quick note

Psychiatry and psychology are the rational side of the brain telling the irrational side of the brain that it's crazy. Religion, superstition, and belief in the super-natural, is the irrational side of our brain telling the rational side that it's crazy. There is no right or wrong, just two sides that are limited by their perspective.

tuned into modernity

I’m sitting here thinking about a certain secret society, of which I used to be a member. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, the party never ends in Aspen. This little resort community may be the capital of the world when it comes to eating, drinking, and being merry. We also add lots of healthy living during the day, like skiing, paragliding, slack-lining, tennis, mountain biking, horseback riding, river rafting, water polo, kickball, pole-vaulting, somersaulting, skeet and trap shooting, duck-hunting, bird-watching, and pot smoking, to help us work through the hangovers, and feel good about ourselves. I’m not currently taking any prescription medications, which makes me a minority here. The Aspen way, exercise and drugs, is commonplace, leaving most of the high end shopping to the tourists. Enough money in your pocket can make drug addiction look good. Relief is essential to ignoring the ridiculousness of living at the very top of the pyramid at the apex of human development. How painful it is to even consider looking down. It’s steeper than that sweet left section, cutting over at the top of Hyrups. My life is your vacation. Is that what the sticker says? What exactly could living in a vacation do to the psyche of a person? It’s sort of like living in Disney Land, except the little kids are getting old now, with slicked back gray hair, expensive belt buckles, young blonds replacing their popsicle, and billions in their bank account to boost their sex appeal. They don’t ride on roller coasters now, like when they were kids, they snort them. There are still plenty of psychedelics around if there is anyone left out there for whom it’s not weird enough. I have to be honest, and differ with St. Thompson on this one, because it’s weird enough for me; it’s way too weird for me. I work in a bright yellow store, did I have to go and make it weirder? Is the card house preparing to collapse? The modern world is not funny. The closest thing we have to a rational spirituality is called Quantum Physics. This is frightening. Ultra-violence is pumping out the television set. Horror movies are blockbusters. Satan is rejoicing, splattering himself with meaty juice in the slaughterhouse. People are having visions in common, of Jesus Christ returning to kill George Bush. I’ve seen it on YouTube. We have magnified reality to the point we have made ourselves God. While Barack Obama is taking heat for the screaming preachers at his Chicago church, who continue to sell a culture of difference, pitting human being against human being, we have yet to come to terms with the basic, rational, implications of Christianity as a belief system. For example, the premise on which Christianity is based is a fundamental blasphemy against a Higher Power or greater God, the one Christians reportedly pray to, or more specifically, the God that Jesus prayed to. Jesus called that God “Father,” which would make him God’s son. That was pretty basic, still is. Most believers consider themselves God’s Children. Which would make Jesus their brother. Jesus is the man that the Church turned into God. Duh. When Jesus said “let he who is without sin caste the first stone,” did anyone report seeing Jesus throwing stones? I don’t think so. Anyways. Politicized religion is against the founding principles of this country. God rarely serves the public good when He is wielded in the hands of those in power. At least Barack Obama goes to a church where they have entertaining preachers. His church serves the same kind of entertainment as Fox News, and most of mainstream media today. The messages these types of churches or media serve up is divisive, hurtful, and creates resentment in larger communities. It’s the same tactic politicians have been using for years. It’s not good for communities, it’s not good for society, but it sells products by making people feel unsafe, it gets people out to vote for you, and it keeps people tuned in. Consumer society works better when people are afraid. It keeps the status quo intact. Make sure to keep your dogs on a leash on the Rio Grande Trail, or you might get a ticket. The leash is getting tighter every day.

Lost in the Dancing Wu Li

What if the glass is not half full or half empty? If the atom is empty, and it looks like it is, like just a bunch of space inside space inside space, then the glass must be empty also. Whatever we put in the glass must then come from our minds, no? So the glass is full of illusion, and outside the glass there is more empty space, but the glass exists, so there is something, right? The glass is empty, but it exists, like us, and so we are the glasses, constantly full and empty at the same time. Not that it's any relief, but at least now if you hear two people debating about optimism and pessimism, you can tell them both to shut the fuck up. The glass is empty, and our brains are full of illusions. Life is grand, and not, and then again. Sometimes we fill the glass with emptiness, and sometimes it's something a little sweeter. Which illusion will it be? But then wait a minute... we also invented the glass?

