Bieber Fever Leads to Chills, Mania, Withdrawal

I almost didn't have a blog ready for today. Then this happened:

Drugs Found of Justin Bieber Tour Bus | BBC

Somewhere there's a joke about him and Selena Gomez writhing on the floor of the bus, pupils dilated and the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack playing in the background, autotuned for some reason, but, you know what?

No.

No, Justin Bieber is about to hit the "Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman" stage in his little career, and all I have to do to laugh is sit back and wait for him to start lifting weights and try to star in a movie like Mark Wahlberg, because this train wreck is about to get good.

On Drug Dealers

Part of my job is going around to local school districts and selling them on the magic that is our proprietary tablet computers.

I feel like a pusher.

"Hey, kids, you wanna buy some eReaders??"

Scary stuff.

Which is probably why it feels like I'm really cool. Cool guys do drugs. Rock stars do drugs. It's not cool to sell to little kids, yeah, but I'm not, man. I'm selling to the teachers. It's fantastic.

Get the teachers and soon the students are hooked anyway. I'm building my own market from the top down. They're middlemen and I'm Tony Fuckin Montana up in here, shoving my face in a pile of circuit boards on my desk, inhaling the acrid fumes of heated silicate and wiring, ready to face the day as a king on my own little corner of the tech world.

Say hello to my little friend. He has an 800x600 Pearl eInk display and a frontlight.

On Squishing Bugs

Further evidence why I am either a terrible enlightened being or a terrible candidate for doing drugs:


There is a spider on my ceiling and I don't know what to do about it.

(S)He is going to die. As soon as I finish writing this post, in fact. The arachnid has merely as long left as I have verbiage within my heart. Not a great while, but an unknown, much as all life seems to be, though I certainly have a better idea of it than (s)he does.


I feel bad, killing spiders. They're chill. They relax. They eat the bugs I dislike having in my house. Overall, I would prefer this spider to live, and serve our mutual good. However it is directly over my head were I to go to bed without smooshing it, and so it must die.

I tell myself it will not matter, that the spider is not truly alive, only a biological robot acting out its base functionality in a predetermined manner. Put any other spider in the same situation and the same decisions would be made. A meat-bot.

And yet, while that may be true of, say, fruit flies, I've seen spiders stick out a leg inquisitively, then retract it, thinking. Sure, it may be running an Enigma-level punch card system in an Apple A6 world, but that little guy works on the same principles I do. I've looked it up, (s)he has a brain. And a heart, and some truly horrific looking internal bits, but that spider can feel and make decisions.

Truly horrific.

Is it better that I tell myself it would be quick? The complete annihilation of a small, crunchy life so instantaneous that life itself would cease before it realized such? I have heard that when you are shot, you feel the bullet burning through your insides the entire way. You feel the life siphoned out of you. Is this what I condemn another creature to? A reduction of its form to a small puddle of guts and goo and twitching legs in the crumpled ball of some tissue?

I tell myself that I am not snuffing out a life, that evolution will continue on and one day perhaps create a spider smart enough to have its rights protected like a dog or a dolphin or specially educated gorilla or chimp.

Perhaps it will even be smart enough to stay the hell away from Kleenex-toting humans.

On Self-Medication

*DISCLAIMER*

Self medication is incredibly dangerous and should never be attempted. Always find a safe person and place to talk and find help. You're worth it.

With that aside, I've been in traction all day. Pretty much as I was preparing to post last night's blog, I had a coughing fit while laying down. This tensed my back muscles to try to sit up, and when I did, a muscle in my lower back popped. Twice.

It was the kind of experience where you really question if there's been irreparable damage or if you've become a paraplegic. Just complete, limb-freezing, lungs arresting terrorpain.

So I lost a full day of work and holiday pay, but on the up-side I had leftover sick leave and I was already prescribed the exact medicine I needed, and I got to watch a lot of anime today. I'll just feel guilty and terrified of reinjury all day tomorrow, but dammit, I'm not missing my first real Memorial Day Barbecue. Even if I can't drink on Naproxen. Stupid Naproxen; hat the Hell is it, even?



God DAMNIT!

It's freakin' Aleve! Strong-dose ALEVE!

Well forget that, I stayed sober all weekend with this pain for fear of a bleeding ulcer from using Aleve?? Forget that noise. Tomorrow I'm drinking vodka ice-tea and grilling meat until I can't feel my insides at all.

