#20 Dodging Broken Down Pieces Of Toilet Paper That Nearly Clogg The Fucking Toilet…oh, and satellites.

#20 Rigged And Ready by Northstar

“Raccoon eyed and skin whiter then heaven’s best fighter. I’m thinking she needs me, well do you girl? I guess well see. And I know she’s perfect, a hostage in purple. We’ll tie up our arms with my cancer and your charm.”

I love Northstar’s lyrics. Upon first hearing the band I thought of them as early Taking Back Sunday with more meaningful and poetic lyrics. I don’t really go for poetry, or all the confusion that often times accompanies it, but I dig it here for some reason. I don’t mean to say I hate all poetry, or even that all poetry must be vaguely confusing and deep – those are only my strictest of standards for Dr. Seuss. I’ve liked some poetry, but only when it either connects with me – which makes sense considering I’m a narcissist, “Hey, I can see some of me in that, I love it!” – or if it just sounds good and flows well, and unfortunately I judge most art way too harshly so almost nothing ever seems good to me. But when it does seem good, God damn it is fucking good. I wouldn’t say Northstar’s lyrical poetry particularly connects with me on most levels, so it doesn’t have that going for me, but God damn is it so fucking good.

When I went to the bathroom after waking up after ten hours of sleep, which seems to be my maximum amount of sleep I can get now, which is a good thing – I used to be able to sleep on many, many, many occasions, I’m talking multiple times a week, for 12 or more hours, which is ridiculous, but when you don’t have something to get up for, and getting up is often times accompanied with thinking which usually isn’t good thinking when your life consists of not having much to get up for, you tend to convince yourself to just lay back down in bed for a few more hours rather than get up and perhaps accomplish something and maybe get to a point where you actually look forward to waking up and starting your day, and of course all the ‘you’s’ and ‘your’s’ in this are directed not towards you, but rather to me – I noticed (we’re back to the bathroom situation now) that the little stick thingie that you insert into the toilet paper roll so it can hang off the wall was missing. No toilet paper in sight in the bathroom either. A full unopened bag of toilet paper sitting right outside the bathroom, but of course why would anyone put any of that toilet paper in the bathroom?

It’s a bad sign for my family that my first thought of where the missing toilet paper holder stick is was in the toilet, assuming the person was too lazy, or disgusted, to fish it out. This wasn’t the case luckily, but had it been it would have been because they were too lazy, because judging on how out of hand this place gets we can’t be that disgusted by much, apparently ourselves included.

It wasn’t long before I found the stick. It was near the toilet, and it had the cardboard roll from the toilet paper still around it. This made me really angry because as always the God damn person who used up all the toilet paper not only didn’t put the fucking holder stick back in it’s place with replaced toilet paper, but they went out of their way to remove it and not even take the cardboard roll off and recycle it, of course the recycling bin is a whole 9 steps away in the kitchen so I might as well be asking them to scale Mt. Everest. The lease they could do is throw it away in the garbage can in the bathroom. Of course that might be too hard as well considering at least a few times a day I enter the bathroom and find the toilet nearly clogged with toilet paper. It’s only nearly clogged so the person could easily flush it down, but again that would take effort, and God forbid any of that be found in this household, myself included. It’s not like the person took a major dump and nearly clogged the toilet. The water surrounding the toilet paper is pristine, drinkable if I say so myself. And while you may scoff in disgust just think about what they drink in third world countries. I’ll take that crystal clear toilet water any day of the week over a ten foot puddle that doubles as a well. Which gets me to water conservation.

I don’t mind not flushing the toilet in certain situations. I’m one of highest contributors to the if it’s yellow let it mellow movement. But I don’t like seeing a pound of toilet paper just sitting in the toilet when I go in there. And like I said, this isn’t shitty water and the after effect of a monster dump. This is just soggy toilet paper in clear water. What the fuck was that person doing with all that toilet paper? Were they blowing their nose? If they were just throw the toilet paper in the trash. And again, no need to pack your sleeping bag and tent in preparation for the seemingly four day hike to the kitchen. There’s a trash bin in the bathroom. And also why is this person using more toilet paper to blow their nose than John Goodman would need to wipe his ass after a trip to Tijuana? I know people get under the weather and get runny noses, but it doesn’t happen three times a day every day for the past as long as I can remember.

