Selling our house.

So, the past few months our house has been on the market. This November will be 6 months and we’ve had more viewings than I can account for, with only one of those visits evolving into an actual offer which was ruined by the carelessness of their realtor. I am at work today thinking about all this and thought to write it down, not to alleviate any sort of stress, just to kind of flush out the pipes.

Luckily we’re not up against a wall and have to sell; we really don’t “have” to sell until spring of next year, we just want to sell.  But the hardest thing about selling isn’t immaculately cleaning the house every time, taking the pets somewhere, waiting, or even the lack of offers in spite of 15+ viewings; it’s the constant small talk you have to make about it with friends and family.

I feel bad for couples who are unsuccessfully trying to have a child and constantly get asked by people “So, how’s the baby-making coming along???” Obviously, if they have a kid, you’ll know. Otherwise it’s just adding insult to injury. In the same line, I constantly get asked how the house selling is going. “Oh, it’s going great, it hasn’t sold yet!” is not an option. It’s not the same as asking someone how unlocking all the achievements in Call of Duty is going, we’re talking about something I have that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars that I don’t necessarily want anymore and can’t unload. It’s actually kind of embarrassing. Every time someone makes an inquiry to the status of the house I have to be reminded, and remind them, that it is, and I am, still ultimately a (potentially costly) failure. That sounds a little harsh but it seems to be the reality.

I’m very confident in my home. So far, the vast majority of people who come for a viewing love it. I can hear people oohing and ahhing while I stand outside near the open window. The only person who didn’t like it was a girl who, for some reason, expected a place that looked like a condo. I have to imagine that she saw the interior photos of the house and decided to waste my time anyway. This past weekend I had a couple come for a viewing and they loved the house, but expressed that they had to take care of his decrepit mother who “has a real hard time with stairs.” Excuse me? Stairs? You told me a day earlier that you loved the look of the house; did you fail to notice that it’s TWO STORIES? How do you think I get up there? I didn’t install a fucking escalator if that’s what you thought. Good luck finding a rancher in Baltimore City.

It really hasn’t been that bad overall. We’re saving a lot of money by avoiding a realtor, doing the extra leg work ourselves and getting a bit of an education in the process. In the end, it’s just a waiting game.

Work? Why?

I don't understand work.

I don't understand why we all have to do this. At this point, it's a complete requirement for life and the majority of us, regardless of the job, have to follow almost the exact template as everyone else. Wake up, get to work at a certain time, stay for a certain time then leave at a certain time. I don't understand how we've decided as a society that this is okay. It's pretty much standard across the globe.

I want to be able to wake up whenever I want. After that, if I have work to do at my work, then I go and do it. Once that work is done, I leave and go home. If there's no work to do that day, I stay home. I get paid a reasonable amount to live and have extra simple pleasures but that's it.

This style isn't for everyone, obviously police can't operate by this schedule, but there are quite a lot of us who can. Me, in particular. Why should I have to suffer?

It's not fair.

The Dorsey Farm i.e. doin' redneck shit

Latarian wants to do hood rat stuff with his friends, because it's fun to do bad things. I can't say I disagree. In fact, I was reminded today of the bad things I would get into, but the difference between Latarian and myself is that I did country rat stuff with my friends.

When I became a teenager I left the world of doing awesome kid shit and entered into the world of doing awesome teenager shit. My peers were acquiescing into adult life by mimicking their parents. While everyone else my age at E. Russell Hicks was hanging out in the woods behind the school smoking, having sex and just being cool, I was Elijah's farm being even cooler.  For me, the woods held much more entertainment than smoking and awkward diddling with a girl. There was plenty of time for that later in life.

The most fun I ever had at Elijah's house was driving cars. For some reason they always had a bunch of beater station wagons around the property and we would pop one in neutral, push it to the gas pump, fill it up and go tearing around the fields for hours. Remember, we're 14 years old at the time doing up to 40 mph through a corn field. My first argument with my parents over when I should be able to get my learners permit was "I've been driving since I was 14! I'm a great driver, just ask Elijah!". Whenever we drove a vehicle to complete exhaustion and it would break down on us (these cars weren't worth stuff like new motor oil or engine coolant) in the middle of a field, we'd go get a sledgehammer and a baseball bat and destroy the thing. The fun never stopped. Then we'd chain it to a tractor and drag it out of there. When we ran out of cars Elijah rigged his riding lawn mower's carburetor in order to double the speed. I'd hang onto the back of the seat and we'd zip around, bouncing all over the place. Mowers aren't meant to go that fast.

