UPDATE: If you know any hilarious Texas sayings, please include them in the comments section--we've been getting some great ones from readers kind enough to take some time and leave them for us.

This blog has more readers from Texas than any other state in the union. I keep pretty detailed stats of all my web traffic, not to be some kind of big brother overlord but to keep my finger on the pulse of what people respond to so I can do more of it. I'm not interested in driving tens of millions of people here but I am interested in attracting an organic audience of intelligent and passionate individuals who come back on a consistent basis and add to the culture of this site.

We are in the middle of a war against symbolism--whether we are killing for the symbol of money, a national symbol or a symbol of god--the heart of man is deeply involved in a spiritual war of symbols and this war can only be won when the individual finally breaks free of all symbols and stands completely alone which means to be free even from the symbol of themselves (an idea of self put together by the mind through time but which has no external substance outside of the mind which composed it).

I am talking about absolute freedom here and nobody in this world knows more about absolute freedom than the citizens of Texas because they enjoy more individual freedom than anyone else on this planet.

If someone trespasses on your property in Texas--you can shoot their ass.

It has been rumored that people have smoked joints whilst walking the streets of Austin and have flicked the nubbed out roaches at cop cars as they drove by.

People in Texas have balls--even the women who are sexiest specimens of brilliant femininity the world has to offer.

Two of my favorite bloggers, Antimedia and JD Allen, are from Texas.

George Strait is from Texas and that man has the smoothest voice ever to lay down and wiggle over a steel guitar.

So I just wanted to take a moment and thank all my readers from Texas who, even though they got their asses smoked by my beloved Buckeyes this year; still represent the best of humanity in this country and embody the spiritual hopes for the freedom of the future of man.

So I'm reading David Milch's book about his show Deadwood which just came out last week and I'm telling you right now that if you watch that show, you will be truly missing out if you don't read that book. (And if you don't watch that show, you're getting idiot points for every day you don't go out and buy both seasons on DVD and eagerly await the third).

The reason this book is so great is that Milch approaches his work from a very intellectual and spiritual level and this book is much more of a philosophy of life and how the radiance of the divine shines through a work of art grounded in a specific conceit than it is a "making of a television show book."

On page 55 of this book, Milch makes the statement about the value of gold as the agreed upon standard of value between human beings compared with the power unleashed from a strong symbol:

The saving power of an agreed-upon abstraction is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, where our founding fathers declared, "We hold these truths to be self evident." All men are not created equal, but we're goign to accept the fiction that all men are equal. The same way that we are going to accept the fiction that gold is worth something.

Milch does bring up a good point--anyone with common sense knows that everyone isn't created equal but I think that the Declaration is a statement of the principle that every human being should be considered to have the same opportunity to pursue happiness given whatever state of faculty, talent and passion they are born with.

Do you think he's right? Is the Declaration of Independence a lie agreed upon?

Let me tell you about the first time I went to the bank to get a loan. I was nineteen and I was looking to borrow five thousand bucks to invest in a pyramid scheme called Equinox (which has since been dismantled by the Federal government). I had on a shirt and tie, the whole deal. I was driving down the road in my POS 1981 black Mustang when this douche starts tailgating me on this country road and making like he was going to pass.

Now, those of you that know me know that I have Short-Man's Complex and at eighteen I was so full of piss and vinegar that you couldn't tell me shit. So, I swerve when the guy tries to pass me. He tries again. I swerve again.

We finally make it up to a major cross-section in Cincinnati and he pulls his car in front of mine diagonally across the lane like a cop in a movie. I said, "Hell no!"

I was out of the car and ready to go, all 115 lbs in a bundled rage.

This guy was fat--like 250 and 5' 8". He began walking up and, even though I had never been in a formal fight before, some kind of lion came out of me. I kicked him right in the crotch with a boot stomp that knocked the wind out of him in a "Ahoooooohaaah."

He started slapping at me like some little bitch and I was all over his ass. We must have looked so ridiculous, this short and skinny white kid with a shaved head beating the crap out of this fat ass middle-aged man on the side of the road.