My mother is going senile. I think things get a little messy and it takes her a furlong of toilet paper to dry off her vaginal area after peeing. First of all that’s a disgusting image and I wish I never said it. And secondly, girls wipe off that area after peeing, right? If so that makes all the pussies I’ve eaten out way less satisfying (that sentence is funny because it’s in no way true, seriously, like there’s no truth in that sentence at all).

#22 “unused, unlike you”

#22 My Ricochet by Northstar

If nothing else I implore you to listen to the last one minute and thirteen seconds of this song.

What I’ve loved about doing this countdown is that I’ve discovered things I’ve never noticed about songs I love. I don’t pretend to completely understand this song, but I’m a bit closer I believe. I’ve always loved the lyrics towards the end of this song that I thought were,

“And I will never understand love of the roses that grow for you. But I know they keep on dying. They always keep on dying. I don’t care about you now you’re not alive.”

But I was mistaken, for as I thought those were the lyrics, along with apparently everyone else who posted the lyrics for this song online, but after reading the lyrics straight out of the CD booklet which I own it turns out that “I will never understand love of the roses that grow for you” is actually “I will never understand love or the roses that grow for you.” It’s or, not of. This makes a huge difference. The person doesn’t understand both love and the roses that grow for, assumedly, her.

“I don’t care about you now you’re not alive,” isn’t using “you’re not alive” in a metaphorical sense, as if she’s still alive she just dead to him. She’s really dead. And while I don’t fully know why he doesn’t care about her – although part of me believes it’s because she’s dead, and therefore even if we are to believe there is some sort of after life, for the song does say “Why don’t you melt way down here, with Heaven so far and Hell so near,” whatever happens to her spirit is out of his hands – but the line, “You threw up my best skin, ‘cause you never loved it,” suggests that she didn’t care about him as much as he cared about her when she was alive, and now he holds some resentment over that. And because he uses the word “now” I have no choice but to assume he cared about her before.

The talk of roses growing for her is mostly what makes me think she’s really dead, whereas before I thought it was just love of roses growing for her and didn’t really know what to think, but I liked the poeticness of it. The roses, I believe, are the flowers being placed at her grave by loved ones. Just as he doesn’t understand the love that grows for her – or perhaps just love in general – he doesn’t understand why people care enough to keep replacing the roses. I assume they keep being replaced because he says, “I know they keep on dying.” In order to keep dying they must first keep being alive, and the easiest answer for that is that they keep being replaced.

This post probably seems absolutely meaningless to everyone but me, and perhaps any Northstar fans who stumble upon it. I don’t care much for dissecting lyrics, and the only reason I do it now is because I loved, and still do love, these lyrics, and I’ve sung them a lot – according to Lastfm I’ve listened to this song 207 times, that’s three different versions of the song, regular, acoustic, live, and I’ve probably sung the song about 1/3 of those times, and then probably 100 other times when the song just popped into my head.

He knows that the roses keep on growing and dying for her, which means somehow, whether being told by someone or visiting it himself, he’s keeping tabs on what is going on with her grave. I think he still cares about her. I don’t know if I have ample reason to believe that, or I just want to believe it, but I believe it.

#56 The Gin War by Cassino

Musically speaking one of the toughest questions I can ask myself is if it was worth Northstar ending in order for the band Cassino to arise? I ask that because Cassino was first brought about when Nick Torres (lead singer and song writer of Northstar) and Tyler Odom (Guitarist and backup singer of Northstar) decided to team up again and try something a little different. Had they only teamed up for Sounds of Salvation, which technically was the only Cassino album they did together, then the answer is easy, I want Northstar still together. But once you throw in Cassino’s second release, Kingprince, which was done without Tyler, the question becomes much tougher.

