Many of you might be aware that I quit my job a little over two months ago to persue a life of leisure.

There are many reasons why I finally walked away from my job of five years, but they really aren’t important to anyone other than myself. The big thing that a lot of you who come in contact with me on a regular basis is that I feel like a new human being.

No more stress over factors that irked me to no end that I had no control over; no more false senses of urgency; no more working insane hours. It’s like heaven!

I gotta tell you, for the first month all I really did was sit around and watch the games of the World Cup. Sure, I cleaned the house like a madman just because I didn’t know what else to do with my idle time, but I got to see almost every game live. That’s a big first for me.

Then, when The Cup ended, I had to start thinking a little more long term. I took a little bit of time to finalize some projects that I had been freelancing on prior to quitting, but, with all this extra time, that happened really quickly.

I finally caught up on my five week backlog of comic books. Believe me, for my insane habit, five weeks is a crap load of books.

I got to play a video game for two days straight. I know that’s horribly hedonistic, but it was pretty damn awesome for me.

I bleached my hair and finally got my right lobe pierced to match the left one that had been pierced for the past twenty years (it’s the little things that working for “The Man” make you really appreciate).

I slowed way down on my smoking (I’m not going to say I’ve quit until I haven’t had a single smoke for three months and I’m not doing that hot towards that goal these days), and I started to aggressively attack a “Couch-to-5K” program. If all goes as planned, I start week four day one tomorrow morning.

This lack of day-to-day responsibility has got me feeling more centered than I have felt in a very long time. I’m less grumpy, anxious, sleepy (and other dwarfs as well) and I actually feel more healthy (except for the blasted summer cold I’m nursing right now).

And, because I can’t stay idle for too long, a friend and I have started a company to book Dallas-area bands (visit ManhandlerBooking.comfor more details). This will help me turn my habit/fascination with live music into a productive endeavor without having to expose anyone to my horrible horrible musical skills. I mean it. There’s a reason I do the vocal parts of Rock Band while squeezle is out of the house. There are just a few people who have been exposed to my dabbling in karaoke who are still alive to tell the tale. It’s just badness.

Unfortunately, the one thing I really intended to do over the past two months, but really haven’t gotten around to is write. I’ve been so lax with this blog that I probably need to get in here and scrub off a goodly layer of dust and mold before proceeding.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got more to say and I’m hoping you folks are still willing to read it. I can’t promise any of it will be heady or substantive, but it will, at the very least, give you a little brain break for part of your day.

To quote something a very wise man said upon being woken on the couch: “My mind is a sewer, and I live in a cardboard box.”

P.S. For all of you worried about that mouse up there at the top of my post, don’t worry. He’s suspended in a PFC solution, so he’s just fine.

Yeah, so I’ve been a little lax in the writing these past few weeks, but I’ve got a good (if not lazy) excuse. Ladies and gentlemen, it is World Cup time!

Typically a large majority of Americans have to be reminded that this grand culmination of the FIFA championship is going on. This year, however, a couple of factors have conspired to bring the World Cup to the attention of Americans.

The first of those factors are the two goals that FIFA officials robbed the US team of in the first round of play. Nothing unifies Americans faster than the thought that we are getting screwed over by some foreigner. That combined with the general hatred of referees in any sport and you’ve suddenly got Joe Six-Pack talking about the World Cup with his buddies on their bass boat.

The second, and way more important, factor has been the ever-present drone of the vuvuzela.

Never before has a two dollar piece of mold-injected plastic generated such a buzz (see what I did there?) on such a grand scale. Broadcasters have had to create new audio filters to cancel out some of the noise, whiny players (I’m looking at you Cristiano Ronaldo) have complained that is breaks up the players’ focus and doctors have been all over the media warning about potential hearing loss due to the 144 decibels these little monsters can pump out.

At first I really didn’t think twice about the hub-bub. It was kind of nice having something to distract from the inane commentary while I watched the first round of matches.  After the third day of three-match-a-day footie (and yes, I’ve been watching every single match), I just began ignoring them.

Then I tried watching an MLS match.

The play was good, I had beer and grilled meats, but something was missing. That’s right, I wasn’t enjoying my footie because it didn’t have the constant drone of the vuvuzela. In just one week I had been turned into Pavlov’s bitch.

