Roscoe's

My new kickball team, Roscoe's Chicken and Kickball, had our first game Tuesday night. We battered the pink clad Shredders Foot Clan 7-1 and battled from behind to tie Brooklyn's Bacon Bits 4-4. The games were fun as hell and the field is great, if hard a little to get to. Alas, our shirts haven't shown up yet, but out socks got the point across.

Some pics of the hottness:

Dispatch from Barcelona

From: thcott
To: Hiro, et al
Re: i am okay

since i know you are all worried sick, i figured i'd send you an email to let you know i am okay. i don't want your panties to get all bunched up your ass. barcelona is fuckin gay and nothing works. i'd highly recommend avoiding it at all costs, even if that means going to china. there's a shitload of mexicans here and none of them speak english for shit. the one good thing is that its easy as hell to find an awesome apartment. i've been looking for 6 days and have been fortunate enough to live in 4. the cool part about that is i have a well-designed 6ft. duffle bag that can fit up to 85lbs of shit in it at one time and is perfect for carrying up stairs, down staris, and then up stairs again. apparently mexicans don't like elevators. the other 4 bags i have are poorly desinged bags that can only hold about 20lbs of shit each. another facet of enjoyment is the fact there are over 497 million incredibly hot sluts, and none of them speaks the fuckin english for shit. so glad i don't have to deal with them. you know how annoying hot bitches are. finally, i can just chill out and not be handling bitches all the time. the best part about not having to deal with any hot bitches is that i can get internet in a cafe and masturbate there while drinking espressos, while i masturbate in public. the bus system is easy to use. all you do is get on and they take you directly to a place where you can get your ass kicked if you want, and its cheap. i just think its cool that they help you get there, so that you can experience that. as far as money goes, i learned that the dollar is both weak and gay. for 100 bucks they'll trade you a swift kick in your nuts. speaking of jesus, he is ominpresent here. in the mass on the first day of school they said something about delivering people away from the jews. well, amen to that. its about fuckin time. time for me to go meet some cockeyed mba bitches and talk about how the sub-prime crises is effecting the gay asian markets, and "how global the markets really are". all i have to say about that is that you're face and ass are sub-prime. bitches can be so stupid sometimes. well, i hope you all get terrible hemorrhoids in the near term.

go fuck yourthelf,

thcott "the sthnake" thilversthtein

You ever try to sleep sober?

honor bound

My buddy and I were out in the street in front of my apartment this weekend, hanging out and talking shit, when we heard a bit of a kerfuffle brewing across the street. We decide to check it out and arrive to see two drunk guys pointing and yelling. One is screaming (we'll call him Stew), "You hit a girl!?! You hit a fucking girl!?!" Apparently the other dude (we'll call him Enos) had punched Stew's girlfriend (she was fine). So the two of them slur furiously at one another up and down the street for a minute. Finally, Stew summons the wherewithal to take a few clumsy, wimpy swings at Enos, hitting Enos' girlfriend, who is trying to break it up. After a bit more pawing and pointing, the two couples separate and wander off to argue amongst themselves.

I looked a my friend and said, "That's how motherfuckers roll in Manhattan. You hit my girlfriend, I'll hit your fucking girlfriend. Hardcore. Thug Life."

you miserable creature

Who gave you this idea that happiness is something that you can or should feel all the time? It's dessert, not the main course. Happiness is a reward mechanism, not a state of being. It's one station on a spectrum. Somewhere, people (I) got this notion (I'm looking at you entertainment industry) that if we're sad or angry or apathetic, that there is a problem we have to fix. That we're doing it wrong. But, you know what? Life is fucked up, sad, infuriating, awkward, confusing, beautiful, desperate and anti-climactic. It's fuckin' boring, scary, hungry, exhilarating, horrific, ecstatic and a total let down.

Rage is the purest drug, despair the most powerful painting, imperfection and frailty are the beauty and the treasure of mankind. So let it go. Be fucked up. Get pissed and yell. Be sad and cry, you're allowed to, you miserable creature. Quit acting like you've got it figured out, because you're fooling everyone.

Rabbit Run

This is really good: Rabbit Blog

"I picture those moms cutting out the dinosaur part of the quesadilla, and then eating the non-dinosaur part themselves, and I want to cry."

Code of the Boys

Always...
via Found

Fuck The News

I don't read the newspaper, or watch the news anymore. Here's why:

1. The news is all mixed up with opinion, punditry and spin. Too confusing.
2. Most of it is wrong. By the time the news becomes history, the consensus will have changed 180 degrees. Understanding major world events (even local ones) takes time, perspective and context.
   
3. There's nothing I can do about most of it. It's not useful or applicable information.
4. I've given up on trying to act "informed." It's just pretentious. As if I can say anything of value about U.S. foreign policy, global currency or climate change. I'll save my opining for something I understand like... well... maybe I'll just shut up.
   

I still read all kinds of books, my blogs and watch TV. I'm curious about the world, but I'm not going to do my learning through the 24 hour news cycle. That shit'll just make you crazy.

John From Cincinnati

HBO's John From Cincinnati is possibly the finest piece of art ever shown on the small screen. Wild story, amazing characters, profound dialog and a fundamental mystery at the center that has made me utterly desperate to find out what's going on.