Finally, my rage had subsided and I was standing over the guy with my fists still balled up. I took a deep breath, seeing that the fight had left him also. I reached out a hand and helped the guy up, trying to find some kind of apology that would put things into perspective in a way that he could explain what happened to his face to his kids.

I even helped him look for his glasses but they were lost in the weeds of Southern Ohio.

I never made it to my loan appointment because I had the guy's blood all over my shirt. I look back on this event with a mixture of shame and self-righteousness that always settles into some hegemonic haze of comfort.

So, fast forward ten years. Yesterday, I went to the bank to sign the final papers to open my company's corporate checking account. I had a 1:00 appointment with the lady. She wasn't there when I got there. The tellers had no idea where she was and were adamant that it was completely out of character for her to miss business appointments like that.

So, I waited for 30 minutes. I read all the webpages downloaded to my IPAQ and even finished the Time magazine about the London Bombing with pictures I hadn't seen yet (doesn't Time have the best frigging pictures in the world?).

Finally, I got up very calmly and went back up to the teller. I asked her if she could give the lady a message, that I couldn't wait any longer than a half hour and that I would appreciate a phone call by the end of the day to reschedule the meeting. I didn't scream. I didn't show any emotion other than mild disappointment. I could see in the tellers' eyes that they fully expected me to explode into an emotional outburst and to have caused a huge scene.

But what would that have gotten me? Back on the side of the road fumbling for an excuse for bad behavior with someone else's blood on my shirt?

No, doing that put me in a position of leverage where the person on the other end of the phone had to apologize to me regardless of whether it was her fault or not, if she wanted to keep my business.

It ended up being a scheduling mishap with her assistant.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt now and let the little stuff go--life is too stinking short to tie yourself up in knots about things that don't really matter.

There are too many things that do matter which need the full spotlight of our time and attention.

Links:

• For those who love to pop bubble wrap

I am a firm believer in using one's time wisely. Therefore, I am a huge supporter of listening to audio books in the car. I am in the car about an hour each day commuting from home to the babysitter to the gym to work and back home again and find that an audio book is a good use of what would otherwise be worthless time.

I am happy to announce that today I began Brand's biography of Andrew Jackson which I have been meaning to get to for some time now. Jackson has long fascinated me. I am still awed by the amount of physical and psychological pain he endured during his lifetime. Despite his obvious historical misdeeds (all Presidents have them); I consider him to be amongst the greatest of US Presidents and a model of a tough ass sumbitch.

More to come from this book...

Who do you think is the single person that had the most effect on world history from the 20th Century? To me, it's Neville Chamberlain.

Everyone knows Neville Chamberlain as "The Great Appeaser" but not too many people understand why his failure to act at several critical moments in world history in the 1930s directly led to the deaths of millions of human beings. This makes him, a single solitary man, one of the pivotal figures of world history in the 20th Century.

In 1936, Germans marched into the demilitarized Rhine-land and were given express orders that if the French showed any resistance whatsoever there would be a full German retreat. Chamberlain, along with the French, refused to act and therefore encouraged future Nazi conquest by threat of aggression.

In 1938, Germany seized Austria in the atrocious Anschluss where the greedy little European piggy nations lined up at the trough and allowed Hitler to rape the country while France, Russia and England sat by and ignored their pacts to defend the continent against that exact type of aggression. Also in 1938, Hitler took the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia by the threat of another war.

Great Britain, France and Russia could have allied together against Germany at any point during these three key aggressive moves and would have easily defeated the Nazi military and leadership but Chamberlain foolishly convinced his fellow politicians of a peace with Germany that was never to be.

And beyond that, he helped Hitler in every way he could. Chamberlain didn't do jack shit to save Austria and he worked with Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia which was the only democracy east of Germany's border and was also a member of the League of Nations which turned out to be the worst costume party in civilized history. The Czechs had a standing army and fortifications that, when combined with the other Allies, would have obliterated the Nazi government from the face of the earth before they even got started on the shameful acts which ended up defining terror in the 20th century.

