I was drinking with an ex-coworker and her born-again Christian friend this evening (thankfully the Jesus Freak waited until the ride home to spring the "Christ Is Risen" bit on me) and the following conversation occurred in the Ghost of War on the way home from the bar:

Jesus Freak: So Matt, do you want to go to church with me in the morning?
Me: Um, no. No thanks. No.
Jesus Freak: That is alright because Jesus still loves you.
Me: So let me get this straight. If I go to church Jesus loves me and if I do not go to church Jesus will still love me?
Jesus Freak: Yes. That is correct.
Me: Sounds to me like Jesus wants me to sleep in.

Labels: drinking, ghost of war, religion, tomfoolery

Kaye: If a baby is ugly do you still say it is cute?
Me: No. If the baby is not cute just pick an ugly parent and say "Your baby looks just like you!"
Kaye: Ha! That is awesome.

Labels: im convos, kaye, tomfoolery

One of my favorite all-time Jerry Springer episodes is when he helped an 800 pound tub of shit get to the hospital to lose weight. The show highlighted the many complexities of a fat pig's life like wolfing down a 12-piece bucket of chicken from KFC in one sitting or needing a bed pan to defecate due to excessive weight keeping her bedridden. The show concluded with a team of emergency personnel cutting open the side of a double wide with an industrial saw and extracting Jabba with a forklift. This link just reminded me of that.

Labels: gluttony, pop culture, tomfoolery

Researchers theorize that there is a link between United States economic conditions and subtle changes in Playboy centerfold physiques. Readers seem to prefer stronger looking women in hard times, and softer, more vulnerable types when the market is good. Personally, I like all types of naked chicks no matter what the economy is doing.

Labels: america, boobs, chicks

A dissertation on the Communist leanings of the Smurfs. I agree that the Smurfs have some Marxist tendencies but I feel that the sexual promiscuity of Smurfette is more of an issue. I know you are thinking that Smurfette represented all that was noble, pure and innocent with heterosexual Smurfanity, but I urge you to consider the following points:

1. Smurfette was the only female Smurf in the entire village. With an approximate 300 to 1 male to female Smurf ratio, are you naive enough to believe that she never threw a male Smurf the blue whiz?
2. The male Smurfs did her biding whenever she asked with no questions asked. Hefty Smurf would throw furniture around the house for her. Painter Smurf would paint her mushroom. Handy Smurf would build her bookshelves, tables and stools. And the list goes on. All of these tasks were performed out of the kindness of the male Smurfs hearts? Please. The only way men perform manual labor for any woman is if they are planning on sniffing her panties in the foreseeable future.
3. Papa Smurf would routinely send the other Smurfs into the forest for Smurfberries leaving himself and Smurfette alone to their own devices in the deserted village for countless hours. He is called "Papa" for a reason.
4. After a few seasons, baby Smurfs magically "appeared" in the village, their presence being explained by the stork theory. Is it unreasonable to believe that a village full of Smurfs at the height of sexual maturity did not hit skins with Smurfette to make some Smurf babies?

It is my conclusion that the Smurfs are not only Pinko scum, but that their female archetype Smurfette was the community bicycle and everyone took her for a ride.

Labels: perversion, politics, pop culture, tomfoolery

Jesus is always with you. Especially when you are playing the French Horn, juggling or selling insurance. Is it me or does Jesus look like a cross between Kevin Smith's loser cousin and Cro-Magnon Man in these renderings?

Labels: art, pop culture, religion, tomfoolery

All this commerce has worn me out. I could go for a slice of pizza at Sbarro, sit down and kick my feet up on one of those imitation cast-iron chairs. (Mall patron enters the food court, purchases food and takes a seat). Now that is odd. Why are all these people yelling, "Watch out for that falling Asian kid, you dumb bitch!"? Oh. That is why.

Labels: inner-monologue, tomfoolery

I do not get Techno. I have tried to understand the music and the scene but it has never worked out between us. I like the allure of young, sweat-soaked bodies stuck on each other in some ancient tribal dance, but the monotonous beat, the lack of lyrics (aside from the occasional sexual innuendo or F-bomb repeated for twenty minutes atop a monotonous beat) and the "songs" that never seem to end does not do anything for me.

Are you reading this in Minneapolis, Scott? I may not get Techno but I appreciate the mix and the effort.

