More Old White Guy Stuff I Hate (or, Some Playful Self-Mockery From Your Lovable SocioLoaf)

Greetings comrade! Welcome to the newest edition of Impending Doom weekly. My latest observation has to do with the filthy homogenization of our art forms, which is something I'd love to lecture you about until the end of days. However, since I realize I can't keep your attention that long (since we've all be conditioned to only being able to digest byte-sized servings of intellectual content, thanks internet!), I've decided to focus on one insignificant sub-category that I know everyone will thoroughly enjoy seeing ruthlessly satirized: GUITAR PLAYERS.

Now, many of you know (or have gathered from my previous posts) that aside from being the pretentious self-appointed author and poet that I am, I am also a musician, and a guitar player at that. Don't crucify me yet, for I assure you I am not the type that only learned two chords to sit under the tree and sing pretty only to drown in my own sad, false hopes of getting laid. Creating things that sound soft and beautiful is just not in my nature. So what is one to do if he/she really wants to delve deeper into the instrument, gain a better understanding of true musicianship? Well, you can turn to the legion old white guys.

As if they hadn't taken over enough of things to rightfully belong to you and me, the old white dudes have done it again. Take a look on the good ol' youtube (right up there with Wikipedia is determining the meaning of a construct we label 'the truth,' that is if you buy into the concept of hyperreality or if you're just really stupid). Chances are, you're going to find a lot of these guys:







Yes! These old white dudes can make an axe squeal like nobody's business... but the problem is they are all just 'improvising' the same old shit. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the phrases 'awesome blues lick' or 'shreds pentatonic scale' attached to guys who are essentially just doing a pathetic rip off of Stevie Ray Vaughn and trying to make a youtube career out of it. It's like this for all youtube informative guitar videos, even if you're just looking to check out a product, let's say, a pedal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQocfCvpxSw

...aaaand 0:26, old guy plays generic blues lick. 

How about an amp?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdDd57s1tI

This old white guy only makes it 0:11, and these are honestly the first two random videos I looked up. I could bore you with 2,000 of these, but I encourage you to look for yourself. I don't want to start getting into the territory of below 10 seconds for fear of losing what's left of my fragile sanity.

Youtube is breeding an army of kids that will grow into these manufactured musicians. Guitar players, my advise to you: LISTEN TO SOMETHING BESIDES OTHER GUITAR PLAYERS. You don't realize it now, but they putting a curse on you. It will turn you into a generic old white guy, and then you'll vote Republican and start wearing John Deere hats. No musician deserves to end up like that, so save yourselves now!

This may not be so hilarious to you, but for me it's another great spec in the grand American comedy. I used to want to be just like that, and rip some fat blues licks when I was a youngin' all to fulfill my rock and roll dreams But after hearing that same damn pentatonic lick for every little tweak or effect I wanted to know about, something just snapped. It's not rock and roll anymore because it's not special. It's boring, it's stale, and it's ugly. If music can't save us, I don't know what else can - so this is a plea for help. If you plan to make music, stay away from youtube and just go play whatever the hell you want, and play it loud. Get out there and make some babies cry, in the name of the American way. And if some old white dude tells you to work on your technique, tell him to go fuck himself from me. Thank you all and goodnight.

Fat baby and puppy

I don't know who took this picture but it's great

Retail

When people ask what I "do" for work, I reply with the utmost enthusiasm, "I work retail! Wow what an exciting life I lead etc!" In all honesty, this is probably the only bit of small talk I have to offer people I have just met. Anyway my brain is slowly deteriorating and I'm developing some form of psychosis at this point from working this job. Here are some shitty/annoying people I noticed:

The Dog Woman:
A Russian woman with a thick accent, and an even thicker body. This woman pushes her long-haired chihuahua around in a stroller constantly as if the dog cannot walk on its own. This dog also wears clothes. She refers to her dog as her "baby" (I see the resemblance). This woman only shops in the sale section, buys almost nothing and when she does it's not over ten dollars. She most definitely spends more money and care on the dog than herself. It's clear that this woman has some kind of mental disability- it might just be stupidity or she might have some abandonment issues with her parents or some furry fetishism. Hey, who knows, this dog actually might be her child. Only in a life more absurd than the one I'm living in now I guess. She comes into the store at least twice a week. What's the most concerning to me is that she prefers my help to any of the other associates. This is a drawback to being severely interested in observing the deranged.


