bomb

July 2005 is going to be a good month.

I'm finishing up the arrangements for this month's outing: From 13 July to 19 July I'll be mountain biking with my pal EP in Colorado.

First I found roundtrip air fare for $190. This is cheap for this season, and I've actually heard of the airline.

I'll be out the Wednesday afternoon of the 13th. EP will pick me up at the Denver airport, where we'll proceed to the city of Denver to meet up with my 25 year old sister and secure the week's natural resources.

It's advantageous to have a druggie baby sister still whittling away at that elusive bachelor's degree (entering year seven of such endeavor) and keeping my parents from achieving retirement.

I'll take her to dinner out of gratitude and then out for a few drinks to settle the caps and stems digested during desert. From there, EP and I will return to the rental house in Boulder that he's staying at this summer with his wife J and dog Sagan to prepare for the next morning's departure.

By the time I get to Boulder, my bike -- el scorpio -- a klein mantra, will have arrived at EP's bike shop and will have been fully re-assembled from the UPS shipping box that I mailed it out in.

Thursday morning we take off for Winter Park in the truck with our bikes and camping gear for the start of three nights of camping and biking and mind exploration.

I intend to bring no less than three rolls of 35 mm film for this excursion.

I'm stoked about this particular trip because el scorpio was designed for this sort of shit... Made of this light weight high endurance chropoly metal that's used in the production of this bike... and the wings of fighter jets... el scorpio is a full suspension Klein Mantra that was built to just fucking bomb down a mountain.

Winter Park has an entire series of runs that are adapted for summer bikers. First we take a gondola from the Mary Jane Base Area (9,450 feet) up the mountain openly smoking a j during the 15 minute ascent to Lunch Rock (11,200 feet).

From there it's fantastic scenery, thin air, countless action shots and pumped adrenaline.

We'll return to Boulder Sunday afternoon, and I'll get to hang out with EP's wife J and dog while he has to work at his temporary bike store job... those two are moving to Eugene, OR in late August.

where you been?

I've neglected making any bold statements or blanket generalizations on this page for awhile now.

Why?

The easy answer is that I've been busy as all fuck with this job of mine the past two or three weeks. The annual meeting has come and past, and this last weekend I finally got my weekend off. I actually had to work Saturday AND Sunday of last week. It was a bitch.

To answer your obvious question of how bad it was, let me put it this way: last Sunday I had to be at the hotel at 8:30 in the morning to sit through the "Finance and Governance Reference Committee hearings"... scheduled to go until 12:30 p.m., this went a little longer. This one ended just after the five hour mark. I sat through the whole fuckin thing too. I turned it into an endurance challenge: no smoke breaks, no 45 minutes of wandering around, no newspaper. FIVE HOURS OF FINANCE AND GOVERNANCE.

Next, on Monday morning, I had to track down two employees serving as secretaries of that particular reference committee and figure out which 4 topics should be covered in my 200 word story. Next, I had to actually write the shit in legalese (note: everything is vague and ambiguous with words and sentence structures that make no sense). Next I had to get the two secretaries to sign off on it, then I had to get the reference chair to sign off on it, then I had to submit it for slight copy edits prior to publication. I hated every fucking second of it... this part of it was true work.

This past weekend was good. My friend Chris was in town from Los Angeles, so we met over at our friend Carney's place and grilled out, then Carney’s wife got even more annoying, so we went to the Irish Heritage Center for some drinks.

Chris is an actor who seems to have more success getting commercial work than actual acting roles. He's basically a large oaf of heartwarming violence. Think John Goodman or James Belushi. Those guys have got to die or something soon because Chris needs work! Chris had a good line. He said that people out of "the industry" ask him all the time "how much did you make on that commercial?" or "how much does TV work pay?" so he likes to answer "it's funny that you brought that up because I was going to ask you how much you make."

Carney is a yuppie who recently bought a bungalow with his spoiled cold hearted wife and the screams of his 18 month daughter. Carney loves company because he's not allowed to go anywhere. The three of us went to college and lived together on Clark street from 1998 to 2000.

Chris kept commenting on how everything has changed so much in the past few years: he got married and finally moved west to be an out of work actor in Los Angeles, Carney got married and had a kid and started to buy real estate. And there's nothing different about me: still working through a string of girlfriends, writing jobs and general and complete asskicking in everything I touch or gently massage.

Chris must've forgotten to mention that both he and Carney are showing signs of grey, whereas single Tim is in shape, gets smiled at by (hot) women on the street, and had five women ranging in age between 22 and 28 guess that I'm 26 years old in the past couple weeks (I'm 31).

Ha! Fuck you two, I win! Return to your Land of Lame, Rule Followers!

