My Drunken Socks

Foot 101

[Posted by Guest Contributor Benjamin Reed]

To be fair Kids, Roone only gave me explicit permission to run the last piece. But honestly, I've been getting pretty pissed that he hasn't put anything up of late, and I'm going to assume you feel similarly.

So here's a great book suggestion, and one that'll help you horrible Americans better understand the Foot: Frank Foer's How Football Explains the World. (You can buy it through that link, or get the bugger from our local library after whenever it is I goddamn feel like returning it.)

We Have Met Big Brother, And He is Us

[Posted by Guest Contributor Benjamin Reed]

So last Monday's installment of my weekly column got yanked from Austinist.com because it was in "poor taste." I guess that puts me in league with the racists, the homophobes, the anti-Semites--oh, and of course the anti-government screw jobs. In reality, my crime was to be too critical of SXSW founder and Austin Chronicle head Louis Black, especially in response to Black's own take on himself.

So I quit. The chance to speak unfettered on a largish venue was my small and sole compensation, since I wasn't getting paid (Plus I'm married, so there wasn't much chance I could use it as the most pathetic pretense [ever] to meet girls). Not that I quit because I was censored. It was also explained that Austinist contributors would now face a future that would be, in effect, censure, and I would no longer be able to post anything until it was first checked by an editor. How much fun that would have been. Like having your lunch packed by your lawyer.

I hate SXSW.

Mostly for all the obvious reasons.  Sure it drives in tax dollars but it annoys the fuck outta me and more than a few tourists have already tried to kill me in their rental cars.

I have already experienced my white-hot rage badge moment when trying to enter Club DeVille and the SXSW rep intercepted me and I couldn't call on the door person to get me in.  This is MY club and anyone including the owner would wave me in but, no.  Is that comma placed properly?  I got mad.  I went to Lovejoy's.  I'm out of pocket downtown for a week.  Fuck it.

Ben might drop his banned article here.

Arsenal decided to suck at Wigan winning a freakin' draw after beating AC Milan at the San Siro in a famous fashion.  AC Milan are the Champion's League cup holders. We beat them good.

Ok.  I'm drunk.

Hi everyone! It's been awhile.

After buying a house one tends to go into hermit mode.  At least I did.  I'm now clawing my way out slowly.  Another animal (prolly an O'Possum) has decided to suicide in the wall again.  Apparently the lonely ones know where to go and scratch for a few days, get desperate and scream (?), scratch a little more and begin to stink of death.  The cats belonging to the new roommate were fascinated with its noise but not so much with its lovely smell.  The Angus now stands guard by the access hole that leads to the bottom of my house.  I don't know what it is but possums just love bathtubs and their voids.  I guess they feel cool knowing they're millimeters away from enamel.  The cats love the bathtub.  I gotta wait till after the January possum fucking season is over and the babies are ready to get the fuck out with the mom.  Apparently they will do this soon.

The ankle is fine now.  I'm getting fat due to lack of the soccer play.  I will start running soon.  I thought my injury was bad until a few days ago when this happened.  (Shit.  I can't copy and paste for some reason).  If the link doesn't work anymore it's because of Premier League copyrights.  Just YouTube search "Eduardo broken leg" and prepare to vomit.  He's out nine months.  Bad day for Roo and the Gunners.  Let's see if I can insert a pic of it:

I'm fine otherwise.  Oh.  Anecdote.  Chick comes in bar.  I asked, "How old are you?"  She emphatically says, "Why?"  I'm baffled.  How do you respond to that without insult?  How about, "You fucking retarded asshat fucktwig!  It's my job!"  Too much?

Ask me about the Ron Paul-tard I had to deal with later.  I'm still not ready to let that asshole go yet.  I've saved the email evidence.  The short version is I somehow insulted him with facts concerning Paul vis a vis white supremacy.  Everyone thinks it's funny but me.  If I wasn't a Paul fan before (and I hate him) I'm certainly not now.  The Accidental Gentrifist at Austinist.com relates it.  My story sparked his article.  I guess typepad won't let me paste anymore.  Annoying.

Ok.

Cedar Fever sucks

But I have indeed closed on the house and am now living inside of it.  Now the true costs of home ownership are appearing.  Need an arborist, a home leveling and a lot of paint and also some gravel.

Furniture too. 

The cedar family of flora can go fuck itself.  Jesus christ I'm taking every know pill for the shit but nothing.  My throat has been cheesegrated.  My fucking throat was actually bleeding yesterday.  My god.

Anyone have an extra chest of drawers available?

Its done on Thursday.