But the weirdest mystery of Chamberlain is why he suddenly decided to grow balls on the issue of Germany's demands on Poland that they immediately relinquish Danzig to German control in April of 1939. Chamberlain recklessly resisted Hitler's intrusive demands on Poland by unilaterally guaranteeing Britain's support for Poland should Hitler invade their sovereign territory (which, of course, they did).

Poland at the time was a nation run by a bunch of idiot "colonels" who had previously conspired with Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia only to have him turn on them shortly afterwards (there truly is no honor among thieves). There was little worth to the western world in defending Poland, not like there would have been in defending Czechoslovakia. Yet Chamberlain chose this awkwardly placed country carved in two by a treaty so hated in the Weimar Republic that it essentially ushered in the Nazi reign of power.

And Russia offered to side with Britain several times to combat Nazi aggression in Europe and was turned down by Chamberlain every time (twice in early 1939 alone). But Chamberlain didn't even consult Stalin before he guaranteed British support of Poland in the event of a Nazi invasion (which, of course, they did).

As William L. Shirer says in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

Finally, [Chamberlain] had done exactly what for more than a year he had stoutly asserted that Britain would never do: he had left to another nation the decision whether his country would go to war.

From this point forward, when Chamberlain made his stand on Poland; world history was set into motion like a sad dance timed to the death screams of millions.

I can't help but try to extrapolate these vital lessons of the past when considering the current state of affairs today with the War on Terror.

On the one hand, we have another world leader of the strongest nation at the time who has essentially put his country on a unilateral course of war by calling out other countries as "evil" and is now being put in a position of acting when those countries take actions deemed hostile (i.e. acquiring and detonating nuclear arms).

We're not quite at the horrible point of another nation deciding when we'll go to war (instead of Congress) but we're not all that far away from that point either.

And on the other hand, we have a leader who isn't sitting back and crying for peace while other nations slap us in the face and take by force that which we are entrusted by treaty and integrity to protect--individual human freedom. We have someone who, instead, realizes that sometimes you have to kick a little ass before dickheads in the world perk their ears up and look up from the mutilated carcass of the weak they go through life chewing on.

History is a strange thing as it's not quite a mirror and it's not quite a window but rather; history is like an old woman standing on the side of a highway whispering directions to drivers trying to get to the land of peace and plenty while they drive by at 100 MPH. Only those who slow down and take the time to listen carefully are going to have any shot at all in getting to their destination.

Everyone else is just along for the ride and waiting for the inevitable crash.

LINKS:

• Olbermann asks, "Why does Habeus Corpus hate America?
  

• Gun shoots a million rounds per minute (the most dangerous non-nuclear weapon ever created by man)
  

• Distant planet is half-fire and half-ice

TAGS:
Neville Chamberlain, History, Nazi, Hitler, Politics, war on terror

I swear; I feel like I've been asleep inside of a cocoon these past five years. I stopped watching cable news (and never watched network news) about two years ago so I've almost become revirginized to the utter foolishness of American media (thank God for Antimedia).

So imagine my surprise when my higher intellect suddenly woke up just as I caught the words WAR ON TERROR come up during a Fox News Alert in the lunchroom at work the other day.

It suddenly dawned on me that this corporate political machine with their propagandic media arms have actually convinced me that it is a wise and just decision for my country to declare a war on an emotion.

The War on Terror.

Why not, the War on Jealousy?

Or, the War on Sentimentality?

Can you remember a time when we declared war on people and countries instead of emotions? A War on Terror is something a father should declare when his child is afraid of the monster in the closet, not what a country does when it is ruthlessly attacked.

You know what scares me today? It's not Arab freedom fighters.

It's lettuce.

And spinach. And carrot juice. The general mass food manufacturing machine that has driven most small farmers out of business and left us with non-nutritional spammy green shit that is killing us rather than making us healthy.