The Batshit Crazy:
This is one batshit lady. She is a frumpy woman in her 50s or 60s or anywhere in that vague middle-aged realm. Anyway this bitch walks up to you and expects you to be entirely at her service for her whole trip to the store. This can be anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours. She will follow you around and ramble about nothing and ask advice about what she's wearing but no matter what she tries on it just looks horribly awkward. So what does one do in this situation? I'm obviously passive-aggressive enough to write a blog, so do I tell her it looks good and make a sale while being dishonest or do I tell her it looks bad and permanently get her off my back? Well I mean I really don't understand the appeal of an extra-small dress on an extra-large woman. It's just absurd. She will also buy something spontaneously, leave the store, come back five or ten minutes later and then return or exchange what she had just bought. I don't understand how she has the means to buy all of this crap because she is obviously stoned and shopping every day of the week.

The Meticulous Asian Woman:
Alright this isn't racist (or is it? I don't care) so whatever. This woman only speaks in broken English, and walks around the store very slowly delicately examining every inch, every detail of the shirt, sweater, whatever. She will come up to me and painfully ask for the price of the item she desires. When I give it to her, if it's too high she will just say "No" and walk away without the item. She will try on nothing. She comes to the register and decides against the item for one of two reasons (1) she finds a loose thread, or some other flaw upon further examination of the object or (2) she realizes she can not beg for an additional discount off the item. She purchases nothing. There's nothing else to say except it's just annoying.


The Drunk Mother:
I've only witnessed this woman at my store on one occasion. She came in on the weekend ten minutes before the store closed, and was wearing nothing but a see-through dress over a bikini. She said to us that she had just been to a pool party and wanted to go shopping (most likely on a whim) and was pretty belligerently drunk. She starts yelling (what she thought was talking) to all of us about how she needed some clothes, and instead of finding them herself (what a concept man) she dragged my coworker around the store and had her retrieve her size of almost every item in the store. I guess she forgot how to put on clothes and was walking around the dressing room shirtless for about five minutes. Anyway she stayed about forty minutes passed closing, and ended up purchasing around 700 dollars of merchandise, only to return about half of it a few days later. I will not even go into the mess she made in the fitting rooms. The eerie part is I saw her at another store while I was window shopping doing the exact same thing to another associate. It is extremely depressing to realize that some women have absolutely nothing to do with their lives except buy copious amounts of clothes every day on their rich husband's credit cards. This will slowly but surely be the means to the end of the world.

The Neiman Marcus:
This woman bought two hundred dollars worth of clothes and said to me, "This is nothing to me, totally inexpensive. I usually shop at Neiman." in her pretentious rich-person accent then had the nerve to laugh at me. My response was "Oh!" and then I proceeded to crack up in front of her because I couldn't contain myself. Good thing I didn't interact with her before the register or else I'd have probably bitched her out about how she should be sending her gratuitous disposable income to Haiti or Darfur. I mean you could buy like 75 Happy Meals for those kids and send them to Darfur and make some ridiculous reality show eating contest. Or is that demeaning? I don't even know.

There are many other delightful regulars and types of customers who venture into my little corporate retail store but I am too pissed off to write more about them. There's just something about entitled rich assholes that really 'grinds my gears' for lack of better cliche. Needless to say I should have known what I was getting myself into given that I work in White Suburbia, California.

Poetry and Congestion

Well I know all of my adoring readers must be absolutely starved for content right now, given the fact that Belinda has been taking her sweet time to post again. Perhaps this online taunt will draw her out from 'the real world,' where she's been hiding from her duties of online notoriety. As for myself, I'm sick as hell this week with a cold and not happy about much, given my return to the cursed monotony of homework and spending my leisure time strolling around the cultural sinkhole that is the University of San Francisco. Because of the illness that has befallen me, I've lost a good deal of sleep and therefore my razor wit. However, you mustn't fear, gentle readers, for I will return to you with more of my generally negative opinions on observable reality in due time. For now, be disgusted with another poem, also concerning sleeplessness, although perhaps not for the common cold. Be warned, this is a cruel work.

"Insomniac"

