Hopeless

Hang in there Pete. Your music rules. Your thoughts rule harder.

Smart Watch the Smart Watch Smartwatchmen!

Despite my living in the douchebag capital of the Midwest, Chicago (complete with occasional forays into Lincoln Park, The Loop, and Viagra Triangle), I have never seen anyone wearing a “Smart Watch” in public …except me.

And I wouldn’t even be That guy if AT&T didn’t foist the Moto 360 watch on me for free with the middle-pack Moto X phone I got for dirt cheap. (Both are due for an update I imagine).

I was going to eBay the fuck out of the watch (the phone is great), but it probably won’t sell for much and…
…I kinda like it.

To this former / current metal nerd, the Moto 360 looks exactly like my old Swatch that had black arms on a black watchface. If someone asks me what time it is, I can again point to the vacuous face and say, “You tell me, freeloader”!

  The Apple Watch is selling dismally by many market and 401k accounts. Its problem may be inflated sense of importance and independence. Unlike Android Wear watches and others, Apple Watch is trying to be more of a stand-alone device (that still needs an iPhone anyway) than a remote control for a phone. And the Apple Hit Me looks like a Casio calculator watch to boot.

  But the Moto is terrible as a watch. If you want to see what the time is instantly, tough shit. You won’t be able to flick your wrist the right way to wake the screen every time. You could leave the screen awake if you want the tiny battery to die in three hours (making it a three-hour day, a three-hour day!).

  The Moto 360 is awesome as a remote control for your phone. You can wake it then dictate anything “Okay Google” will do, which is a lot: open apps, start calls, send texts, take pictures remotely (pervert).

  The Moto 360 looks good. The LG Urbane (or something) looks more like a Rolex (or something) but this looks just enough like a watch and our dystopian future. Plus its huge, like our distended, devolved future mutoheads.

  It takes a licking. Literally. It has been through Bikram Yoga classes’ 105° F streams of bonus sweat / bile and the post-Hell showers.

  It’s also great at predicting things, like your death. How few steps you took this week and your racing heart rate are popular notification alarms you never wanted.

  The Moto 360: count down the seconds ’til YOUR SLOUCHING, LONELY DEMISE with style and digital accuracy. 

Turn on YouTube Captions for British TV Interviews or “Time of Rue Womb Cat Son’s Sore Bitch Itch TV in Tub Views”

 

 

Yes, that’s Gary Numan. Gary Numan. Though incomprehensible to computers, Gary Numan is actually still very creative and gracious, despite the hair, actually.

 

Here’s the source. It also proves that inane morning TV is an international disease and the carriers are made in the exact same factory in Peoria.

 

Wax on / Tear Off. I Try a Back Waxing. A. Back. Waxing.

Okay,
…it’s been about ten days, and I think the North Korean sadist lady can’t hurt me anymore, so I will chronicle this, my Faustian follicle folly.

Ten days earlier:
Me: This warm wax actually gives a nice, soothing feeli… JESUS CLOTTED CREAM CHRIST ON A CRUTCH I COULDN’T BE IN ANY MORE PAIN!

I AM BLIND! ALL I CAN SEE IS SEARING WHITE!

A FALLEN ANGEL OF LIGHT HAS REMOVED MY SKIN AND REPLACED IT WITH STINGING CENTEPEDES MADE OF ACID AND HATRED!

Ten days earlier +1 hour:
Me (two pounds heavier with fur and fluids):
What the Hell, this place looks interesting. I’ll try it. It’ll be an experience.

——

Ignorance was never more blissful.

I’m a hairy guy: Robin Williams hairy. But I am neither a back model nor gay, so the thought of a back waxing never came up until I started wondering what hot yoga would be like if I was not wearing a permanent gorilla suit.

Lady torturer aestheticist explained that my unusually thick, back-facing rug likely did not come from my Italian half heritage (“Italian guy have all hair on arms!”). Rather, my Manx ancestors likely begged a demon to give them warmth in the middle of the Irish Sea. Hence: Celt Pelt.

The defoliation chamber looked clean, though the door seemed to be soundproofed. This cart gave me pause:

Whatever, I have tattoos, and girls have square inches of hairea waxed without dying. I’ll get square feet waxed. It’ll be fine.