The real enemy of the American people is the endless line of shit we shovel into our gullets on a daily basis. Consider this quote from the book Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma city Is Only the Beginning by Joel Dyer:

In 1962, the Committee for Economic Development comprised approximately seventy-five of the nation's most powerful corporate executives. They represented not only the food industry but also oil and gas, insurance, investment and retail industries. Almost all groups that stood to gain from consolidation were represented on that committee. Their report [An Adaptive Program for Agriculture] outlined a plan to eliminate farmers and farms. It was detailed and well thought out.

It's some evil shit, people and we are about as far away from the agrarian democracy that twinkled in our forefathers' eyes as Michael Jackson is from a functional monogamous relationship with an adult female.

People, if it smells like shit, looks like shit and tastes like shit--don't eat it.


LINKS:

• Antimedia weighs in on Foleygate
  

• The Guide to Calling "Shotgun"
  

• Did Rumsfeld help sell nuclear reactors to North Korea?
  

• Disney declares "They Understand Piracy Now as a Business Model"

Jesus came and visited me during my nap today. I knew he'd be coming and I thought for sure that he would ask me how I felt about the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica and if I thought that the Bush administration had any inkling of how subversive it is to the War on Terror which is becoming ever more ridiculous and transparent as the days drag on.

I thought for sure he'd want to know what I thought about the Cylon machines that man made and which had since turned against man had now developed a fanatical belief system revolving around the concept of God which fuels their force-led occupation of New Cylon and what remains of the human race now in captivity on Cylon.

And I thought for sure that my bearded, cross-bearing friend would ask me what I thought about the suicide bombings that the most fanatical human beings started up in order to free themselves from a crusading army hell bent on imposing a foreign way of life on them in order to "save" them.

I was going to ask Jesus if he thought the Cylons would start referring to the people defending themselves and their property against invasion by an outside force as "insurgents" or not.

But that conversation never took place. Instead, Jesus asked me to tell him the story about the last cigarette I ever smoked which is strange because I've told him that one about five million times now.

That story always makes him laugh and I guess chuckles are hard to come by when you're the son of man responsible for bearing the world's sins on your lonely shoulders and all.

So I told him again because when the boss drops into your home, you fix him his favorite dinner and let him sit in the Archie Bunker chair right in front of the TV.

It was a Monday morning and I was just nineteen years old. I had been up late the night before, partying with Tiggity Turgin and Connelly and some other fraternity brothers. Bong hits, keg stands and beer slides--all in a day's work down on Digby in the Phi Delt house at the University of Cincinnati.

I was on my way to work and it had snowed heavily over night. I worked as a salesman at the electronics counter at Service Merchandise in Springdale. I was driving a 1981 black mustang with moon roof and I was late.

I must have been spacing out because I almost missed my exit. I slammed on the brakes without thinking about the sleet on 275. My car started fish tailing and whipped around until I smacked hard into the guard rail and came to a dead stop in the burm facing oncoming traffic.

I remember seeing the faces of two or three of the drivers as they passed me. I remember one man in particular, he had a wiry mustache that looked like it came from the 1970s. He was looking at me like, "What the fuck is that kid doing?"

I had no idea, myself.

I was about twenty-five yards into the off ramp of my exit but I was facing the wrong way. So, I started backing up onto the off-ramp. When I saw a break in traffic, I pulled a U-turn and weaseled back into traffic going the right way.

My hands were shaking and my heart was racing. I could have easily died had my car went the other way out of the fish tail. I needed a smoke or at least I knew that I was in a situation where a good smoker would be reaching for their stash and I thought I was going to become a good smoker because my coolest fraternity brothers were good smokers and I wanted to be like them because I was a lowly pledge and lowly pledges always want to be like the cool actives.

While I was stopped at the light outside the Comp USA there on 747, I fumbled in my glove box for the half-smoked pack of Marlboro lights and the cheap plastic yellow see through lighter I had been using lately. There was a solid brown stain on the side of the lighter from capping metal bowls being passed from Cheech to Chong.

I pulled a cigarette and stuck it to my bottom lip, pulling it into my mouth with my top lip. I flicked the spark wheel, totally forgetting the little game I was playing with the valve the night before as we sat outside by the pool as the snow started falling and the marijuana took hold of our minds and the conversation rose to a clamor.

