Josh Runs the Voodoo Down

It's official - my parents go out more than I do.

They went to drink some adult beverages at the home of a friend, while I travel lazily and half-assedly around the Internet, literally shrugging my shoulders at the sites I typically check daily. I don't know, I haven't even been able to muster much political or news-type reading lately. After reading the headline, that's it, I'm too beat down to chance my blood pressure with the actual article.

I tried to talk to my social life last night, see if it was still awake. It didn't say anything, so I poked it with a stick to see if it was even alive, only to have it elicit some unclear grumbling and what may have been a burp. It's not dead I don't think, but it might be in a vegetative state.

I'm guessing the Republicans will stop what they're doing and convene an emergency legislative session to keep me from completely pulling the damn plug on the whole thing.

The other day I was discussing life plans, or a complete lack thereof, with a fellow friend and Alpinian. His concern is that he’s 25 years old, lives with his parents, is basically unemployed, and he shares my wonderful ability to never commit to an idea for long enough to make it an actual opportunity for employment.

Basically, we’re together at this whole quarter-life crisis, beached on some shore of indecision and fear. We constantly reflect that Orson Welles had finished Citizen Kane and moved on to other ventures at this age. Truth be told, we’re afraid we’re aging without anything to show for it.

Except justifiably concerned parents.

But then I got to thinking…People of other ages - 30, 40, 50 - are always told nowadays that their age is the new 20, 30, 40, respectively.

For example, "You're 50? Ah, don't worry about it. 50's, like, the new 40!"

So, by that logic…

25 is the new 15.

That’s right folks, if your parents are starting to eye you suspiciously as a failure who may continue to eat their frozen goods when they’re not looking for a frighteningly undetermined amount of time into the future, just relax and tell ‘em that’s no way to look at somebody 15 years old, dammit. You’re sensitive, going through some serious changes, and are confused. You can then run to your room, slam the door and crank up loud music that embodies that abstract and hormonal rage inside you.

Then, if you’re like me, you can go about your 15-year-old way of trying to lose your virginity and passing chemistry. (I settled for the less exciting but probably more important latter challenge.)

I guess this whole being 15 again thing means I should start thinking about what college I want to go to, maybe what field of study interests me most. I’m thinking something with the Internets. I hear they are not unlike tubes, but quite unlike dumptrucks.

As for a college, I figure I’ll just base my selection on the quality of sports team that I will spend drunkenly supporting every weekend. Or I’ll base it on Playboy’s ranking of colleges’ percentage of attractive women, or a combination of both. Oh, and how could I forget? The real clincher will be whether or not the school has a leisure pool…

On a different note…

Have you people lived with automatic, self-cleaning litterboxes?

First of all, do you live with a box of shit in your house? I do. But this box of shit is no ordinary B.O.S. (for brevity-sake), oh no, it’s got computers in it, or robots, and it apparently converts feline waste into pure energy. I just can’t figure out what nefarious, intergalactic projects it plans to fuel with this abundant resource.

One of the cats I live with, who we’ll call Tom, is endlessly fascinated with it, often running the length of the house at the first sounds of its magical self-cleaning ritual just to watch it work, often with his head at an angle and whiskers all atwitter. Another cat, now deceased, used to be terrified of the damn thing, forcing the placement of an old-fashioned, non-self-cleaning B.O.S. in a different part of the house. I’m not unconvinced that the mechanical terror of the dark, new age of robotic feline waste management didn’t send his elderly heart racing even faster toward that light at the end of the tunnel.

I Mention My Genitals in this, Just So You Know

I wrote this before I left Lubbock (Sept. 6 to be exact), and still kind of thought it was funny. So here 'tis.


Aaah, self-loathing - who knew it could reach such heights?

I think I'm going to start a whole new blog called, Stuff Josh Sees from His Bed Because He's Probably Never Gonna Fucking Leave It.

The title's a bit of a work in progress.


While writing this, I realized that while I may find some sick joy in stewing in my own sadness soup, maybe it's not best to sling it on others. But then again, if blogs and the Internet weren't invented for selfish, childish bitching and whining about life not being fair (with glittering HOT FREE LAYOUTS!! behind them), then I don't know why. Except maybe porn. And pictures of pets doing people stuff and us forwarding them with the heading "2 CUUUTE!!!" to all our friends working in cubicles.


