sometimes this happens

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’ve been mildly wronged, say, at a car repair shop that told you the repair would be free, but ended up charging $55 for labor, start throwing a tantrum. Do not let your anger rise slowly, reach a flaming hot boil the moment you’re given the bill and sustain that anger to a degree that requires the receptionist to hover her finger over the 911 button throughout the duration of your stay at her counter. Tell her that if she really wants some help she better call your husband because he’s the only one with even the slightest chance of calming you down right now. And when she does call your husband, he’ll greet her in his calm, mild-mannered voice and then instruct her to just do whatever you want because there might be some serious physical and emotional consequences if she doesn’t comply. Your husband’s key piece of advice to this receptionist will be, “Look, you don’t understand my wife. I really don’t know what she might do before I can get down there.”  As she puts the phone down, make it clear through body language that calling for help was futile, and the thin sliding pane of glass separating the two of you will soon shatter under the weight of your stare. Hell hath no fury like a woman overcharged for auto repair. 

Be unreasonable. The ratio of your anger to the banality of the situation should be absurdly disproportioned. Make sure your sanity is in question. Let her know that you don’t have a problem with her personally and you know she’s just doing her job, then proceed to call her a ‘heifer’ and demand to know how many times her parents had to drop her on her big-ass head before she came out dumb enough to work as a receptionist at a car service and lube center. Cause a scene that the elderly couple behind you will never forget - even in their dementia. Give the people a story to tell. Make your anger legendary. 

And most importantly, when the receptionist asks you to ‘please calm down,’ cock your head to the side, wide-eyed and say this verbatim:

“Calm down? Oh you haven’t even seen me. I will be on the news.” 

This is the type of threat that could only come from a woman who has seen some serious shit and done even worse. A woman who has watched a litany of ghetto folk go apeshit on the 6 o’clock news and sees them as role models. A woman who is willing, ready, and able to commit a felony for principle because her mama didn’t raise no fool.

This woman is my sister-in-law and all of this happened at her local Volkswagen dealership on Friday. This is real life and the line “Oh you haven’t seen me. I will be on the news” is funnier and more poetic than anything fiction could ever come up with. I call her G-Unit because that’s her first initial and she has more thug in her upper lip than The Game and all his tattooed butt buddies combined. She’s a 98 pound kindergarten teacher from Atlanta, GA and she will be on the news.

This is my favorite music-related read in the past 5 years. 

kusoon:

But do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy?

- Steven Fry, on Grammar Nazis

THIS! 

knowwhatsfuckingcrazy:

I wanna meet the weird, out-of-the-box-innovative-thinking son of a bitch who invented clapping. Because what could be crazier than taking our hands and slapping them together forcefully and repetitively when we want to show our approval or praise?

Next time you’re in a place where people around you are clapping, lean over to the guy next to you and, in a gentle whisper, call him out for being the fucking hand-slapping weirdo he is.

Give this guy a follow. Can’t wait for him to tackle boobies and door knobs.

laughingsquid:

Jesus Waffle Maker by Alisa Toninato

miracles everyday

I think about death a lot. Not really about the fear of dying or what happens after we die, but my own death and what it would mean. I never think about how I might die and rarely do I think about when, but I do agonize over my funeral. Who shows up, what words are spoken, what music is played. God I hope they laugh a lot. I wish I could orchestrate it all - not so much because I love a good funeral, but because on some not-so-deep a level I think I’m obsessed with how I’ll be remembered. I’m deathly afraid of being reduced to a boring label or one lame aspect of my life. I don’t want to be caricatured. What a self-absorbed twat I am for thinking of these things. It probably explains why I’ll never actually achieve anything great in life - too busy wanting, not enough doing. 

But anyway… 

Prior to my eventual death, I’d like to be crystal clear about a few things that may not be so obvious:

1. For all the hate I pretend to harbor, I really do love people. Especially the honest ones. I love people who stay true to themselves and loyal to their friends. I would die for any one of these people and moreover, I would kill for them. Nothing is more important or valuable than a true friend and I consider myself immensely wealthy here.
2. Beef jerky is awesome and no matter how much of it I eat before I die, I wish I’d had more. 
3. Of all the things I’ve wanted to do in life, the only non-diminishing dream I’ve ever had was to be a musician. It’s also my greatest source of fear and insecurity. This is both sad and disappointing, but perfectly normal for all of us living our lives at half-speed. Shame on us.
4. Seriously, beef jerky in all flavors: peppered, sweet and spicy, teriyaki, some magical new brew that I haven’t even experienced yet, they’re all so awesome. Wherever I’m going next, I hope they have beef jerky. 
5. I’m not lazy; I’m just uninspired most of the time. Life is easy, living is hard.
6. Trust me on the whole beef jerky thing, I’ve had other jerkys: deer, salmon, turkey, they’re not the same. There’s something about the texture and consistency of beef jerky that makes it far better than other jerkys. It’s an unparalleled chewing experience. My favorite part is how shards get stuck between your molars sometimes and the flavors kinda implant themselves into your mouth, kind of like an exclusive after-party just for the taste buds on the tip of your tongue.