Dear woman of dreams long past,
I'm writing to you
only because I can't sleep.
I'm entangled with a murderous mattress,
My comforter offers no comfort, and
My blanket is no longer blank
with the advent of my Van Gogh sweat,
painting the yellow celestial bodies of my suffering.
I started writing again, and now
it's the literature that keeps me up.
(How else could I find time for this?)
I roll over, the horror! the horror!
The clockwork orange reads 19:84;
Hm, I'll never understand military time.
I see The Wasteland
everytime I go to the fridge.
However, right now there's a French author
concerned with memory
that I just can't get out of my head.
I give in
and open my eyes
to my monitor's hypnotic blue glow
washing over the rectangles of my cell, and
suddenly the sights of Cabrio flood my mind.
I can picture the blue pulsing waves
rolling in and out over the discarded corona bottles
and empty boxes.
The filthy beach where we made love.
Laying by my naked leg is an empty bottle of vodka:
your favorite.
I can't recall your bedroom
without the taste of the clear Russian,
the white absent, and the warm milk
spoiled, never to touch human lips.
I made a Freudian slip
when I accidentally spilled it
on that CD you got at a hole in the wall noise joint called
The Smell.
God-forsaken place!
Strangely enough, it was not the offensive scents
that ruined me.
But that screaming, demonic hysteria, the sound
worse than a hungry newborn's cry.
My highlight remains the moshpit bloody nose
I walked away with.
And It's funny really,
because that last incident reminds me
of the time I couldn't sleep
because of the innocent blood
that permeated my sheets
and painted our masterpiece.

- SL

Mind-Boggling Tales of Blasphemy and Sorrow Brought Back From My Otherwordly Travels Into The Depths of Airport Limbo

Deep in the abyss...

Here I am, in the famous St. Louis Lambert airport. Charles Lindbergh's plane is here, or something like that, and I'm sure it has some other irrelevant historical value. However, all I know about the airport is that the moment I step in the door is the moment I start thinking about an escape plan.

Is it just me or does it seem like every airport in the Midwest is some kind of biggest redneck in the universe contest? I want to start by stating that I don't only mean 'most redneck' (although that would probably be a significant factor in a real contest) but the physically 'largest.' I suppose the airport is full of fat people because if they had they chosen to walk a few thousand miles across the country, they probably would have cut some inches. But these look the kind of people that don't walk much farther than the fridge on the daily basis, unless Randy Jr. ate the last of the McGreasies leftover from last Thursday. I wonder how one can possess such a luxurious lifestyle and still maintain the moral and spiritual loftiness required to have a 3 foot tall Jesus sculpture on your lawn. Some are just gifted in their faith.

The American airport is indeed a fantastic spot for sitings of the elusive (at least in civilized cultures) 'Don't Mess With Texas' and 'John Deere' apparel. Trucker hats possibly less common, still seem to be in excess.

It's -almost- redeeming to see people reading in the airport, although the people who do are still but a fraction of the ones with their eyes plugged into their laptops (guilty) or their iPhones. However, on closer inspection you'll find out no one is actually reading at all, but simply having their brains absorb a heaping spoonful of sugary bullshit force-fed into the dark, gurgling pit of their mouths by Patricia Cornwall, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer, or someone else that Mark Twain would've probably liked to beat with a hammer. I don't believe in book burning, but I am beginning to feel open-minded.

I still don't know if I want to call it airport limbo because it seems like I'm surrounded by the living dead, or if being surrounded by these other zombies kills me a little more inside each time. First of all, I'm sick of the couples. It's a four-stage process of development in people, and it almost always turns out the same way unless something truly disastrous happens (although at the end of this, you might call it a disaster too). It begins with the lovey-dovey newly wed types, all gushy and holding hands and just shouting to the world: "LOOK, SOMEONE -WILL- ACTUALLY SLEEP WITH ME! FUCK YOU CLASS OF '94!" They soon turn into the preggers type, where there might already be one screaming abomination already out of the womb and another one in, and both of the parents already starting to get the itch of fear that something out there in the big bad world of evilness (see: smokers, minorities, anyone else that the perfect family cannot bear the thought of interacting with their child) will do harm to their wittle preshush. I think it's pretty clear by now that I don't want kids, and yet this still fascinates me so. The third kind is the rich conservative type. These types will fly often, as most likely they will be trying to drown the misery in their life by consumption of possessions and vacations to cookie-cutter resorts where it's like the good old days, where they used to have servants. Usually it's a family vacation, with either a few bratty porkers or the blonde, blue-eyed type with names like 'Trevor,' 'Keith,' 'Anastasia,' or 'Kimberly.' And in the final form of this evolutionary process, they metamorphose into the bizarre bug-eyed old woman creature with an absurd amount of mascara and a Louis Vutton purse, just like the one staring at me right now. And now, just like Christians in Texas, evolution is starting to make me feel a little uncomfortable. The husband probably got caught in one of the myriad number of golf stores, which I always found to be a mystery as to why it would be in an airport until now. Then, the answer hit me like a nine iron to the forehead: golf is the coping mechanism of old rich men, an escape from their empty, meaningless, superficial excuse for existence; it's essentially the society man's substitute for alcohol or heroin. We're all the same, deep down.

