The thing that sucks about life, besides the fact that we’ll all die someday and nothing we’ve ever done will actually mean a single goddamn thing, is that, no matter how hard you try to be a good person, you end up just fucking everything up even worse. For example, in attempt to make up for all the times I’ve done fucked up shit like washing antifreeze down the drain at the end of my sidewalk that drains straight into the local creek, I’ve been steadfast in my resolve to bike to and from work everyday, despite the fact that its 100 degrees outside and I’m fat and old, and its like five miles from my stupid piece of shit fucking house to my even stupider piece of shittier office. Plus, I have a stupid fucking cruiser bike, with flat tires, and a chain the falls off, usually in the middle of busy intersections and usually when I’m going really fast, and since it’s a stupid cruiser bike, when the chain falls off, there’s no brakes so I usually end up eating shit in some gravel or projecting myself headlong into some sort of shrubbery. But despite all this, I’ve been sticking to my guns, riding my crappy bike every damn day to my pseudo job, and then riding it home every night to bask in the cat-shit stench of my filthy hovel. Just look at me, doing my part to save the environment, one carbon footstep at a time! Why, you’d think I’d be reveling in the warm, fuzzy joy of eco-consiousness, of doing my part to promote self-sustainability, but instead I just feel like a fucking murdering son of a bitch. My daily ride to work through Bidwell Park, which theoretically should be a time of contemplation, of empowerment, of expanding my mind in concert with the trees and birds and wild nature, instead becomes a war hellride, an insect genocide in which I am Hitler, Pol Pot and Slobodan Miloševi? all rolled into one, single handedly committing Holocaust again a race of hapless red and black caterpillars who inch their way across the park roads at a snail’s pace, single-minded in their pursuit of a branch or tree trunk in which to build their cocoon. I try to swerve. I try to go slow, even slower than my flat-tired cruiser already is, and yet by the terminus of my ride, my tires are both dripping with tonnes upon tonnes of insect gore, the guts and flesh of innocent caterpillars staining the rubber like red badges of cowardice. Or I guess more like orange, and weird brownish color badges of cowardice, but you know what I’m saying. I mean, just think of all the beautiful butterflies who are being robbed of their wings, of their very fucking lives, all so I can feel better about not melting the glaciers in whatever the fuck arctic bullshit territory is the current cool place to be worried about. Of course, many people would say “Who gives a shit about a caterpillar?” Well who gives a shit about the world? Who gives a shit about the universe for that matter? God? Who’s God? I ain’t met him, or her or it yet. Maybe god is a caterpillar. After all, people who take DMT and other crazy hallucinogens often report seeing insect overlords. Maybe God is, or at least was, the caterpillar I crushed on the road on the way to work today, perpetuating the cycle of death and violence that traps us all in the circle of suffering called reality. Maybe its like the Butterfly Effect, only without the butterflies; the caterpillar that I crushed on the way to work today could have grown up to be the butterflies who flaps its wings and in turn creates the snowball that eventually creates total world harmony and peace. And I ruined it for everyone, forever, just because I was trying to do like the guy on TV said I should do. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” is easier said than done, I guess. And it’s not really even that easy to say, at least say fast. Thoreau wasn’t thorough enough. He forgot that no matter what you do everything sucks and everything dies.

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind…Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.” -Thomas Jefferson

The Westwood Rifle Range on Highway 36 in Lassen County is a great place to exercise our Second Amendment rights and have some good old-fashioned fun. A few friends and I went up there for a little “therapy session” a few weeks ago. There’s nothing as inflating to the ego as the look of awe and trepidation on the faces of Westwood’s gun crowd when us city boys showed up with six shotguns (including 2 Winchester pumps and a sawed-off Mossberg 12 gauge “hallway special”), a .44 Magnum, a snub-nosed .357 Magnum, two Glock 9mm’s, two Chinese SKS assault rifles, a BFR Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum (the most powerful handgun in the world) 12 canisters of mapp gas, a stick of dynamite, 2,000 rounds and 750 clay pigeons.

We began with a light warm-up round of skeet shooting. But this soon devolved into two pigeons being thrown, and then blown into a fine powder by a thundering volley of shotgun fire, followed by us laughing loudly, congratulating each other for our fine marksmanship and firing our guns into the air in approval. Soon after, we moved to the handguns. The others at the range stared in disbelief as we let out blood-curdling screams and fired off 10-round clips at life-size posters of Alex Rodriguez, Spencer Pratt and Nancy Pelosi, or took aim at the mapp gas canisters with the .500 and .44 Magnums.

