Levendis LOVES to Whine

For my first official post, I thought it would be appropriate to shed some light on the reality of our intrepid leader's real life. He said, "this trip is sucking hard." Here's what that really means:

• I'm whining because I spent the day sunning myself by the pool, soaking in more solar rays than Buffalo gets in a year. While drinking.
  
• I have to spend the whole week NOT WORKING like normal people, drinking as much as I want (or can), and tossing quarters into machines that could make me rich (and probably will, because fate is a bitch like that).
  
• I make so much money, I can piss it away at poker tables in Vegas, and yet I still think I'm justified in complaining because no one is feeding me grapes and rubbing my feet (although I can afford that, too).
  
• I jest in my complaints, because I know the only thing that really matters is that in a few hours, my wonderful, brilliant, funny, charming sister will drive through 3+ hours of traffic and boredom to have lunch with me, and no one can put a price tag on that.
  
• Considering the wasteland that is Western New York, I know how fortunate I am to get away once in a while, and even if it isn't perfect, I'm not in Buffalo! Woo-hoo!

I could go on (and Santa knows I want to), but I won't. The short and long of it is that this guy deserves no pity. His life is more charmed than yours. Rally! Riot! Kill whitey!

He may be mad that I'm writing this, but I have wireless and he doesn't. So fuck him.

Yes, I Am Still Alive

The Frontier, AKA the Vegas shithole I am staying in, doesn't have free Internet access. In fact, they don't even have paid Internet access. I am currently logged in through a NetZero dialup account. Fucking dialup sucks, but I suppose its marginally better than nothing. Anyway, I don't really want to post anything significant yet, as I am totally wasted and about to go out on the town. Suffice to say, this trip is sucking hard, and I will detail why once I get home.

Myspace for Really Stupid People

From God is for Suckers, someone started a site to make a Christian-safe myspace. Time to fuck with them. Here's my profile, and no, I'm not really James Marsters.

UPDATE: Looks like those douche-bags deleted my account. It's a shame, 'cause I thought it was a real knee-slapper. Oh well, fuck 'em.

California Raison d’Etre

Holy shit… we finally made it, at 4:30 PM. Only, like, twenty hours after the original ETA. And what do you know, Jesus blessed up with perfect weather on the entire trip, until we hit LA. The city which has cloudless skies 98% of the time was completely overcast by the time we rolled in to town. Ominous sign of things to come, or completely random coincidence? Only time will tell.

Anyway, nothing much notable happened today, except of course a happy family reunion. We drove through the Mojave Desert on the way here, which was pretty disappointing. I don’t have much time to write at the moment, because my damn attention-whore sister and her even bigger attention-whore roommate Jimmy are taking up all my time. We’re headed off to Trader Vic’s pretty soon to drink pina coladas and shoot the shit. More to come later.

Lost Angeles

Well, we didn’t quite make it to LA today as planned. We are following my sister’s driving route, which she completed in three days. It turns out that we missed one crucial fact: my sister is clinically insane. She drove 14 hours a day to make the cross-continental trip so quickly. Since we don’t have ready access to meth, we’ve scaled back our ambitions, and instead are staying the night in Cedar City, Utah. Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like Utah on a Friday night. Needless to say, I am alone in my hotel room, drinking lots of Jack Daniels – hey, it’s almost just like home!

Strangely, this is the first hotel room I have ever stayed in which is lacking a Bible. I usually try to defile the Good Book in every room I stay in, and I figured Utah would be a shoe-in. Hell, I was even expecting the Book of Mormon, possibly on the original-but-conveniently-lost gold plates. Alas, no dice. Maybe someone stole the Bible to use as rolling papers? (“Have you ever read Revelations… on weed??”) The only thing in the dresser drawers here is an unopened can of Budweiser, which I am really tempted to drink for the sheer depravity of it - but it’s probably a booby trap filled with Mormon Conversion Serum (absinthe and virgin’s blood). I’ll leave it for the next sucker.

Today’s trip, although long (nearly 800 miles over 13 hours), was actually really good. We drove through the Rockies on I-70 for most of the day. That is really an amazing trip, and if you have the means, I highly recommend taking it - in the safety of an SUV traveling at 90 miles per hour. We went from nearly 10,000 feet up, down to 4,500, and then back up to 7,500. We saw endless mesas in endless colors. We drove through canyons and along twisting rivers. And, I swear to God, I even saw some purple mountain’s majesty, along with some amber waves of grain. I’m usually not big on the whole “outdoors” thing, but what I saw today really reinforced my certainty of the puny insignificance of mankind (not that I needed convincing).

