The Death of Enthusiasm

OH SNAP YOU GUYZ!

I moved this blog to wordpress! YIKES!

CLICK HERE!!!!!

This last weekend my family underwent some early spring yard work. Awesome!

As part of this there was digging, raking, pulling weeds, and the general dragging around of large tarps heaped with branches.

I have crappy lower-lumbar strength or something, so this more or less reduced me to a heap of wussy, quivering man-flesh on the ground.

What I want to know is when I get to have old man strength.

You know what I'm talking about: A 75-year-old farmer flings bales of hay around like they're empty cardboard boxes. Middle age men with massive beer guts and slipped discs carry a piano up three flights of stairs. Heck, I've seen my old man dead lift a 300 pound Armoire over his head and into the bed of a truck, with his fingertips!

I know old man strength exists, I just wonder when it's finally going to kick in for me. Is it a realization of your own mortality? Is it just a sum affect of all the experience and wisdom of your years? Is it just being...old?

At any rate, I feel that when I finally do get my old man strength it won't be used for anything very cool; I'll be pushing around boxes filled with dusty sports equipment with my bum crack showing. I can't wait.

Labels: old man stuff

As part of my ongoing effort to show everyone how not gay I am, I decided to make a list of my (FEMALE!) pop-culture crushes. It started off well, with your standard picks like Rashida Jones.

So Pretty!

Team Karen forever!





Alison Brie from Community is also good looking:




In addition to these, I was going to add Mila Kunis, but then for some reason I started thinking about how she looks like a young Linda Ronstadt. Example:



Interesting! She was very attractive! Add that to her HUGE voice and that puts her above most modern day chicks I can think of.

Here she is singing with Johnny Cash. Sign me up!



AND SO, that gave me an idea to write an all-time list of hot girls regardless of their respective places on the space/time continuum.

HERE THEY ARE:

1. Ellen Barkin:



Until recently, I only knew this lady as the one with way too much plastic surgery who gets seduced by Matt Damon in Ocean's 13. However, I happened to see The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension recently, starring Peter Weller. (PETER WELLER, WHO LATER BECAME THE LEGENDARY ROBOCOP!)

It's an incredibly bizarre movie with stilted dialog and a nonsensical plot...yet I really liked it. I probably couldn't convince anyone to sit through the whole thing with me, but just trust me on this one. It's the good kind of awful.

The thing is, Ellen Barkin was actually really pretty and unique looking when she was young! Good job young Ellen Barkin! Here's the trailer:





2. Stevie Nicks

Ok so, Stevie Nicks was really hot in the mid seventies. I can see why the whole band wanted to commit adultery with her. Well done mid-seventies Stevie Nicks! Sorry about your cocaine addiction! (Not really.)






3. Jennifer Connelly

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "HEY JENNIFER CONNELLY ISN'T THAT OLD YOU JERK. WHAT KIND OF JERK ARE YOU?"

I know! She's not very old, and she's still very good looking!

HOWEVER MY FRIENDS, I maintain that Jennifer Connelly circa 1991 in The Rocketeer was probably the most attractive person of all time. PROOF:



4. Emmylou Harris:

Whoops! So many musicans! Sorry guyz, I can't control it. I'm like a male version of those girls who think any guy who can sing is attractive. Does anyone know a girl who can play the autoharp? I'll propose on the spot!

Double whoops! Now that I've looked up some photos, I think Emmylou Harris is actually better looking as an older lady with silver hair.





See...right?

Actually, I think I might have overshared on this one.

In conclusion: Great job attractive ladies! You really are quite attractive!

Labels: crushes, lists

I was in Southern California for almost two weeks with my family recently. Awesome! I got to put off my job hunt/life for a while. Here are the most inessential photos I took.




Sock hands!







The Ocean!




I was privileged enough to eat at Nice Food #3! I'd hate to see what numbers one and two were like.




I got to play a Theremin! I felt like a crazy person.



Impressionism on main st at Disneyland.




Nightmare fuel at the Orange County fair. Look at those fries!



The best coat of arms. FACT.

Labels: california, vacation photos

When I moved home without a job I knew I was probably going to have a lot of time where I wasn't really doing anything productive.

I planned to spend this time writing songs, designing stuff, drawing cartoons, maybe exercising, practicing banjo. You know, pie-in-the-sky new year's resolution type things.

