An open letter to those surly bastards at Wendy's

Dear The Ghost of Dave Thomas, Hi I'm Josh, 32 of Athens OH.

I'm writing to inform you that some alleged "people" here are running a very sloppy version of one of your stores and while I know that your spirit is busy haunting/monitoring other shitty Wendy's stores I'm asking that you please take a look at this one.
Sincerely, Josh.


P.S. See you in hell!

In Middle school my best friends were James Roberts and Steve Thacker.
Steve had moved to Chillicothe from Columbus for our 7th grade year.
He and James lived on the east end and while I was a country boy it
seemed like I was always over on Hern or Scioto street, sleeping over
or getting up to something, running the alleys or shoplifting from the
Speedy Mart. At school we tried to coordinate lunches and recesses to
hang out. Steve and I ended up with the same lunch period and while
there wasn't what you'd call a real recess with a playground, there was
the football field and the track, and if it was warm me and Steve would
go walk around the track and smoke. He had this shitty walkman with some
broken headphones that we'd share as we walked. Metallica's kill'em all
was still getting good milage and we must've listened to that cassette
until the tape broke. One evening Steve was walking down the alley
towards home and stumbled across a cassette laying there sans case and
j-card. He brought it to school the next day, excited to play it for me.

"Dude, check out what I found in the alley last night." You could barely
make out the artist's name since the printing on the tape was almost
completely worn off. "I think it says Jello Biafro", he said. I squinted to
try to read it. "What's it sound like?" , I asked. "Here". He popped the tape
into the player and handed me my 'phone. "It's kinda like thrash with a weird singer"
he stated and hit play. He was right.

Unbeknownst to me at the time what I was hearing was Hardcore Punk. We walked around the track and shared a Marlboro. Our young ears couldn't compare this to anything. It didn't really register as punk to us because it didn't sound like The Ramones or Sex Pistols and with that vocalist it was barely metal, so we had to call it Thrash. "Jello Biafro" was cracking me up with his ridiculous name and singing. I had no reference for this.The tape lasted as long as our lunch period and it was time to go back inside. I remember wanting to hear it again for the rest of the day and when school ended I got on the bus and Steve walked home. We did listen to that tape again. And again and soon I was obsessed with finding out who the fuck 'Jello Biafro' was exactly. Like most things the answer came to me by accident. I was thumbing through an encylopedia when I happened across the entry for Biafra, the little nation that tried to secede from Nigeria in the late 60's. "This is it!" I thought, I knew the word Biafro was too ridiculous to be true. Jello Biafra! But that still didn't make any sense and even then I wasn't sure if it was the name of a person or the band itself. I resolved to find someone who knew what I desperately needed to know. I didn't even know who Dead Kennedys were at this point and didn't know anybody who was into punk or would know anything about this, since all the punks in my paper mill hometown were older dudes in their early 20's. It remained a mystery for a solid two years until my legendary 9th grade year, when I made my first punk friends. They knew all the older dudes too and turned me onto "Give me convinence or give me death", the DK's "greatest hits" album. In the liner notes the singer was credited as 'Jello Biafra' I was right! but this wasn't the tape I had listened to with Steve on the track at Mt. Logan Middle School(it was actually loads better). I had a vague memeory at the time of walking past a car parked in the lot outside Blind Dog Music on Main St. It had a DK's sticker on the passenger side window, a design I've never seen since with a suicide king playing card and the old english logo blazen at the top. How could I not have made this connection before? I managed to fit jello in with DK's but I still had no idea what the hell that tape was back in 7th grade. After making the magical transformation from nerdy metal head kid to nerdy punk kid (with admittedly embarassing tendencies toward industrial and goth...you should have seen the make-up)and spending a couple years skating and smoking dope with the punks I realized that Jello had collaborated with a couple bands post DKs. One such collaboration was with the Canadians, D.O.A. The resultant album was "Last scream of the missing neighbors". Released in 1990, it features the epic nearly 14 minute "full metal jack-off" in which Jello rants about just about every political evil that had gone down at the time. When I listen to this now, it reminds me not only of things like the crack epidemic, Ollie North and the Contras but also of growing into what I would eventually become, of changing tastes in music, identity and even people. The beginning of that decade, the 90's, was the beginning of my adolescence, of my teenage years. The beginning of life-long friendships and the end of others.