Tomorrow, we are getting up obscenely early to make the final leg of our journey. I was just going to give up on LA and have my mom drop me off in Vegas, but my sister wisely enticed me to finish the trip by promising a 12-year-old bottle of scotch - my one weakness (aside from loose women, gambling, smoking, and pornography). So if all goes well, I’ll be in Los Angeles shortly after lunchtime tomorrow. Pray for me!

Today’s vital stats:
Number of times we crossed the Colorado River: At least 4
Wal-marts spotted: 3 (including one in the middle of the Rockies… hey, even mountain-folk need cheap tube socks)
Jesus billboards: 1 (come on Christians, how are you ever going to convert me with just one lousy billboard!?)
Small furry creatures accidentally run over: 1 (not my fault)
Number of times I briefly considered prayer while my mother was negotiating the terrifying downhill curves of the Rockies: at least 30
Pages of The Blind Watchmaker I managed to read despite my mom talking my ear off: about 40
Number of stations we could find on the radio when we crossed from Colorado to Utah: 1, and it was Jesus-related
Number of liters of Jack Daniels I have consumed since getting to my hotel room: .5
Number of cigarettes I have smoked over same time period: at least 15 (I lost count after first .25 liters of Jack)
Chance I will actually be able to wake up at 6:30, as I have optimistically set my alarm clock for: 15%
Chance we will actually make it to LA tomorrow: 90% if mom drives the whole way, 5% if I have to drive (see previous three stats)
Likelihood I will ever drive cross-country again: 0%

I Can't Drive 55

Today we drove almost the entire length of fucking Kansas. God damn, is this place flat and boring. We are way behind schedule, because my mother is too much of a pussy to drive at night. Our current nesting ground is a Super 8 just outside of Colorado. I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to LA tomorrow – Mapquest says it’s an 18 hour drive. Then again, I’m not exactly eager to catch BUBONIC FUCKING PLAGUE during my vacation.

The Super 8 is, as the name suggests, at least 2 notches above the Motel 6 rat-hole we stayed in last night. I have Internet access and actual shampoo. The bed doesn’t smell too bad (yet), the TV is in color, and there is no clear evidence that a hooker has been murdered in the bathroom. Not bad for the middle of fucking nowhere.

My mom has been surprisingly tolerable during the trip, except for the time she started telling me about the romance novel she is writing. Once she started describing one of the sex scenes, I said to her, “Please, don’t tell me any more or I’ll never be able to get an erection again.” She was quiet for a while after that.

Also, like all old people, she doesn’t drive nearly fast enough. We have easily seen twice as many Jesus billboards out here as we have seen police cars (seriously), and that counts the accident we passed today where two cop cars were directing traffic away from an over-turned church van (better pray harder next time, guys!). So I figure we might as well floor it and take our chances. The speed limit out here is 70, but I try to do at least 88, hoping for Back to the Future-esque time travel to get me out of this hellishly misguided adventure through the intestinal tract of America. But mom, who is thankfully doing most of the driving, doesn’t believe in speeds over 80.

At least I have plenty of time to get some reading done. I just finished America: The Book, which is fucking awesome, and The Areas of My Expertise, which wasn’t quite as fucking awesome, but still better than looking at farmland all day. Once I get out of Kansas, I’ll work up the nerve to crack open The Blind Watchmaker, a book on evolution which I’m sure would get me locked up if a Kansasite saw me reading it. (State motto: “No book learnin’!”)

We counted 9 Wal-Marts on our trip today, but that’s hardly a surprise. I was hoping to see some tornados or maybe even a flying house, but once again Kansas has disappointed me. Goodbye you rectangular shit-hole, you won’t be missed.

Tomorrow:
Colorado (Denver! The Rockies! Boulders! Mile high stuff!)
Utah (Polygamy! Gullible people! Tumbleweeds! Salt lakes!)
Nevada (Prostitution! Gambling! Nuclear bomb proving grounds! Nuclear waste dumps! Secret military bases everybody knows about!)
And, hopefully:
California (Earthquakes! Hedonism! Trannies! Mexicans doing jobs that Americans won’t do! Palm trees!)

