So Brian Said

Michael's friend gave him a book to sell on Amazon. At the exact same time, my identical copy of that book went missing. I told Michael that I thought he stole it, but he assured me that he did not. I told him to give it back, and he told me he would. That was very generous, considering he hadn't taken it and would surely have to pay back that other kid.

Let's play "Remember When."

Remember when....

Remember when Michael stole $20 from Andrew?
Remember when Mom made him pay the $20 back, so Michael stole $20 more from Andrew?
Remember when Michael stole a CD player from Sears and Mom, Andrew and I busted him, so he ran away?
Remember when Michael stole Dad's audio cards and sold them on E-Bay?
Remember when Michael stole my checkbook to buy subscriptions to online pornography sites?
Remember when Michael didn't steal my book? Honestly!
Yeah, good times.

The point is, kids, that if you steal things from your family, you should be publicly ridiculed. You should also have the crap beaten out of you, but then I'd probably get kicked out of the house.

Michael likes to think he has "the criminal mind." That's his way of saying, "I'm simultaneously a shameful, pathetic loser devoid of any decency and a worthless idiot too stupid to successfully sustain my addictions without being caught red-handed." He likes "criminal mind" better not because it's shorter, but because he thinks it makes him sound cool without pointing out the parts about being shameful, pathetic, indecent, and stupid.

Don't steal things, kids.

In the interest of full disclosure (read: before someone else tries to do it)

Remember when....

Remember when Brian got caught shoplifting at 7-11?
Remember when Brian got kicked out of Walsh for B&E, burglary, theft, arson, CCW, possession of drugs and general naughtiness?
--McJangles 1:34 AM
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Did you ever look in the mirror and not recognize yourself?

Not metaphorically, either. I just looked in the mirror and thought that it was wrong. Is that me? I thought my face was wider. Hmm....
--McJangles 12:17 AM
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I've been forgetting to publicly commend Jill, who remembered my birthday this year. I was sort of hoping she'd forget again, because it was fun to make her feel bad by bringing it up over and over last year. But she came through like a champ and left a long message on the machine and even made a special birthday weblog entry. You did not. Unless you're Jill. The Datsuns own her, too. She hasn't updated in over a week now. Naughty.
--McJangles 4:44 AM
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In other news: Martin ruined Mariachi Locos, possibly permanently.

In other news: I almost made Sid cry today at work. He was outraged, and I considered pushing him to the point where he would fire me.

The real news: The Datsuns own you.

The show was out of control. Opening band: horrible. Next band: tolerable. Datsuns: Cuh-razy.

These guys are just getting better. Dolf played all the instruments. And he and I chatted during the set. It was great.

Right in the middle of "Harmonic Generator," the monitors started falling over, the mic stand fell off, the plug on the mic came disconnected, then none of the mics worked and the technician started running around like crazy trying to fix everything. It was hilarious, except that it was my favorite song and I couldn't hear it. It's always disheartening to see that kind of thing happen to a great band in the middle of a great show. So once the song ended, I shouted, "We love you anyway," and Dolf apparently took offense. He was looking out to see who said it, and asked, "'We love you anyway'? What's that mean?" "I love you anyway." "'Anyway'? What's that mean? That we're shit?"

Now, when we went to see the Datsuns at the Grog Shop, some moron started heckling the band--"Play (pick a stupid song)!" "Tuning? Nobody tunes their guitars in Cleveland!"--then continued to berate the band. I told this guy to shut up twice during the show. But Dolf got all crybaby and started in with, "You Americans are so blablabla.... You think you're really great, don't you, trying to bring us down like that?" It was pretty queer. I didn't realize until today that it was an issue he had.

Anyway (ha!), after he asked if I meant that his band was shit, I continued, "No, your shit fell apart." He seemed to get it right then, and kind of shrugged in acceptance, that yeah, everything did fall apart and they looked stupid. "Our shit did fall apart."

Then he realized that all the equipment was property of the Beachland Ballroom and that the guy who was working everything was a Beachland employee. He pointed up with both fingers and then at the walls and then at the floor and said, "Your shit fell apart." Well played, Dolf.

Anyway, the show carried on basically without a hitch from there and was out-of-control crazy good. At the end, Matt launched one of his sticks off a cymbal and into the crowd. A bunch of people far to my right fumbled it and it ended up on the floor right next to me. I made a quick reach into a sea of dirty white-hats and pried the sucker out of the hands of probably five people, including that one guy, who I hated and pushed around several times during the show. After that, I got guitar picks as well. I rule.