Shopping

Is it me, or does shopping in your average American grocery store make you suicidal? Was it the depressing rock love ballads playing, or maybe all the colorful packaging leading the mind in a hundred different directions? There are 20 different kinds of rice, what am I supposed to do? People are having riots over food shortages throughout the world, and here in Aspen I’m troubled over which rice to choose, while people are dying for just rice. I just bought four different types of chocolate from a few different third world countries. I’m eating their chocolate. America: the beautiful, the war mongering, and well-fed dieters to boot. We are having a plastic bag competition with Telluride. Who can use less plastic bags to save the world?!! Are you kidding? Isolated in our little mountain town, with mansions popping up on the hills like spring flowers blooming, with enough light sweet crude to keep the private jet running, we are oh so responsible and environmentally friendly with our cute little hemp tote bags, with which to carry imported brie cheese, and a few bottles of water from Fiji, in case we get thirsty on the way to yoga class. Will they open Aspen Mountain over the Food and Wine festival weekend? I sure hope so, cause like Duh, we need a reminder that after the winter of 2008 we can all be sure this whole Global Warming thing is really a hoax. It snowed in Baghdad after all, for the first time in a long time, but the Iraqi people might not have noticed, distracted as they are with all the pretty soldiers we’ve been powdering them with the last 5 years. The media is currently in the midst of it’s biggest lull in its reporting of the war. We can ignore our guilt now, amidst this huge year of natural disasters. I mean you can’t blame the earthquake in China, or the Cyclone in Myanmar, on America? Or can you? We’ve pumped more carbon into the atmosphere than any other group of people over the last hundred years. It’s been the American Way. It’s built up our American Dream. Then of course, there’s the coming down, and carbon emissions don’t cause earthquakes as far as we know. Speaking of natural disasters, has anyone heard of Hillary Clinton? A total lack of faith in her ability to lead, or win, is not sexism, it’s realism. Now there is talk of what a powerhouse team her and Obama would be if she ran as his Vice Presidential candidate. That rumor may have been started by Karl Rove, another criminal adopted by Fox News, sharing his fair and balanced commentary with us on a weekly basis. Great. Barack Obama has his work cut out for him trying to pull this country together behind the first black Presidential candidate in one of the last countries on earth that outlawed slavery. But let’s be honest, we did that before we gave women the right to vote. People ask which is more pervasive, racism or sexism. Let’s consider. Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus, right? Is the sky blue, or is this still a patriarchy we are living in? Misogyny, the word has been thrown about like a flaccid football this political season. The hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women is still just as American as apple pie. It was only a few hundred years ago that our forefathers were burning women at the stake, for nothing more than being accused of witchcraft, of dancing with the devil. Men, rulers of worldwide hegemonic patriarchies crossing cultures and continents since we made God a man, have been the greatest devils, and women have suffered our sins, and loved us even as we oppress them unceasingly. American women are broadly oppressed today, through their objectification. Women seem to do a great job hating themselves nowadays, as they kill themselves with eating disorders trying to look the way our culture tells them they should. Patriarchy gives names to women like Hillary Clinton, women who stand up to men, who do not sexualize themselves and submit to the status quo. Hillary should be applauded for being the tuff woman that she is, but that does not make her a good presidential candidate. Hillary has taken on masculinity like a woman whose husband has been cheating on her for the entirety of their marriage. She comes off like a big, crazy, power hungry man in a blond wig and a pantsuit. Giuliani could probably do a great impression of Hillary if he tried out a nice yellow pantsuit and a blond wig the next time he goes for drag. Hillary is not a terrible candidate because she is a woman, she is a terrible candidate because she is Hillary Clinton. The Democratic party has a debt to pay her and she does not seem too concerned with anything other than cashing in on the rest of the political capital she earned by staying with her philandering husband like a good little girl through Monicagate. Hillary Clinton is a great Presidential candidate for those who want today’s democracy, where the well being of the many is sold for the profit and benefit of the few, to continue at its wonderful capitalist clip. When it comes to the characteristics of many of the worst presidents in our history, like our current one, she has what it takes: a lack of honesty, integrity, and a willingness to say anything to get into pole position. I’m going to shove another huge bunch of plastic bags under the sink and continue to insist on my American innocence.

