An Open Letter to Musicians Who Write Songs About Corporate Life, Money, and Wealth.
Dear Musicians:
Please stop pretending to understand economics, real jobs, or what a cubicle is like.
Allow me to explain: I’m a musician too. I completely understand where you are coming from. Your socialist views, your bohemian Taoist life choices, your vegan diets. Being an artist full time requires a weird dedication to your craft that sets you apart from other musical hobbyists. Sometimes you have an idea at 3:00 in the morning, and you simply must wake up and record it. Sometimes you practice a new chord you “invented” until your fingers bleed, just because you don’t have callouses in those exact fingering positions. Sometimes you are forced to turn down a teenaged groupie because your only groupies are teenaged, and you realize they are only into you because you rent a bachelor apartment and own a leather jacket that you claim to wear ironically due to your veganism. Then you write a song for the teenaged groupie anyway, which you perform to her on your would-be-ironic second hand chesterfield which you retrieved in your buddy’s truck from Value Village, or possibly the Salvation Army Goodwill store. You work at night, and you can’t get up early because of it. Can’t even make it out to busk at lunch, can you?
Vader & Me: An Intimate Interview.
I arrived a Lord Vader’s Beverly Hills mansion. LIke most of the homes in the area, Vaderland was a product of years of renovations, and the most recent changes were still in progress.“I’m sorry about the state of the place,” he said as he strode out to meet me from the grand entryway. “I’m using the same contractors as we used on the Death Star, and they tend to run behind schedule.”
Amazing Racist? A True Life Adventure Story
Some of our regular readers know that I am a student teacher, and as such I am surrounded by children who have no idea how offensive or hilarious they are. An example:
Kid: I like your toque, Mr. M! Where did you get it?
Me: Thanks, my mom gave it to me.
Kid: What? I thought your mom was dead!
Me: Not to the best of my knowledge.
“Erotic” Fiction for the Nerdy Disappointed Male.
A friend of mine recently suggested that in order to get my long departed groove back, I should try writing erotic fiction. I tried, kind of, then gave up, but this got me thinking: What the hell kind of thing is arousing anyway? What qualifies as a fantasy? The results of my bold new genre of erotic fantasies are below. Spoiler: Some of these stories are so arousing, there isn’t any sex in them at all.
1.
He paused the DVD, and rose from the couch.
“Are you getting up to make a sandwich?” she asked, coyly.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“Then let me be direct. Instead of eating a portion of your sandwich when you bring it over here, leaving us both unsatisfied, I would like for you to prepare two separate sandwiches, and I will eat one of them,” she said.
Tears of joy trickled down his face, and when he returned, he brought two more sodas as well.
Hope Sandwich: Eat, Pray, Love, Eat again…
She stood in the kitchen, looking out across the expanse of the distant jungle valley as the sun rose. Untold millions of dew drops reflected the red glow of a dawn. Time stopped, and ever so slowly, all of her pain, her hatred, her failures began to evaporate just as the mist in the valley floor did. Through the panoramic windows of her incalculably expensive tropical mountain escape, the light from the sun was reaching her, it felt today, for the first time. Today, there was finally purpose, a reason to go on. For the first time in a decade, she awoke to hope. Hope, a feeling she had come to distrust. Had it not been hope that broken her heart? Had it not been hope that had led her to wait for love to seek her out, and not the other way around?