My voice is shot. My ears are shot. I have a Datsuns stick and pick. I rule. The Datsuns rule. You stayed at home and are a loser.
--McJangles 4:26 AM
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I wonder if I could get an internship at al Jazeera.
--McJangles 12:45 AM
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Speaking of incident reports, I meant a long time ago to link to this obituary.

My editor e-mailed me the day before the piece ran:

"Check out a news obit that will run in wednesday's paper. A lawyer named Waller. His daughter told us he just loved reading about stolen meat in crime watch! You just lost a fan."

Strangely, that's what I'm always hoping for when I see a theft report.
--McJangles 12:38 AM
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Post.

In other news: Happy birthday to Elizabeth Ewonus. BRATS forever.

As I reread Andrew's notes from my birthday, I thought to myself, "Man, this sounds like a cop writing an incident report." Then I laughed reference that being funny.

I have a lot of stories and other things that just haven't made it up on here recently. Here are the ones I can think of right now.

Martin's gay brother
The opening act at the Black Keys show was an atrocity. Martin said that the Apes were the bad version of several bands, but I don't know any of them. It sounded like the guy was trying to emulate a high Jim Morrisson, but that doesn't usually work very well for anyone, including Jim Morrisson. He stuck his hand down the back of his pants and did God-knows-what. His little sister played the keyboard and was the only remotely interesting part of the troupe.

The Black Keys were phenomenal. This is the fourth time I've seen them in about six months, and they only get better. They're really pretty ludicrously good.

While we were at the show, two gentlemen who were very secure in their homosexuality were pawing all over each other and acting like a couple of trollops. I respectfully asked them to behave, and Martin's brother's boyfriend tried to egg me on. I stared him down until he shut up, and then he walked away a few minutes later.

About another minute later, he comes back with a big black guy about 20 feet tall, points to me and says, "Yeah, this is the guy who called you a fucking nigger!" I considered pooping my pants, but decided against it. I almost said "Do I look like the kind of person to make such a racist comment?" I decided against that, as well. While I was trying to find a way to talk myself out of this, the guy continued: "Yeah, not just 'nigger,' he called you a "fucking nigger.'" It pretty soon became evident that these guys already knew each other, so I gambled on the black guy already knowing that this guy just wanted to scare me. I stopped talking to them, they stopped talking to me. Further, the little flits stopped pissing off everyone.

Wallet
This story is better told in person, but I'm getting tired of repeating it, so if you haven't heard it already, you get the ultra-abridged version: I left my wallet on the hood of my car at the gas station. At Route 8 and 303, it flew off without me realizing what it was. I got to Coventry and figured it out. I drove back up 8 today, going about 50 and irritating everyone behind me as I scanned the shoulder for my wallet. I eventually found it, looked both ways out of habit, crossed the street and grabbed it. I lost my FOP card, a picture of Beth, my Locos punch card and some things that weren't important enough to remember. Credit cards, student ID, etc. all accounted for.

Birthday events
After the on-my-actual-birthday events, I spent Saturday with Beth. My mom thought it would be a good idea for her to come to Meghan's wedding shower at my house to meet her and other family members. It was a disaster and a half, but I think that aside from me, her and Giselle, no one else noticed. I think Beth was drunk when she showed up. After that, we went to Angello's. I have forgotten in the last year or so that this actually trumps Donato's for best pizza in the world. Canton, Tuscarawas Road, west of Canton Center Mall, north side of the road. Holy hell. Go eat the Crested Butte Colorado.

On Sunday, Beth and I went to Whitman house for dinner with Quinn, her--not my--Martin, and Rachel Loudon. (I know you're asking yourself, and the answer is yes.) Then we went to Quinn's new UU church and played Scrabble with a bunch of old dorks. They seemed unassuming, but it was a slaughterhouse. I played Beth in the first game, then got beaten by 101 points, then again by 100. "You're a very good player," Midge told me as she handed me my ass. Humiliating.

That's all I can think of for the moment.
--McJangles 11:43 PM
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Andrew sent this to me on my birthday in an e-mail with the subject line: "Notes I wrote to remember how drunk you were one year ago tonight." I didn't get it until today because he sent it to the wrong address, but I'll share it with you anyway.