The most painful process is about over.  I close on my house on Thursday at 2 p.m.  I had to literally cut a hole in my rental unit to connect to the front house to claim a "single family residence" to satisfy the loan requirements.  That sucked.  I would provide pictures but I am just to f'n tired to do it.

So, anyway, I lose 22K of hard earned cash Friday morning and become a landlord.  How fun!

Cheers.

Go Arsenal.  Sorry about the delay between posts.  See post below.  I'm in utter fucking hell and then my mom suddenly, unannounced, dropped in on my hell/mortgage crazy week sending me into the sleepless week of hell capped off with hole cutting in the wall waiting for my carpenter friend to show up/oh god-I can't do this shit crisis.  I don't care about grammar right now.  Or being twee.

Fuck America.

roo

House.

Not the show where it's either a seizure, bleeding from something gross or something else.  I like the show alright as I'm a Hugh Laurie fan (of Footlights College).  No.  It's the home.  I've had a scare this week.  I was pre-approved for a loan and then Fannie Mae decided my loan program called the "no-doc" loan had to go away forever because it was BAD and cause all this mortgage crisis shit and not the speculators bad decision making.  Run on sentence.  Anyway, I lost my loan.  Oh shit.  Lots of bargaining/grieving shit.  I was feeling pretty bad on Tuesday.  Then my mortgage guy somehow, miraculously, found me a loan but the deadline to lock a interest rate was on Friday.  FUUCK!  I boogied.  I called my seller and demanded he come over and hammer out a sales contract.  Took forever.  Got done.  Headed over to FedEx Kinko's to do some faxing and some overnighting.  Made it in time.  Rate locked.

Talk about very down/suicidal to extremely high/satisfied.  Prolly not good for the cerebellum. 

I got no sleep during all this stressing.  God hated me.  I hated him.  I hated myself.  Then Thursday decided to hate me.

The city of Austin decided that they were going to shut our water off at 11 p.m. on Thursday so we would get to close early!  Yay!  I can get drinks.  But wait.  I was still stuck in a severe sleep deficit.  No problem.  Just power through it.  You've done it before.  I have anxiety issues.  Hereditary.  No such luck.  Getting ready to kick out an entire bar full of people who didn't read the notices saying that we were going to close early was bad enuff.  No.  Wait for it.  Mummers showed up to do a 10 minute play in the bar.  In the bar.  Line out the door.  People pissed (because they can't read notices) that we were closing their tabs out and denying them beer.  No.  There was a play going on.  The play space commanding half the bar.  I'm closing tabs and managing the disaster.  You know.  You've gotta close the tabs, make sure all the glassware has been washed and the customers were indeed hiding their beers as best as possible.  Also had to make sure no one took a poop in a waterless toilet while filling bucket after bucket with water just in case manual flushing was necessary.  Nope. 

The clincher was that the T. A. B. mutherfucking C. decided to show up one minute after the shitty mummers showed up 10 minutes before closing.

AAaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhh.  Then I got crazy. 

Somehow I/we pulled it off.  I went all Navy at the bar commanding co-workers to do shit I can't now remember saying. 

It happened.  I felt relieved.  I was tired and hallucinating.  Then I got booty-called and had sex.  She stole all my covers and pushed me to the edge of the bed.  No sleep.

I'm drunk.

Go Arsenal.  COME ON YOU REDS!

Intrigued.

What do I think of this? 

Amazon's Kindle book thingy.

I don't know yet.  I like touching books.  I like flipping pages.  I like hitting indexes.  I like folding page corners.  I like underlining and stuff.  I like making notes in the margins (heresy!). 

Good idea but not for me?  I don't know.

Hi.

My desktop died.

Arsenal won.  Man United lost.  We're 3 points ahead in 1st with a game in hand.  Thanks Man United.

I moved wood around today.

That is all.

Holme's Comet.

You really can't see it that well right now but I can.  It's pretty cool.  If you look in the constellation Perseus, you will spot a blob or fuzzy patch of light on the 5th star down from the Pleiades cluster.

I showed a bunch of people at DeVille tonight but only half saw it.  The thing flared for some reason in late October and has been dimming since but it may flare back up again and become bright enuff to clearly see.

It's pretty cool to see a comet with eyes only.  Here is a photo from Japan.  To find the constellation Perseus look straight up at the zenith around 11 p.m. and find the Pleiades (looks little a smaller little dipper).  Refer to the image below to orient yourself and the find that star it's next to and focus on the star.  Your peripheral vision should see the fuzzy blob if not the point of light that is the comet itself.

If you have binocs, use them.  You'll totally see it then.