an organic producer is this: You think this food's expensive How much does cancer cost?

or this:

Non-organic food will kill you dead and make your babies have small dicks.

So what's the answer? Re frame traditionally Green benefits and marry them to conservative ideals. Lakoff believes that the root of Conservative and Liberal differences has to do with the basic way each camp perceives family values. As long as Green issues don't relate to this, they will not be easily passed on and it'll be very difficult for me to sell organic bananas to NASCAR fans.

Conservation needs to be re framed as a value. Waste needs to be equated with sin and decadence. Imagine the power of just one major Mega Church preacher

I could go on and on, but I've got some more ads to write.

Is Alien the New Zombie?

2010-07-01T21:01:00.001-07:00

Steven Spielberg, a man addicted to aliens, has decided to throw his hat into the post-apocalypse ring. His newest offering is called Falling Skies. Word on the street? It will deal with a college professor leading a band of survivors against an alien horde.

Over and over again I've seen the messianic protagonist of an end of the world story ends up being a professor. Usually one can infer the author's attitude to the learned from how capable this figure is. In Earth Abides, the professor is well meaning, but ultimately ineffectual. Jack London, the quintessential self educated enemy of the University system, has no love for his pitiful professorial protagonist.

I'm not sure if I would follow any of my old professors into battle. I am fond of them all, though (even the boring ones).

Ultimately I would probably do the same were I to pen my own Doomsterpiece. How trendy would an agro-biology professor with a love of permaculture farming and archery be? I imagine Robin Hood mixed with a dash of Sean Connery, a pinch of Indiana Jones, and the teacher from Dead Poet's Society. His enemy would be a rogue futurist with maniacal schemes.

Farmpunk needs it's own Neuromancer if it's going to get off the ground anytime soon. The experts always say that you should write the book you've always wanted to read.

Not Quite a Typewriter

2010-06-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

Recycling Fucking Kills Terrorists

2010-06-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Let's get real here. Al Gore is boring. Leo Dicapprio is too rich to connect with anyone making minimum wage. We're completely incapable as a culture of recognizing Ingrid Newkirk as anything but the batshit crazy person she is. The big names and faces of environmentalism are, in my opinion, doing more harm than good.

Shit is desperate and getting worse from an ecological perspective, but no one's buying what the eco-crowd is selling because it just isn't cool. It isn't Dale Earnhart drove a car till he died monster truck elite strike force cool. If you don't get this, then pull your head out of that fixed gear bicycling against oil wars ass of yours. Environmentalism seems like it's for whining losers and America likes winners.

Space was cool. Everyone in America was stoked on the space race. Kids wanted to be astronauts. Scientists made rad shit all the time. Other countries were actually envious of American achievements at this time. The space race was an all or nothing, badass American project. We got Star Wars out of the space race. Notice, it's called Star Wars, not Star Peaceful Protest. Luke Skywalker, a hero farmer (more on this later), blew up the God damned Death Star. He didn't lay down in front of it or throw paint on it or boycott it, he kicked its big round ass.

Why isn't there a Green race? Why isn't there a Green War? Why isn't there a knockdown drag out nationalist battlefield over developing new power? Third world dickhole countries are tripping over their curled genie shoes in an attempt to develop nuclear power. Don't they know that shit is so forty years ago?

The obvious answer here is that nuclear power is easy to weaponize. Any small dick dictator could have himself a new toy if his scientists manage to smash some atoms. Solar power isn't a sexy weapon.

It's a failure of marketing that keeps wind and solar down. The closest thing to a convincing alt-energy campaign I've seen is T. Boone Pickens' commercials for clean gas. Now, that old coot is obviously jockeying for position and has money on the line, but he's got a farmer talking about clean energy being good for American jobs. That sells.

Good start. Americans love good, honest hardworking dudes, but what they really love is fucking up countries full of brown people. If alternative energy wants to move forward its advocates need to start talking about it as if it is a weapon. Here's the line: domestic alternative fuel sources provide a low cost, high effect means of destabilizing the incomes of potentially dangerous oil producing nations. Build a solar panel, fuck up an Arab. It's something even those shit kicking assholes "protecting" the border could get behind.

The military is actually one of the few globally reaching American institutions seriously considering alternative energy sources. Transporting fuel for generators and vehicles has always been a logistical challenge for large military forces and the viability of self fueling base camps using solar and wind sources is being explored right now. The Marines will probably have a .50 machine gun toting solar humvee before we civilians see a truck that gets 50 miles to a gallon. Good for them.

Food production is another major point where environmentalists could stand to get a little more red state. Over in England they've got a pretty heavy advocate for sustainable farming in their Prince of Wales. The old folks with the votes seem to like this geezer and he's been able to do quite a bit for the movement. Imagine how powerful a voice for organic farming someone like Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or even Sarah Palin could be.

I don't think it would take much more than getting someone like that to just walk around a sustainable farm (and maybe a little grease for the palm) to have them on board. I mean, Palin can stand in front of a Wal-Mart and get all teary eyed about "Real America", imagine mobilizing that emotion for the realest of Americans: Jeffersonian Agrarianists.

Speaking of real, I think it's time we take a page from Frank Luntz and rename sustainable farming. From now on let's call it Real Farming or Classic American Farming. Real Americans love Real farming. Perfect for a t-shirt.

Mobilizing militarized, nationalistic language for farming was used very successfully by the Nazis in the buildup to WWII. There are all these cool heroic farmer posters that were made by the Reich's propaganda department. This appeal to traditional Germanic pastoralism was very effective in defining what it meant to be a real German.