We made bombs. We'd cut open shotgun shells for the gunpower and stuff it in whatever container we could find/build and blow shit up. WE CUT OPEN SHOTGUN SHELLS TO MAKE BOMBS.

Shotguns, rifles and paintball guns flowed like water. Trips to the river, exploring deep into caves (which in hindsight was extremely dangerous, I wouldn't do now what I did then) and wandering through woods was the norm.

"Youth is wasted on the young." -George Bernard Shaw

I'm glad that doesn't apply to me.

East coast vs. West coast

This is going to be a rap only post, so protect ya neck.

I don't even know how to begin so I'm going to start simple:

Fuck Compton.

I was watching "Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood" the other day and I realized that west coast gangsters were super-big cry babies. I also re-realized how super funny that movie is. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, these tough-ass gangstas didn't have anything to bitch about. What the fuck were they fighting over? I'd like to let a few pictures speak for me.

Yes, straight outta Compton. Now, I've never been to Compton but I imagine it's pretty scary. I mean, these guys look intimidating and I imagine where they live is intimidating as well. I imagine that it's pretty run down, lots of drug addicts lying in the gutters, busted up houses, cars missing tires and up on bricks. You know, the usual.

Heeeyyyyy.....what's that? That's a nice little beach house. Cute picket fence. It looks like that house may be located in the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

Why, here's another one! Nice big front yard. This is nice too. But what is that, palm trees? Can't be anywhere on the east coast then...except maybe Florida? Hmm.

Oh my, another! So nice....what's that written there? COMPTON, CA?!?!?!

ARE YOU SHITTIN' ME MAN?!?!? This is the HOOD? The GHETTO!?!

Straight outta Compton. Fuck you. No way.

THIS is the fucking ghetto:

These are all pictures of Harlem, NY in the mid to late nineties, the same period of time that Easy-E was rapping about being gangsta cold runnin' shit.

I'm no good at rappin' and rhymin', but instead of belly-aching about getting pulled over by the cops, Ice Cube should have been rapping about how the bright California sun keeps getting in his eyes, or how "I'm sufferin' from allergies, from all these palm trees" (that rhymes!)

Speaking of Ice Cube, I'd be remiss if I didn't post this:

Wait....wrong one...

That's better.

Sorry, this was a picture-heavy post but it needed to be said.

Again, fuck you Compton.

p.s.

I'd probably get in trouble if I didn't post a few pictures of Baltimore in it's current state.

You know what, now that I think about it, fuck Compton and fuck New York. All these pictures of Baltimore are representational of, in my opinion, at least half of the city. LA and NY can't even touch that. They can consider like, maybe 5% of their city as ghetto. Hells yeah.

Disney and shitty comedy

This is going to be an odd one. An interesting mix of something weird I really, really enjoy and something weird I really, really hate. You could say I should have titled this 'The good, the bad, and the (insert pun here)' but I don't have (insert word I inserted for pun here) to complain about and I'm pretty sure someone else since 1966 has already played off that movie title.

I'm pretty sure Laura is the only person who is aware of this but I love animated Disney musicals. I'm talking Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and of course, Aladdin.

These movies are the shit and I don't care who knows it. It doesn't get any better than belting out "Les Poissons" from The Little Mermaid.

See for yourself.

Hee hee hee, haw haw haw!

That's fucking hilarious. Not only is the song catchy and clever as hell but just great comedy. But the best thing is that they're fun. Here's another one of my favorites. Again, the song is very well written and of course, funny. There's not much more to it than that. It's very simple and perhaps that's what makes this shit so funny to me.

Speaking of 'simple', 'shit' and (the lack of) 'funny', this brings me to my next issue.

Maria Bramford.

You fucking unfunny bitch. I hate you.

I hope you Google your own name and find this. I know you will because at some point you'll forget to take your anti-depressants and you'll be so hungry for attention you'll scour the internet to find people talking about you.

Angry? Yes I am. Why? Because she's a comedian that is not funny. I've seen a lot of comedians that weren't funny and I don't hate them. In fact, she's so not funny that it makes me angry listening to her try to be funny.

My evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-DteBZgT9c

I got to 1:17 before I passed out.

But wait, there's more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCliYhFqC0g

Oh Maria! You're so kooky!!!

No, you're embarrassing.