Well, not to burst anyone's bubble of how productive a human being I am, but I haven't done that well in some of those aspects. (I KNOW RIGHT, BIG SURPRISE GUYZ).

I really thought I would write a ton of blog posts about my job search and all kinds of insightful essays that would shed light on the ridiculous peccadilloes of the human condition. Sorry about that.

I guess I used to come up with things to write when I was bored at work and had no other mental escape. Now that I can just go downstairs and turn on Iron Chef when I get bored, it's more of a challenge to finish anything. For example, I've written portions of many blog posts in the last month (e.g. "Why I hate Family Guy" "Chase gives advice to made-up questions") but never got around to finishing them. OH WELL.

I have made a six month plan for myself though:

1. Get a job (any job, besides call centers or prostitution {basically the same thing})

2. Use my tax return to buy a silk screen press

3. Learn to use the press to make t-shirts/other printed materials

4. Sell t-shirts at farmer's markets or whatever

5. Take web development classes at DATC (HA HA HA WHAT HAS MY LIFE COME TO?)

6. Grow my hair as long as possible

So, basically college was just a long and costly excuse to decide that I really like to do things that I didn' study in college. I had an interview for a tech writing position a few weeks ago and I swear the guy could sense that deep down I hated tech writing, and therefore he didn't hire me. Either that, or I'm just caught in the old "need experience for a job/need a job for experience" catch 22 that people in their twenties get stuck in. HOORAY FOR COLLEGE EDUCATED GAS STATION ATTENDANTS!

Labels: funemployment

Labels: funemployment

Me: So Karl, What do you think about the health care bill that passed the house and squeaked by the senate on Christmas eve?

KM: KARL MALONE DOND NEEDS NO HEALF CARE. KARL MALONE STILL HAS GOT SIX-PACK ABS. KARL MALONE’S SUPER AB WORKOUT VIDEOS DOND LIE.

Me: OK, I get that you might not need health care because you’re super wealthy, but don’t you think something needs to be done? The number of uninsured Americans is growing every year, and our current system is clearly at the mercy of unscrupulous and/or wrongheaded healthcare industry lobbyists.

KM: KARL MALONE OWN MANY BUSINESSES, AN HE TAKE CARE OF HIS WORKERS WIF FREE WORKOUT VIDEOS. THAT WAY, THEY GOT SIX-PACK ABS TOO. THE GOVEMENT CAND GIVE EVRYONE HEALF CARE WHO WAN IT. THAT CALLED COMMIENISM.

Me: Actually, universal health care would be no more socialist than half the government programs that we’ve had in place for decades like social security, our current tax code, or our education system (where the government uses taxes to provide a universal education for all citizens). All this socialism hysteria is just conservative fear mongers trying to rile people up. The real question is, can we provide adequate care without putting too much of a strain on the already fragile economy? How do we decide what needs to be done to keep the economic recovery going, and what can be spent to fix our healthcare system?

KM: YOU RIGHT CHASE, THE ECONMY IS PURDY BAD RIGHT NOW. KARL MALONE CAIND SELL AS MANY WOROUT VIDEOS AS HE USED TO. OBAMA DOND CARE ABOUT KARL MALONE PEOPEL.

Me: Well, I think Obama really cares about those working poor who can’t just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” to use a favorite phrase of the right wing. The good part of the current proposal is that it would do the following:

* forces the uninsured to obtain insurance.
* forces insurers to accept those with preexisting conditions.
* will reduce Medicare spending, purportedly by cuts, of about 500 billion dollars.

Maybe a plan closer to the now defunct Healthy Americans Act sponsored by Bob Bennett and Ron Wyden would have been better, but at this point we have to wait for the discrepancies to be hammered out between the house and senate versions to see what it actually looks like.

Of course when Bennett cooperated with one of his fellow senators for the good of the country, his own party turned on him and aired attack ads here in Utah blasting him for “working with a liberal Democrat.” Great job Republicans, you’re right! What we need is more partisan bickering so nothing ever gets done. How DARE a senator try to sponsor a bill with a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT! What’s next, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS serving on congressional committees along with CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS? People of differing viewpoints coming together to create a satisfactory compromise? Black is white, up is down! What has the world come to?!