People are always going on about the Nazi propaganda relating to the military machine, but if you watch a movie like "Triumph of the Will" you'll see large crowds of farmers and workers marching triumphantly alongside tanks and soldiers. Those Krauts were no dummies.

Now how does a person start this shit? Conversation. For instance, next time one of your hillbilly/ghetto family members starts talking about a bunch of dumb anti-environmental shit ask them if their interested in kicking the shit out of terrorists. They'll say something like "hell yeah!" or "most definitely!". Then you say, "solar power allows America to destabilize terrorist economies which will keep those rag heads in the stone age."

See? It's like judo.

Copywriting Book Review, June Edition

2010-06-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

As I'm essentially a self taught copywriter and don't really know anyone else in the industry (other than my coworkers) I've turned to book learnin' to figure some shit out right quick. Some of what I've read is immediately useful, some not so much. Here are some thoughts:

Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy is on everybody's list. It's the first ad book I read and I'll probably purchase it after I return my copy to the library. It's old school, for sure. Criticisms of it being "dated" really miss the essential message of this book which is less about technique and more about how to conduct yourself as a professional and where to put your energy. Copywriters need to be more focused on selling products, not showing off how slick and smart they are. You could probably stick to Ogilvy's ethos and perform well as a work horse copywriter for years.

Buyology by Martin Lindstrom is one of those hot books business professionals pretend to read on airplanes (like Blink or Tipping Point). I'm convinced that putting out these books are simply a way for these authors to justify charging thousands of dollars for worthless seminars. Let me save you some time and sum this turd up:

1. Very wealthy companies are hooking people up to brain scanning equipment to test their reactions to marketing. This creates the word "neuromarketing".
2. More companies will probably do this as cost of such research dips or it proves to be freakishly effective.
3. What was discovered? People don't trust celebrities, sex doesn't really sell unless it creates controversy. People like to see everyday joes and janes pitching products. There really was no need to hook anybody up to anything to make those observations.

I wish there was a way to sue an author for time wasted.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriting is certainly accurately titled. With such advice as "keep up on current topics" and "make sure you know your grammar" this book is probably the least useful Idiots/Dummies guide I've ever read (the chess one I read was actually very helpful as was the HTML one). Most of the book is made up of long lists of optional words for various topics. You could really dispense with all of this if you own a thesaurus and have a little common sense. The money saved by not buying this surprisingly high rated book makes owning a library card worthwhile if I were to never check out a book again.

Direct Mail Copy That Sells by Herschell Gordon Lewis I borrowed from a friend and is another one I'll be purchasing for reference. Lewis has an engaging style (he better) and provides excellent examples of what to do and not to do to sell product. Like Ogilvy's book, this one is accused of being dated. Ultramedia Twitter-tards may reject this book, but the psychology and style advice Lewis gives is timeless. I've noticed a trend where reviewers accuse ad books that focus on sales to be too old fashioned and those that focus on viral marketing to be cutting edge. We're still selling things aren't we?

I've got tons more of these books on an ever expanding list.

Before my first day I was super paranoid about not understanding what software I'd need to know how to operate. So far, Word, Outlook, Excel, Acrobat Pro are about all that's necessary. Down the road I'd like to brush up on Powerpoint so I can use it if I'm ever at an agency where pitching is necessary. I'm shelving any and all HTML study for the time being.

Might Makes Copy Right. Pt.1

2010-06-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

After years of down time in the cursed (say it with me like a preacher, kur-said) bar industry I have managed to land a pretty decent job that doesn't involve pouring intoxicants into glassware.

I'm now employed as a copywriter. To be specific, I am the regional copywriter for Whole Foods Market Northern California region. Not bad. I've got a business card with my name on it and everything.

How did I manage this transition to a good job in a career with no experience? I have a natural talent for short writing, a relatively applicable degree from UC Berkeley in Rhetoric and a very strong knowledge of sustainable businesses, farming, nutritional trends and other Green related trivia.

The best part of my job involves research and condensing of the facts acquired through such effort into persuasive brain infiltrating bullets. This is the bare-knuckle rhetoric Aristotle wrote about. To a certain extent I'm insulated from really nasty moral dilemmas by the Core Values of my company, so I'm not sure how the whole Classical Rhetoric thing will play out here.

One of the longer running themes of this blog has been the existential horror of bartending. I hope that it's amusing to some of my friends even if it is a downer most of the time. I'm still bartending at least two nights a week, so don't expect an end to the posts and observations of people at their worst. I've noticed that with a real deal vocation (writing something, anything for a living has always been my dream) the nightly tragicomedy of being employed at a nightclub has shifted itself from a soul crushing result of decades of sloth and rage to an interesting, slightly enjoyable spectacle.

I now truly couldn't give a fuck about anything bar related. This isn't going to manifest as poor performance as much as you would think. I'm just less emotionally invested in the outcome of a poor night or a particularly rude douche-mangina.

From time to time I'll be adding some thoughts on advertising as a career, specifically copywriting. I had no idea how to get into this field or even what to do if I got hired. So I'm learning as I go.

I'm very stoked to not have had to go to some corny advertising school. The few people in the industry I e-mailed about them all seemed to be unsure if they even knew anyone working that had attended one. This has the familiar scam stench of an educational con; very much like bartending school.

So, I'm going to write a little about copywriting from a Martin Eden style, up from my own bootstraps angle. Don't count on any info about my Top Secret Whole Foods Projects, though. This is going to be strictly theory.

Oh, and book reports. Lots of book reports.