The huge, warm, gooey Bandaid thing actually felt really good on my back, and Ms. Evil was making pleasant small talk in a comforting tone.
After the first ripping, I was instantly sorry I was born and that I had ordered the full back and shoulders package. I was sure all layers of skin had been removed. There is blood spraying onto the ceiling.

It felt a lot like a tattoo, a tattoo being applied to a severely burned area with a ten needle.

Then another ripping. And another. Another, this one not quite letting go of my back like an unwilling cat that needs to go outside clinging to a couch. I’d rather be that couch.

But after a few more rips, the endorphins kick in and the initial areas start to only throb.

This whole time, I’m trying to continue Smalltalk with Mrs. Satan. The conversation freezes occasionally, a lot.

But I lived and slowly made my way through the rest of my week trying to not let anything near my back, because a layer of my skin actually has been removed.  I’m sensitive to heat, light, and all molecules.

Here is your obligatory after / before comparison pic:

Is yoga easier now? No.

Is the pain:permanence ratio better than a tattoo? Hell no.

Will I go back after the six week regrowth period to endure to worst pain I’ve ever experienced outside an emergency room?

Yes.

Jif Whiffs

Peanut butter is the near perfect food. Minimal ingredients, packed with protein, and you can kill a kid with nut allergies just by saying “Skippy!” in an enclosed space.

Ice cream is a near perfect food because it’s aerated fat and sugar, and because it’s fucking ice cream.
The meth Elvis alchemists at Jif decided to husbandry them some peanut butter and ice cream the second it became all legals. Pictured above is the love child no one wanted. I foster parented a tub for your safety.

It is one of the rarest of modern packaged foods: simple. Four ingredients. One is air. It has less fat and calories than any other peanut butter and doesn’t use assplosive fat substitutes like Splenda to accomplish the feat.

It is fluffy and spreads easily enough to frost a key lime pie with it.

Taste? It is damn good. It’s a bit sweet for me, but that makes sense, because it’s in an ice cream tub.

What’s the awful?  After one sandwich you’ll fart enough to fill a moonwalk.

Bikram Yoga, Let’s Visit Hell

So, you tried driving a semi. Congratulations, sitting 11 hours a day like a supertrucker has made it so you can’t bend any extremities, at all. And now you amble hunched over, like Mother Teresa after six years on a pro bowling tour.

Time to get some exercise. And, to get far away from the Mother T vibe, you choose yoga: the only form of exercise banned by the Catholic Church.

Hey, get as far as possible. What type of yoga would Satanists practice?

Bikram Yoga!

Bikram is a 90 minute, 26-pose, sadistic ritual performed at 105 degrees Fahrenheit.  This ceremony isn’t held in a candlelit room with Tibetan bells tinkling in the background. Nope. Everything inside is carefully controlled and choreographed to best simulate a visit to the Dark Lord in His brightly-lit, spacious office. The minute you walk into a Bikram Torture Chamber (TM) you’ll lose a pint of fluid via every excretory process, because you’ve walked into a physical wall of heat and humidity. You’ll look for the smelter, but you’ll only find an altar at the center front.  Your soundtrack: An angry furnace fan and an instructor/cleric on the altar shooting rapid fire commands at you to be “a Japanese Ham Sandwich”. Not that you’ll comprehend these orders, because your brain will be sautéing in its own blood. You’ll try to commiserate with your fellow subjects only to realize that the person to your left is actually a space heater placed there to fill in what you hoped would be a cool spot. And, NO TALKING.

After ten minutes, you’ll be in so much buckling pain and heat stress that you’ll think you’re in a Hieronymus Bosch painting giving birth to a beak out of your right nostril while holding Standing Bow Pulling pose in a pot of boiling urine. Only an hour and twenty minutes to go. And you can’t, under any circumstances, leave the room. This would break the ritual’s flow, keeping the Golden Goat Baphomet from appearing at the ceremony’s climax. Apparently, he appears and distributes gold or candy or Dixie cups filled with water or something. I have no idea. By that time I’m lying on my back trying not to die.

Typical Bikram Yoga Class.

Some are confused as to what Bikram Yoga actually is. Benefits are obvious to some, not worth it to a few, controversial to others. Adherents are sometimes seen as extreme, even cult-like (the practice’s founder / namesake, Bikram Choudhury, collects Rolls Royces like a Movementarian leader).