Lucky for me, however, I had a variety of means at my disposal for faking that vuvuzela feeling. The easiest was to just get on the internet and download an mp3 of the buzz. Next, I hopped into the iTunes app store and found a couple of free apps that filled my need (plus it’s a great app for confusing people in bars).

So, damn the naysayers. I can understand banning vuvuzelas at events like Wimbledon and the US Open, but these plastic horns are here to stay. Besides, I’ve been seeing them at high school and college football games for years.

Haters gonna hate.

I did something today that I haven’t done at all in my adult life: I didn’t leave a tip at a restaurant.

As someone who has worked in a variety of restaurant jobs over the course of my teens and twenties, I cut a lot of slack for a lot of the standard crap that goes on in the course of someone serving you your meal. I understand, to some degree, that omissions and substitutions can sometimes wreck havoc on the kitchen and I also realize that a ten table station is downright ludicrous.

What happened to me today at lunch was just a snowball effect of horrible management and apathetic self-victimization.

I’ve been going to a Thai joint near my office every week or so for the past five years: my first time being about a week after they opened their doors. It’s a pretty simple place with a mere dozen menu items for lunch that comes standard with a little cup of soup and a tiny eggroll. On most days, about half of the fifteen or so tables are filled and the whole lunching experience takes about thirty minutes and it’s right back to the office again.

Not today.

Today I walked in and everything seemed moderately normal: about ten of the tables were seated and the normal Asian server/manager was hustling around from table to table. I sat in the corner and she immediately came over to get my usual order: Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy and an iced tea. She shuffled off and sent the other girl who typically acts as food runner over with my iced tea.

From there, the circus began.

As is typical with most days I’m out at lunch, I had my Kindle with me and was reading the latest crap novel that I crave so much, so I don’t often pay attention to much of what is going on around me. After five minutes of reading with no sign of soup, I started to look around. I would guess that more than half of the ten tables had their food and were throwing down the nom while the rest of us waited. A table near me who, I’m guessing, had recently ordered, flagged down the server/manager type who was standing in the corner opposite me. From their gestures I gathered that they were curious as to where their soup was. At that point I was curious as to where mine was, so I made the “inquisitive” face towards the server/manager. Rather than wander over to see what I needed, she merely yelled across the room “No soup yet?”

She hadn’t brought me the soup, and her runner had made herself scarce in the kitchen, so yes, she knew damn well that I had no soup. She proceeded to take three more tables of orders and, as an afterthought five or so minutes later, brought me my damn soup.

When the soup was dropped off at my table I asked her if I could get a refill of my tea. She motioned to the other end of the dining room and told me it was over there. Not once in my five years of going to this place have I ever refilled my own drink. I looked her in the eye and said “Seriously?” and her reply was “Yes, it’s over there.”

At this point I was already starting to get a tad pissed off.

Another twenty minutes passed and Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy, was still not in front of me. The remainder of people without food around me were also wondering where their dishes were and started signalling to the server/manager that they needed to get their food out now or packed up to-go. The server/manager would make these exasperating huffs and then go back into the kitchen only to return a few seconds later explaining that she told the cook(s) to make the order. She proceeded to do this five or six more times for five or six more customers.

Finally, someone who had been seated before I got there got up and said forget the order and he was going to have to leave to get back to work. The server/manager got really indignant and said that the customer couldn’t do that because the food was finished. The guy gave a little chuckle and then walked out the door.

I was still without my Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy.

Two more tables say they either need to cancel or have the food packed to-go right now and stood up. The server/manager began scurrying around the restaurant like ants after someone upsets an anthill; and, like those ants, it seemed that nothing was being done.

Suddenly, a plate of pad Thai came out of the kitchen and was delivered to a table where three gentlemen were seated. I’m not sure where the other two dishes were, but the other two guys got up and left.  After another couple of minutes another plate came out and the food runner angled towards my table. “Fried rice?” she asked. “Yes,” I responded and she plopped the most lacklustre plate of greasy fried rice I’d ever seen in this joint down in front of me and scurried off. Sure, it was Thai fried rice, but it was chicken instead of beef and had a spicy factor of zero.

It had been about forty-five minutes since I had sat down, so, instead of sending the plate back and trying my luck with another hour of waiting, I began eating.