Now, please notice that I'm not cherry picking any of these clips. They're all this awful. If she gets a half-hour stand up slot she spends 29 minutes of that talking in kooky voices and making sounds with her nose. I first became aware of her when I watched the Comedians of Comedy DVD starring Patton Oswalt (awesome!), Zach Galifianakis (awesome!), Brian Posehn (awesome!) and Maria Bramford (huh?). Adding her to the bill is something I will never understand. I'd rather not think about it. She is honestly the worst comedian I have ever seen.

What prompted me to complain about her is yesterday I listened to her and Aziz Ansari on the Doug Loves the Movies podcast and she spent the entire time talking in her kooky voice and being awkwardly unfunny. I couldn't believe that even in a situation where she just has to sit there and chat she couldn't behave normally.

It's a shame I spent more time bitching about Maria Bramford than touting the joys of Disney movies but seriously...

Just quit already.

KISS and more shitty music. IT'S A LONG ONE.

I was listening to David Cross' audiobook 'I Drink For a Reason' and at one point he talks about his love for the Brooklyn, NY band Les Savy Fav.

If you're not familiar with this band (hey, neither was I at the time) go ahead and do a quick YouTube search on them. Actually, let me do you the favor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNxx6HzURY

I know, right?!?

Wait...just to make sure we're both on the same page here, I'd like to emphatically express, so we're clear, that this band fucking sucks. And here I'm slowly becoming more aware not only of the band, but of their popularity and this infuriates me.

After watching the above YouTube clip of their song "The Sweat Descends", I began to feel a very familiar feeling, one that I usually feel whenever I hear a band that, more or less, is total shit. Usually these bands have a certain, unmistakable "shit sound" that they all share in common; a seeming lack of talent and musical ability, songs without structure or at the least, a catchy melody, and in Les Savy Fav's case, a horrible fucking hipster front man.

The thing that annoys me the most is that I've personally written "The Sweat Descends". Well, not that EXACT song, but one very much like it. See, whenever I'm playing in a band and we're practicing, it's common place to just start making shit up between songs. The drummer just starts playing some silly beat and the guitars begin playing some delayed spastic noise and you do this for a minute or so before stopping and laughing at how incredibly stupid that just sounded. "Okay, back to the real music" you'd say.

But what I've realized is that people are mostly interested in that "incredibly stupid" stuff we just played. People would rather hear the jerk-off spaz stuff we play in between our REAL songs than our actual REAL songs. And the jerk-off spaz stuff sounds almost exactly like "The Sweat Descends".

My mind is blown.

So, basically, I've been trying WAY too hard making, in my opinion, very good, serious music. The masses don't want this. They want something they can shake their neon green fanny packs to while their whippit high from a Cool Whip can wears off. Fuck it, I wouldn't make it in that crowd anyway. To start, I don't live in Brooklyn, plus I like a challenge, it would be way too easy to gain 50 lbs, go bald, keep my beard and wear ONLY bright red shorts and a necktie in public.

Which leads me to my next point which has almost nothing to do with the previous section. The band KISS.

I remember being a kid and my mom telling me not to listen to certain types of music, certain types that she, herself actually listened to as a teenager. Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and of course, KISS. KISS, my mother said, was an evil band who played evil music. And I believed her. I mean, fuck, look at Gene Simmons:

Seriously! This guy looks like he'd eat your face off while fucking you in the ass. Probably with either one of those spikes or that bass guitar. Maybe both. I mean, shit, he's a fucking demon. At that young age, KISS was a band that was incredibly foreign to me and therefore scary. I mean, I almost didn't want to listen to their music because I assumed I'd either shit my pants or the floor will open and Satan himself will pull me under. I thought all these things for quite a long time.

Until I actually heard their music.

"IIIII, wanna rock and roll all niiiiight, and party every day!"


WHAT THE FUCK? Who is this? What? KISS? That satanic, evil band that my mother told me not to listen to? This is what they sound like??? Wait, this is what their drummer looks like?

A FUCKING CAT?!?!?!?

Your bass guitarist dresses up like a demon and you choose a CAT. Dear God this is unbelievable. What a horrible disappointment. The most famous acronym for KISS was "Knights In Satan's Service". Well, if you think Satan listens to this shit, you're an idiot. 

To finish, I hate a lot of music.

No way.

I passed a walking Dan Deacon on the street the other day while riding my bike, and our eyes locked. He nodded, as if to say, "Hey, yeah. I'm Dan Deacon and I notice you, noticing me." and I wanted to yell at him "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT."

Holy shit!

This still exists!

I wrote a Maya Angelou-esque poem for Nate:

Child, child
Morning star
As yellow as a ripe banana
You rise and set, wax and wane with the light
Child, child
Thick legs and strong back
You pin me down
Good morning.