The deal is this: I can't get a fucking job. More precisely, it seems something I'm saying to potential employers in the email exchange is making them think I'm a coked-up hippy who sexually assaults children after killing their puppies in front of them, and also eyes too covetously the office supplies. At which among these they draw the line, I have no idea.

Or maybe I should have gone to school to actually acquire skills, as opposed to knowing theories of communication that nobody gives a shit about because it's not profitable. Sure wish I'd thought of that six years ago.

Today I'm sitting around playing with my moustache because I'm not even motivated enough to fancy a go with myself, i.e. masturbation. Or maybe it's that my sex organs are just sad and upset about being attached to me. It seems even my genipals are badgering me about my unemployment, and they say, "Josh, but you have a degree! The world should be yours for the buffet-style taking."

To those genitals, and you dear reader, (what glorious company!) college is the new high school. Whether that makes grad school the new college, I don't know. But college is a fucking joke. Anybody can get a degree if they have enough money and patience. It's not about scholarship, it's not about learning how to think, it's not about trying to understand yours and everybody elses' place in the world or trying to gain empathy via multicultural understanding, it's not about absorbing timeless aesthetic notions capable of helping us understand for what passes as modern Culture, etc etc etc.

Shit, it's not even about books anymore. Just the selling of them, and the new editions every year that feature very little editorial change but instead a new multimedia cd that's supposed to help you study by signing up for a Web page started by the publisher.


If I sound bitter, I am.


Deal is, I've been waiting for a response from a possible employer here in Lubbock since yesterday afternoon. It seems like a legit job, possibly one for which I'm underqualified, but also something that could provide me with those mythical "skills," which I'm told by credible hip hop sources, are the things that pay the bills. (Sorry)


The job came up while having a drink with some other professors and staff after my final day of work last Friday. I happened to mention that my plans involved going back home to alpine, living with the parents and, this is what got them, doing construction work, namely installing septic tank systems.

Being that they were some of the same professors that I had for my major, I think they were disappointed. Possibly a little hurt, I don't really know.

I imagine the immediate connotations of the word "septic," followed by mental images of shit-splattered underground tubes and shit-spraying mechanical whirligigs beating the ground to all hell come to most of you reading this. They certainly came to me. Before, you know, I realized this is the installation process. There would, thankfully, be no shit involved. Just dirt. Maybe. Either way, it would still pay decently.

Maybe I'm just justifying it to myself.

Maybe I had these courses secretly piped into my brain through vicious radio signals while I slept:

Selling Yourself Short 101
Learned Helplessness - Honors Class
Murky Ambitions and Clouded Judgment (Lab)


I can't help but feel that I missed some sort of boat, or I missed a day at school (high school or college) that was really important and I couldn't become a productive, tax-paying, employed citizen without it.


I thought about deleting this next part or saving it for another post, but I thought it was funny, albeit a bit personal.


Ah yes, where I lay forth all my sexual neuroses and insecurities! (well, not all)

You know those signs in high school, maybe health class in particular:
"They say that when you sleep with someone, you are sleeping with everyone they have ever slept with."

Wow, then I've slept with a whooole lot more dudes than I've slept with girls. And, I don't see myself catching up anytime soon. Or ever. Does this make me vicariously homosexual?

(Then again, maybe I could somehow make some lemonade out of these sad sexual lemons by trying to connect myself to Kevin Bacon using this. HOly shit, I nailed kevin bacon! whooot!)


I buy condoms like an old lady buys milk, searching through the ones in the back looking for the latest expiration date.

I wouldn't say I'm looking for a girlfriend, for any sort of serious commitment. But, if I were, I guess I do have some standards. Call me picky, but here's what I look for in a girlfriend:

1. Not fucking other people. I know, it's kind of tough, but I'm crossing my fingers.

Hmm, I was going to make a joke about having all their limbs, but really, that would not have been very nice.

So I guess that's it. One thing. But, considering the gravity of the request, probably too much to ask. I understand.

I still have my paperback novels and my hobby of knitting afghan sweaters for my cats.

And while I'm feeling miserable, let's wind this up by remembering that I'm still unemployed. My mom said to me today that I could have it worse. I completely agreed. I could have raging asshole cancer, or a rare disease that makes me confuse chainsaws for toothbrushes, etc. But no amount of "oh gee, shucks, good thing I have both my legs still" is going to get me a fucking job. (sorry mom)