Your Hairstyle is a Marketing Gimmick

2010-06-20T22:53:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine makes the kind of art I don’t like; art well below his abilities and designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Tasteless, drug culture clownery. Head shop art, straight to t-shirts. His best seller is a shirt with an American flag made out of cocaine lines and a razor. It makes him a decent income.

The reason I don’t like it has nothing to do with valid art criticism. I don’t fault him for composition or color choice or any of the hundred things a thoughtful, knowledgeable person might bring up in a constructive peer review.

The deal is I’m not supportive of his narrative, but for entirely personal reasons. To me, the rock n roll lifestyle (drugs, cynicism and the celebration and elevation of mediocrity just for the sake of its contrast to high culture/success) has run its course and caused too many generations to embrace death rather than life. How many artists and musicians and writers could have written the sickest books, the best songs, and most revolutionary paintings? A sorrowful trend has emerged where artists, musicians and writers run their talent into the ground pursuing a myth; get high, get creative.

It always has and always will be a lie.

The fantastic drama of William S. Burroughs lying around a Tangiers hotel, banging typewriter keys to the rhythm of smack induced fission jazz fantasies or Jim Morrison channeling the poetry of subtle and dangerous old gods through bacchanalian excess is a lie. What little Burroughs managed to write high received a considerable amount of editing from friends. Jim Morrison was never as good as Oliver Stone made him out to be.

I am not against drugs (of which I include without reservation, tobacco and alcohol). The desire to use mind altering substance is about as natural as a bear’s desire to scratch its back on a tree. It feels good, that’s why people do it. But that is all people. Drugs can, at best, function as a kind of mini-vacation chance to step outside of oneself, if only for a few hours.

An acquaintance of my artist friend had this criticism: I find your work to be vapidly bourgeoisie. Texting those words, that specific charge, is about as vapidly bourgeoisie as it gets. It’s the sad, Freshman Marxism class version of calling someone a poser. To be young, in a major American city and able to discuss art is a benefit of actually belonging to a bourgeoisie class. Enjoy it.

I’ve been guilty of criminal foot dragging and artery crushing complacency for a long time now. I am born again, hard. I am a werewolf. I am here to smash everything I ever was and polish everything I wanted to be.

This is what a long climb looks like.

I want to stop that commercial with the hamsters singing that Black Sheep song.

Shanghai

2010-06-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

I'm going to war with all the phonies, the quitters, the suckers, and the clowns. Not just the ravaging mutant hordes that skip and puke down the road, but the echoed voice of mediocrity that howls in my ear all damn night long. The whine of a busted ear drum can't even drown that rotten scoundrel out. My perfect self gets up with the sun. Bangs out a good set. Writes a thousand words with a cup of black coffee before my wife stirs, the dog rises for its morning meat. I am not my perfect self.

A Guide to Tipping Out Barbacks.

2010-06-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

In order for a bartender to truly maximize earning potential, as much attention as possible must be paid to those drunk, slobbering hordes of fools we know as customers. Every moment you are unable to entertain hopeless dead behind the eyes singles or appear concerned about the empty glass of swill edged closer to you, demanding to be filled, will reduce your tips, and reduce your livelihood.

An entry level position into this dark and useless career path is barback. The barback is the backbone of the bar industry. A good one makes your job easier. A good barback will make it so all you have to do is take and fill orders and operate the register. A good barback knows everything you need and is ready to fill a request before you even ask. The ice will always be filled, glasses will always be stocked, you will never run out of limes if you have a great barback.

A bad barback is a fucking curse.

You will lose money taking the time to repeatedly ask for things you need. If your needs are not met, you will move slower. The customer doesn't know anything about the barback. All they know is you, the bartender, were unable to give them what they wanted, when they wanted it. All they know is that you stood there without a bottle of Patron for three minutes. They don't know that your useless barback forgot to stock it earlier and had to go through three locked doors to get another. This will decrease your cash flow considerably.

The worst barbacks, without exception, are friends of the owners. The owners believe they will be able to train up a good and loyal friend to handle the bar. This person has often been a friend since childhood and seems trustworthy. When a friend of the owner is hired, it means that you, the bartender, will have to supplement the income of an extremely lazy person that doesn't believe they can be fired and feels entitled to drink as much as they want to. A personal friend of the owner is almost always non-trainable. The only thing worse than a friend of an owner is a girlfriend of an owner.

The industry standard for tipping out barbacks is 20% of the total tips from every bartender the barback supports. For example, if I make 100 dollars, the barback gets twenty. If the combined tips of three bartenders is 500 dollars and the barback was responsible for all their wells, that barback will make 100 dollars.

Barbacking is hard work, arguably as difficult as bartending some nights, but the barback doesn't usually deserve one penny more than twenty percent. They are generating no money, they aren't required to know much and they don't interact with customers (unless they are attention seeking idiots).

Two things to keep in mind:

1. Barbacking is essentially an apprenticeship. Not many professions allow for an on the job learning experience where you can also make decent money. As a barback, you should be paying attention so on that glorious day when a bartender doesn't show up (jail, death, hangover), you can step in and say "I've got this".

2. It's about the only type of job where the owner of a business requires an employee to pay the wage of another employee. There are, of course, similar dynamics in other service industry professions (waiter/busser), but where else does a person with seniority have to give money to a person in training?

I think, given all of the above, the automatic 20% tip out needs to be reexamined. What do you do if your barback sucks? What if he's excellent and you can't do without him, but he's becoming disillusioned because no one has left for three years and he's still a lowly barback?

I offer the following guide to adjusting the tip out. It is performance based and rewards initiative, while punishing sloth.