Fair warning my friends, if I may call you that, which I’m thinking you’d rather not like to think of me as your friend so let’s try that again. Fair warning person who drunkenly stumbled upon this blog at three in the morning while looking for porn, this post probably isn’t going to be as humorous as previous posts have attempted to be because it will contain some actual information, and as most poor writers I too have trouble blending insight with entertainment. Mind you when I say information I don’t mean anything useful, I just mean you might learn a little bit about a couple bands, which is vastly different from how I’ve done this in the past where I rarely mention anything about the band and instead find a way to link the song to masturbation. My personal favorite being a couple posts back where I somehow went from Taking Back Sunday’s You Know How I Do to Peewee Herman jerking off in a movie theater.

Nick Torres of Cassino, but I can tell he's playing a Northstar song there

If I had to answer the question which I posed to myself at the start of the blog, and I’ve just decided I do have to answer it, I would choose for Northstar to have never ended. As much as I love Cassino’s Kingprince album Northstar has quickly become one of my all time favorite bands, still with two songs left on this countdown, whereas this will be the only Cassino song, but I would also strongly suggest listening to Maddie Bloom and Cannonball off the Kingprince album, and The Old Year and New Jerusalem off the Sounds of Salvation album.

As I was doing research for this song, which is something I rarely do before writing because inevitably it will somehow lead to a hot or cute new girl discovery and that will lead to a two hour search of the perfect thing to jerk off to before I realize I’ve wasted too much time and then just jerk off to something I’ve already jerked off to many times before and then I feel shamed and after shame always comes laughter, or vice versa, it really doesn’t matter just as long as they both fit in there somewhere, which is also great advice to keep in mind if you ever consider direction porn. But I wanted to look up just exactly how many members of Northstar were involved with Cassino because I was only certain of Nick Torres but I thought there was another guy, which was Tyler Odom but he was only on the first Cassino album, and then I was curious what happened to him after that.

As I was doing this search I started to realize that bands are a lot like sports teams. The best example I can think of is Taking Back Sunday – and they’ll be brought up for a third time shortly. I’m on Taking Back Sunday’s Wikipedia page and it says that they’ve had 11 members, not to mention that two of their current members, John Nolan and Shaun Cooper, were once members in the past. It’s not unoften in sports that a player will establish his career with one team then eventually move on, usually not accomplishing much, and then return to the team he first found glory with for his last couple of years. But what reminds me of sports teams is that these musicians will bounce around from band to band, much like many athletes will bounce around from team to team. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a couple of notable musicians turned up in one place.

If my research would have spiraled into a two hour long jerk session this is what would have set it off

While finding out what Tyler Odom had been up to I shockingly discovered that he was currently in a band called Destry with Michelle Nolan DaRosa, who was the coish-lead singer in the band Straylight Run and featured on some tracks on Taking Back Sunday’s first album, and also the aforementioned Shaun Cooper who was in Straylight Run and on Taking Back Sunday’s first album, and is now apparently back with Taking Back Sunday. It was odd to see how a musician I didn’t really know much about except for that he was part of one of my favorite bands and another band I like a lot could turn up in a band with two members I was pretty familiar with.

I don’t really have much to say about the band Destry as of yet considering I just discovered them today. I’ll link to a place you can buy their music for cheap, and by cheap I guess that depends on how cheap you think ‘name your price’ is. You can also listen to the songs, probably over and over again, without ever having to pay for them, but I’m not sure why anyone would do that when they’re ‘name your price’ cheap.

You know someone is either incredibly kind or incredibly desperate for quick money when you ask them how much something is and they say, ‘whatever you want to give I’ll take.’ Also you should probably stay away from that phrase when shopping for sexual favors. A ‘name your price’ handjob isn’t going to be anywhere near as good as the $13 ones Ke$ha is giving (if people don’t click that link in the next two days that joke is going to make no sense at all) as if any of my jokes ever make any sense.