But get this - What's hilarious is that I'm posting this on Blogger, while Blogger's 'Next Blog' feature serves as a perfect confirmation of theory. Don't believe me? Well bookmark this page, hit the 'Next Blog' button, return, and post a comment when you realize how true it is. Most of the time you will get stuck in one of the loops documenting some exceptionally boring family's life; complete with a catalog of depressingly ugly people in the form of wedding shots, 200,000 pictures of the same stupid looking baby with ice cream all over its face, or super duper fun in the sun family vacation shots. That is, unless you get stuck in one of the other little niches about knitting or biking or some other shit no one cares about. What the fuck is the point of a blog, anyway?

When it boils down to it, I just think airports have a lens that make people look uglier and stupider. However, I think this is a side effect of the fact that everyone is generally pissed off to be there. I know that I am, and that distorts my perception of others into having seriously noticeable genetic abnormalities, whether in the form of the 'You can tell I have low brain activity' stare or the 'I'm a superficial bitch' overbite. It's a deadly cycle, the more annoyed you get, the worse people seem, the more annoyed you get, and so on and so forth. I know there's probably a psychotropic drug I can take to cure the Airport Social Syndrome (ASS), but let's just say I'm not one to miss out on the details. I want to soak in all of that juicy bullshit completely unfiltered, through nothing but the lens of my bloodshot eyes.

- SL

UndyingBullshit

It's 2:16am and I am pissy and shit. So what better way is there to take out my frustrations on internet dating web sites? (IS THIS A THEME?) I don't know, the internet is all I do. So anyway, me and @Social Loaf (is that trendy? a trendy way to acknowledge him?) set up a decoy profile on a popular online dating web site of some bitchy girl. Basically, she was completely retarded, yet still a shitload of guys messaged her. Here are some select quotes from said guys.

"vhi, im architecture student in turkey, national swimmer, 20years old. wanna make cam sex on msn?"

Every girl's dream. I mean, not only can you speak our language, but you are also romantic and are an athlete.

"This is the older guy thing...I'm like old and stupid...I will easily be totally in love with you because you are gorgeous...You may feel overhwelmed or that the relationship is somehow unbalanced...I've got a degree from Berkeley... blah blah blah...The reality is this. If you want to be treated like a lady, like Marilyn Monroe or Gigi or the lady in My Fair Lady, you will need to consider hooking up with older guys who want to treat you like a lady....Young dudes are really sucking a lot of balls these days..."

I love being told to hook up with older stupid men because that's the reality of life. I don't even know where to begin on this message. But I assume he knows very well about how much young dudes suck balls.

"maybe its not your cup of tea, but thats why i ask to find out, right? well i have a couple of friends, who are bi. they are cute girls. and i was wondering if youd be into having some casual fun with us 2... (or 3).. it depends. obviously, youd get to talk to them and such beforehand. i can show u pics..... let me knwo if u have interest.. we are cool people hehe and looking to have fun :) and you are sooo adorable!!!"

This guy, I swear, was a pimp. I asked him for pictures and these girls were on the web site as well, from completely different cities, hundreds of miles away from him. I think they might have got murdered? I don't even know. I was supposed to meet up and his hoes on Saturday but @Social Loaf called him gay or something. I would have totally gone to meet up with him because he knows just how to attract young ladies. I mean, at least he's a smart pimp. He put up pictures of him with stupid longish brown hair, aviators, American Apparel hoodie, etc. What girl wouldn't want to have an orgy with this bro? Well I won't speculate if that was actually him or not, but he seemed like he would be good at scamming sixteen-year-old girls posing as adults. I can respect a guy like that, man.

"sup girl? i heard you like boners. i am a raisin farmer. would you like to help me harvest the raisins?"

Then we talked about Twilight and nut varieties. His picture featured him covered in food with his pants down in a Sombrero. So basically, he was Mexican Edward.

"Uh-oh. Someone's a brat, I can already tell. Well goodness, you're pretty damn cute, young Lady. And the cool style isn't hurting one bit. Now I'd like to know if you're the same on the inside. I'd say let's get together and see what happens, if you weren't so far away. Are you a good kisser?"

Yes all girls are cute and stylish in their vaginas. Or did he mean our decoy's personality? Signs point to vagina.

"hey,wow,u look fun,wild ,and fun!!! aahah,i am [name],i dont usually date or talk to woman younger than me,but,i would be a fool not to say hello at least,,so hey!!,lets get to know each other more"

This guy clearly speaks English. I kind of feel bad, but, what can I say? Foreign people, IMO (I mean, isn't that acronym in?), are the funniest people alive.