Begin your calculation with the standard twenty percent tip out then add or subtract based on the following:

Penalties

1. Every time your barback bumps into you, subtract 1 dollar.
2. Every time your ice scoop hits the bottom of the ice sink, subtract 1 dollar.
3. Every time your hand reaches for a garnish and comes up empty, subtract 1 dollar.
4. Whenever the words "I don't have time" are spoken, subtract 5 dollars.
5. If you have to ask for beer to be stocked twice, subtract 5 dollars.
6. If you run out of glass ware, subtract a dollar.
7. If the barback farts near you and leaves, subtract 10 dollars.
8. If the barback disappears to smoke and you run out of something, double the penalty if applicable and subtract 1 more dollar
9. If you run out of a liqour that is actually in stock, subtract 1 dollar.
10. Leaving without wiping down the bar is an automatic 20 penalty carried over to the next shift.
11. Being obviously under the influence of drugs results in a 5 dollar penalty or confiscation of some or all of the substance in question (bartender's choice).
12. Performing any flair moves is an automatic 30 dollar penalty.
13. If the barback pours drinks without being instructed to, subtract 25 dollars and possibly inform him that it's time to "kick rocks".
14. If the barback is out of uniform, ridicule him, and then take off 4 dollars.

Rewards

1. If the barback manages to fill your ice without getting any cubes in the well, add a dollar.
2. If the barback manages to win a fistfight, add 10 dollars.
3. If the barback puts a bottle in your hand just as the one you are using runs out, add 2 dollars.
4. If you don't have to toss any questionable citrus, add 3 dollars.
5. If a keg is changed fast enough to allow the customer to still get the beer they wanted in under a minute, plus 2 dollars.
6. Performing all bartender specific closing duties is a 10 dollar reward (must ask first).
7. Nailing a cocktail waitress is a 5 dollar bonus, double if accomplished by female barback.
8. Every cigarette bummed off of a barback costs 1 dollar.
9. If drugs are found, and turned over to head bartender, estimate 10% of street value, and add that dollar amount.
10. If five or more kegs are changed, plus 5 dollars.
11. If the ice needs to be replaced because you broke a glass, add 10 dollars, unless the barback performs task known as "burning the ice" in a colossally inefficient manner, in which case this becomes a 5 dollar penalty.
12. Going to the store for personal items benefiting the staff as a whole (cigarettes, condoms, earplugs) add 2 dollars plus money necessary for purchase of the barback's own supply of whatever was purchased.

This is really just a starting point, but you get the idea.

Routine

2010-06-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

Awake. Roll out of bed. Drink terrible coffee made by the wife (Hazelnut, is there anything worse?). Lounge about. Read news. Shake off general sense of dread caused by news. Drink more bad coffee. Shower. Skip Shaving. Brush teeth. Dress. Throw slept in clothes in laundry bag. Take dog outside. Yell at dog as dog tries to eat neighbor dog's poop. Yell at dog as dog tries to eat snail. Herd dog inside. Take dog on walk. Leave dog at groomers. Walk to library. Get sidetracked from library and buy pizza. Listen to high school aged kids talk. Clash version of "I Fought the Law" comes on. High school student says "I wonder who's doing the cover of this Green Day song?". Pay waitress. Leave too big of a tip. Give homeless woman extra slice of nasty pizza. Walk to library. Check out three books on advertising. Walk home. Try to motivate for laundry chore. Fail. Sit at computer. Type.

Nerds With Swords Fight Mongol Hordes

2010-05-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

After a serendipitous meeting with old friend and owner of the magazine I work for now, John McCoy, I found myself stuck in sluggish horn heavy traffic near 3rd St. The radio traffic report warned that cars would have to contend with the blockade created for the President's motorcade.

Hundreds of people were lined up and down the street, cameras and phones ready, to catch a glimpse of the Prez. Motorcycle cops (always the biggest dick heads on the force) blocked the road as far as could be seen. The motorcade passed at freeway speeds. It was hard to tell which vehicle Obama was in, but the sheer volume of radio antennae bearing cars loaded with rifle carrying stormtroopers was certainly impressive.

The event driving me from home on an afternoon of pissing rain was the SF App Show. It's a meet and greet handshake and business card exchange event with an open mic of sorts where app designers present their new gadgetry. As with most niche group affairs, the crowd watching provides the best entertainment.

The most eager to meet and swap skin and cardboard are, of course, the Indians. There were dudes hanging around, full of smiles, who had taken huge risks vacationing in SF, spending life savings, for a chance to meet possible employers and contacts.

Whenever the America first pussies get all up in arms about Indians "stealing tech jobs" they need to recognize that no soft palmed American dork with a laptop would be as willing to risk as much as these men and women to simply work someplace. Sure, Indian men might be the worst tipping and most socially awkward bar clientele these days, but they've got balls and humor, and that goes a long way.

To be fair, it must also be noted that Indian women are actually a pleasure to serve. They know what they want, They know what their friends want, have their money ready, and are pretty decent tippers. Basically that's everything a bartender could ask for.

On a personal note, I was quite pleased with my own recent fortunes. When asked what I did for a living I didn't have to say "bartend". I can now say I am in advertising and I am a contributing editor at an arts magazine. Next step for me is business cards. I received a pocket full of them, but had nothing to give out even though I was approached for advertising opportunities. Fake it to make it, folks.

The thing I was most interested to see at this event was the release of Neal Stephenson's (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age) new project, The Mongoliad.

As a person who likes to think about remediation and post textual narrative forms, the promise of one of the Cyberpunk genre's biggest names putting his stamp on something so different was alluring. Unfortunately, the six minutes allowed for each presenter wasn't enough to really get what the whole thing was about.