Another plate emerged from the kitchen and it was another plate of Thai fried rice; a plate that looked suspiciously like beef. “I ordered chicken,” said the gentleman server/manager tried to put the plate down in front of. “He took yours,” said the server/manager pointing in my direction.

That was it.

I shovelled a few more forks full of rice into my gullet and gathered up my stuff. As I headed towards the counter where the cash register was the server/manager scurried over to find my check. We didn’t exchange a single word as I gave her my best head-shaking stink eye and paid for my failure of a lunch. I’m pretty sure she knows that I’ll never be back in there again.

Dear plainskin™ stranger,

I’m glad you have the courage to talk to people you don’t know in just about any locale or circumstance, and I’m glad you appreciate the artwork that adorns my skin, but please, please oh please, don’t waste my time telling me about the “bad ass” tattoo that you are going to get or that your cousin or your cousin’s step-mother’s boyfriend’s parole officer has. I couldn’t give less than a rat’s ass.

Don’t get me wrong, I talk about potential tattoos and the tattoos of individuals’ relatives all the time, but those are people that I know. Much as back in article number two, while you are not touching me, I also don’t need to know your genealogy.

You would honestly be surprised at how often this actually happens. It even can be predicted by some telltale gestures and facial expressions as the person is moving towards me screwing up their courage to regale me with fantasies of giant tribal pieces “not like that other crap you see,” and un-ironic armbands of barbed wire. In fact, I would dare to say that the conversation almost always starts with: “Those are some pretty [insert modifier here] tattoos. Are you an artist?” Then they launch into the usual drivel.

I can only think of one instance where this conversation was ever fruitful: a plainskin™ stranger was telling me about what her boyfriend was going to get while I was waiting for a drink at some bar, and, before I could entirely glaze over, she got to the point and asked me where I got a couple of my pieces because she really liked the strong colors. That one was borderline.

Just remember, by attempting to keep my attention with your story that I don’t care about, you leave the door wide open for ridicule and mocking. Generally I’m a nice guy and will put up with a bit of that crap, but, every so often, I have one of my days where I’ll move straight into mocking mode. Because you engaged me in a conversation I would rather not be having, it is your fault that I’m making fun of your and/or your family. I realize that this truth will do nothing to quell the immediate anger you will feel towards me, but didn’t your mother tell you to not talk to strangers as a kid? There, lesson learned.

There is one and only one exception to this rule: if you are bringing me food and/or alcohol, I’ll listen to your stupid story. That’s right, my time can be bought. I do, however, reserve the right to waive this exception because while I may be a whore, I am not a cheap whore. For reference, I tend to enjoy pints of English and Irish ale and good Irish whiskeys.

Think before you speak, I may indeed bite.

justin.

I’ve got to be honest, this one came after a lengthy conversation with squeezle over some tasty breakfast tacos, but it really should have been the second in this series rather than the sixth. I’ll claim the fail on that one.

If you are here because of this article then I’m glad you visited. This is the fifth “article” in this series and you could probably stand to read the other four. You are probably what I refer to as my “target market” when it comes to little thing like being in contact with the modified (especially in Dallas).

First, and foremost, kudos to Teresa Dennis for getting out there and kicking off a new shoppe in town. Now that I’ve said that, I’m really wondering why she went with her own concept instead of franchising a Hart & Huntington shop here in Dallas. What, Dallas is just too cool for H&H to put out a shingle? I really doubt that. I expect Ms. Dennis to make a metric craptonne of money from her endeavor with almost zero repeat business. Why, you ask? The answer is simple. Hers is the land of ankle tattoos and tramp stamps. More kanji will make it’s way out of Subkulture Klothing and Ink than is in the Japanese Constitution. Part of me wants to grab my camera and just wait to be a paid contributor to Hanzi Smatter after what I expect to come out of this Uptown “experiement.”

This leads me to the fifth, and horribly late, lesson in our series: trend kills art.

I used to be a huge fan of the works of Don Ed Hardy. Hardy took a degree in printmaking and a relationship with Sailor Jerry Collins and managed to pull together an iconic catalog of style and form that helped to define “old school” tatoo art.

Then 2004 rolled around and the douche that killed the Von Dutch name decided to destroy yet another American icon. Yes, that would be Christian Audigier. It’s not coincidence that squeezle and I dressed as douchebags for Halloween in 2009 by decking ourselves out head-to-toe in budget Ed Hardy/Christian Audigier clothing.