I'll be responsible on Tuesday. Maybe I still get Holiday pay then, but I doubt it. Maybe the computer won't accept non-holiday pay when I put in for my sick leave. Maybe the world is full of bright sparkles and ponies and everything will be perfect forever!

… This is still just Aleve I'm on, right?

Scopolamine: The Most Terrifying Zombie Drug Ever

If you don't have the stomach to sit through the whole video, skip to the last five minutes after reading this:

It's a roofie. Except you're completely conscious and appear normal, but completely susceptible to any suggestion. You will empty your bank accounts, wallet, apartment, anything they ask you. Then the next day, you remember nothing.

Now watch the last 5 minutes with that nice motivational/cautionary speaker. Let him become the most pants-wettingly horrific gangster you've seen since before you realized Scarface was just a movie.

Okay?

Now here's a question: What if this drug just made you really, really generous?

What if there was a drug that gave you a terrific sense of ecstasy and brotherhood with all things, but more than that instilled in you the impetus to actually do something about the inequality and poverty and dearth of good will in the world, and you just of your own volition gave away everything you realized you didn't have an immediate need for?

ALT Text: "Yeah, it's pretty much
the worst, cats and kittens!"
I hope Ryan North doesn't sue me.
He's a pretty cool guy with Fair
Use. I just wrote stuff that sounded
like it needed to come out of
T-Rex's face. Wow, that's long ALT.

Just, like, ignore the parts where people get beaten and raped and die.

The world would be a pretty alright place if we had all that without the last part, huh?

But that last part's pretty bad.

On Haters

Haters gonna hate. Do what you do and love it.

Or, go to sleep after posting an odd photo because you yourself had an inappropriate order of fun last night and it was far too late to post anything fancy.


…


Good morning! Well that was a good sleep. I dreamt this blog got a mostly-positive write-up in some magazine. I think it might have been Time, so that felt good. I also liked the part where a gorgeous brunette was laying across my lap as we casually flipped through catalogs.

I also came up with another method to deal with my deviated septum that's even more dangerous and more expensive that going to a professional doctor, but less embarrassing than effectively getting a nose job:

I could always just get addicted to cocaine.

We All Know What You're Doing

Hey.

Middle-Aged Guy In The Sneakers, Camo Sweat Pants, Plaid Jacket, and Hoody Balding On Top With A Ponytail Who Was Staring At The "Medicinal Horticulture And Hemp" Shelf Of The Gardening Section In The Book Store Today.

We all know what you're doing. Stop making it so obvious. You're a shameful stereotype.

Also, can my friends score a bag? I don't partake, but I recognize the utility of having a wholesaler nearby.

Zombie Escape Plan #684 & Other Work Thoughts

Thoughts for the day:


Mothers, tired and exasperated, can usually only be distinguished from crack addicts by their proximity to a relatively clean child.


If my own children ever get into Harry Potter, they're each getting exactly one toy wand to play with, and they'll all be the same. I will have an elder wand, and I will constantly force my children to duel myself and each other to determine who is the superior wizard in our house. The winner will then be repeatedly smacked with a plastic lightsaber for being a giant nerd.


My long-term zombie survival strategies are pretty weak; most end at the local super market or Walmart. I think after that I'll try to determine if zombies freeze, and then try to make my way up to one of those isolated Alaskan towns. At least then I only have to worry about black-and-white vampires.

On eBay

This look was dubbed "Blue Steele." Grandma didn't get it.

When normal people are strapped for cash, they tend to do normal things, such as "Get A Job," and "Sell Drugs."

When I'm strapped for cash, I go into my grandma's attic and find pieces of my childhood that were boxed away in The Big Move and sell them on eBay.

As far as profitability goes, you'd be surprised how little a childhood fetches on eBay.

I mean, a Happy Childhood would be a couple grand, easy, but more often than not you've opened and torn the packaging, because, hey, you were a kid and you weren't thinking about resale value, you just wanted to get in and get those sticker decals applied so you could fly around the room and shoot Bad Guys.

Happy 4-20!

This is not in celebration of weed, but rather it celebrates the fact that I stayed up to 4 a.m. filling a couple of portfolios with a ton of previous work and blew off doing any new work. But procrastination is a great part of weed, so let's call it even.

In the spirit of the day, here is something I did which I can never look at without cracking up into insane gigglefits.

I know there is a special level of Hell dedicated to people like me, but I'll (still) be damned if Dante couldn't figure out where. Good thing I don't believe in Hell.

On Friends, Food and Weed

I'm going to come out on this issue: I love weed.