KM: KARL MALONE DOND UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU SAID. HOWEVR, KARL WOULD LIKE TO INVITE EVRYONE OUT TO THE GRAN OPENING OF KARL MALONE’S WORKOUT VIDEO STORE. ALL KARL MALONE VIDOES ARE ON SALE FOR ONLY TWENTY DOLLARS EACH.

Me: Thanks for talking with me Karl, it was a very interesting conversation.

KM: NO, THE THANKS IS TO YOU CHASE. AND KARL MALONE SORRY ABOUT TOTALLY CHOKING IN THE ’97 FINALS.

Me: Apology not accepted, Karl.

Labels: Karl Malone, politics

For whatever reason, my tow best friends are pretty much gym rats. I don’t begrudge them this, and I actually admire their dedication. I feel strangely envious when they start discussing how sore their traps are, or how many reps(?) they do(?). (Sorry, as you can tell, I’m not up on the whole workin’ out lingo.)

I hate working out. Not like most people hate it, though. I think most people don’t like having to put in the effort of the workout. I don’t really mind the workout itself; it’s just the aftermath of the exercise that gets me. It seems like my body is not able to deal with lifting weights or exercising for any period of time without some kind of terrible breakdown afterward.

Have you every heard of a runner’s high? It’s supposed to be some sort of endorphin rush that runners get after pushing themselves to the limit. Well, I think I lack whatever chemical reaction is necessary for the “runner’s high.” I’ve never felt good after having worked out; I’ve actually never felt even just OK. Afterward, I’m always shaky and weak, my head hurts, I’m about to throw up, and on top of that I have exercise-induced asthma, which leaves me coughing and gasping for air for at least an hour. It’s almost as if God himself didn’t want me to touch a treadmill. Or, maybe he just doesn’t want me to have to spend time with people that go to the gym, A LOT (who are some of the most annoyingly self-absorbed people in the world).

Hold on—I understand that exercising regularly will lengthen your life and that people who do so are no doubt wise and full of truth and light. HOWEVER, I have also seen that a large number of regular gym users have crossed over from doing it for fitness reasons and being “concerned with my overall health and happiness” to “concerned about keeping my arms shaved/oiled and increasing the appearance of veins of my calves.” It’s actually kind of scary how narcissistic some of these people are, I mean sure, I spend a few minutes a day picking out my clothes and carefully messing up my hair before I leave in the morning, but it’s not my main interest. And again, I’m not Professor of Hobby Studies at Leisure University, but shouldn’t a hobby be something that is productive in some way? Like learning a skill? Or if you are going to lift weights, maybe it could be for a specific reason, like you play a sport and want to become stronger so you can excel at it?

Yet, the total end goal of these muscle guys is to look really big and muscled? Like, oh yeah, congrats dude, you’ve reached your goal, now go stare at yourself in the mirror for twenty minutes. Mmmmm brother, soak it in. It was so worth it, man! All that andro and creatine and protein powder and time in the tanning booth! It’s been a long, crazy ride, Bro Montana! Keep in touch!

Labels: Chase the misanthrope, pumpin iron

And now here is the long-awaited (by no one) account of the last day of the ACL Festival:

Since it rained all day on Saturday, the whole park was a mud patch on Sunday:



Many people just left their shoes in the mud and went barefoot.





All that MUD and LOVE and PEACE! It truly was the Woodstock of my generation!

In thirty years we'll all be subjected to an onslaught of nostalgic movies about the '09 ACl and how we "changed the world man!"

(Side note: Shut up already, baby boomers. 99 percent of you didn't do anything or change society in any way; you lived in suburban Ohio and voted Republican. Quit shoving all your self congratulatory nostalgia down our throats.)

Anyways, this guy certainly got into it:



As for the actual music, we started off listening to a Gospel band (which was pretty appropriate for Sunday morning). They were pretty adamant that everyone stand up and clap along with them. Clap! If you don't clap, you go to hell!




After that we saw Dodos:



They were good, but at this point I kind of had a case of music overload, so anything that wasn't a huge fat lady named Breezy running around playing a flaming washboard didn't really catch my attention. I guess it was a good thing that the next band we saw had just such a lady! Here is Rev. Payton's Big Damn Band:







The last picture I got from their website because I was too busy high-fiving everyone around me in excitement to take a picture of when she lit the washboard on fire. Seriously though, they were pretty cool live. Excitement!