At one point, I almost got shot myself; I had just finished mounting a poster of CNN’s Rick Sanchez on a tree when I heard a blood-curdling scream behind me. I whipped around just in time to duck as a friend of mine started running at the poster, foaming at the mouth and a glazed look in his eyes as he unloaded two ten round clips from the 9mm’s and then pulled the .44 Magnum out of his belt, squeezed off six shots with stunning precision, then pulled out the sawed-off Mossberg, pumped three slugs into what was left of the poster and finally collapsed on the ground, moaning loudly and clearly sexually-aroused. I was a bit shaken by this episode and I considered toning it down a little as I watched the other visitors at the range quickly pile into their cars and pull out their cell phones. But then someone mentioned that this sort of fun would all be over if the Democrats, and President Obama in particular, got their way. I shrugged the comment off outwardly, but inwardly a dark pall fell over me and my shooting took on a desperate, frenzied nature.

I had never considered that a Democrat-controlled White House, Congress and Senate might lead to serious curtailments of the 2nd Amendment, but when I got back into town I began to ask people if they felt this way about the incoming administration.

The Tackle Box on Park Avenue was my first stop. I sidled up to the counter and asked a man named Phil if I could ask him a few questions for a possible article. He fixed me with an amused look in his eyes, leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, let me ask you a couple of questions first. Do you own a gun?” I smiled back at him, showing lots of teeth, and said I did, making sure not to mention the loaded .357 in my belt. He said to proceed, so I asked him if there was any truth to these sadistic rumors I had been hearing. He told me that the government in general has been trying to limit our right to bear arms virtually since it became a right. “But,” he said, “Obama’s scaring the shit out of everybody.” I offered to attribute that particular quote to an anonymous source, but he would have none of it.

We talked some more and he told me that gun sales had gone through the roof since November 4th, but also explained that in poor economic times gun sales tend to go up anyway. But he also estimated that roughly half the people who had bought guns since the election had done so in order to get all the guns they could while they still had the right to do so. To emphasize this point, he pulled out an absolutely gorgeous Springfield Arms .45 semiautomatic and told me that a woman had called the day after the election asking for a price on the gun ($750) as well as 100 rounds pre-loaded into 10 clips.

I pondered the significance of increased gun sales in a conservative, pre-dominantly white county after the election of a black Democrat to the White House while I headed to the next shop. Grim implications indeed. When I arrived and informed the owner why I was there, he agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. I shrugged, said why not, and began asking him about assault weapons such as the AK-47 and its less expensive cousin, the SKS. How do people justify using these guns? Aren’t assault weapons above and beyond what we need for home protection purposes? The glint in my eye must have scared him as I rattled off the names of various assault rifles, my voice rising with each one, because he slowly backed away with his hand on the pistol in his hip holster. When he finally answered, he told me that the NRA fought to keep such guns legal so that anti-gun activists did not have any legal precedent to begin banning even more guns. Or, as several of the people I talked to outside the shop said, it isn’t about protecting people’s right to own assault weapons specifically, it’s about protecting the right to own guns in general. If anti-gun activists were to get their foot in the door regarding assault weapons, they surely would not stop there; gun lovers have no intention to find out just how far anti-gun activists will take their crusade.

I had set out to see whether there was any legitimacy to the dark rumors I had heard concerning the Obama administration and future gun control measures. I suppose I had always known that gun lovers would harbor some sort of concern about gun rights when a Democrat moves into the White House, but I wanted to gauge the paranoia level and compare it to my own. But the paranoia simply wasn’t there. What I discovered instead were people who were indignant, angered and exasperated by repeated attempts to limit a very basic right of theirs. In tough times like these, gun control is not high on the government’s list of priorities. But when things are better, the government now in place will have the will and the werewithal to enact harsh anti-gun legislature if they choose to.