the breakdown

OK, so i'm in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Have you guys heard about how the King of Thailand has lost his taste for yellow? It just happened recently. His favorite color was yellow, and every year on his birthday, masses of the population would wear yellow in his honor. He's changed his favorite color to pink. I think I may be tiring of yellow myself. It's too intense for me lately. Unfortunantly my whole store is yellow; bright, fucking, yellow. I highly advise you come down and buy something before we decide to paint the whole place pink and start selling baby diapers and strollers. I don't really want to sell anything anymore. I think i've decided I want to go back to school. Or maybe join the Army. That would be a great idea. Fantastic. Cheers from the king of the indecisive. This place is too damn yellow for me. Yellow was the new black for awhile there, but I think black may be back. I think the time has come for some serious pessimism. Time for the denial to stop. Time for the ship to go down. Time for walking back into the great unknown and not doing what we think we should be doing. At least for me. I'm tired of doing the things that I think I should be doing. I was being a good citizen, a functioning, respected member of the Aspen business community, but I think i'd rather go the way of standing man, or maybe trudge my own road, drinking beer out of a brown bag on the lazy streets of Aspen. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! Where exactly does running a business fall into that equation? Doing stuff is overrated. I'm tired of it. In my last post I said "get a job," but I may have to revert back to my former attitude of, "if you can't beat them, join them." What the hell, if I wasn't spending so much money on yellowjumpsuits.com, I might like to go pay the prices at that stupid club they are going to turn the Red Onion into. Yes, I think it is time for retreat. Do I really need to prove i'm crazy by running an insane business?

Anyone out there interested in running yellowjumpsuits.com? Cheap business for sale, vintage clothing and art boutique store in Aspen, great location right across from the Aspen Brewery, get the ecommerce going and have a field day. Motivated, business and marketing oriented person would be perfect. I can't stay in one place long enough to run a business. Full inventory, 1000's of tee shirts, vintage sunglasses, coats, one-piece ski suits, sweaters, classic tweed dress coats. Any takers, shoot me an email at yellowjumpsuits@gmail.com.

Otherwise, at least for the moment, I will be in business. We have fine American made glass tobacco pipes coming soon for all the green machines. We'll also be getting lots of tee-shirts out for sale directly. Come on down.

Summer has arrived...

I got two pound puppies about two months ago out in the desert of Southeastern California. They are Needles dogs. Summer is the girl, and she's a real pain in the ass. She loves to pee inside. Her brother is a little angel in comparison. But Summer is a lovebug and cute as a button, and she has a doggie smile straight out of a cartoon. She likes to live outside, and do her dirty business inside. She's a wild soul I guess.

Ferris B's Day Off is playing at the Yellowjumpsuits.com store, here in Assholepen, formerly Ute City, and the Greedheads are turning the Red Onion into some Los Angeles type nightclub. They should try opening one of those in Los Angeles instead. The bastards are overwhelming us, so swin on down to the store and get a brew at the Aspen Brewery next door while you are at it. The least we can do is offend these disgusting people with outrageous clothes which will offend their sense of self-entitled style. I'm tired of all the yuppie wear in our town. Untuck your shirts douchbags, unless you have a sweet belt-buckle to show off! Get that sweater off from around your shoulders unless it's neon.

Ute City needs to fight back against these snobs! Enough already. No more overpriced club scene in the mountains please. Hello people, if you want the city scene and culture of the American Douch, please move to a city. This is the dirty hillbilly mountains of Colorado.

I want to see a neon Frank Sinatra before I die.

I need it.

I feel like a Palestinian in my homeland, getting invaded by people who want to turn this town into a little guilt free safe-haven for lazy, egomaniacal, rich-people, who come in waves, and then retreat, leaving over-developed ugliness in their retreating wake, and then they return in their jets from one of the coasts and attack again. Get a job or get lost people, but please stop by YJS.com and buy something on your way out. .

