Poor Allie Brosh

You guys probably don't know who Allie Brosh is, but she has been making me laugh for a few years now.  Her blog is Hyperbole and a Half.  She hasn't posted since October of last year due to horrible depression.  My sister in law Rachel turned me on to her, so here you are.  Enjoy.  (please ignore the laziness of this post and the fact that I am using someone else's shit to amuse you.  I'll do better, I promise)

This Blog

This Blog

Sneaky Hate Spiral

Most of the time, I'm pretty even-tempered. Aside from the odd nervous breakdown or caffeine-induced bliss-seizure, I have the emotional variation of sand. However, every once in a great while, I'll lapse into what I like to call a "sneaky hate spiral."

The buildup:

Sneaky hate spirals begin simply enough. In fact, that is one of the hallmarks of sneaky hate spirals - they are merely the confluence of many unremarkable annoyances.

Your day begins poorly.

Before you've had a chance to recover from your unpleasant awakening, you are pummeled by a series of unfortunate events. There are probably some loud and/or persistent sounds mixed in there, too.

The little frustrations start to happen more quickly. They ping against your psyche like hundreds of tiny pebbles.

Eventually, the sum of the small annoyances begins to exceed your capacity for patience and rational thought. All it would take to send you over the edge into a bottomless pit of angry hysteria is just one more tiny, little thing...

The turning point:

The turning point is usually a minor but slightly jarring incident, initiated by some force of nature that cannot be blamed or scolded - like gravity or sleeplessness or wind. That last specification is very important. In order to send you into truly batshit crazy hysterics, the final straw must cause anger that cannot rationally be directed outward in any way.

Your worn patience plus the inability to blame anything for your misery causes a chain reaction to take place inside of you.

The rage enters your body, but cannot exit through either the blame or personal responsibility pathways. It therefore must travel to the very center of you where it will fester and eventually rupture.

Chaos:

When enough anger and hatred has accumulated inside of you, it will rupture through your pathetic sense of integrity and start spewing outwardly as if you are some sort of rage sprinkler, spraying your putrid hate all over anything that comes near you.

You are officially out of control. At this late stage, there is no way around it. You are simply a helpless passenger in your psychotic war-machine of a body.

Bonnaroo 2012 Lineup Announced

They released the lineup for Bonnaroo this year, and in my humble opinion it is amazing.  Here you go!

Yeah the headliners are fantastic.  The top four lines are great.  I would go just to see Ben Folds reunite with the five.  Radiohead, RHCP and Phish are a bonus.  Love the Roots and Blackstar, so the hip hop side looks great to me too.  But what I am really excited for is the undercard.  The bands I have never heard of.  I have been listening to the playlist Bonnaroo put out on Spotify, and some of them are surprisingly great.

There are many more bands to be added, so I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for Edward Sharpe and Le Loup.  Not holding my breath though.

 I've already started building my "Roo Pile" of stuff I'm taking with me:tent, camp stove, camp shower, sleeping bag, etc.....  I'm so psyched, I don't know if my body can handle this fever for much longer.

Last year, we missed a TON of music because we didn't prepare for the undercard.  We saw the bands we knew, and kind of ignored the ones we didn't.  Time to set up a listening party to familiarize ourselves with those bands.

I have noticed a phenomenon this time of year.  Friends will catch the fever with me and swear they will be going this year.  Month after month, they slowly drop off and think of reasons they can't go.  We have a lot of hopeful campers this year, so hopefully we will have a good showing.

    

Baby Blues, Fear Not, Home, and Bonnaroo!

Ok so my child sneaked a coffee bean tonight.  Side note, I thought "snuck" was the right word, but apparently "sneaked" is the word to use....thanks google.  Anyway, Isabelle at a coffee bean and hopefully will go to sleep sometime in the next decade.  She should be asleep around the time we get her training bra picked out.  Maybe she'll doze off in time to get some beauty sleep before prom.  I was very worried, but a big shout out to google again....she'll be fine other than being wired and having a stomach ache.  She's finally down now, and hopefully will stay that way.  Time to get some good creative writing in.

The artists for Bonnaroo should be announced sometime in the next two weeks and I would like to talk about a couple bands I LOVE right now called Le Loup and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros who I really hope will be there. 

Le Loup has apparently been around since 2006.  Thanks to Pandora, I heard them this year and fell in love!  Their sound is comparable to Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire mixed with maybe Animal Collective......and throw a banjo in there.  It's so weird to hear electronic rhythm with a banjo and bluegrassy tone mixed in.  It's amazing in my opinion and I encourage each and every one of you to listen to their stuff.  Here's a couple of my favorites of theirs. 

The sky at the end in awesome. 

On to Edward Sharpe.  These guys are the epitome of any traveling hippie band you have ever seen, heard, or thought of.  I've never seen them clean.  Never even seen them in clean clothes.  The lead guy bares a striking resemblance to what you would imagine Jesus sounds like, and the music they make I would assume pleases Jesus a great deal.  It is great to me.  They played Bonnaroo in 2010 I believe and I would have killed to know them then.  Here are a couple of my favorites of theirs.  You may recognize a couple of the tunes from commercials or movies.

And here is a live version of these two songs and one more called "Janglin" they did for NPR in their office....not a studio haha, but they jammed it.

Other bands that are rumored to be there this year include headliners like Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Radiohead.  Either one of these bands would be worth it.  The Roots and Das Racist are also in the mix.  We'll see.  I'm very excited to say the least.  Never been more excited to be dirty and camp out for 4 days, but I have never had more fun.

Here are some clips from last year's festival.  We will be setting up like this next year hopefully haha.  This dude is a pro.