I don't even smoke it, but I have a great affinity for the stuff because I have friends who smoke it who I also enjoy. I'm also aware of the possible health benefits and haven't heard a single cogent argument for why it's a bad thing, but that's really over selling the point.

That point being, "I have fun, straight, around people who are high." I went out with a friend the other night, ostensibly to buy him some weed, and the drug dealer we end up going to is a kid we've known to one degree or another since grade school. Kid doesn't even sell much now, because the cops are kind of watching him, but tonight he was alone with his girlfriend and a couple friends were coming over. He was nice enough to let us creepily leave rather than forcing us to stay and seem inconspicuous.

Which kind of sucked because holy crap this guy had the cutest kitten ever. Swear it. I'm talking a single handful of gray fluff with a white stomach and paws and a scraggly little tail. Adorable.

Then my friend smoked and we went to McDonald's with only a single cop-car-behind-us scare which I didn't even notice because it turned away. We got to the drive-thru and my friend goes to order.

"Can I get two four-piece nuggets…?"

Silence.

"…Did you want something else?"

"No!"

"Do you want any sauce?"

"No."

Really, dude? First off, you act like she was supposed to know you were done. The way you trailed off, you clearly sounded like you were going to say something else. Poor girl on the other hand is confused enough listening to stoners on the McDonald's 24-Hour drive-thru night shift, don't make her job more difficult.

And no sauce? I mean, I only ask because your usual response is, "Can I have all your sauces?"

You literally ask for all the different kinds of sauce they have, even the ones most people don't know about. You get sweet and sour at McDonald's, dude. Did you just decide to do it raw tonight? No throat lubrication; you'll just dip them in your own blood when they make it down to your stomach. You've been secretly grooming an ulcer for months just for this moment.

If this is seriously the worst thing that happens on weed, I'm all for it.

On Dreams, Pt. VII - Return To Dream Lake

So I awoke this morning from a dream in which I was forced to take an precautionary drug course at some college. This is what I remember, narration included:

"Ridiculous," his mother had told him, back when he was still a little girl, "You're a freshman and every freshman has to take this class."

"I'm twenty-three."

"Nonsense. Now," she continued, "You are going to be offered drugs and dope so…." Holding her pre-written anti-drug propaganda pamphlet splayed open in her left hand, she trailed off as I mused at the poorly photoshopped image of a girl with three front teeth on the scantron they had given us with absurdly wide bubbles and a little section to review the the new form layout. I recalled what had led me here.

It wasn't weed or anything, it was crack. I'm not going to touch the fucking stuff, I just wanted to watch him make it. A college buddy of mine had asked me if I wanted to split a dub. I declined, walked away musing over the slang and various drug use philosophies until I realized I hadn't actually said anything and had just done the walking away part.

I followed my friend into a basement laundry room and apologized for my train of thought causing my to be socially discourteous. I told him I did not want to partake, but would be interested in watching the process.

*Now, I know that "a dub" is generally reserved for pot sales, but in my dream I must have recalled that it's technically $20 worth of anything, and since this was a dream I was aware that my friend intended to convey the substance was some kind of cocaine.*

My friend began cooking cocaine into crack right there on top of the washing machine, for some reason in a tiny sepulcher. I watched the white blacken and bubble up neon lime green as he mixed in baking soda (not the right color) and then flip the boiling, volatile concoction into a Coca Cola can. It was at this point that a tiny bit spilled out onto the dryer, so my friend contained what he could as the rest spontaneously combusted.

His solution to the fire and noxious fumes was to lay down a couple lines of coke on the far side of the spill and inhale them along with the precious drug fumes emanating from the fire. Catching a small contact high off this and not wanting to get instantly addicted to dream-crack, I left.

As I walked the long corridor out of the basement I saw danger ahead. I quickly turned back and asked everyone still near the drug room, loudly to catch an ear, "Have any of you guys seen my keys?"

Quietly, I added, "Yo, the mother from Everybody Loves Raymond is headed this way with laundry. Watch out," then turned again, plotting my escape. Above ground, I found myself in a college office center, thinking only "I already have a degree…" and suddenly I was in a classroom taking a shitty drug course.


The other night I just dreamed of zombies clawing at me and woke up to a cat attacking my foot. Some dreams are just easier to explain than others.

On Addiction

The BBC reported today that British scientists have agreed it is mean spirited and "humiliating" to call heroine users "junkies" or "addicts."

Somehow, this is bad for them. The article goes on to state that being an addict now is like being gay or developmentally challenged 30 years ago.