Dragged him out of car at 0230
"Her name was mary, she had brown hair and she was like 5’2” or 5’7” and she wanted to rub my head, so I said if I can rub yours. So she did and said it was good luck. Then she started grinding on some other guy."
"They’re giving away T-shirts! Let’s get T-thirts, then we’ll always remember this was the time that we got t-shirts. That would be cool."
"Let’s get t-shirts. I think they only give them to girls. Well if I get a girl and she gets a t-shirt and gives it to me it will be mine."
He wanted to dance in the corner of W. 10th and Main. So I got out and activated the child lock on his doors. He crawled across the cab of the Explorer and tried to get out so I had to shove him back into the car.
"Am I stripes, solids, or red?"
"Do you have any nap? I could sure use one of those."
BAC .29 “Red Alert”
--McJangles 1:09 AM
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It should be known that in addition to being a thief, Michael is a woman-oppressor. He refuses to let his girlfriend speak freely.
--McJangles 9:49 AM
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Good show. I almost had to beat up a short, gay version of Quinn's Martin. Bad news.
--McJangles 2:28 AM
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Holy rerun, Batman!

B-Day shout-outs to: the Vernal Equinox
Me.
Pat at the West Park Post Office
Bach
Rachel's sister
Florenz Ziegfeld
That one guy from Ace of Base
Timothy Dalton, who put all those zeros in 007
John D. Rockefeller III

Quinn really posted out-of-control style.

I want to go to the show now. I don't want to go to Sign-A-Rama. Nyargh. I really won't want to go next week, when I have no classes.

You guys thought the music was stupid last year. Screw you. It's awesome.
--McJangles 12:14 AM
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Our layout was better than the Beacon's or the Plain Dealer's. We rule.

"No Irish music though, unless you count U2." Ten days of nonposting are forgiven.

Quinn doesn't post in forever, then I don't read for two days and she posts enough to take off at least the last post that I read.

Happy birthday to Billy. He's cool.

That midterm sucked a lot.

Tomorrow: Locos, pool, Black Keys. Bring it.

Peace.
--McJangles 11:23 PM
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Michael is a thief.
--McJangles 11:25 PM
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That was creepy; allow me to explain.

I restructured the order of those names, and it had said "my dad, Martin, blablabla." I forgot to take out the first my. I've fixed it now, though.
--McJangles 12:53 AM
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For public consumption
--McJangles 4:10 AM
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I saw this on my dad's computer. At first read, anyway, it seems like a bad idea. The article talks about free vs. paid blogging (getting paid to blog, not paying to use a weblog service). Meg Hourihan, writer for WepProNews: "I came to a realization that I've been mulling over ever since: a lack of money is hindering the growth and potential of blogging. Free--or personal--blogging can only take us so far."

My first objection is on factual grounds. I admit that I don't have all the relevant statistics in front of me at the moment, but I don't think that much of anything is hindering the growth or potential of blogging. In fact, let's go get the stats now: Blogger announced that it had 1 million users registered on Jan. 6. Livejournal is just short of those numbers.¹ I've sent an e-mail to Xanga to find out how many users they have. Diaryland has about 850,000. Then you have Diary-X and My-Journal, each with a couple thousand or so. On top of these, you have who-knows-how-many more services with still more users. Then you have countless more people like Martin, Andy Diroll and my father, who keep weblogs but just use Front Page or write straight HTML.

The point is that there is no shortage of weblogs. There's no reliable way to tell just how many blogs are out there, but there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people trying to use them. E-mail technology was created in 1973, and it took about 20 years for it to reach the popularity that blogging has attained in its relatively short history. If you build it they will come. Just be patient.

My more important objection is more personal. Don't these corporate types know that when they touch anything, it becomes less cool? No, they don't. Worse yet, a lot of consumers aren't wise to that either. Everything is so fake. It's really boring. I was complaining just the other day about jeans manufactured to look old, with fading, fringing and holes in the knees. Most of my jeans look just like that, but I wore them every day to get them that way. Screw you, Abercrombie & Fitch. Screw you, everyone who buys their crap.

Must everything be hip and chic? I really wish it didn't, but the fact is that this garbage permeates every aspect of our society. I've drank less than a total of eight ounces of coffee in my life, but even I can appreciate the coolness of a small, neighborhood coffee shop compared to the mildly offensive Arabica and overwhelmingly disgusting Starbucks. Then you have cool bookstores like Booksellers fighting against Borders.