As far as I could tell the Mongoliad is some sort of LARP-tastic sword fighting dorkery for people that grew up watching Highlander and now have tech jobs. The setting is 1241, in the European Dark Ages. Mongol hordes threaten the ancient sword bearing crackers and must be defeated, or something.

I can imagine all sorts of classic New Media narrative Vs. ludology problems faced by this project. How do people follow the story? Are people playing a game? Why wouldn't someone just read a fantasy book or play World of Warcraft? The former has maximum story, the latter maximum agency.

It's probably unfair of me to be so critical of this project since so little is known about it, but the screen shots of the app didn't look promising. Graphically I was reminded of Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering card game. It probably doesn't help that the app's icon looks so similar to the "M" from Magic.

The Mongoliad is supposed to be a serial narrative that allows for the expansion of the story's canon by users. Online serial novels have traditionally been major failures (Stephen King's attempt was probably the best known, biggest flop). Sure, some writers might have minor followings online, but I doubt anyone is making money.

Including user input seems like a quality control nightmare. Star Trek has a pretty large amount of fan fiction that spans several media types, yet still maintains a near flawless continuity. I think the reason for this is that so much of the universe of Trek was formed before viewers could answer back online. There was like thirty years of Gene Rodenberry force feeding stories to eager nerds before home developers really even had the technology to bootleg their own adventures (Hustler's Star Trek parody is a notable exception, though not really generated by a home user).

The Mongoliad story is at a distinct disadvantage as far as its ability to rely on the sanctity of a storyline in the minds of fans. Imagine this, what happens when a user's side story becomes more interesting or cleverly produced than something even Neal Stephenson wrote? Both narratives basically appear at the same time so there is no seniority and the interface is designed to respond to viewer/reader input.

The Subutai Coroporation (creators of the app) seem like cool people so maybe they are free wheeling enough to enjoy the chaos of a runaway storyline. If they aren't, then they either have to always produce the best content in the universe, a noble goal, or they have to crush dissidents, a terrible goal.

I really have high hopes for this project, not because I think it will be a real success, but because each attempt at the creation of a new narrative format forces a lot of thought and creativity. I predict this project, if it is successful, will probably devolve into either a more traditional webseries, a novel, or a multi-player game. Hopefully it's evolutionary desires will produce at least something.

The Times They are Arranging

2010-05-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

To look at the news, to read the environmental blogs, or to go to a nightclub can throw even the most hardened bastard into a fit of despair. It seems like people have moved beyond ineffectual indecision right into a radical despondency so thick and brutal that only the most new age of millionaires can resist the urge to dive head first off a bridge while firing round after round of hollow points into the crowds of people clamoring to watch the spectacle. At this place in history it is all too normal to expect death and destruction.

This could very well be the age of Kali, goddess of death.

I am not a millionaire, but I am, despite a very strong understanding and sympathetic tendency towards atheism, a true new ager. I just can't help it. I don't believe in magick in the corny crystal worshiping context, but I do believe in a reptile level subhuman ability to cause change in conformity with will. Simply arranging thoughts towards a goal manifests all sorts of possibilities.

I am a True Believer in the ability to shift thoughts and effect change. The trick is you can't be nice. You can't be accommodating. You have to form your vision in your head and crush all those that oppose it. Trying to worry about karmic backlash, social deviancy, critics, and what people might say is for fools and weaklings.

The Secret is to be a dick, know what you want.

P.S. astrology is still bullshit and yoga is just stretching.

Blah, Blah, Nighclubs Suck, Blah.

2010-05-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

A slow night is like going on a date with a Catholic Phillipino girl expecting to get laid. There’s anticipation a plenty, but in the end you will go home frustrated and slightly annoyed with yourself for having invested the time in such a fruitless pursuit.

To head out to work after dark, a proper mindset must be established. Preparation for skullduggery requires the willingness to wallow in the underbelly, a sense of adventure. To maintain sanity, one must believe that in the veiled evening streets there exists the possibility of magic and derangement. There’s always profit to be made when people have enough coin to disperse reality for a while. The bartender is often in an excellent position to collect.

The promise of profit is often broken.

When I tell the average cubicle dweller or mutant business major I bartend for a living they always have the same thing to say: “that’s a great job, you can always bartend because people always want to drink”.

True that, but they don’t always want to tip and if you aren’t the owner of a bar that is all that matters. The tip is everything. The subhuman wage servers are provided isn’t enough to make the ends meet without that little lagniappe.

Working at a regular bar, one with a local clientele, is always preferable to working at a nightclub. A regular bar allows you as a bartender to cultivate a steady base of customers and put your own stamp on the place. People come there because of you and the regularity of the place. The local watering hole is a safe port in a storm.

Clubs are increasingly at the mercy of out of house promoters and their ilk. Most of them would be as empty as mausoleums if the doors were just opened without some greasy promoters taint present. You would assume that a person in my position would be more thankful for the effort of these night creatures, but I’m not. As a whole, promoters are scabby humans that want to be compensated simply for throwing parties. Not that there’s anything wrong with that exactly, but the torturous display of ego when these clowns are present is, at best, distasteful.

Promoting exemplifies the “boom and bust” model of business that’s basically running the fucking country into the ground. Parties are hot or not and the working class industry worker suffers at the hands of fickle audiences.

This could just be sour grapes. The only night I ever promoted was an epic failure. It’s fucking hard work and doing it right is a skill. Unfortunately most of the doucheoise endeavoring to promote don’t expect it to be. They just think being cool is enough.