Back in Action

We are back at the store, busy as can be, moving out the winter inventory, and bringing in the summer styles. Hillary Clinton is still sqawking like an out of control parrot, CNN is coming up with new ideas for terrorists and engaging potentialities of destruction and damnation. Seems like the media is only too exited to report the coming apocalypse. Living at the end of the Age of Oil is an interesting experience. It's like being a drunk in the depths of denial, without any sense of how to recover from a deadly addiction. Laziness is the answer. Oil is like pure speed for society. The more you have, the faster you go. With enough rocket fuel you can go to the moon faster than a person can ride from New York to Philidelphia. Maybe it's time to go back to horses and donkeys. The Amish are in great shape, not much is going to change for them. The rest of us spinning monkeys are in for it though. Can my portfolio possibly survive?

Oh what the hell?

So why not just post another driveling blogpost. Blog. Blog. Blogger. What would Charles Dickens think of this? There is no money in it. We are being fooled. This is volunteer work. The people reading should be the ones getting paid. That would be interesting. Is this life in the modern world?

John and Tom are speaking, but other people are listening in on the conversation. They are talking in a large room. This space is painted in interesting colors. Colors blend together to confuse the fragile gelatinous mind. This room is inside a green or maybe a purple gel tab, with all the intensity and reflections of the maze.

John goes by the name Eagle on this Day, and Tom is playing the Crow. Goose sits idle on the sidelines becoming a Jew among Jews, who plans to passionately convert the Muslim and Christian hordes back to their origins. Goose is screaming at Bear, Tiger, Panda, and the fool swine Hedgehog is painting his own delusions.

Eagle: I can't believe the stupidity of this modern world.

Crow: You fool, this moment, this distraction from itself, this is your delusion. This isn't even happening, and these swineherd clawfaces are still being fooled by the lie of separation.

Eagle changes the channel from CNN to the History channel where a documentary, apparently advertising the new Indiana Jones film, is playing. The search for the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and the ancient stones of the lunatic guy with the overused crazy skull helmet, all pointing to the existence of an angry judgmental God.

Bear is hungry again, and stoned, and looking for mushrooms. The Tiger is taking over America. He has a plan to storm the Capitol with 50,000 peaceful marchers, occupying the White House, the Capitol Building, and the lowest class whorehouse he can find to appease the desires of the Hippy masses. The plan looks sound, and American Intelligence is certainly at this moment planning some appropriately idiotic way to prevent this chaos, and avert the catastrophically beautiful outcome of the movement's plan to move the Capitol to San Francisco. There, in the promised land, is waiting a whole congress of Peaceful geniuses and scantily clad gay bikers with rainbow flags and adorned bazookas. The future is inevitable.

Chipmunk: Oh how fun this global garden of Eden will be! How colorful!

George W: I don't like it. I'm a decider. I've made my decision.

Jesus Christ: Are you people still talking about me? Jesus H! Christ. Shut up already and stop lying about who my father is.

Crazy Black woman on the train in Atlanta (see youtube video below): Who wants to see Jesus Christ Kill George Bush?

Eagle swoops down on Jesus, and lands on his arm, which falls off quickly because he's been dead for thousands of years, and sadly it turns out, is not sitting on the right hand of God forgiving people.

Jesus: I'm Jesus, remember me? Son of Joseph. Prophet of unity and peace. Killing is wrong.

George W: Shut up son, you talking like a damn Terrorist agitator. You sound like an appeaser. What was your name again, sounds vaguely familiar? Think my friends in the Masons were talking about you, but I can't really remember, cause I was on Acid. Heehee hee. Think I have one of your crosses in my back yard, to remind me how innocent I am. Hehehe.


This is foolishness. Plain and simple, the voice, the voice. I have no voice. I am the sickness that lurks beneath the surface of your addictions.

I am Adam, who led my people out of the garden and into loneliness and separation. I am the original fallen Angel. I have many names. I am the snake. I am the rooster. Just kidding.

Eagle: aren't we all Adam's. Just a bunch of insane Assholes, who make each other feel good then bad, then good, then bad. At least that seems to be my life. From the bottom to the Skies, then spending a lot of time in the trees.

Crow: Let's go get drunk.

Badger: No I think an AA meeting would be better.