"Fat" Pat Steevens is a winner folks. Always fucking has been too if you want to know GOD's own truth. Short in stature but tall in victory, Fat Pat has ever been on the forefront of achievement. From overcoming the odds and defeating Diabetes to that really hard stage in Metallica Rock band where you have to shred the solo on "Enter Sandman", it's no wonder he's the most popular merchant in town. This success isn't counted in dollars and cents though, but through his community spirit and philanthropic generosity. You can bet your American ass that when the Schwann salesman comes to the door Pat is ready to put a sizable dent in his wallet. When you forget to pay for a 20 dollar sack of ditch weed, Pat is also willing to forget, as well as forgive.

In 1985 Pat was drafted into the U.S.Marine corp age 13. No one could know what an asset he would be in the months to come. He cruised through basic and by the time he was stationed in Grenada, had achieved the rank of Sargent. The Brass had plans for this pre-teen upstart. What Los Pepe death squads couldn't achieve against Pablo Escobar in Columbia would have to be handled by Sgt. Patrick Steevens U.S.M.C. It's well known that Escobar, King of Cocaine, died in 1993 at the hands of Los Pepe death squads, but what isn't very well known is that that's a pack of fucking lies. At the time of this writing, 2009, The Freedom of Information act allows me to disclose that Pablo Emilio Escobar, was, in fact eliminated by a single man in 1986. A man who is no stranger to victory, honor, glory, Jello-shooters or death. An Escobar lookalike was installed personally by Sgt. Steevens until 1993 to maintain order and a facsimile of leadership lest the entire region crumble into chaos. After accomplishing that mission in secret and to no fanfare, Pat was immediately relocated to the Afghan border to observe weapons shipments to Russia. Once upon visiting his palatial home in south east Ohio, Pat showed me a rusted Mosin-Nagant M-44 that he kept above the mantle and fireplace. "See the hand prints impressed into the butt here?" he indicated. "This was held by a Russian soldier during the Cold War". But I was the one who was impressed. Pat doesn't talk about that time much but I suspect I'll have something to right about as soon as it becomes declassified.

After another year in Afghanistan, Lt.Col. Steevens was sent to Panama to infiltrate and capture that country's military dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega. This well known event was also disguised to exclude Pat's involvement for National security reasons but let it be said that the idea to drive Noriega out of the church where he had sought sanctuary with American Heavy Metal music was entirely Pat's idea. After the capture and imprisonment of Noriega, Pat decided that it was time for a change of life and retired with full honors from the Marine Corps. Returning to his native home of southeastern Ohio Pat settled into a life of ease and relaxation. Becoming a pillar of his community and leader of his own Air soft unit, Pat still displays the leadership skills necessary to carry any group of young men into victory and as far as this biographer is concerned, I'd follow him anywhere.

Wheel O' Fortuna

Hollywood has an amzing talent for destroying, nay, trivializing just about anything. Among the towering pile of cultural detritus is the once frightning
Carl Orff classic "O Fortuna". After innumberal appearances in film this epic crashing, thrashing animal has been defanged. The intro and outro to the opera Carmina Burana(1935-36) "O Fortuna" gives the listener a feeling of epic struggle. It's as intense as any Wagnerian Heavy Metal piece and invokes such
primal human feelings I'm inclined to think that its dumbing down can be attributed to some grand conspiracy. Its common knowledge that The Church
openly repressed tons of music that contained "Mi Contra Fa" or "Diabolis In Musica" plainly: The Devil's Music. O Fortuna has that in spades. Why else would this short(in terms of Opera) piece be so overplayed? It's in EVERYTHING.

From beer commercials and your local stadium's jumbotron to awesome movies
like Excalibur and awful movies like Paul Blart mallcop, O Fortuna is a joke.
No more is it contextualized in a serious manner. Whenever I hear it's first notes I know it's gonna result in a bad joke. The feeling of epic adventure turns to some bumbling fat ass klutzin' around a mall. Where once this amazing piece of modern classical music could inspire the most sodden spud to sword weilding mayhem it is now doubtful that it could even inspire a chuckle from summer blockbuster audiences who(even with their doubious tastes)certainly have heard enough. The Hollywood movie machine is but an extension of America's own propaganda factories and just as the Church tried to keep the Devil's Jams down in Hell where they belong, America will not stand by and let the common couch dwelling spud-masses aspire to anything more powerful than Jack Black in a CGI panda suit. I'm not saying that some Snidely Whiplash character is sitting up in the White House or a corporate boardroom stroking his handlebars, cackling
"NYAAAH HAA HAAAAAHHH!!" and then pressing a button that turns subversive art, music and literature into safe numbing gumdrops.(if it were that easy I'd just call Dudley Do-right, but he's from Canada).But it seems like an effort is being made to quash these things by way of trivializing them.