Labels: music, pop culture, scotty minnesota

This morning, I walked into work, put on my headphones, took a bite of my breakfast burrito and cued up the song "Astro Zombies" by The Misfits. Here is an expert for those not familiar with the early musical life of Glen Danzig:

With just one touch of my burning hand,
Gonna send my astro zombies to destroy this land,
Prime directive: exterminate the whole human race.
Your face melts into a pile of flesh,
And your heart heart pounds as it pumps with death,
Prime directive: exterminate this whole fucking place.

It feels like that sometimes, does it not?

Labels: music, pop culture

I have bore witness to some wicked drunks on the Jagermeister and I, too, have succumbed to the unadulterated madness that dwells within the green bottle. One hazy night long ago my brother-in-law bought me seven Jaeger Bombs while we hung out at the worst strip club in Denver. The night concluded when a strip club patron actually took a swing at one of the strippers. While she was dancing. Behold the rage that is a 17-year-old girl after succumbing to the Hunt-Master. When I was 17, most girls got their buzz on with wine coolers or some other fruity ghetto swill. The times they are a' changin'.

Labels: bro-in-law, denver, drinking, glory days, rage, strippers

It is my first day back in the office after the HOW Design Conference in New Orleans and I have over 100 emails to sift through. While I was gone, I missed a party at CH's house. This morning he shot me an email describing what went down:

Here's a funny story from the party on Saturday.

Juck took on the role of class drunk as we were wrapping up the trivia game. I had a tiebreaker where people had to hula-hoop and do shots at the same time. After the two teams failed at it (neither were Juck's team) he decided to try it, although he wasn't supposed to or required to. He failed miserably, and as the rather small hoop consistently fell, he tried picking it up and jumping through it like performing dogs do. That failed too. No one was amused, rather, they were scared. I was convinced his weight of jumping on my wood floor was going to knock some art off the walls. Finally, tired of trying, he returned towards his seat. He appeared to trip over a Coors Light box another team was using as a trash can. Full on like Chevy Chase, he fell into our table that was covered with plates of snacks, beers, chips, dips, etc. He landed against the edge of the table breaking the fall with his forearms. All of the aforementioned food went flying everywhere, people's beers spilled into their laps, and the dip onto our white rug. After that, everyone was cracking on him unmercifully. Keep in mind; this was the same Juck whose Pakistani roommate broke my coffee table at a party last year.

As the night wore on, he drank more. I found him on the back deck later in the night in a deep discussion with Spotty and a couple other guys about "If you could suck your own dick, would you?" Not surprisingly, he was very vulgar. Guys he had just met that night were very uncomfortable. He was also loud. Very loud. My new neighborhood has a lot of little kids (2-6 years old) in it. So I asked him to keep it down, and he yells at me, "Hey, it's not my fault you moved to fucking suburbia!"

Labels: career, ch, data slaughterhouse, drinking, how design, sg crew

I arrived back in Denver today safe and primarily sound. Aside from a wicked day-long drunk followed by a slow, mind-numbing hangover, I am in good spirits and had a great time. Last night I attended the finale party hosted by a paper company (I was too drunk to care which one) where conference goers were given free reign over a warehouse where the majority of the Mardi Gras parade floats are stored. In the midst of six foot paper-mache heads of jazz music legends, sports heroes and animals, we drank and danced the night away.

Over the course of the 2003 HOW Design Conference many relationships were established and by three o'clock this morning were solidified by toasted imbibed spirits. A design posse has now been established reaching across the North American continent. There is me, Holly and Tina from Denver, Wes from New Jersey, Scott from Minneapolis, Mark from Montreal, Dave and Beatriz from New York, Stacy from Pittsburgh, Rod from New Orleans (who gets props for taking us tourists to some of the best eating establishments in town) and whoever else I forgot to mention that I may have sat next to at a session, ate fish with at a restaurant or drank with on Bourbon Street.

Although my liver hates me, the rest of me had an excellent week.

Labels: career, data slaughterhouse, denver, drinking, how design, scotty minnesota, travels

All is well in the Big Easy on the HOW Design Conference tip. Last night's voodoo and haunted tours were a minor disappointment. The scariest moment of the evening was being witness to a homosexual couple performing boisterous fellatio acts on each other atop a parked car on a crowded street in the French Quarter. I lost a $20 bill somewhere near Jackson Square and proceeded to drink whiskey the rest of the night. The conference thus far has been phenomenal. There is a palpable creative energy with excellent speakers like James Victore and Genevieve Gorder (who I now want to make a million babies with). This environment has not only gotten me excited about design again but has yielded two crippling hangovers.