Unfortunately for me, the lighter was set to its highest flame setting and when I flicked the spark wheel, a great plume of butane fire jumped past the cigarette and peaked on my forehead.

I screamed like a woman and threw the lighter to the floorboard on the passenger side so I had a free hand to put out the flame on my face.

I blew the cigarette out of my mouth when I said, "MOTHERFUCK!"

I smelled burnt hair and looked into the mirror. I had no eyebrows left. Back in those days, I didn't have a goatee and had recently shaved my head on the sides and had long hair on top. Without eyebrows, I looked like a shaved penis vomiting hair.

I don't have to tell you the punishment I took from the active brothers and even my good friends. It took about a month for my eyebrows to grow back.

That was the last cigarette I ever smoked and the next time Jesus wants to hear this story, he can come back to this blog post and read it himself.

NOTES:

• Pic comes from Antimedia

LINKS:

• In a study of Presidential doodles, JFK wrote "9/11" with the word "conspiracy" next to it.
  

• Watching Battlestar Galactica from the Middle East
  

• Keith Olberman's Definition of the Difference Between Terrorists and Critics

TAGS:
Battlestar Galactica

It has been put forth by many prominent anthropologists that the concept of god was born from the voice of thunder as frightened man-apes went running from the enormous booms.

Well this past Wednesday night, an enormous storm descended upon my great city and did a fair amount of damage. My own home fell victim to the outrageous plum-sized hail that pummeled my poor home on its western facing side. As you can see below, the hail punched several holes in my sliding screen door, ripped two screens right out of the window (I still haven't found one of them), chipped several pieces of vinyl siding, and smashed the hell out of an old ice cream bucket that my son keeps all of his outside rocks in.

There weren't any tornadoes despite the warnings but this storm still left my family (dog and cats included) huddled up in the basement with a flashlight, a jug of water and my police scanner.

I don't know if it was the voice of god or not but I do know whose going to foot the $500 deductible to fix all this shit and it isn't his royal majesty on high. Somehow Jesus and his father always seem to hit the bathroom when the check comes.

When I saw this book listed on the Entertainment Weekly's biggest grossing non fiction list, I assumed it was a biography of Bob Marley. It wasn't. Turns out, this is one of the best animal owner memoirs I've ever read--right behind Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.

Marley the dog was a 97-lb. yellow lab who was crazy as hell but loved his family without end. Grogan is a very good writer and his voice kept me engaged (I listened to the audio version of the book).

The book covers the entire life of Marley from puppyhood to death and the growth of Grogan's family from a twesome in West Palm Beach all the way to his three children in the snow drifts of Pennsylvania.

The book was easy to keep up with, it was moving at times, bringing tears to my eyes (I'm a softy when it comes to animals and especially dogs); and it was hilarious. I must have laughed out loud twenty times during this book.

I highly recommend Grogan's book. Buy it for your mother for Christmas--you won't be sorry.

NOTES:

• This is my own dog in the picture. I love the Boxer breed and wanted one for several years before I moved into a home big enough to accomodate my sixty pound beauty. She's dumb as a rock but has the heart of Rocky Balboa and I have always cherished big hearts over big brains in my animals and close friends (I have enough brains to counter-balance the ratio).
  

• The first five minutes of Lost blew my fugging mind! I will be posting about this show tomorrow after I cogitate the sweet lunacy this season has started off to become.

LINKS:

• JD Gets the Final Word on the Foley Scandal
  

• The Executive Coloring Book (Hilarious!)
  

• Are You Ready for the THC Patch and Gum?
  

• Check Out the New Dyson 400MPH Hand Dryer

TAGS:
John Grogan Marley and Me

Everyone knows the soundbite. Kennedy's sharp New England accent peaking crisp--"Ask NOT what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

This is one of the most deceptively evil sound bytes in history because it has gone down in popular history as a statement of social duty for the individual living in a free society when it is actually something that would have been far more appropriate for a Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler to say to their country.