Weird Al Vs. Billy Joel.

For some reason I was thinking about the amazing song by Weird Al Yankovic: Dare 2b stupid.I actually know the reason. His name came up in a conversation and I mentioned that my friend's band WE MARCH (www.myspace.com/wemarch ) does a crazy cover of the aforementioned masterpiece. (they manage somehow to make it sound like Motorhead's eponymous song, if you can believe that). This lead me to start thinking about all the cultural references and cliches used to make up the lyrics in this song. It's mostly cliches but I think it's cultural references bear more significance on my personal being than a similar song: "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel. I remember most of the lyrics to D2bs but I'll be damned if I didn't have to google WDSTF. The only lyric I could think of was "Space monkey mafia.." Which would be a sweet band name if it wasn't a Billy Joel reference. Upon goggling, I discovered that there were pages that specifically used the song as an educational tool! (http://www.teacheroz.com/fire.htm)Why is this?!
I think the main reason is that most teachers are lazy, but also because they're Subaru Forester driving Liberals who grew up with the song and trust that Billy would not lead them astray with his comprehensive run-down of the 20Th century. I call bullshit! I think it unfair to squeeze a bunch of historical and cultural references into a 5 min. song. This smacks of revisionist history and as everybody knows, revisionist history is the stuff of American educators, Nazis and apparently Billy Joel. It's true! If you need proof, the title of the album on which WDSTF appears is "Storm Front", also the name of a white supremacy group.(http://www.stormfront.org/)
That link gets four hits on google before you see even one hit for the BJ album. That should be enough for anyone to surmise that D2bs is a superior song. If not let's compare both songs on a strictly sonic/visual basis:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKu2QaytmrM I know it was excruciating the first time you watched this 20 years ago but bear with me. Besides the bloated, sterile rock production and inflated video budget for this song it just sounds AWFUL and has not one iota of the kind of timeless quality Dare 2 b stupid has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nll8-kSlq6c

See what i mean? I'm sure Mr. Yankovic had no idea the kind of significance this song would have when he wrote it, I mean, it's obviously a stab at DEVO and their sound, (lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh was once quoted as saying he found himself to be angry and jealous of the sound Al got in the song, wishing he could have captured it himself and being pissed off about
The Prince of Parody making fun of his band, which if you think about it is a compliment: you haven't arrived until Weird Al makes fun of you) but when you compare the two videos you see that the real differences lie in the intentions. It seems to me, your humble narrator, that Mr. Joel's intentions were somewhat toward the educational while Weird was just having fun. Billy encourages you to enjoy history, while Al dares u 2 b stupid. Joel fails while Yankovic succeeds in achieving the opposite. Joel references a multitude of bygone stars of the big screen while Al is the only one to use an actual big name star in his video (the unforgettable Craig T. Nelson of POLTERGEIST and COACH fame). Even though it seems like Al is being whimsical and funny
I'd say he's really lambasting the junk culture of America, while Billy seems to be championing it.

Evidence of this can be found in "The Transformers Movie" in the scene where Al voices a "Junkion" transformer, lending credence to my statement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKqboQV_lfg
see there? further evidence, proof positive! that Dare 2b stupid is more culturally significant than We Didn't Start The Fire. I'm sure the Nazis and teachers of Amerikkka would say otherwise but I have a question for them: Did Billy Joel have a song in the fucking Transformers movie? Did Mr. Joel ever make Mark Mothersbaugh jealous with his sound? I thought not, Rommel.

Calzones & Bonghits.