Promoters are one of the many reasons I would advise anyone thinking about investing in a liquor selling business to stay away from nightclubs. Very rarely can a place rise above trends and maintain longevity and profitability.

Corner bars have a lot more staying power. A place like the Homestead is a perfect example of what a neighborhood bar can be. No matter what is going on, people are going to drink at and enjoy a beautiful bar with warm lighting and no cover. You’ll get to know your regulars and they’ll be loyal. You’ll never have to hear someone tell you how big the guest list is and how they packed Mission Rock three years ago. Keep that hip-hop off the jukebox and you’ll probably never have any real problems.

A neighborhood bar might not be as sexy as a nightclub, but it’ll last. It’s a slow dime not a fast nickel.

In a city like San Francisco (or really any place that is worth living) real estate is expensive and the square footage needed for a massive club commands a brutal price. Unless your pockets are very, very deep to own a nightclub requires a group of owners and an army of investors. There is an old Islamic saying, “if having partners was a good idea, then God would have had one.” So there you are with four or five other folks, some with family money, some with every single penny they could scrape together from serving retards trying to figure out how to make money.

There’s another saying, “too many chiefs, not enough Indians”.

Investors are another matter. They’ll want to drink for free, cut the line with crowds of deviants, and then tell the staff that “they own the place”. The previous incarnation of the club I work at was plagued with clowns that put in like $500 fifteen years ago. Making a bad investment does not make you a VIP.

The best case scenario for a bar is that you and at most two other bartenders you’ve worked with for at least a few years have enough money to put down for a turnkey operation.

Buying a bar is kind of like buying classic cars. You want something an old man owned, but doesn’t know the value of. Like cars though, the internets has fucked everything up. There are really no deals left out there.

For example, the bar The Ha-Ra is owned by a dreadful old codger. He has my deepest respects. His hostility to the young and anyone foolish enough to wear low riding pants into his joint is legendary. The experience of drinking here is sort of like having Clint Eastwood’s character from Grand Torino make you drinks.

He’s not down to sell. Back when I thought I wanted to own a bar, had more than 50 bucks to may name, and partners I trusted I wanted this spot. We went into his bar and scoped it out like big time surveyors looking for a place to put a new Wal-mart. Honestly, I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was and had we bought the bar it would have probably ended up as an exercise in reverse gentrifying. I only pray that the ultra-lounge craze is over before he kicks off. Or at the very least his spirit is angry enough to haunt the place.

If you’re a hard working bartender with dreams of owning a spot stay the fuck away from nightclubs.

Sports bars are another safe bet. When I’ve gone on trips sponsored by my wife’s job (she deals with bar owners) the people who have the most scratch are sports bar owners. Park one of those things in the burbs and it’s just like having a license to print money. You’ll have a little Asian kid screaming “fifty dolla bill! Fifty dolla Bill!” like you’r e the fucking Fratelli’s from Goonies.

Are You a Real Bartender?

2010-05-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Days ago I had a conversation with a fellow nightclub bartender about a person that exemplifies exactly what is wrong with the culture of so called mixologists. The subject of the conversation is a kind of bartender (basically a waiter with a drink menu under his belt notable for obscure ingredients). He doesn’t feel the same about those of us in the nightclub world. To him, bartending is perfect, obscure, well crafted cocktails. To him, if you work in a nightclub, you aren't really a bartender, at least not as much as he is.

Speed, crowd control, accuracy, and longevity just aren’t as important to this person as say, a grated piece of clove atop an egg-white froth.

If you give up your time to pour drinks for people that hand you money, and you support yourself through the tips and wages received for this service, you are a bartender. That’s it. Real bartending is about little more than that. Some people are better than others, that’s all.

To be a successful nightclub bartender you need to be fast and calm (or able to throw down with serious violence). You have to not get too fucked up and you need to be able to manage a crowd. I am a very successful nightclub bartender. For over a decade I have supported myself through bar work. I have shown up on time (mostly), made money for the club and myself, and done it over and over, weekend after weekend. For someone to say that this is not bartending, that ringing over five grand in three hours is not bartending, is insulting.

Allow me to return the favor.

I’ll be generous and call this person a bartender, a real bartender. My guess is that this douche bag thinks his knowledge of cocktails and liquor alone qualifies him for this title. He is wrong. Knowledge of liquor doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think. Every single brand, no matter how lowly (I’m looking at you Taaka) has a sales rep and a website dedicated to spreading the special narrative of why it is good/valuable/cool. Write down all the brands in your bar, go home, spend a few hours with the internet and you will know nearly as much if not more than 99% of the clowns calling themselves mixologists. Did you know that Maker’s Mark doesn’t use any genetically modified corn? Yeah, pretty cool. Finding this out took about twelve seconds. There are literally thousands of other little tidbits of info that will make you seem smart. Being smart and looking smart are not the same.

Even the crafting of interesting cocktails doesn’t qualify you as a bartender. GQ magazine has a really good long running page about drinking and in most issues there are instructions on how to make an excellent cocktail. If you memorized twenty of these recipes along with the hundreds of other fast shooters and whatnot the Proles order you’d be doing well for yourself.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking recipes are everything.

There was this Civil War movie called Glory that came out a few years back. It starred Denzel Washington and Matthew Borderick. The story involved the training of an all African-American Union regiment. It’s worth watching. The scene that I always remember is this one: a soldier turns out to be a crack shot. He can hit bottles further away and more consistently than any other enlisted man. He’s pretty stoked on himself until Matthew Broderick comes along and tells him to do it faster. Broderick starts firing a revolver next to his head, all the while screaming, “do it faster, the enemy are moving and shooting back. Reload faster!” All of a sudden this crack shot falls apart and can barely load his musket. From what I’ve seen, most mixologists are like this soldier. They can hit a target pretty well as long as there isn’t a crowd screaming at them. There are probably exceptions to this statement. Sure, there are outliers, but not every Marine is Chesty Puller, either.