The list of manufactured cool goes on: Applebee's, TGI Friday's, and everything retro.

It's easy to see that corporate folk know just how to suck you in. They simulate familiarity and exploit people's desire for it. People are too fickle to keep anything around long enough to grow familiar with it, so products need to be made to seem familiar in advance.

My, how I've strayed off-topic.

Back to business: We don't need a bunch of mercenary bloggers running around the Internet. The reason goes back to the beginning and purpose of topical weblogging. Blogs were created as a sort of new press. Not everyone can get their ideas into a newspaper or onto TV, but blogs gave them even greater power than both of those media combined. Bloggers with stratified content are a separate breed of journalists. If I want to know how good a new movie is, I can go to a blog and find a review of the movie. I don't want a blog paid for by advertising revenue from Paramount or MGM.

...

I had high hopes for this entry, but it's just not happening the way I'd hoped. Maybe I'll try again later.

1: Some glitch--hopefully temporary--is resetting most of the numbers on this site to zero every night. If you want numbers, you'll have to believe me or wait until morning.
--McJangles 1:29 AM
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It appears Mom and Laura are both buying new cars. Perhaps someone has a buy-two-get-one-free deal that I can snag.
--McJangles 2:35 AM
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That secret sucks and I hate it. I'm very sorry.
--McJangles 11:26 PM
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So I'm peeing, right?

Yeah, I am. And as I'm standing in front of the Buchtelite toilet, the U-shaped part of the buckle just falls off my belt. It had happened earlier in the day, so I was being careful not to stand too close to the toilet. Nonetheless, it hit the seat of the toilet with a terrible clink and bounced right into the Yellow River.

Most unfortunate. So then I'm standing there, wondering if I should try to retrieve it. Sure, it's sitting at the bottom of about 2 gallons of pisswater, but I can clean it off, right? It's not like anyone's going to know.

Still unsure of my next move, I stepped away from the toilet to get a better idea of my chances for recovery by letting the bubbles clear and seeing if there was anything to reach in there with. I forgot though, that these toilets are automatic-flushers. Swoooooshhhhhh... and away went my belt buckle.

I bought a new one today. My first permanent purchase from Value City. I'm fairly happy with it, though it is a little shiny. Such is the Val.

More importantly, the Hobo Kin is back in action. We've plugged in, and Jay sounds awesome. Martin sounds less awesome trying to make lyrics out of a flier for some party being held by the Black United Students. Even less awesome is that organ Martin tried to make me play. More awesome is using it as a drum. Less awesome is Smooth Danny K not participating. More awesome were the presents from Jay. Less awesome was forgetting them in his trunk.

All stories should start with "So I'm peeing, right?"
--McJangles 10:03 PM
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Anyone who ranks higher than me at the paper deserves to be shot.

We're running a story about fake LeBron jerseys being sold on E-Bay, and these idiots are afraid of a libel suit coming out of a factfactfactual sentence. The whole story is ruined because these morons are afraid to say anything that the story is about. They have taken what could have been a great starting piece of investigative journalism and turned it into a meritless piece of jibberish.

Apparently, it's libelous to say that Throback.com is selling replica LeBron James jerseys. Meanwhile, Throback.com says that it is selling a "LeBron James High School Game Jersey Replica." Further, it's libelous to say that there are "LeBron James replica jerseys being sold on the Internet auction site E-Bay."

I guess that in Akron, truth is not a defense against libel.

This story is the most boring piece of garbage ever. If we had sat on it until the next issue, we could have had a ton of good quotes, a go-ahead from UA lawyers (which we don't need to have), some facts, and something that would be worth reporting.

Instead, we have a pair of worthless losers heading the paper.

Linda Lee, you're incompetent.
Jon O'Neal, grow a pair.

I'm pretty sure that at least Linda reads this. I hope so.
--McJangles 11:01 PM
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I am a hypocrite. I gave Cizzy a ton of crap for listening to that Justin Timberlake song, but I just heard "Bye Bye Bye" for the first time in a couple of years, and it still gets me dancing. I remember one time when I actually danced to that song--on a dance floor and with a girl. Drinking is baaaaad.
--McJangles 1:37 AM
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I shall beat Martin to the punch and post the story the Onion wrote about him.
--McJangles 12:35 AM
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