In my last post I mentioned that in order to free ourselves of disappointment we must first embrace Disappointment. This starts with everyday things such as eating and getting rad with the warlock or warlock 2 the raddening. Such mundane things as these are quite easy to fuck up and can make for a supremely Disappointing experience, or a Chicken Crunch Wrap Supreme(also terribly Disappointing).A typical evening can be spent renting horrible movies (what's the most Disappointing aspect of actually getting up, putting on shoes and leaving the goddamn house to do this? The fact that it's not net flicks and you're leaving the house?, not quite but getting there...is it the fact that you wont own these shit burgers after you've been through the agony of watching them? no, it's the fact that you'll have to get up, put on shoes, and leave the goddamn house again to return them, and you'll probably end up renting more shitty horror movies, thus completing the cycle, thus thus creating more Disappointment to embrace) and ordering out for the fast food world's most Disappointing consumable: Calzones. Yes I've said it, there's nothing more sad and lonely than the "pizza you don't have to share" (except maybe the poor slob who delivers it...the guy that stands in the fucking doorway and lets out all the heat, says nothing, expects YOU to provide the conversation when all you want is for him to get his ass out, hell you just tipped the guy two dollars! and now he wants to waste your precious heat and talk to you about his mutant progeny and the thing that actually accepted his abnormal seed: a mockery of human form and evolution). Now I know you're asking yourself: "how can you fuck up a pocket of flaky dough filled with delicious cheese, sauce and toppings?" A: there are several ways but the most important one lies in the act of ordering, paying for and eating the calzones. It makes no difference whether it's the Best Damn Calzone In The Land (or : BDCITL) or not, the Disappointment factor comes from the fact that you and your loser friends are sitting around watching Big Trouble in little China for 118Th time, eating shitty over-priced strombolis and doing bong hits of the worst schwag weed ever scored from some chubby diabetic gamer nerd whose actual REAL job it is to sell you over priced shitty weed. Fuck.

Yeah, smoking the herb isn't supposed to produce the kinds of Disappointing effects I've mentioned above and, unlike the easy-to-fuck-up-calzone, it's not really that easy to fuck up a tasty bong load, but lo and behold, some people are just full of surprises, aren't they?
Seriously, if you want a real taste of Disappointment, find yourself a weed man who accepts obscure nerdy card games in exchange for an eighth(or so) of commercial bud that smells like hay. Once you've heard the Bells of Dis (the clinking of a bong slide against the living room ashtray), finished the last crumb of Disappointment Dough (TM), and learned without really wanting to that John Carpenter was the deep voiced singer of the
"Big Trouble in little China" theme song, you can go to bed with the knowledge that another level of Disappointment has been attained.

BASIC TENETS OF DISAPPOINTMENT.

Disappointment as philosophy is a hard concept to describe. At it's root it's mainly about becoming free of the crushing let downs that our expectations provide. It's about liberating one's self from disappointment by embracing Disappointment. Make sense? Didn't think so.Here's what you have to do: Have a shitty childhood. It doesn't have to be specific just make sure it sucks. Being poor is a good one but that doesn't always guarantee shitty results because even though you have nothing and are starved half the time, you could have really loving parents and all that and become one of those American success stories where "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" and "coming from nothing" are the magical catalysts responsible for your success, so if you're going to be poor, make sure it's the whole enchilada that includes merciless beatings, humiliation, parents engaging in drug use, prostitution, and even murder. On the other side of the coin if you must come from a well-to-do back round make sure there's enough neglect in your life to distort your development to the point of no return, being an asocial weirdo is paramount to understanding Disappointment (*note* all sorts of factors play a part in the development of an asocial weirdo, not just neglect by busy rich parents). These are the more extreme examples I can give of course (Not to say there's none more extreme but they are just a guiding example after all), for most Disappointanarians are average, like myself for example: I may have grown up in less than abject poverty, and had pretty cool folks to raise me but the looming Disappointment was always there. Socially I couldn't have been luckier. I was chubby, grubby and in love with comic books and role-playing games (not to mention Nintendo). Yes, I was that spazz who sat around in class and drew up character sheets, toted around a faux velvet bag of multi-sided dice and listened to "kill 'em all" on headphones at recess. All dues-paid card-carrying Disappointanarians have had similar experiences such as: bad luck with the opposite sex (or preferred sex if you like), alienation from peers, unpopularity, bland food, shitty haircuts, horrible soul-slurping jobs, mechanical failure, erectile dysfunction, small breasts, narrow still-born child bearing hips, greasy hair and that disorder that makes you stink worse than normal. The looming cloud of Disappointment knows no color, creed, gender or soda preference, it doesn't care. Some decide that this force, if you will, is responsible for their own pathetic lives while others use it to explain why other people are dumb, hard to get along with, foul smelling, limp dicked, narrow hipped corporate dick-jobbers with shitty haircuts. But no matter which sect you may fall into the remaining fact is this: Disappointment is for everyone.