“I wish I had you in my lungs, I’d blow you up and block the sun. And save everyone from this brilliant light we’ve won.”

#60 Taker Not A Giver by Northstar

“If you get the chance to, wipe that glare off your face. French kiss my fingerprints and heave it in an alleyway. Defenseless yet so violent princess of divine, your ugliness arrived on time. And I know I never was beautiful enough for you. The scars on my back turn my fingers blue.”

This is just one of those times when I have nothing to say. Not just about the song, or the lyrics, but just about anything. I slept for 14 hours last night after spending 32 and a half of the previous 37 hours awake. My mind doesn’t feel very recovered. I still feel tired. I want to crawl back into bed and sleep, and dream, and be warm, and have my hands in my pants without anyone shaming me – when I try to sleep and it’s either cold or I’m really sad I often sleep on my stomach with my arms stretched beside me and my hands directly under my pelvis, also known as the place where my penis is located. I guess I do this when I’m cold to warm myself up. I guess I do it when I’m sad so I can take up as little space as possible – I’d like not to go back to bed though. I want to try this thing I’ve heard that other people do. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but supposedly it’s called being productive. Sounds crazy I know, but I’ll give it the old college try.

I say ‘the old college try’ quite possibly more than anybody else in my age group, which isn’t hard because I only have to say it once every year. I remember my favorite time ever saying it. My friend and I were talking about me continually dropping out of community college and then I mentioned how I might go back and give it one more old college try. At the time it was funnier than it sounds after writing it out.

“And there are reasons why I forfeit that nightly mess. Numbing my hands down that evening dress. My daydreams love the violet color of your lips. And the nightmares that accompany it.”

I don’t know if I’m ever going to give community college the old college try ever again. I honestly don’t think I’m cut out for college. Even community college, which basically is glorified high school without the glorified part. I just went and checked my MyPCC account, which is my community college account, and I’ve got 72 credits with a GPA of 2.85, which I think it’s pretty darn good considering it includes two F’s, an NP and a W, whatever the hell that means (withdrawal).

I wish there was a way I could donate my transcript to somebody. You know, some guy (or girl) with a decent GPA like me, but would never get through community college by himself (or herself) but with the help of my credits could get some kind of degree, of course nothing of any use, but still good enough to put them at the head of the waiting list to get a job at Taco Bell.

“I don’t plan on you tonight, so just shut off the lights…like you wanted to.”

I have to get a job pretty soon. I mean technically I don’t. My mother is far too nice and my step-father is far too pussy-whipped to ever kick me out of this house or make me get a job or make me do anything that might be good for my life. I don’t necessarily think kicking a person out would be good, but it’d be nice to nudge them towards getting a job so one day they could move out. I don’t place any blame on my parents for me having accomplished exactly nothing in my life. Well I blame my biological sperm donor (i.e. father) for not being in my life, because had he been here I’d at least probably know how to drive and have impregnated a few girls by now. But in seriousness even though my mother could have possibly been more motivating I place the blame entirely on me…and God of course.

My mother would like me to go back to college. She tells me it has nothing to do with her wanting me to graduate from a college, which not many members, if any, from my family have done. I think it’s bullshit. I think she would love nothing more than to tell everyone about how her son graduated from college. How dare her try to be proud of me! I no longer have any desire to be a stand up comedian, nor did I ever have any desire except for about two weeks back in high school, but there was something appealing about trying to make a living and possibly gain fame with something where my mother would have to beat around the bush with her friends trying to explain my career to them without revealing my staple act being masturbation humor.

Don’t get me wrong, I would like my mother to be proud of me, but I’d like her to be proud of me for what I want to do. At this point my mind makes me imagine Hitler having a conversation with his mother: “But mom I’ve been behind the deaths of more than 6 million Jews. I was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1938. What more could you ask of me?” And Hitler’s mom replies, “How about bringing home a sweet girl who could give me grandchildren?” Hitler says, “Mother, we’ve been over this. I’m a screaming homosexual.”