The old claw drags on the hawbag of life,
Like it always has, and nothingness matters as much as anything.
The anguish well beneath the surface
Veiled behind the fragile lies of our institutionalization
Wants to consume us
The letters of our alphabet can't hide the truth much longer,
and we will enter a new epoch.
As cyclones, earthquakes, and tornados savage the surface of our globe
The idiots of the apocalypse rejoice in the corners
Awaiting their own demise with the vain optimism of resurrection.
Hope lies in little old grannies on rollerblades
Wearing purple hats rolling down Venice beach.
Their Kingdom has already come.
Morning whispers again.
Enlightenment in a stuffed American face,
Fat on the belly, and calories to burn.
There is nothing really happening.
Stuffed, drunk, and smoking, we all wake up dead.
The Hunter strikes, and ever loves us all.
Aloha

Young Frustrated Woman Gives Old Lady Piece of Her Mind. Amen.

Flying High

Well I’m sitting at Danny’s bar in Venice California, next to the ocean, trying to put my brain back together after a few months of bursting insanity. Things are getting back together and I’m snuggling into a fine form of unconsciousness and the good old news-fed drivelty and blank stupidity of the status quo in Modern America. I was stuck in my head the last day or two because I seem to have been so stoned the last few months that I have finally reached total burnout syndrome. I discovered that I had reached this marvelous landmark when I woke on a plane from Hawaii to Los Angeles, via Phoenix, with a nice exit row of my own, ample leg room, two blankets and a number of pillows; but the arm rests were built in on this emergency row, so I couldn’t lay down. It could have been worse; we could have been hurtling down at the earth from 37,000 feet, a wing ripped off by a giant pterodactyl straight out of the coming apocalypse. Planes, and other carbon guzzling machines, be warned! The vision has been seen.
I had to pee. So I got up and wandered to the back, because first class was before me, and I wasn’t welcome there on this specific flight, flying with the savages in the back, I was, and so I wandered back and noticed an open row with the right kind of arm rests and three open seats for me to lie myself down on. I peed, then returned to exit row 10 to collect my blankets and pillows, and decided to store my cell phones so they wouldn’t press into me when I went to curl down to sleep. I acquired a second cell phone in Hawaii a few months ago using the idiotic logic that a second phone would somehow simplify my life.
I do remember putting the phones in a conveniently located pocket in my backpack that I don’t remember being there. I went to the back of the plane and made myself comfortable in the empty row, put up the armrests and lied myself down. I went right to sleep. I woke with the light of the sun coming through the window, and felt refreshed. It was a perfect red-eye flight. It had passed like an evening on the couch. Easy. I went back to my previous seat, with the endless legroom, and the beautiful view out the window, over the clouds, over the ocean. Past the half-way point the stress of being awake, trapped inside an aluminum tube, thousands of feet above the mother planet, begins to subside, and hope rises, that all of us squirming sardines on board will land safely, and escape to the land. We landed, thank the Jesus of the Universe, and I had little time between flights. When the doors opened, I was on my way. Out the tunnel of emptiness and through the A concourse of Phoenix I shuffled, hurrying through the corridors on my wild morning adventure to the B concourse and my flight to Los Angeles. After years of the monotony of flight, the thrill was still with me. Yippee, my heart leapt anew, with the thought that I would again go hurlting into the air in a metal phallus with wings.
Between concourses, I decided to retrieve my phones from my bag. I opened every pocket. Nothing. Stuff. No phone. No time. No connection. I didn’t search thoroughly. I knew they had to be there, but the question lingered. Had I failed completely? I hurried along to the next flight, 8:57 to Los Angeles, and a sweet blond snake in the grass, who I had no way to contact. I searched again before boarding the flight. And searched. And crossed the way to report my phones lost. I admitted to the uninterested lady the stupidity of what I’d done. She didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to really even think. Everyone had boarded my plane, and she told me to report it in Los Angeles. I ran across and boarded my plane, still hoping that I would search my bags again and find a last hope of sanity.
When my beautiful lady friend finally picked me up, with worries about why I had not called, my little pleasure domes of connectedness were still missing. While she was sympathetic to my story, I have not been able to come to terms with this blaring act of clarity. The reality of my situation has still not sunken in. I am now completely out of touch. How does a grown man with his face up close and personal with someone else's bag, just go ahead and stick his cell phones right in there? Bye Bye. I am drinking the red juice of the Lords sweetest miracle, and feeling softly optimistic about the demise of life as we know it. I think it’s overrated anyway.

?