What I’m getting at here is that bartending is a job that you do. Mixology is a hobby that can enhance your abilities to bartend. Proficiency in the latter is not enough to claim the former.

If you want to put on a corny fedora, roll up your sleeves and make a fancy pants cocktail for a competition, go for it. You can do the same for friends at parties, let your freak flag fly. Just never make the mistake of thinking that your knowledge of egg white cocktails matters. If people really gave a shit about that, there would be an egg white sales rep and there would be egg white companies throwing egg white happy hours. The fact that none of that happens should clue you in to how irrelevant egg-whites are.

All of the winners of the cocktail competitions know that their carefully crafted concoctions have a time and place. Do I think zesting tiny slivers of blood oranges over chocolate infused vodka is a bad thing? Of course not, but it doesn’t make you any more or less of a bartender than a single mother cracking cans of Red Dog for offshore oil rig workers at some forgotten bar in the 9th Ward.

Real bartenders make a living bartending. Posers make themselves feel better by claiming that they are somehow more real or accomplished because they can make a twelve step drink with two people sitting at the bar.

Heavy Hearted Horus

2010-04-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

A man and his granddaughter were pushing a large blue and gold box up a hill on Noe St. in the rain. Old wheels clattered on the asphalt. The box caught on a curb and the man, old and frail, the daughter, young and frail, were unable to lift it. Southern heritage and decency involved me and soon, with my help, the surprisingly heavy box was lifted and rolling again.

"Thank you, young man."
"It's no problem. That thing's a beast."
"Because it is full of songs, it is so hard to move."

The old man was pushing an organ grinder, built in Paris, inherited from a relative who saved it from German bombs. Or so he said.

The pagan part of my brain wants this man to be a spirit. A ghost of cobblestone roads wandering restless and disturbed, encumbered by a musical chest with all the world's best love songs.

Don't Bartend pt. 1

2010-04-17T03:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that computer spell checkers don't recognize the words bartend or bartending? I'm convinced there is a cultural conspiracy against bartending as a trade.

Example: In the film The Departed there is a scene where Alec Baldwin's character reacts to Marky Mark's character's resignation with the line "the world always needs more bartenders".

Example: That movie Marky Mark starred in about the bartender who makes it into the NFL is basically about how no one will escape bartending without a long shot miracle occurance. That's two for Marky Mark.

Example: The most well known bartending movie of all time, Cocktail, is also just about the worst movie of all time. There's a line in this piece of shit that goes something like "bartenders are the aristocracy of the working class". Bullshit.

There are basically three paths to becoming a bartender. You can start as a barback, you can start as a cocktail waitress, or you can fuck one of the owners. I've never been to bartending school so I can't speak to how well it might prepare you (it probably doesn't), but I can honestly say I don't know and have never met a single person that has a legitimate bar gig that came about through such an effort. Of course I don't hang out at The Olive Garden, so maybe that's where they all are.

Once you've made it into a bartending job there really isn't much more room for you to advance. Sure you can spend all your free time researching recipes and buying forty dollar essence bottles for various infusions, but that effort isn't really going to effect your bottom line too much. If you buy a queer looking fedora you might be able to go to some cocktail competitions.

It's pretty much a dollar a drink tip on average, no matter what you do. Anything you do to slow down the amount of drinks you can pour in the window of your shift is only going to hurt you, moneywise.

Even jugglers (they like to call themselves flair bartenders) don't really pull down any more money than a fast bartender at a nightclub unless they are working in a high profile Las Vegas superclub. In order to do that you need to be able to execute extremely complex routines that require high levels of hand eye coordination. If you've got two corny moves that you nail about half the time you need to start thinking about some other way to colorfully improve your act. Every single time you embarrass yourself by dropping the bottle negates 100 successful attempts. That is the rule.

I get juggling and mixology. Really. Some people just need to express themselves through work and either skill probably won't hurt you in the long run.

The absolute most important career skill a career bartender can have is money management. Assuming you start bartending around 21 like I did you've got about ten years to work in nightclubs before you start looking too old and want to wrap your lips around the barrel of a pistol. Trust me on this one.

A lot of you will do what I did. Blow all your money on booze, women, and motorcycles/cars. This is a lot of fun and I can tell a good story or two, but I am nowhere near the only viable advancement for people who choose to stay in the industry: bar ownership.

You need two things to open a bar. Money and some people willing to give you more money. The first you should acquire by saving your tips. If you put fifty bucks a weekend away for your 10 years of bartending you should have around 15-20K cash. It can be done. If you get out of the habit of eating out this is an easy one.

The second, people giving you money, is all about rep. Are you a known coke head? No money for you. Did the liqour costs at a club skyrocket after your poor managment of the joint? No money for you.

Let's recap so far. You can't simply bartend until you are old; you have to have an escape plan. That plan depends on two things: your own hard won nest egg and a reputation for not being a douchebag.

I totally failed to put away money and made no effort to manage a bar. Therefore, no bar for me. So I choose to escape bartending as a career. It's fucking hard to step away from the rail, but one day I will and in my absence some other poor shmuck will be lured to sleeping in and making fast cash. Save that money. You don't want to be that old guy polishing glasses at the seafood restaurant. That would suck.