Even Andy Warhol couldn’t mass produce that much cultural pap to be slurped up the the “undesirable elite” to be worn at exclusive clubs and events that would probably rather not have me in attendance. Hell, Andy is probably touching himself lewdly in the grave at the mere thought of having his work reach the ontological and improbable (near impossible) pinnacle that Hardy, err, Audigier has done: killing an American artform.

Sure, I’m more than willing to recognize that I have a severe degree of bitterness in this regard. For years and years I’ve wanted nothing more than a gigantic “Aloha” monkey tattooed on my torso (if you don’t know what it is, look it up). Squeezle has pretty much forbidden me from getting this, but it has been our little back and forth for the last decade. Now, sadly, it’s a cliche. I still want the little guy, but getting it now would be akin to getting the McDonalds arches put on me and declared subversive art. For that I am pissed. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Mark Ryden and Simone Legno (tokidoki for those not in the know) works become as prevalent, but I can, at the very least, still enjoy these gentlemen as pre-co-opted artists.

Above all, I want you, gentle reader, to know that this drivel is my personal opinion. Blogs are like assholes, everyone knows someone who has a stinky one. Sure, my bidet is on the fritz these days, but I still keep ordering the red curry and hoping for the best.

I honestly hope Ms. Dennis makes a good go at her “Subkulture” effort. I don’t imagine I’ll know any of the artists or clients of the joint, and I expect it to do as well as any of the trendy “boutiques” in Uptown, but I hope she learns a lot out of the exercise. Normally I’d throw in a nasty remark here about the potential for a Kat Von D guest spot at Subkulture, but I think that’s just a little too soon for Dallas’ fragile psyche.

Just a parting thought, though, what’s the over/under for the “buy the shirt, get the same tattoo for 75% off” sale at Subkulture?

I spend an inordinate amount of time sitting in front of a computer. I realized last night while going through my typical Facebook/blogs/forums routine that, even when I’m not at work, I spend a crapload of time sitting in front of my monitors.

Ultimately, I’m all about getting my daily dose of rads while I rot my brains chuckling at lolcats and maybe even popping out a line or hundred of code. What I’ve never thought about, or even had to think about is how much I’m moving around while I’m “moving about” onscreen.

That sounds weird doesn’t it? Well, let me set up why this concept suddenly became my biggest daily issue.

In my office at work my area used to be a gigantic open section of floor. At some point very flimsy walls were hung from the ceiling and doors were hung on some of the holes in these walls to form rudimentary offices. One of those caves is my office. What didn’t change, however, is the lighting. The lighting setup for the gigantic open area was left as-is for the current setup of five offices, one conference room and a whole crapload of cubicles. What this means for me is that the single switch that controls the lights for my office, and all the areas in-between, is about fifteen yards away from where I sit and around all of the cubicles.

That really never bothered me. I’m at work, the lights are on, it’s time to get crackin’ on what needs to be done. Sure there have been a couple days of severe hangover that made me wish I could turn out the lights and just curl up, but it really hasn’t been an issue.

Last Thursday night, however, everything changed. Apparently a crack team of commando electricians spent their Thursday night rewiring my little area with motion-detecting sensors for all of the lights. Now my office can be dark while the rest of the floor is lit up.

All in all that’s very responsible of them. Mythbusters has proven that it’s more economical to turn out those nasty fluorescent lights rather than leave them on all the time, so I’m a believer in the off switch. What I’m hating, however, is the fact that the damn motion detecting sensor is a low-bid piece of shit.

Three times, yes one, two, three freakin’ times the lights have gone out while I have been writing this piece.

If you’ve been around me for any given amount of time then you know that I’m not really one to stand still well. I’m a fidgeter and it’s genetic. I almost always have one or both of my legs bouncing like crazy whether I’m sitting or standing. When I’m working and my brain is pretty much just wired to my fingers, it gets even worse. Here I am, wriggling like a puppy and the damn lights are still going out.

The ultimate beauty of this change, however, is the fact that noone is stepping up and taking responsibility for it. I’ve talked to three different “people of authority” and each and every one of them has pointed me in a different direction: all wrong. Times like this remind me how laughable bureaucracy really is. Something major happened yet nobody knows who did it or even authorized it.