Please Be Quiet

Have you ever been driving in your car and for one reason or another wanted to murder the complete stranger in the car nearest you?  Well today's post is for you.  We'll call it Be Aware You Share the Earth with Other Humans.  I've got a list!  If you are one of these kinds of people, please either change your behavior or kill yourself.  The latter is obviously the less desirable of the two.

1.  Movie Theater Narrator.  If I go to the movies and pay $11 to see something someone has made to entertain me, I trust that the movie alone is enough.  I don't need to hear you talking the entire time, either to each other or to the screen itself as if through some sort of idiot magic, the actor can hear you and be warned about the killer in the closet.  Shut your damn mouth.  Shut it.  SHUT IT!  That's better.  You may speak again during the credits.  Another less prevalent, but equally annoying, occurrence at the movies is the appearance of 12-15 year old assholes mid way through the movie.  Yeah, we know your mom won't pick your retarded ass up until 10:30, but take your butt out there to the curb like the rest of your kind and sit there until she arrives.  Just because Beauty and the Beast 3-D let out at 10 doesn't mean you can sneak into a rated R movie for a half hour and make noise and giggle and disturb everyone.

2.  Bad/Inconsiderate Driver.  We've all been there.  Some dickhole is driving in front of you slow as Christmas, but what does he do when you try to pass him?  That's right.....he becomes Mario Andretti in the final lap.  There are other examples of course: a.  The jackass who gets in the fast lane and drives the speed limit next to another person in the slow lane also driving the speed limit, creating a 65 mph blockade.  b.  The person who refuses to merge correctly.  Please don't slow to a complete stop on an on-ramp....you are supposed to speed up to merge into highway traffic moron.  c.  The person who does not get over when he sees someone trying to merge even though the lane next to him is completely empty.  and finally, d.  The idiot who breaks the sound barrier to get ahead of you and then slows to a crawl.  Now there are other examples of bad drivers: teenagers, people texting while they drive, asians, and women.  But these are universally accepted and kind of given a pass.  The only thing we can fault the women for is being outside of the kitchen....

3.  The Only Person on Earth.  You know the type.  The woman (it's usually a woman) who sees you allowing her to cross the street in a parking lot, but instead of acknowledging you with a wave or a thank you, she walks even slower and pretends she is the only woman on the planet and may move across this street at her leisure.  This is the same person who sees you holding the door open for her and does not speed up to get her fat ass through the door or even say thank you.  And I say fat because in most cases this woman is a beast.  Sometimes the same woman as the one who parks in a handicap space (with no handicap other than obesity), walks 30 feet to the door, and then rides a rascal scooter around Target.  You are fat because of these things....park your huge behind in the back row, walk to the door, and WALK through the store.  Back to the point......this person is also usually the bad driver AND the person who talks during movies.  They are the only person on Earth. 

4.  People Who Say Things Like "Irregardless".  These aren't really the dregs of society....they just bother me.  Stop saying irregardless, fustrating, and words of that nature.  Pecan is pronounced peh-con, salmon is pronounced sa-mon.  You don't pronounce the P in pneumonia do you?  You bother me.

5.  Teenage Style Texting.  I won't go too deep into this one, because most of the people seeing this post on facebook or wherever are probably the main perps in this case.  If you are over 20 years old, it's time to stop putting lol, lmao, rolfmao, smh, hmu and other garbage in your texts.  You're an adult now.  CALL PEOPLE.  It's a phone....texting is a SECONDARY FUNCTION.  Spell out "two", "are", and "you" PLEASE.  Thanks :)


These are the main culprits who contribute to my rage during the day.  I know there are more out there and I'll post them as they come to mind.  The main point is.....and I hate to say this......WE NEED TO BE MORE PATIENT.  Regardless of how inconsiderate they are to the other inhabitants of this earth around them, they are just that to us.....fellow humans.  We should try to show them that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, instead of just thinking murderous thoughts about them.  Let's make this world a better place. 


And this is just because it is hilarious to me....you're welcome.

Hiatus

Ok, so I've been almost 7 MONTHS WITHOUT A POST!  This is a shame, it's inconsiderate, and for the most part, it's basically stealing joy from the public.  I am sorry.  Very very sorry.  So sorry that I'm back here now forcing something out just to get started again.  I'm like a guy who really doesn't have to poop, but he knows he hasn't pooped for a while.  So I'm just gonna sit right down here and force some word poop out whether something good comes to me or not.  My word colon is packed, so here goes.

Type you idiot.....spit something out.....ugh ok here goes.

I'm a father.  The father of a beautiful, smart, and hilarious baby girl.  She is the absolute center of my life, and no matter what I have gone through or how big of an idiot I have been, that little woman greets me with so much joy and adulation, I feel like a Saint.  There is no joy as great as when I am holding her when she is tired or sick and she just needs her daddy to hold her.

She goes to the corner to poop (in her diaper, not on the floor), she tries to ride the cat, and she loves eating anything she can find on the floor.  It's like she is a little me, because those are the exact same things I would do if afforded the chance.  Give me a diaper and I'll poop in that thing all day.  If a cat were big enough, I would ride it like a stallion, scratching and coughing up furballs at everything in my path.  And forget about it if I find food on the floor.  It's as good as eaten.  She's so much like me it's ridiculous.  But it's these times that make me look at myself and the man I've become.

I hope she is nothing like me.  I have become a cynical, sarcastic, miserable man, but it's that sweet little girl who is turning me back around.  I mean who wants a miserable old man as a father?  So here we go Isabelle.  You're going to have the kind, loving, understanding father you deserve!  Look out 2012, and the world for that matter, we're going to beat the hell out of you!

Your Dad,

Bo

P.S.  I know that was a LOT sweeter and less funny and sarcastic than my usual stuff.  I'll be back with funny things again soon.  Here's something awesome to tide you all over.....