I’d Like to Teach the World to Drive

[Editor's Note: This message was posted a day late, now that I finally have fucking Internet access. I'll post today's update later tonight, after a few stiff drinks.]

I am currently blogging at you LIVE* and IN COLOR** from Effingham, Illinois. This town was apparently built on the premise that people would be too tired to travel to St. Louis, and would settle for the first shitty rest stop they found. This town sucks. They have yet to figure out the downsides of inbreeding. I am staying at the Motel 6, where management hasn’t even heard of this new-fangled “Internet” fad, so I have no access whatsoever for the first time in several years. I guess I’ll have to post this once I reach civilization [Ed. Note: See?]

The title of this post is about my disdain for every other human being in this country who drives a vehicle. What the fuck is wrong with you people? In the five or so hours I drove today, I encountered at least a dozen people who apparently learned to operate a vehicle by watching Mad Max. Hey dickhead, this isn’t NASCAR, you don’t have to drive three feet behind me at 90 miles per hour. Fucking hell, going on a road trip to see America was a really bad idea.

And I cannot stress enough how much this Motel 6 sucks. I didn’t bother packing shampoo, because I figured I could steal my sister’s while I was at her place, and any hotel I stay in would surely provide one of those tiny bottles. Ha! I’m counting my blessings that Motel 6 even remembered to provide me with a bed. And I am going to leave the door open when I’m in the shower – the interior door frame of the bathroom has several knee-level scratches on it, as if someone tied a hooker to the floor and she tried to claw her way out unsuccessfully. I don’t want to be alone in there with her ghost. Also, this room has exactly one electrical outlet available, presumably because electricity has only been around these parts since earlier this year.

Anyway, I went to dinner with my moms at the local Ruby Tuesdays, and had a lovely Cajun tilapia (what the hell is tilapia anyway? Is this a species of fish that magically appeared 4 years ago and only allows itself to be caught by fisherman for chintzy family restaurant chains?). After that, I ditched her ass and headed to the Friday’s across the street, hoping to score with a local farmer’s daughter or a desperate housewife who found herself looking for a fleeting moment of love in the local watering hole. Wow, was that ever a mistake. I arrived at about 8:45, and was informed that they were about to close (!?!?!?). I didn’t mind much, because the patrons consisted of (1) an obviously drunk Vietnamese gentleman, (2) an overly amorous couple, in which the girl was far too hot for the chump she was fucking, and (3) an underage bartender who was fairly fuckable but smart enough not to engage in conversation with me. So here I am, in my shitty Motel 6 room, alone and eyeing the hand cream.

On the way here we took a short detour to visit Lincoln’s log cabin. I have a picture of me pointing at a dry gourd which was hanging on a hook for no readily apparent reason, but I have no way to get it off of my phone right now (fuck you, Sprint), so that will have to wait.

I’ve also counted 4 giant roadside signs proclaiming something along the lines of “Jesus is Awesome!”. If I see another 6 or 7 of these before hitting LA, maybe they will convince me.

Today:
New York (home sweet home, why did I ever leave?)
Pennsylvania (yawn)
Ohio (fucking swing state, thanks a lot)
Illinois (worse than Pennsylvania, plus traffic)

Tomorrow:
Missouri (Gigantic arches! Rivers that begin with “Miss” but are referred to as old men! Kansas City!)
Kansas (Another Kansas City! Intolerance! Farms! Tornados taking you, your house, and your little dog to fantastic lands far more interesting than anything in the real Midwest!)

* Not true.
** True if you have a color monitor.

Vegas, Baby, Vegas

Tomorrow morning I embark on a journey which may damn well kill me. I’m getting into an SUV with my mother and driving the 2,500 miles from Buffalo, NY to Los Angeles, CA. The cost of gas alone will be over $1000 (roundtrip). I am bringing my iPod, my laptop, and several books, in the hopes that I will be able to distract myself from the urge to strangle dear old mom.

I’m tolerating this “quality time” with the mother of my father’s children in order to visit my sister (and co-contributor to this site, despite never doing jack shit around here), who moved to LA several months ago. I look forward to eating her food and sleeping on her couch, just so she can see what its like to have a freeloader around. We’ll also check out all the goofy touristy stuff, like stalking celebrities in Hollywood (anyone know where Paris Hilton lives?) and going to the Dresden Room and Trader Vic’s - with perfect hair, naturally.