This afternoon, I am going to stop bitching about the lights that keep going out on me. The way I look at it, lights on means business and productivity and lights out mean nap time. When I crawl back into my hole after lunch and the lights go out on me, I will take that as a sign from the mysterious “Powers That Be” who authorized the installation of our wonderful new lights as a signal to take a nap. I guess they really do care about employee engagement around here.

I’m not sure if a recent head injury (reference my zombie hammer posting below) managed to rattle loose the plaque clogging up my artistic side, but I’ve been scribbling on just about everything for the past week or so.

I have one gigantic stumbling block when it comes to artistry, however: I can’t draw a straight line to save my life. Sure, everything looks just peachy in my head, but transition to paper is a Herculean effort of “over-the-mountains-and-through-the-woods” between my brain and hand. To make matters worse, the frustration of the effort makes my lines even shakier than they normally would be.

If, by some chance, I do indeed manage to get out a decent representation of what I was attempting (typically on the piles and piles of random scrap paper I keep in my office), I am often hard-pressed to duplicate whatever effort I just made look acceptable.

Even more scary is that the current things I’ve been doodling out look like stuff that Martin Ontiveros has done whilst having a seizure during an earthquake.

By no means do I let any of this distract me from putting ink and graphite on paper: it’s just adjusted my approach a little. I spend much more time experimenting with lines I normally draw straight and seeing if I can duplicate the opposite side of a curve. It’s frustrating as all hell since I’ve been spending the better part of the last decade popping out computer generated graphics like crazy. Photoshop and Illustrator are much more forgiving that good ol’ pen and paper.

I’ve got no problem with computer graphics, and still rely on using the computer for almost 90% of ideas I’d like to move forward into any semblance of a physical manifestation of my creativity, but there is just something fundamentally different between printed images from the screen and something that was plotted out and drawn on a given surface.

Recently I’ve begun playing around with customizing the paint schemes on designer toys (my beloved RealxHead mini fortune cats in particular). The challenges of working with a two and a half inch tall piece of vinyl really turn into a matter of scale. I’ve got grand plans that need to be executed very small, so I’ve turned to working with stencils and my newly acquired airbrush setup. On the screen everything seems just perfect, but trying to cut out wee tiny stencils after printing is just about one of the most annoying things I’ve ever done.

I realize that the more I practice, the easier this will all go and the better I’ll eventually get. It’s a painfully slow process, but I’m willing to stick it out (for now).

Something to consider each and every day is your level of preparedness when the zombie apocalypse comes.

This may sound farcical, but being ready to not be overcome by flesh-eating masses of the undead will pretty much make you ready for anything. To this end, I spend more than my fair share of time thinking about how best to defend myself if set upon by shamblers, runners or both.

Several weeks ago a friend and I came up with what could be one of the best zombie survial tools to date; a device we simply call the “zombie hammer”.

The construction of the zombie hammer is quite simple. Cast a pretty decent sized sledge hammer in titanium with a slightly over-sized head that is hollow. Fill the hollow head with mercury and you are all set to swing for the bleachers.

When considering a zombie weapon it is important to think about upkeep and portability. Guns will run out of ammo, and swords/knives will probably lose their edge (ever de-bone a chicken?), but hammers and/or maces seem pretty solid. Putting a spike on one end may provide for some more damage, but if you get stuck while a horde is on you, a spike could be a problem.

Let’s talk about the power behind the zombie hammer: a head half-full of mercury.

When I was a kid my brother and I had one of those over-sized plastic baseball bats that we used to smack all manner of objects around our backyard.  Quite by accident we discovered that filling the bat a bit with water allowed us to smack the crap we were swinging at a lot farther. The weight to power ratio was pretty damn amazing.

I was further able to test the power of the zombie hammer this past Friday when I managed to smack myself in the eye giving myself a slight concussion. The offending object? A half-filled Camelbak water bottle.

That’s right, I conked the crap out of my face and managed to give myself a black eye in the name of science! I can say, from firsthand experience, that the zombie hammer is quite effective against human flesh. Please don’t try this testing at home, I’m a pseudo-professional.

My embarrassment of concussing myself while standing in my bedroom were only compounded by the fact that America’s Funniest Videos was on the television. Oh the humanity.