If you haven't tried it yet, do it asap. If you've watched the show and didn't like it, give it another chance, please. If you feel you've given it a chance and you "don't get it" or "think it's weird," you might be ignorant, so you should try harder and think about stuff.

I hear rumors that the series won't be renewed next year. I find that depressingly believable. What kind of media landscape do we live in where the best shows die so young?

Watch the John From Cincinnati on demand and get hooked. Tell your friends, get psyched. It's so worth it. Don't let it go the way of Firefly.

alone in the dark

I've started pulling the night shift again. For the last few years, I've slept like a baby rock, fallen out as soon as I laid down my head. Not so this week. Two nights of >3 hours of sleep. Reason: Unknown. I guess I'm plagued by regret and indecision, but no more so than usual. Too much caffeine, but again no more than normal. I tried meditating, masturbating, reading, TV, breathing, but still my eyes keep popping open like they're spring loaded. Well, at least I'm good company.

Pros and Cons

So, I was out smoking a butt last night and I found a coffee table that is perfect for my apartment. Heavy, sturdy, cool in a campy, retro, piece of shit way. This pleases me. Makes me think I should smoke more.

Mechanics in DC

OK, so we didn't exactly win the tournament, but we did have a great time. And by a fair margin we were the funniest, sexiest, most popular, hardest drinking, most widely photographed squad there. We certainly did more making out that any other team. Our only competition in any of these areas was the flagrant band of yahoos (and our new friends) from Richmond called Shocker in the Face. See here:




And a few pics of our hotness:

Flipcup domination



















The Cap'n
























Dance party domination


















Aerial maneuvers with Mattis





























Boot camp

Can you sell a trailer?

My kickball team, "The Mechanics" will be playing in a tournament in DC this weekend. The games start at 10am on Saturday 7/28 on the National Mall, then there's gonna be a bar crawl or something in Adams Morgan. If you're around, come check us out. In case you weren't aware of how frighteningly awesome we are, here's the trailer:

They die of shame

There's a great David Mamet movie called The Edge, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. In it, Hopkins and Baldwin are the last two remaining survivors of a small plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, trying to survive and get home. At one point, they have a conversation which has stuck with me and I try to keep fresh in my mind. It goes like this:

Hopkins: You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame.
Baldwin: What?
H: Yeah, see, they die of shame. "What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?" And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives.
B: And what is that, Charles?
H: Thinking.

I often feel like I could die of shame. Reviewing my life, I find a catalog of missed opportunities, bungled relationships, lack of preparation, stupidity and cowardice. The fact that I try so hard to do things right make this panoply of incompetence all the more pathetic and heartbreaking. Some days, I just want to write gushing letters of apology to everyone I've ever met and then lay down and die before I can do one more dumbass thing.

However, I realize that remaining functional is a responsibility I bear toward myself and the ones I love. People depend on me to keep it together, more so every day. The greatest failure of all would be to lay down now. So I resolve to defeat my own stupidity or at least to continue on in the face of it. I will keep moving forward despite my regret, despite my shame. I will keep making decisions, keep thinking. It doesn't matter how I got into this or that mess, only how I am going to get out. Berating myself is a waste of mental RAM and I have little to spare. So I put one foot in front of the other and keep trying to live the best way I can think of. And hey, sometimes I even do things right.

Longshot

It occurred to me that the odds of all the factors needed to sustain life on earth and for that life to evolve into creatures self-conscious enough to consider their own origins are so long, that it almost couldn't possibly be a random combination. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. Either some being put this thing in motion for some reason OR there have been opportunities numerous enough to make such an astronomical probability into reality.

Consider a few of these factors:

Location: The Earth is exactly close enough to the sun to allow the existence of liquid water, which is of course vital to life. We can live here neither scorched nor frozen.

Composition: The early molten Earth stratified in such a way that it now has a nickel-iron alloy core. This core generates the electro-magnetic field that protects us from the million mph solar winds, which unchecked would blast our atmosphere into space and leave us naked to the vacuum.

Moon: Our perfectly sized moon (a size ratio unique in the solar system) stabilizes the Earth's rotation and gives us our tides and calendars.

So now we have the platform for life. A stable planet, in just the right orbit of the sun, protected by a nice cosy magnetic field. After cooling from it's molten origins, however, it was likely a sterile rock. But as luck would have it, there are huge chunks of ice hurtling through space all around us. A few of these comets probably smashed into the barren early earth, seeding it with both liquid water (just the right amount) and the carbon structures that would eventually become life.

Without even delving into the improbable causal chain that leads from the primordial ooze to Stephen Hawking and Miles Davis, this sequence of events seems just too perfect to be random. If it is random, it's like the proverbial infinite monkeys hammering away at infinite typewriters, and writing Shakespeare. But where do we get infinite monkeys in a finite universe? We would need infinite parallel universes and infinite alternate realities in which less fortunate earths are frozen, or baked baked or barren or smashed to atoms or moonless, or just simply fuel for a greater sun.

In any case I figure these to be our options: Earth was either set in motion by the hand of god, or it's the jackpot on a googolplex to one shot.