Goblin as an Adjective

2010-04-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

This handsome fellow is a Goblin Shark. He's a weird looking bastard for sure, but not without a certain amount of grotesque charm. The snout and gaping goober jaw give this lethal beast a comically weird appearance.

If you're going to modify a noun with goblin, then whatever you're describing better be bizarre, primitive, unruly, interesting, ill-fitting, stubborn, secretive, and slightly dangerous.

Goblin as an adjective is something I feel responsible for in the context of sustainable/artisan food. "That dude is a goblin chef" or "girl, that recipe is straight goblin" are ways of expressing simultaneous disbelief and admiration at a type of cuisine that is driven not so much by tradition (as some peasant food revivalists would like to believe), but by an urge towards the strange.

Hunter S. Thompson is quoted as saying "it never got weird enough for me". Goblin cooking is an effort to answer that with a meal. Sure, three days of psychotropic spirit questing in the armpit of America's failed dream might not have been enough for the good doctor, but I wonder if he ever had a roasted pig's head stuffed with beef tongues?

So goblin cuisine, I salute you. Bring it. Make it weird. make it good.

Treme and fashion

2010-04-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

One particular wardrobe cue that Treme really gets right is the corny and disheveled look of the average white Rebirth Brass Band fan.

Steve Zahn's outfits are pitch perfect. No where else on earth can people truly claim to not give a fuck as much as the locals of New Orleans. To achieve this look all you need is an iconic Louisiana t-shirt (Saints, Tipitina's, Dixie Beer, etc.) with a short sleeve dress shirt from a job interview you went on in your senior year of high school draped over it. Pants can be shorts or some kind of old ass Levi's. Shoes may be busted sneakers or a really expensive pair of reptile skin shoes or boots.

I think the reason why people end up looking like this down there is a strong resilience to spending money on anything that isn't a consumable. If it ain't good to eat or fun to drink what good is it?

I've been living in a style capital for a long time and have tried to dress well, but I just can't do it. It's three in the afternoon and I'm wearing sweatpants, flip-flops, and glasses thick enough to cause a fiery holocaust on an ant hill. I dream of a life with tailored suits and silk underwear. If my wife came home now she'd probably divorce me on grounds of irreconcilable fashion.

Treme

2010-04-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

Baltimore may be a dynamic city rich with its own traditions, but for me, it only exists in The Wire. I’ve never met a soul from Baltimore and I’ve never once considered a vacation there. I don’t understand what it means to be from Baltimore; what kind of music people really listen to or what they like to eat. To me Baltimore is Omar and Bubs and McNultie and little hoppers. As far as I know, the water faucets pour Jameson and there are two restaurants: That River Trout Selling Corner Store and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

This is a type of injustice. To reduce a city to so narrow a view, narrower than any Frommer’s guide is objectionable to any resident.

If The Wire had been on trial for this fictional narrowness it would walk free. No one would ever convict it, because for all the reductions and limitations of the show it was an expansive and groundbreaking work of television fiction. It was an all too rare example of what television could be. It was visually dynamic. It was as epic as any Russian novel. It lifted the careers of actors that may never have had a chance otherwise (I’m looking at you Felicia “Snoop” Pearson). It was the best television drama of all time. The Wire is a model citizen. There weren’t even subtitles.

There are two things that are important to know about my initial opinion of Treme. The first, and less important, is that I’m incapable of thinking about it without also thinking about The Wire. For all my exposure to Critical Theory and Literary Criticism I’m still unconvinced that a work should be considered independent from its sister works by the same creators. I’m not alone.

The second, and more important, is that I’m from New Orleans. By that I mean specifically that I was raised in Metairie and lived for a while in the Lower Garden District. I’d argue that being from Metairie is basically being from New Orleans, but many would disagree. The difference isn’t so great as being from Oakland and claiming San Francisco, but it’s subtle and evident to any born and raised within Orleans Parish. Whether from Jefferson or Orleans Parish you’ll be familiar with a whole bunch of things represented in Treme that the casual viewer may have no idea about.

Example: If you’ve never been to New Orleans, the scene where Albert Lambreaux (played by Clark Peters, famous for his role as Detective Lester Freeman) marches up the street in a flame colored, feathered costume makes zero sense. If you know what a Mardi Gras Indian Chief is, then you have an idea of why his friend agrees to haul junk from lambreaux’s new home.

The Times Picayune’s Dave Walker has written a pretty decent guide to the real world represented in the first episode of Treme. You can read his article here. Be prepared to follow some interesting links. If you don’t know what the hell’s going on you could do a lot worse than checking that article out.

A series that’s designed to be open ended and likely expansive doesn’t truly deserve to be judged by the first episode alone. Negative reviews I’ve read focus on mostly two criticisms: that nothing much happens in the first episode and that New Orleans is only portrayed in a positive light.

To the first I’d answer by comparing it to a larger novel and series. Can you imagine judging The Lord of the Rings by the events that take place in the Shire before Frodo’s fruity ass even gets the ring? No, you can’t. It takes many pages and many episodes for a big story to get rolling. I don’t know if that trombone playing cat is going to throw a ring into a fire pit or anything, but I’m willing to see what shakes out in the future.

As far as only positive portrayals of the city? No one that’s ever smelled the mold that’s so perfectly depicted by the set designers or worked in an understaffed restaurant or looked for someone after the storm would levy such a charge. Yes, it’s a big ol’ circle jerk for the music and food of New Orleans, but that shit is worthwhile. Stand up, give it applause.

This is a David Simon show. I’m sure if you give the show long enough some Lil’ John looking motherfucker will kill someone. Preferably a tourist.