When considering that gun sales in California have gone up roughly 50% since November, it’s hard not to think that gun owners have become gripped with unnecessary fear and paranoia at the remote possibility that their gun rights will be taken away. But these people are not paranoid; they simply understand that their vigilance in protecting their rights might have to become a little more focused now. It is the effort of these “paranoiacs” that spearhead the fight to preserve what has been a basic American right for more than 230 years. Free speech advocates must protect even the rights of pornographers if they want to preserve free speech, and gun lovers face the same situation in their fight. Are there some horribly paranoid gun freaks out there who are convinced that Obama’s out to get them and their guns as the first step in turning this country into a totalitarian police state? Sure, but those people are far and few between, even if they are the ones who get plastered all over the cable news networks as “gun advocates”. Besides, those uneducated inbreds don’t even realize that it’s the Dick Cheneys of the world, not the Obamas, that are most likely to turn this nation into a modern day 1984.

I also noticed another interesting trend at the gun stores I visited. Without exception, every shop is completely out of ammo, aside from .22 caliber bullets (which may as well be pellets) and shotgun shells. Gun prices have also gone up by as much as 50%. (A Glock 9mm a few months ago went for around $500 but now start at $700) Given that I didn’t find any ramped up levels of panic or paranoia about Obama’s gun control intentions, I think it is entirely possible that some of the hysteria caused in the media recently may have been at the behest of gun and ammo companies. Are they looking to jack up the hysteria to boost their profit margins? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Although my own behavior has done little to dispel this notion, people with guns are not homicidal maniacs trying to preserve their right to act in such a manner. Every gun owner I spoke to readily acknowledged that assault weapons are severely pushing the boundaries of good taste, but they also fear that banning such guns would be the first step toward banning ALL guns. Many also readily accept that protecting the right to own guns means protecting the right to own guns that they personally feel should be illegal. But they will gladly fight to protect your right to do something, or own something, that they may not agree with because they fully expect you to do the same for them and their rights.

One of the neat things about editing the Syntheis Weekly is that I get a first-had crack at the action before the paper even hits the streets. Last Friday I was proofing Mad Bob Howard’s column, and he referenced a fellow “outsider artist” (aside: something about the term “outsider art” or “outsider artist” makes me cringe, and therefore, encase it in quotes like some sort of literary specimin) by the name of Jonathan Troxler.

Easter is one of those bizarre holidays – quasi-religious, quasi-pagan, entirely alcoholic these days. It has really become a post-modern event. Thanks to Johnathan Troxler’s terrific and terrifying paintings I will never get the image of the crucified Easter Bunny out of my head. That and the three stooges strumming the guitar in a manger for baby Jesus and Santa Claus. This is Troxler’s older work – to me it doesn’t point to any particular warp or hiccup in his character – instead it asks of us a simple and direct question: What kind of sick freaks are we?

Three Stooges as the Three Wise Men, with Baby Jesus and Santa in the Manger? Sounds like my kind of religous art! Unfortunately I couldn’t find that particular image on any of Troxler’s sites, but I did manage to uncover a few other precious religous art specimens. Enjoy.

With the multiple-version release of his album Since 1972, Josh Freese has officially won life.

The album’s physical release is slated for 4/14. But don’t let that date stop you from purchasing one of these options now. I’m personally vying for the $10,000 version that includes his Volvo station wagon.

JOSH FREESE: SINCE 1972
$7
–Digital Download of “Since 1972″ (including 3 videos)

$15
–CD/DVD Double Disc Set
–Digital Download

$50
–CD/DVD Double Disc Set
–T-shirt
–”Thank You” phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like ‘Is Maynard really THAT weird?’ or ‘Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?’ or ‘Are Devo really Suburban Robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of Dads from Ohio?’ or ‘Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?’ It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$500 (limited edition of 15)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download
–T-shirt
–Signed Cymbal and sticks
–Meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank (filmed and posted on youtube)
–Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and “all you can eat” Shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
–T-shirt
–Signed Cymbal, Drum head and Drumsticks.
–Josh washes your car OR does your laundry….or you can wash his car.
–Have dinner with Josh aboard the “Queen Mary” in Long Beach, CA
–Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5–FOUR REMAINING)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
–Get a private drum lesson with Josh or for all you non-drummers have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
–Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the “Spearmint Rhino”
–Signed DW snare drum.
–Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
–Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3–ONE REMAINING)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
–T-shirt
–Josh writes about a song about you and make available on iTunes.
–Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the youtubes.
–Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
–Get drunk together. If you don’t drink we can go to my Dads place and hang out under the “Tuba tree”
–Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on “Since 1972″

$10,000 (limited edition of 1)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download
–T-shirt
–Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle’s 2003 tour.
–Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
–Twiggy from Manson’s band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe’s Chicken n’ Waffle in Long Beach for dinner.
–Josh takes you and guest to “Club 33″ (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and The Tower Of Terror)
–At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in Josh’s Volvo station wagon. It’s all yours….take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please.