Saturday my friend Dan and his wife Susan rode their bikes over to my place and we rode down to Wired magazine's Next Fest at Navy Pier. It was intriguing and cool in a Sharper Image catalog kind of way. Actually I was very impressed with the event's layout and lighting scheme. They were able to recreate the look and feel of the magazine's layout note perfect.

The shit that bugged me was the whole corporate marketing thing going on with giants like GM and Pfizer. GM had four totally efficient and reasonable hydrogen-run cars and minivans on display. Now, if they wanted to mass-produce these vehicles, people would buy them. But they won't. AND, GM was handing out these pieces of paper with wildflower seeds embedded inside the paper for me to toss out the car window at 80 mph on I-94 to spread the growth of wildflowers. Yeah, so this was GM's marketing platform that they're a corporation that actively cares about damage to the environment. Right.

Pfizer was even scarier. They had this fucking cat that they cloned into an identical cat inside of this plastic box. The signage said that they were going to begin cloning dogs next. Doesn't anyone else see the danger in allowing one of the world's largest pharmaceuticals to begin cloning life? What could happen here? Maybe I'm alarmed by this because I naturally assume that the human element of selfish irresponsibility will turn this cloning-thing for the worst... I mean, look how responsible they were with nuclear research and weaponry.

In short, we're doomed.

After the fest we smoked and went to catch Batman. That movie rocks. After that we went to Rossi's for a few. Rossi's was typical chaotic on the edge of absurdity that that place always is. We had to give Susan a look. It was time to go when some fucked up cubs fans (all fat single sunburned dickheads with Prior jerseys and goatees) dropped a dollar in the jukebox and starting to shout along to John Melloncamp. Fucking lame, dickheads... John Melloncamp is fucking lame (I shouldn’t have to tell you this)... and you're fucking lame. Point to this part of the story: Rossi's has no door policy.

We biked over to Tuman’s to meet up with my pal Tim and Todd and their crew. It was a slow moving easy Saturday night for drinking on the sidewalk and making fun of Bishop – Tim’s 12 year old husky – to his face because he gets into the garbage and likes to lick his own ass and sometimes eats drunk puke. Bishop knew we were ripping on him and just layed on the pavement in self loathing shame.

We smoked in the alley like lowlifes and then went over to Todd’s place to watch edited footage of this year’s south side irish parade… shots of Greg walking around the Cork and Kerry with a cigarette and drink holding a rolled up blanket like it was a baby… on camera interviews with the drunk and the mentally ill…

Sunday was fucking hot. Biking from the north side to the loop I caught a flat and had to walk pista about a mile to a bike store, where they pulled an office-sized staple from the side of the back wheel. I must’ve picked it up while cutting a corner. Anyways, I got down to the ESPN Zone to collect Rick and Andy, and then took them to my gym’s outdoor 7th floor pool. It rocked: hot black girls, hot thai girls, hot blondes and a humid late June afternoon plus bud and a 12 pack of coronas. We picked up some dinner at Heaven on Seven, then I rode north to my crib, smoked and kicked back to some Yesterday’s New Quintet and drew for an hour.

super millionaire

Once again somebody else has won the mega millions lottery. This time it was won by someone in Ohio. Yes, Ohio. Not Illinois. Not Chicago, Illinois. Not me.

The news reports that it was a single winner this time. Somebody in Ohio is the sole winner of $106 million. Every time the lottery shoots north of $40 million, I spend ONE dollar at the newsstand in the lobby of my workplace. I figure that one dollar is enough to win, and anything short of $40 million is a waste of time. Every time I play, I lose,.. or, rather,.. I "don’t win."

I think that that fucking sucks and that I would rock as a multi-millionaire. I fucking would, and many, many people would benefit from my sick wealth. I already got all that shit planned out.

First I would contact my friend Dave who’s a lawyer that defends insurance companies who don’t want to pay when somebody gets killed. Dave is a self-loathing asshole who’s barely tolerable to be around for longer than a three hour stretch because of his black heart and growing gloom due to knowingly performing the devil’s work on earth and fucking over grieving families for multi-million dollar insurance firms. Dave needs to take on a pro-bona job like advising me on my legal rights to claiming $106 million dollars to cleanse his conscious and his soul of encroaching wickedness.

Dave also serves as a fence for the untraceable firearms I’ll need when transporting the winning ticket to a lottery official. Dave knows the type of people who know where to procure the types of weapons I’ll require.

Overkill? Fuck off, have you ever carried $106 million dollars in your pocket? No one has. I break a sweat if I’m carrying more than $200... yeah, that's right, chicago trixies, I wasn't born into a wealthy family, so I'm not used to having cash just laying around. And, oh yeah, after I've fucked you five ways to friday, you're still not getting anywhere near my money.