This country was founded on the concept that government is a necessary evil and the most beneficent government is the smallest one with the dullest teeth. Of course, this noble precept was pretty much aborted once the Federalists got hold of the shaping of the country during the period of the Constitutional Convention when the Articles of Confederation started getting holes in their knees. Instead of patching the holes, the Federalists opted for changing clothes altogether.

Isn't it ironic that our Emperor has given up clothes altogether and continues to strut bare ass naked through the ridiculous news parade each day?

So what does it mean when you tell a country of individuals not to ask what their government does for them but rather what they can do for their government? I think it's complete fucking nonsense because governments and countries are not tangible, flesh and blood objects that take up space in the real world.

You might as well say, "Ask not your imaginary girlfriend to give you a hand job. Ask if you can see her invisible boobs."

Sure, the buildings the government inhabits take up space and the ridiculous waste a government produces takes up space in terms of paperwork and mountain high piles of bullshit exuding from all the chicanery and backstabbing which goes on to supposedly secure a government--but government itself is a fictitious collective delusion enforced upon innocent biological creatures upon entrance into this Class-M atmosphere.

I would counter our righteously dead ex-President by saying that when compared to the discarded skin flakes of one of the lowliest individuals who compose it, the idea of a country is worth less than the feces of a slave working the deepest diamond mine;

it's worth less than a ripped up back page in a fifty year old hymnal in the back row of a one room Amish church in the backwoods of Pennsylvania;

it's worth less than the ridiculous notion that peace can be secured through war when death is obviously the only thing secured through war;

it's worth less than the I love you of a rapist as he seizes and grunts over the quiet woman who was walking alone under the stale sodium lights of Anytown college U.S.A.

I don't buy the notion that any government, no matter how grand, is worth protecting over a single law-abiding individual constituent (meaning one who doesn't infringe upon the lives or property of his fellow citizens).

I guess I'm old fashioned in that I believe that the only use for laws is to protect the lives and property of individuals and that the definition of a just law is one where a collective group of individuals have simultaneously deferred their innate right to defense of life and property to a governing body which polices to ensure the protection of their life and property. And I believe that this act of deference, which creates government, gives it charter, is a two way street and this power should always flow back home--to the individual--and not to the governing body.

Call me simple minded but I think President Kennedy was full of shit about a great many things and especially this little do gooder sound byte anthem that barked the death charge of thousands of soldiers who died pointlessly in the Vietnam conflict and the War against radical Islam which began soon after.

I say, "Demand your country protect your life and property and piss on all the rest of the beauracratic bullshit."


LINKS:

• Oliver Stone is Ashamed of His Country
  

• Dude Makes His Own Retractable Wolverine Claws
  

• Did Bush Fire Colin Powell?
  

• Polish Man Farts When Asked What He Thinks About President and is Now the Subject of a National Manhunt
  

• Sneak Preview of Shane Nickerson's New Show on MTV
  

• Improved Nuclear Fuel is Going to Change the Way We Split Atoms
  

• An Excellent and Very Funny Political Ad
  

• Hilarious Stoned Professor

This is part one of my conversation with Jason Patterson about art, spiritual awakening and the nature of true intelligence.

Jason and I worked together as entry level grunts in a customer service call center about five years ago. We used to have the most in-depth conversations on philosophy and individual freedom during our coffee breaks. Everyone around us thought we were nuts but we knew who had the goods.

I invited Jason to have another one of those deep conversations on my podcast so you can get a glimpse into the hell it has been for us to put the pieces together so that they fit in our minds.

Throughout both parts of this Blog Cast, Jason and I discuss:

• The difficulty of collaborating with others in an artistic venture
  
• The similarities between Tool and Pink Floyd and what I believe is Maynard's overall vision
  
• The meat of the conversation is about Jason's decision to stay away from highly-opinionated and fear-based mindsets (aka "Rush Limbaugh") and what this means in terms of reaching individual Enlightenment for yourself
  
• Jason tells us the most inspiring book he's ever read (hint: I bought it for him)
  
  Tags: Joshua Minton, Jason Patterson, Boys Wear Pants, Blog Cast, Art, Spirituality