Glad we’ve cleared that up.     

You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ‘em later

This is Steve Jobs yesterday presenting at a City Council meeting in Cupertino, CA. You know in Talladega Nights when Ricky Bobby says, “Here’s the deal: I’m the best there is. Plain and simple. I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence”? Steve Jobs actually lives this way. He bends and twists the universe to fit his will and his only adversary is a world brimming with mediocrity. 

There is integrity of Steve Jobs in everything Steve Jobs does here: the clothes, the unassuming entrance, the ease with which he speaks. But the real secret to his presence is in the pauses. Those perfectly timed moments of silence where it seems as though he has a thought which is so deep and profound and beautiful that he needs to figure out a way to dumb it down for the city council members of Cupertino and me. Steve-Synthesis. And in these pauses we wait with bated breath at what Steve will reveal, what anecdote will serve as the metaphor for his earth-shattering proposal. Sometimes it’s an MP3 player, sometimes it’s a goddamn building shaped like a spaceship that can hold 12,000 people.

Nothing is ever pedestrian with Steve. Even the glass in his office building will be special - “there’s not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved.” And even the expertise to build such a geometrically sound spaceship office could only come from Steve and his exceptional group of Apple retail store architects. For Steve, everything that currently exists is “boring and we’d like to do it better.” And by ‘we’ he means Steve.

There is, apparently, a way to rule with an iron fist as long as the fist gives the appearance of being casually humble. Everything is “pretty cool” with Steve. “We think [this amazing feat of modern architecture and engineering which will also be eco-friendly and beautiful to behold] is pretty cool.” He lets the idea sell itself and does the classic undersell at the end - that’s the real power move. If that were anyone else, it comes across as crass and manipulative, but with Steve, well, that’s just Steve pissing excellence.

And for all his excellence and unbending will, Steve calls himself a simpleton. And in his back and forth with the council members, the phrase “best in the world” is always preceded by the casually humble disclaimer, “we have a shot at…” As if being the best in the world is by chance or some random opportunity. The new building ‘has a shot’ at being the best office building in the world because Steve will make it so. He will have the ground broken by the end of the year and his people will march inside by 2015. He’s a simpleton alright.

With Steve, the plan is always simple: make it the best in the world. Why aren’t more people like this? Why aren’t we all like this? This is probably why Steve has a legions of fanboys and the rest of us don’t. We cling to those with a singular pursuit. Those who endeavor to the top. In Steve, we see what we’re supposed to be but fail to achieve because we’re too scared or too dumb or too unsimple. Maybe more than anything we lack the moxie. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to try to do/be/make the best in the world. And it takes even more to not let up when you get close. It’s not enough to just drink excellence, you’ve gotta piss it out too. Excellence has to be the only thing running through your veins. Excellence oozing out of pores and tear glands. 

The video ends with Steve, simple Steve, being honest in his simple way. The sweaty palmed council member, in a classic bullshit politician move, clumsily gropes his iPad and asks Steve to remember to ‘give back to the community’ by way of building an Apple retail store in Cupertino, CA. It says a lot about a community when ‘giving back’ has nothing to do with serving soup to the homeless or donating shoes to orphans. Build an Apple Store in Cupertino? You have the attention of the world’s most influential figure in technology, the CEO of the Century, and you ask him to build you a goddamn store because the other two stores are 7 miles away? Why not ask him to help you unlock your iPad screen while you’re at it? In that moment is revealed the difference between Steve Jobs and rest of us: one is thinking in terms of ‘best in the world,’ while the other can’t leave an 8 mile radius of his house, even in his imagination. And still, Steve, in his cool, simple way answers honestly: “The problem with putting an Apple store in Cupertino is that there just isn’t the traffic. So I’m afraid it might not be successful. If we thought it’d be successful, we’d love to.”

You’re right, Steve, there just isn’t the traffic.

[now, if you’d like to read something that was actually well-written, see: Tom Junod on Steve Jobs and the Portal to the Invisible] 

People often ask me what I do for a living. This is it.

TRUTH

Solid gold.