"...I'm a pianist/singer/songwriter, and I'm genuinely interesting to be around, so let me know if you're at all interested in hanging out. I realize that I'm a couple years older than you, but please don't consider that sketchy..."

Every girl genuinely loves ineresting musicians. This message was longer but it was a bunch of chickenshit bullshit.

"i love your hair haha i use to have blue streaks but i got to Stanford and they told me to stop it...... really sucks lol so hows your summer been?"

I love how eloquent Stanford men are. I could just eat them up.

"lets go get into some trouble - low key - i just split with my x too. It'll be fun - we can go rip in the city or something. "

This guy was much older and French and into filming horror films. Seems like a nice normal guy. He asked our decoy if she would ever date him, and she said only if he would be willing to be whipped (figuratively) and he responded, only if he could slap the spit out of her. Having nothing to say, I responded "I don't have spit, I had it surgically removed."

"I don't like your face. Looks like I just insulted you hah I didn't mean to but then again calling you gorgeous or asking how you are is pretty boring. You probably get those messages ALL the time. This is me bringing something fresh to the table...."

You hear that? Calling girls ugly will make them swoon. Take notes, guys.

"Hello again. I'm not sure if you missed the first message I tried to send or not. I'm the kind of guy that follows his gut instinct (intuition?) and, alas, here I am writing you this message... I'm a 25 year old caucasian male; I'm a graduate student, independent, and well versed in life; I'm easy going, low key, down to earth, unique, drama free, and well rounded; I'm a mature, decent, respectful guy; I'm an eternal optimist; I have good morals; I don't lie, steal, cheat, or manipulate!"

Well this guy sounds great. Why does he have a dating site profile? Please, tell us more about your personality because it must all be true.

Anyway. I would go into the deeper implications of all this shit but I'm just gonna say it speaks for itself because I don't want to write anymore. Thx peace out.

I'm drunk. Also, Myspace is a piece of shit.

I'm drunk. If any of you (3) people who actually read this shit have a complaint about the quality of content in this particular post, I politely ask you to find Johnny Walker's number in the white pages and give him a call. Or, if you prefer modernity's answer to simplified communication, perhaps try electronic mail. Or, if you really think you're hot shit, go post on Johnny's fucking Myspace. That's right - Myspace! The greatest communication medium of the 21st century. That is, if you're an emotionally distraught preteen suffering from severe mental psychosis. I've never seen such an abomination to the internet: Yet another shameless device designed to allow below average performing youngsters to have an outlet for their tormented, sorrowful existence, not to mention the existential crisis stemming from their inability to reconcile their lingering baby fat with a reasonable camera angle.

But the emo army is not my main complaint about Myspace on this drunken occasion, but simply their entirely irrational design team (Tom?). All I wanted was a minuscule sliver of their server space to host a music project I was working on, but no. No average user can upload their music, only those that label themselves as a "musician" in their sign-up process. As if every long-haired asshole with a Lyon guitar could really be called a "musician." However, the average user is still capable of uploading personal videos, which, the last time I checked, contains both audio and visual components that quite likely take up more bytes in the endless abyss of Myspace stored data. Well doesn't that make sense.

It would seem that there should be a way to change one's account to a musician after creating it, but that is also false. The method that is supposed to serve that function supplies the user (me) with a 'OOPS WE FUCKED UP!' sort of error screen. Perhaps their server is overloaded from the excessive intake of Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz covers being uploaded every ten minutes. Or perhaps one of the engineers just spilled his beer all over the main server control. The world may never know.

And lastly, if all of that weren't enough, if you'd like to delete your account and recreate it as a so-called musician, you have to actually click the 'Cancel My Account' button no less than 400 times. "Are you sure? What is your reason for quitting Myspace? Not functioning to your liking? Talk to one of the gorillas in charge of web design. Are you sure you want to quit Myspace? Too much bullshit? Well consider psychotherapy. Are you sure you want to quit Myspace? No reason? We can arrange for you to talk to someone who can come up with a reason. Are you sure you want to quit Myspace?" ... etc etc, ad nauseum, until you're finally about to shoot yourself and then they finally send one more to your e-mail, which is likely to be bombarded with frivolous sexual advances from so-called 'Sexygrl114' (Located near San Francisco, CA, or wherever the hell your wireless connection originates) every few hours for the next few years. God that woman is persistent.

In short, I hate Myspace. But I also wrote a song today, that I tried to upload to Myspace, but couldn't. So, courtesy of Sethamphetamine (also the writer of lyrics and main vocalist on the track), here is the completed work:

Avenged Sevenfold Covers, or something you won't find in great demand on myspace.



- SL