#97: The Pornographers Daughter

I have to hurry this post up. Nathan and I have plans to go out and drink every Friday night, and by go out and drink I of course mean make a failed attempt to pick up girls. The actual goal isn’t to get a girl, it’s just to try and then fail. The reasoning behind this is that if we were ever to actually get a girl that would be more than we could ever hope to achieve again, so there would be no point to go out again. As long as we keep getting rejected we’ll continually have something bigger to hope for, until of course we get rejected so many times that we become hopeless and almost succumb to homosexual activities but instead just jerk off in our respective corners of the hotel lobby bathroom.

I’m not excited about tonight and it’s because for me taking home a chick and drunkenly banging her crazily was never my ultimate goal (for any of you that listen to the podcast this is a spoiler for Sunday’s episode). Last week at the bar, due to a confidence heightened state due to lots and lots of alcohol, I approached two absolutely gorgeous women and started up a conversation with them that lasted for about an hour and a half before they had to go. As they were leaving I forced upon one of them my phone number and by the grace of God she actually accepted it. And in an act more miraculous than when Sully Sullenberger landed that plane on the Hudson River the girl actually texted me later that night which for all intents and purposes was her giving me her number (let’s not forget that she had a few drinks, so that might have aided in her poor decision making that night) hey, shut up (just stating facts).

So I texted her back the next day when I was sober and I got no response, which was a big sad face moment, except for the fact that this week has been fantastic so when otherwise her not texting me back would have sent me into a depressive spiral reminiscent of diarrhea getting flushed down the toilet, I instead just brushed it off my shoulder and proceeded to masturbate vehemently to the few memories I had left of her. Not true about the masturbation part, although not a bad idea. However I did make one last attempt and texted her the night previous to when I am writing this (precisely six days after I met her at the bar) and guess what? (You spelled guess ‘gusse’ three times in a row before spelling it right?) Well yes, but more importantly she texted me back (Oh my God!) huge smiley face moment.

We had a couple back a forth texts before she had to drive back home from visiting some family and then get to sleep for work tomorrow (otherwise known as an excuse not to talk to the ugly guy from the bar who she’s regretting having gave her number to) I’m in such a good mood I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. I strongly doubt she’ll ever go out of the way to text me, but now I have reason to believe that I can text her at least one more time without having the cops called on me. This of course won’t lead to anything, for various reasons which I might talk about soon in an upcoming blog, but can’t now because I have to shower in preparation for disappointment at the bar with Nathan tonight, which brings me back to my original point.

We went to the bar and I had a conversation with two beautiful chicks, and I got the cuter, and no offense to (let’s call her K) K, and the more interesting one’s phone number. For a guy whose most relatable moment ever was when I heard George Costanza say that he couldn’t ever envision a scenario where he would have sex again – only I couldn’t ever imagine when I would ever have sex for a first time – talking to a beautiful chick in person and getting her number is about as good as I can ever hope for. If I didn’t still have a little bit of hope that an Arrested Development movie will be made I could have died happy then and there.

To speak of the music for just a moment, Northstar is one of my favorite bands and they’ll have a couple more songs on the list. I’m sort of happy I don’t have much time tonight because that disallowed me to write what I was originally going to, which was going to start about being the child of a porn star and lead to some sexist, but also flattering, thoughts on why women tend to have a more public, whorishly, sexual proclivity. It would have been very awkward, offensive, and enjoyable for all.

By the way, as I post this I am naked, but I have reason to believe that at some point clothes will be put on (and as the female readers hear that clothes will be put on they cheer in a style reminiscent of how an Oprah crowd screams when it’s announced they’re all getting free cars).

….

A link to part one of the podcast where Chris and I talk about me meeting the chick I spoke of in this blog at the bar. Part two will be up Sunday.