Labels: career, data slaughterhouse, how design, travels

New Orleans smells like a combination of stale beer, urine and vomit. You'll be walking down the street and the pungent aroma assaults your nostrils and makes you want jackals to chew your face off. Other than that, New Orleans is a very cool town. Out of my hotel room window I can see the Mississippi River, and I'm across the street from a casino and three blocks away from the French Quarter. Last night a pack of conference attendees went down to Bourbon Street and engaged in drunken revelries until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight I'm touring old haunted homes in the French Quarter and watching some crazy fuckers do voodoo shit. I will have pictures posted when I get back.

As if becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, yesterday, the first person I met remarked on how humid it was. It took a throng of tattooed and pierced graphic designers to restrain me from ending her life. It has been raining for the entire conference thus far, and the weather reports indicate that it will continue through out the weekend. So the obvious response to the humidity question is yes, its fucking humid out.

In the morning, I'm off to New Orleans and the HOW Design Conference. I've attended the HOW Conference before, but I've never been to the Big Easy. I hear it's a fun town that smells like garbage. I expect it to be humid and I'm comfortable with that (I won't be comfortable, however, with other conference attendees hitting me up with small talk like "This humidity is pretty bad, isn't it?" As a matter of fact, if anybody decides to engage me with inane humidity banter, I'll punt their fucking teeth down their throat).

During the day I will be kicking it Huck Finn off the banks of the Mississippi style; easy, laid back and oblivious to the world around me. At night, I will be kicking it Girls Gone Wild style; drinking Hurricanes until I give up the ghost and flashing my tits for insignificant plastic beads.

Unless there are computers with internet access somewhere at the conference or a comely young lass will let me borrow her laptop for 15 minutes, I will be unable to post while I'm in the Big Easy (Unfortunately, the company laptop is being used at another conference for some work-related bullshit. Fucking whatever). Either way, I will be pimping the old school composition book and rollerball pen to capture the moments, so rest assured you'll be hearing all about my New Orleans adventures.

Chicago Cub power hitter Sammy Sosa has been caught swinging a corked bat. That doesn't mean he caught a rare venereal disease from a transsexual prostitute, it means he’s cheating at baseball. In the Major Leagues, corked bats help balls travel further, thus, they are illegal. I feel sorry for Sammy and hope he can regain his composure and respect before his next steroid injection.

I believe that most Germans are good people. Even though they started the last two World Wars, committed the worst case of genocide in human history and made David Hasselhoff into a legitimate rock star, I think overall they mean well. Unless, of course, they're at family barbeques and stabbing one another in the ass with meat skewers.

During a brief bout of sadness pertaining to my deteriorating relationship, this idiot pulled me from the doldrums of melancholy and self-loathing to bring a smile to my face. Morons make the fucking world go round.

A bikini model's inner monologue: So all I have to do is take off my clothes and have those other oiled, attractive girls apply multiple layers of body paint to me while you guys video tape me? Hmm. I don't know. I don't want people to think I'm some kind of lesbian whore. Well, I guess if those other girls aren't gay, I'd be cool with it. Lets get naked and paint each other’s crotches with our hands. I just want to make sure everyone knows I'm not a lesbian; that could damage my modeling career. I am, after all, the two-time Hooters bikini champion, and with that reputation, I have some of the classiest modeling agencies in the world knocking down my door. I swear if this video makes me look like a dyke, I'll sue.

I'm sweating like I just gave Delta Burke a four-mile piggyback ride and my left knee stings like an Ike Turner backhand. I just arrived home after a hockey game (a tough 3-4 loss), where my knee became a bloody mess of raspberries and bruises. It doesn't faze me though, because I'm fucking hardcore.

Last night, I went to see the much-hyped Matrix Reloaded. I was entertained, yet disappointed. The action was, as expected, insane but the story left little to be desired. A suggestion to any producer who chooses to put Keanu Reeves in a starring role: the less dialogue he has, the better the film will be. The story jumped from holy trinity Catholicism references, to different schools of philosophical thought, to Jesus metaphors, to fucked up tribal raves with gratuitous nipple shots and finally, a moment where we learn the architect of the matrix is a cross between Sigmund Freud, Colonel Sanders and the Wizard of Oz. I don't find Carrie-Ann Moss even remotely attractive, either. Even though shes adorned in black latex and can drive the fuck out of a motorcycle, she does absolutely nothing for me. Monica Bellucci (Persephone) on the other hand, I would pay just to watch read the newspaper.