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)
–Signed CD/DVD and digital download
–T-shirt
–Go on tour with Josh for a few days.
–Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
–Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.)
–Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL’s Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while.
–Josh will join your band for a month…play shows, record, party with groupies, etc….
–If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
–Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
–If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks.
–Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.

more press release after the jump.

(more…)

A bizarre race of Ancient Ones living on right beneath our noses, or perhaps as microbes “in our noses”?  Someone page HP Lovecraft:

As well as the many forms of life based on DNA that are known to science, the Earth may have been home to a second creation of organisms that make up an unremarked realm of “life as we don’t know it”, according to Paul Davies, of Arizona State University, a cosmologist and theorist of extraterrestrial life. Such “weird life” would never have been identified by scientists because the techniques they use for studying microbes are based on the familiar biological processes that drive the living things we understand, Professor Davies told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago.

“The belief that life is widespread is based on the idea that it’s easy to make in Earth-like conditions. There is a rather obvious way [of testing this], without even leaving our own planet. There’s no planet more Earth-like than Earth itself, so if life does form readily in those conditions shouldn’t it have formed many times over right here on our own planet? There’s been no systematic search for life as we don’t know it here on Earth. There’s been plenty of thought given to weird life on Mars or Europa or elsewhere, but very little thought to what weird life on Earth might be like, how it might manifest itself.”

He suggested several forms that weird life might take. Known life on Earth is based on five main elements – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous – but it is possible that organisms could use arsenic instead of phosphorous. Arsenic is poisonous because it so easily replaces phosphorous in our biochemistry.

As he nears the 23 year anniversary of his first contact with “the visitors,” Communion author and famous, if not infamous, paranormal icon Whitley Streiber is still struggling to be taken seriously, and he’s not too happy about it:

It is late here, midnight passing. December has come again, and for the past few months I have been enduring the same demonic nights that I experience every year at this time, as my spirit relives the hard pilgrimage that led to the night of December 26, 1985.

The feelings are so complex, the fears so deep and the love, too, so deep, that sometimes, even after all these years,the whole emotional avalanche of having the visitors emerge into my life threatens to drown me.

It was not all bad, not by any means, and that what makes my present condition so hard. I have lost loves, great loves, towering loves, left behind me a life and experiences that are somewhere close to the pinnacle what can happen to a living man.

I know that what I did is considered nothing–the foolish bagatelles of a pitiful man with a deranged imagination, or even a frank liar–but it was all real, and there was far more of it than I have ever said, and I am so lonely now that it is a physical agony, and yet, along with the loneliness there is also a fear that is greater than my blood, greater than my soul, I would think, that breaks me on its wheel in these lonely hours in the early winter, every year.

I have lived most of my life, and over its course been given a great blessing, to see truly and accurately to a land beyond death, and see its sacred population, and even gain friends there.

But what did it mean? Is there really an afterlife, or was it a trick to force me into the state of question in which I now live? Am I standing before a door, or, like Tantalus, doomed to forever seek a meal I will never consume in the form of answers I will never receive.

I am deeply, profoundly angry at the way I have been treated by the world. I brought one of the premiere human experiences to the surface and my reward has been a mock Science Fiction Hugo, and to become a star of the television show Southpark as the victim of a ‘rectal probe’–the character skillfully changed, of course, so that I could not sue or claim theft of my story.

I mean, I guess I feel his pain. But what do you expect, when you say that non-human entities have embued you, and seemingly you alone, with the knowledge needed to save mankind from certain destruction, while they weren’t anally raping and otherwise terrorizing you? I mean, at least you got Christopher Walken to play you in a movie. That’s a lot more than most people ever get out of life. I certainly hope that Streiber is not deranged, is not somehow out of his mind; what he’s talking about is a lot cooler than just being some hunk of accidentally slapped together molecules living and dying a meaningless life on some stupid planet in an ever expanding universe. That shit would suck.