So, why submit yourself to this, other than for untold fame and fortune promised to and reaped by practitioners – like Madonna, Lady GaGa, and Andy Murray (meh, 2/3 ain’t bad)? Weight loss is a benefit, though it might be easier to go with amputation.  There are few ways to get more out of exercise in that amount of time. By the time you’ve showered, you will have spent 2 hours of your life, but it’s a concentrated workout. Nothing comes close, unless you are misogynist running for VP. The heat seems to loosen joints and relax muscles, so you can be that pretzel you always wanted to be. And, like getting that Mark of the Beast tattoo on your head, it hurts a lot while doing it, but you feel amazing hours after enduring the pain. It’s addictive. This explains why so many go every day and others are covered with asian script tattoos that have no meaning.

Disclaimer: Author has been to almost 100 Bikram classes and has meaningless tattoos.

Drive a Semi. Try Not to Die

Come on, it’s like getting paid $60,000 a year to camp and see the country. It’s also a way to see that this nation probably needs to be buried in cement by beings who see no use for a society devoted to the processing, distribution, and consumption of pork cheddar Hot Pockets.

From 1992-2005 I practiced some form of Landscape Architecture. But I predicted the building industry’s inevitable bust and was used to touring the country in my awful band vans, so what the Hell, why not drive a semi? Here is my warning:

First, you have to learn for five weeks how to jam gears and guide a 53ft trailer through a crowded parking lot… backwards. Today, desperate trucking companies will pay up to $5000 towards driving school tuition.

Then, say goodbye to all of your friends and family for weeks at a time.

Your new friends are:

Lot lizards- willing to do anything for drugs or a ride. These are prostitutes who apparently couldn’t cut it at mainstream whoring or walking.

Strangers on the CB- mostly talking about above mentioned professional women and how people with dark skin should probably not be allowed to vote or live.

Deer- grazing on discarded Copenhagen tins on the side of the interstate. You’ll mostly meet their entrails after being reminded that ruminants are very, very stupid animals.

Other drivers- I have nothing specifically bad to say about this collection, because it’s huge and very diverse. I have met very interesting eye docs, writers, lawyers, and dentists – all driving trucks because of the economy and / or their adventurousness.

My favorite natural group of drivers are the unusually large numbers of Sikhs. It takes big ones to drive a truck decorated with swords and Eastern religious iconography into Nebraska wearing a toga and a turban. They are super friendly and hilarious, so any xenophobes are instantly disarmed.

So, if you aren’t scared of huge equipment, hookers, salty food / language, and the underbelly of our economy… Hit the road.

Scrapple

1997, Maryland, USA: “Scrapple? What the Hell is Scrapple?” I asked our Baltimore record label Pooh-Bah, ChrisX. His answering look of simultaneous pride, disgust and mischief (but zero explanation) made me curious enough to order it in sandwich form.

What came back was an undressed, jellied meat rectangle sitting on a slice of white bread. Its most notable quality wasn’t its hue (a disconcerting grey green) or its texture (are those taste buds?). It was the odor. My band mates distanced themselves from my place setting, because it was radiating the smell of death, puppy breath, and rotting liver.

My disgusted face may have resembled Scrapple at that point, but Chris was buying us dinner in his town, and I was going to eat this local delicacy in appreciation and fear (of his gun collection).

Holding my nose, I tasted what felt like something that was also tasting me back. But I didn’t mistake this for head cheese. That would have been a relief. No, it was more a combination of soft, chunky Spam and meatloaf made out of greying rat carcasses with scraps that happened to be lying on a swine killing floor.

That said, you can kind of see why Scrapple is considered a Mid Atlantic delicacy. Nothing else tastes like it, and that in a way is a triumph the region can claim. I tried to get my Texan band mates to at least TRY Scrapple for this reason. No go.

For the rest of that tour, I ordered Scrapple instantly if the restaurant was insane enough to stock the stuff. It had a use in two ways: No one swiped any of my dinner. And soon after, I was a vegetarian.

**Note: You can’t spell or manufacture Scrapple without crap.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple

Hello Cruel World!

You know you want to try things, things you should not want to try, lots of things. We at Try This It’s Awful will help evolution along.

I am your host, Leighton Chamberlin Mann.

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