Lest you think I’m some nostalgic or sentimental momma’s boy, there is more to this journey than a family reunion. From LA I’ll fly to beautiful Las Vegas, Neveda (without my mom) to piss away ungodly sums of money on gambling, booze, and hookers. If all goes well, I’ll hit a jackpot, get the High Roller Suite at the Bellagio, and die there from a combination sexual exhaustion, alcohol poisoning, and cocaine overdose. However, if things go as they usually do whenever I venture to Sin City, I’ll be returning to Buffalo on Saturday the 29th, penniless, sporting a wicked hangover, and in need of a penicillin shot.

I have no idea what internet access will be like, but I’ll try to get a few site updates in from time to time. I’ll definitely have a summary up on Monday after I get home, unless I don’t survive the trip, in which case I’ll see you in hell.

Secrets from inside the White House

I've been reading this thread at the Something Awful forums for hours. Its awesome. A guy named "Martin Random" claims to be a White House insider, and he's dishing all sorts of crazy dirt about our dear leaders:

- Tom Ridge is batshit insane with OCD. It got to the point that staffers were doing things like whispering behind his back and trying to plant fake rats in his office to get him to freak out.
- Bush is on massive amounts of anti-depressants, to the point of impotency.
- Cheney was drunk when he shot that guy. He is also a close talker with no social skills, and has the disgusting habit of carrying around a flask of hydrogen peroxide to rinse his mouth, which he then swallows.
- Condi Rice uses a super-secret perfume that drives men crazy. Everyone at the WH is constantly sniffing her surrepticiously.

All of this is probably bullshit, but its extraordinarily entertaining and even somewhat thought provoking. Is it really possible that the people who make the Big Decisions are as insane as this guy says they are? That sure would explain a lot.

(from Wonkette)

Old People Got No Reason

The elderly have had it pretty good in recent years. Medical science has been keeping them alive with miracle drugs and new procedures, and keeping them rock hard with Viagra. Social Security, Medicare, and insanely generous pension plans have been keeping them from panhandling. Adult diaper technology has made embarrassing accidents a thing of the past. Politicians routinely fellate them (metaphorically, of course) because of their collective power as the only group in this country un-apathetic enough to actually vote. For millions of Americans, the golden years have gotten even goldenier.

This must stop. The old should bow out gracefully once they cease being useful, like in that Star Trek episode when Charles Emerson Winchester capped himself at the age of 60. Instead, today’s super-elderly take up valuable space with their senior centers and nursing homes that could be put to much better use for golf courses or strip malls. Instead of children and grandchildren getting a nice fat inheritance after grandpa forgets to take his heart pills, we have old folks squandering their fortunes on Metamucil and artificial hips long after they should be six feet under.

What’s the point? Nobody likes old people, especially other old people. And who really wants to live so long that they forget how to control their own bladders? I hope I’m dead before my brain rots to the point that I can no longer remember how to tie my shoes (I’m guessing I have at least ten years of hard-core alcohol abuse before that happens).

The main threat to the economy of our country isn’t dirty illegal immigrants, its old people. Without them, we wouldn’t have to worry about Social Security. Medicare would just be for the poor, not septuagenarians who need boner pills. Florida would be little more than trailer parks and drunken spring break sexual escapades, instead of the huge phallic retirement home it is today. And traffic would run much smoother everywhere.

That’s why I applaud the actions of Officer Kelly of Los Angeles, who recently ticketed an 82-year-old woman for taking too long to cross the street. It’s about time that those of us who still have our original teeth started telling these fogies that we’re not gonna take their shit anymore. The next time some old biddy starts arthritically counting out change in front of me in the supermarket check-out line, I’m going to lay down the law. Who’s with me?

Transporter 2 Sucks

The original Transporter was pretty good, and Jason Statham always kicks ass. But Holy God, the sequel is fucking terrible. Its worse than the Star Wars prequels. I realize that is a pretty harsh allegation, but this piece of shit deserves nothing less.

Where Are All the True Christians?

Up until around the time I went to college, I was a True Christian. I attended church services three times a week, prayed several times a day, and made sure to give 10% of everything I earned to the church. I was very active in my religion, doing things like visiting smelly old people in nursing homes, attending religious instruction classes, directing the hideously off-key choir, and, so help me, even warping young minds by teaching Sunday School occasionally. I got up behind the pulpit several times to preach the Good Word to my fellow brothers and sisters. Once I spoke in front of a group of close to 500 people. I truly believed I was doing God’s work and that when I spoke, it was God speaking through me.