Later, we went to a tent and watched the Broncos/Cowboys game for a while, then we went to see The Dead Weather (featuring Jack White on drums). They were fairly decent! Very gothy/scary raw garage punk!



To close out our long, glorious musical orgy, we saw Girl Talk. It was pretty cool, and I'm kind of surprised my Dad watched them as long he did, just given the sort of language that tends to crop up in the hip-hop music he uses.



So that was it. Three days, many bands, and one hell of a birthday present. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Labels: ACL

The other night on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dennis shared his system for picking up girls (or rather, getting girls to fall hopelessly in love with you and then exploiting them). He called it D.E.N.N.I.S. (key steps: Demonstrate value, Engage physically, Nurture dependence, Neglect emotionally, Inspire hope, and Separate entirely).

This made me think of what my own (very successful) system would consist of. I believe it would look something like this:

Concentrate on anything but dating:
The hallmark of the C.H.A.S.E. method of romancing women is going on a few extremely awkward dates every couple of months. If you don’t want to feel bad about not going on that many dates, you have to focus your efforts on something else. In my case, it’s usually my band. Or, drawing cryptic cartoons. Or, reading a lot of experimental fiction. Or, cultivating an unhealthy obsession with certain typefaces. You get the idea. The upside to this is that when you finally do go on some dates your tastes will seem so bizarre and insular you can pretty much guarantee you’ll completely alienate the girl and make her warn all her friends about the kid who organizes his book collection in reverse alphabetical order based on the author’s first name.

Hover uncomfortably in the friend/more than friends no man’s land:
If by some chance you find a girl you enjoy spending time with, by no means should you make your feelings known to her (that is a sign of weakness!). Instead, engage in a series of ambiguous “hangouts” that will confuse and distract her from your true purpose. Watch a movie with her in your room, but don’t cuddle or show any physical affection. Or, take her to get some ice cream and pay for her, but then dodge her texts for a few weeks afterwards. These contradictory actions will keep her off balance and give you the upper hand. If she forces some type of “determine the relationship” talk, pretend that you just wanted to be friends the whole time and then soon after try to make out with her. It’s all about confusion, friends.

Adjust your standards based on the attractiveness of the girl in question:
This means that even though you always talk about how you need to find a really smart girl who has her own opinions and good sense of humor and maybe a similar worldview, you would throw all that out the window if the girl is hot enough. So what if she’s dumb as a bag of rocks and uses the word “irregardless” on a regular basis, she’s hot! What’s that? She goes to beauty school and loves “laying out” and going to Avenged Sevenfold concerts? Who cares, she’s like an 8! Out of 10!

(Bear in mind that once you actually go on a date with any of these attractive, yet awful girls, the whole illusion will be shattered and you’ll be right back where you started, which as you might notice, seems to be the recurring theme of the entire C.H.A.S.E. system.)

Smother any girlfriend with mix CD’s and handwritten notes:
This one pretty much goes without explanation. Once you do get a girlfriend, you need to absolutely drown her in sentimental gifts and mix tapes. Nothing says stable, healthy relationship like an obsessively annotated, thirty song mix CD of early Appalachian bluegrass! If she starts distancing herself, just put together a carefully themed care package that includes, among other items, a novelty coffee mug and a half pint of ice cream. I really don’t see how that couldn’t go over like gangbusters!

Enjoy the constant badgering by your parents and other relatives:
Anyone who isn’t married is obviously miserable and stumbles through life in a half-remembered fog of loss and regret. That is not up for discussion. Parents and other relatives will try to remind you of this whenever they can. Get used to deflecting these questions with half truths and outright lies. Some of the excuses I like to use are:
1. I’m between girlfriends.
2. I have an eating disorder I have to take care of before I can focus on dating.
3. I’m partially gay, and partially a eunuch.
4. I had a girlfriend but she became a socialist by voting for Barack Obama, so I had to dump her. She obviously hates America. (This one is particularly helpful if you have any ultra right wing family members.)
5. I’m a hermaphrodite. It’s complicated.

So, there you have it. I hope by following these steps you too can experience the high level of emotional satisfaction my romantic life gives me.

Labels: brutal self evaluation