After the winning ticket has been authenticated, I’ll handle all the PR bullshit myself. The lottery winner telecast has always been a bit of a let down for me because the "winners" always seem to blow it. I’m sick of listening to some "winner" with an oversized check stammer into the microphone about how they’re going to quit their job and pay off some debts. Blown opportunity, my friend.

I’m going to walk into the press conference wearing a white t-shirt with "ex girlfriends suffer" written in blood from my pricked finger across the chest, and look dead into the camera and say:

"I am going to use $100 million to create a clone army for George Bush, complete with advanced weapons training and karate moves to fight the terrorists who linked 9/11 from al-Qaeda in Iraq."

I will answer no questions, and instead repeat the mantra on clone armies and karate moves in Iraq.

Next, I will change my address, my telephone number, my e-mail account, and most likely my name ("Maximus Sunburn" is sounding pretty fuckin right on right now), and I will take off for an extended six month trip through southeast Asia and the south pacific.

My travels will take me through tsunami ravaged regions where I’ll volunteer service in the excavation and rebuilding of the region. I will make private financial donations where needed. I will not reveal my true identity, nor financial capabilities to anyone during this time. I will role play a traveling westerner lending a hand, and I will live simply.

When I return to the United States, I will pay off the remaining mortgages on all of my immediate family member’s homes. I will purchase a house in the city limits of Chicago and begin to furnish it. I’ll let my sister live there for free (I’ll also buy a home in Denver for my other sister to live at for free, even though I know that she won’t work and will smoke pot and watch TV all day). Once the house is complete, I’m going to invite all of my friends in the city to come over with their credit card bills and I’ll begin to write checks. Bring everyone back to zero.

With the home base complete and virtually everyone stupid debt free, I’m going to purchase a fully loaded RV and two Doberman pinchers (for breeding purposes) and hit the road on a cross country mountain biking/disc golf tour. I will follow my muse and begin to create amazing oil paintings on black velvet canvases. I will drive into small towns and find the busiest intersection (usually at a gas station) and display my original art for sale. I will also sell Dobermans for $20 each (by this time I’ll have bred and trained 10 to 15 killers).

While on the road I’ll contact my oldest and greatest friends and begin to grant wishes. Cross country road trip on new motorcycles? Sure. A hiking trip through Vietnam? You got it. Two women at the same time? Well, I get that shit whenever I want now, so, sure, go for it.

Cause I got fuck you money.

I’m a big believer in doing good deeds and not telling anyone about it. I think that you lessen the deed if you tell anyone about it. Like you’re looking for praise or some such shit. So, vast generosity will be bestowed upon those deemed in need. I’ve got nothing more to say about that.

Oh yeah, I’ll also be keeping a detailed journal of my journey, to be self published under the title What I Did My First Year As a Super Millionaire.

Look for it June 2007.

scientologists are insane

I can't help it. I have to keep railing against the cult. Tom Cruise is making it far, far too easy. And you can't just let him get away with talking this shit...

Cruise: If someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them. If someone wants to learn how to read, I can help them. If someone doesn't want to be a criminal anymore, I can give them tools that can better their life. You have no idea how many people want to know what Scientology is.

SPIEGEL: Do you see it as your job to recruit new followers for Scientology?

Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

Cruise: You don't understand what I am saying. It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

Dummy.

Oh right, "Narconon"... that teaches that drugs remain in your system indefinitely, until you take a lot of vitamins, exercise and then sit in a sauna.

Scientologists believe this even though repeated studies have shown that when drugs remain in your system, they do so in the fat cells IN YOUR BRAIN.

I don't know if somebody has to actually sit Tom Cruise down to explain this to him, but you can't actually burn off brain cells from exercise.

Spiegel interview

--

Brooke Shields gets a few kicks in:

Shields Attacks Cruise for Criticizing Her Drug Use

Actress Brooke Shields has lambasted former pal Tom Cruise for criticizing her "misguided" use of drugs to combat her post-natal depression.

Cruise - who claims to have helped people fight drug addictions through his controversial Scientology religion - recently attacked the Suddenly Susan star for becoming dependant on Paxil, following the birth of her daughter Rowan.

But Shields is disgusted by the Top Gun star's "dangerous" comments and took a swipe at his Scientology beliefs, by saying she wouldn't take advice from someone who devotes his life to creatures from outer space. She fumes, "His comments are dangerous. He should stick to saving the world from aliens."

ok, I'm going to stop talking about Tom Cruise, aliens and Brooke Shields now.