Bullshit. They don't think addiction is the problem of the addicted? Of course it is. They were retarded enough to try something insanely stupid and instantly addictive. How is that not their fault? That'd be like saying it's not my fault I'm an astronaut, I just joined the air force, signed up for astronaut training, passed and beat out 98% of the competition so now I'm fucking stuck in low Earth orbit. But, guys, it's totally not my fault!

Here's a better idea: instead of calling them "addicts" or "junkies," how about we start calling heroine users "Fucking Assholes?" That way, every time someone asks for money to buy heroin, someone else can yell at them, "WHAT ARE YOU, A FUCKING ASSHOLE!?" I feel like that might just give heroin addicts the little jump start they need to put their lives in order. An "addict" can pity himself, but no one ever wants to be called a fucking asshole.

Drunken Master and Other Failed Kung-Fu Prodigies and Their Finishing Moves

• Drunken Master - Profuse Vomiting
• Heroin Master - The Shakes
• Weed Master - Sit On the Couch Watching Food Network
• LSD Master - Trip Balls
• Rohypnol Adept - I Forget
• MDMA Master - Rub Up Against Things
  
• Cocaine Sensei - JesusfuckingChristhithiminthefacealreadywhydontchacomeonjustdoitgoddamnitmoveoverIlldoitmyselfheremove!
• The Crystal Meth Monk - Steal Your T.V.

On Banks

Let me preface what I'm about to say with something else that I'm about to say:

I do not partake of illegal substances.

Now I fully support everyone's right to do whatever they want responsibly, I just don't do certain things because I think my mental state is suitably askew already.

That said, I know a drug dealer who closes up shop at 9 p.m.


Think about that. He sells drugs and he keeps normal business hours. Costco is open later than this guy. "Hey, what time is it?" "It's like 9:55, dude." "EFFFFFFF MEEEEEEE…."

Really? You're really going to stop selling drugs just because it's getting late and you want to go out with your friends? Or sleep? Dude. Those are prime drug trafficking hours.

Kid doesn't even start his day until two, anyway. What kind of respectable drug dealer is gonna stay open exclusively from two to ten? You really want to keep to an eight-hour day that badly? You're like my fucking bank.

I hate banks.

They're only open weekdays in the middle of the day. Everyone else is at work. How the fuck am I supposed to get my money into you if you close in the middle of the fucking day? Seriously.

I mean, yes, I understand that you don't make anything from my money, but from taking that money and–essentially–playing the stock market with it, but man … you could at least do me the courtesy of pretending like my business affects your business hours in the slightest.

Man, help me out, banks. I got drugs to buy and my guy closes at ten.

On Real Life Conversations III: On Pancakes (I Promise This Is The Last One)

Auto response from JOJO X ONO: "Withdrawal."

Me: "Pancake withdrawal?"
JO: "You know it."
Me: "I DO know it."
Jo: "You sureeee?"
Me: "I'm so sure, I drank Pediasure. Which can supposedly flush drugs out of your system, so you might not have to go through withdrawal. I'm not sure how long pancakes stay in your system for, or how jobs test for them now. I guess if you come into work with syrup on your face and they find forks and butter packets in your locker they realize you have a problem."
JO: "Don't worry. I am an avid addict; I know all the tricks."

Everything I Need To Know In Life I've Learned From Spider Jerusalem

• Always trust your journalistic gonads (or attack womb).

• Don’t kill yourself; kill everyone else.

• Always do a proper background check on your drug dealer.
  
  
• Motion-activated cameras can mistake violent sex for assault.
  
  
• Beware the Chair Leg of Truth!
  
  
• Trust the Fuckhead.
  
  
• All religions suck, that’s why I have drugs.
  
  
  
• We all have a little Hitler in us, more so the Nazi sex midgets.
  
  
• Baby seal eyes taste better fresh.
  
  
• No one gives two tugs of a dead dog’s cock.
  
  
• Don’t leave home without your journalistic insurance.
  
  
• Recreational drugs can be written off on your taxes as journalistic equipment.
  
  
• The correct proportions for Aoteroa are one part blood to one part milk.
  
  
• The perfect mood for journalism is miserable, edgy, and tired.
  
  
• Everyone’s a FUCKING EDITOR.
  
  
• TV should be seen, not smelt.
  
  
• Journalistic ethics mean nothing in the face of the truth.
  

This list originally compiled with the help of Matthew Sanders, who has his whole life been preparing for the role of 'Weird-But-Cool Grandfather.'