During that time, my friends were almost exclusively people from the Church. Most of them were hypocritical assholes (like the rich dentist/priest/scumbag that would send his underlings on some menial task and then go to their house and fuck their wives), but I also knew a few who were genuinely good, honest, loving, and compassionate. People who truly tried to be “Christ-like”. People who would ask themselves “What Would Jesus Do?”, and actually mean it.

Those are not the people you hear about. Don’t get me wrong, I still think those people are idiots, but at least they are harmless idiots, and sometimes they even contribute positively to society. But those who proclaim their faith the loudest, and use it as a means of gaining power and control, are not True Christians. Jesus was always talking about helping the poor, being humble, and showing unconditional love to your fellow man. Show me one well known Christian who actually behaves this way, and I’ll show you twenty who regularly ignore or even try to fuck over the poor, who pompously proclaim themselves superior because of their ludicrous beliefs, and who foment hatred against others (Muslims, immigrants, gays, whatever) to further their own greedy agendas.

Those asswipes piss me off, and not just because my fellow citizens are stupid enough to take them seriously. They piss me off because for years I really tried to be a True Christian. I made the sacrifices I was asked to make. I gave fully of myself to do God’s work, and to live the way God wanted me to live. And what did it get me? Jack shit. In fact, worse than jack shit. I was brainwashed. I was deprived of many experiences that I should have had, were it not for the arbitrary rules handed down by a bunch of hypocrites in order to control me and stop me from thinking for myself. And even now that I have freed myself from the chains of religion and other delusions, these douche bags continue to affect my life on a daily basis because we, as a society, allow them to.

So why is it that the so-called Christians of this country tolerate this? Are they all stupid? Probably. Despite what they say, most wouldn’t know Jesus if he sat next to them in their megachurch. In fact, they’d probably think he was a hippy, and they would argue with him about the war in Iraq.

People like to say we live in a Christian nation, but it is nothing of the sort. The hate-fueled, mindless, greedy religion of this country bears little resemblance to the Christianity I once knew. We live in a Hypochristian Nation.

[Sorry for the serious post. I promise a few really funny fart jokes in the coming days.]

Top Ten DHS Pick-up Lines

Don’t you hate it when some cock-teasing FBI agent poses as a hot 14-year-old girl on the Internet, only to bust you for some harmless phone sex? Just ask Brian J. Doyle, soon-to-be-former deputy press security at the Department of Homeland Security. But for everyone else at DHS, don’t despair – they’re not all FBI agents! From an anonymous source deep inside their new faith-based office, here are the top ten lines DHS officials are using to pick up tight young girls - and boys - on the Internet:

10. Baby, seeing you raises my threat level from Low to Elevated.
9. Have you ever had a category 5 hurricane named after you?
8. It doesn’t matter if you’re an illegal immigrant, because amnesty is just a rim-job away!
7. Have you ever played “Transportation Security Administration”? (see picture)
6. You’re doing a heckuva job, baby.
5. In the interest of national security, it is vital that I personally inspect your ports.
4. Have you ever seen the inside of a FEMA trailer? That bed is more comfortable than it looks.
3. I want to breach your levees with my storm surge of love.
2. I’m putting you on the terrorist watch list, because you’ve totally hijacked my heart.
1. I haven’t been blown that hard since Katrina.

Hallelujah!

After years of denying the existence of God and His only begotten son Jesus - our Lord and Savior - my eyes have finally been opened to the truth. I have been hating him for killing my puppy when I was 10 years old, but now I understand that that steamroller was just part of His Divine Plan.

My awakening occurred earlier today, when some very friendly and sincere people from the local church knocked on my door at 9 o’clock this morning. Since I have been living a life of depravity and sin, I was still in bed at the time, nearly naked and surrounded by empty whiskey bottles, half smoked cigarette butts, and loads of disgusting pornography. But God magically roused me from my drunken stupor and I answered the door. It was then that I learned the Truth about the Good News that Jesus Christ gave his life to bring to us. And boy howdy, it sure is awesome. I just kinda wish it would have Muslims who opened my heart to God’s Plan, because those 72 virgins sure sound good. But we all must walk the path He has put us upon.

Tomorrow morning I am going to join my brothers and sisters at my new spiritual home. When I get back, I will remove all the evil and immoral words I have written in this space, and start a fresh blog about my newfound love for Jesus. Peace be unto you.