This next week marks my achievement of making yet another complete rotation around the sun on this ferro-nickel rock ball we call home. Coinciding with my annual trek, I have recently become painfully aware of the limits of my quickly dilapidating frame.

Two factors contribute to my current tales of woe. First, in a matter of freak genetics, the males of my immediate family have unusually long torsos. This, sadly, gives us no advantages other than the ability to see over short people and the propensity for lower back issues. Second, I am horribly accident prone. Combine my bad back with my ability to injure myself in even the most safe environments and you have the perfect recipe for my current run with organized sports.

In an attempt to justify the amount of beer I drink each week, I started playing soccer (again) several years ago. When the league started up most of the teams were like-minded and saw the matches as a way to justify going to the bar afterwards. As the players started getting that false sense of pride and hope that comes with scoring goals and winning games, the league got a lot more competitive. By the time our team fell by the wayside (D-Burn/Brewsers R.I.P.!), we had managed to very successfully fill the coffers of many a medical specialist in the DFW area. I, myself, had managed to jack up both knees, tweak my back horribly, break an uncountable number of toes and even break my own rib in a fall worthy of a Warner Bros. cartoon. Did I mention I was accident prone?

In the aftermath of soccer (not dead, just on hiatus), I mistakenly thought it would be a good idea to partake in a 3-on-3 basketball season/tournament with some fellows at work. The season started roughly a month ago and I managed to get a good eight minutes in before I was crushed backwards (oddly enough by an HR specialist) and sent to the floor with my back spasming. Thus ends my current basketball career. That’s right LeBron, you’re off the hook. Three weeks later and I still have to be very wary of my horrible slouching posture lest I not be able to walk out of my office. Boy howdy that’s fun.

So that leaves me with more pedestrian methods of keeping my shattered corpse in good enough shape to keep upright for the time being. I’ll keep doing individual activities where the chance of me being folded, spindled or mutilated are slim (though I probably will find a way). My next hope at damaging myself falls this summer when work has been toying with a badminton tourney. Yes, I am, in the first time since college, going to find a way to injure myself playing a game made popular by British aristocracy whilst subjugating India. Kudos to me.

In the meantime, does anyone know of a good herbal muscle relaxer? My prescription of Flexeril is running out.

I’d like to preface this entry with a disclaimer. If you are at all religious and/or are offended easily, you’d better stop reading right here.

Are they gone yet? OK, I’ll proceed.

This weekend I had the very fortunate opportunity to attend the wedding of two friends. It was a lovely small service in a quaint wedding chapel and that got me to thinking (uh-oh).

As a rule, I tend to steer clear of Christian-oriented locales. I was going to write that I steer clear of religious-oriented locales, but that’s just too inclusive. As a general rule, religions other than Christianity don’t try to cram their doctrine down my throat. Never once have I been proselytized to by a Muslim or Jew (except for that wacky Jew for Jesus a few years ago, but they are an entirely different kind of animal entirely), and I actually know quite a few Muslims and Jews.

Anyway, sitting in this chapel waiting for the show to kick off, I was struck by something that actually tickled my funny bone: the universal symbol of Christianity is a device of execution.

I understand that over the past couple of millennia the meaning of the cross has been turned around to a symbolic representation of redemption, etc., and I’m just fine with that, but that doesn’t change the fact that it took Constantine I to abolish it’s use as a method of execution in 337 AD. That’s a full 300 years after it was used on Jesus. Scarily enough, that date is one of the few things that has stuck with me from the formal courses in “Christian History” I took almost ten years ago.

At this point you are probably trying to figure out how I derived humor from my observation of a cross in a wedding chapel on a Saturday morning. Fine, I’ll get to my punchline.

If the time/technology for the events of the New Testament had been shifted by two thousand years or so, it is entirely feasible that the symbol at the altars of Christian churches could be a gas chamber gurney or even the electric chair. That’s what I found funny.

Can you imagine baroquely jewelled and gilded “old sparkys” adorning sacred space. How many people between 0 AD and 337 AD found the cross as repulsive?

These are the things that humor me. Oh, and for all of you who didn’t heed my disclaimer, yes, I do indeed know that I’m going to burn in your “Hell,” but I’ll keep a seat warm for you.