The Bus Bench

Black Monday prompts Blue Metro

As there is neither a recession nor a depression, then it follows that tits and ass, drugs and death, wrong and right, AIN'T. Or so Metro implies, as this single slice of the debauchery to follow clearly illustrates:

Dirty hippies, don't wash. 12/16. Downtown LA

   BusTard and I try to be environmentally sound and crap. We do things like put our cigarette butts in one spot, we take public transport, and we try to force those around us to take public transport. I call it date rape when forcing others to get on public transport, BusTard cause it being environmentally conscious. We don’t eat meat. Of course I don’t eat meat to stay skinny, but I care about animals too. I don’t have a fur coat or anything like that and neither has anyone that I have dated. BusTard also doesn’t have any fur coats, I don’t think.

   Anyways, we’re trying to be all environmental and downsize, so I’m trying to find a more eco-friendly way to wash clothes. I hate trying out new things on my fashionable clothes, so I tell BusTard about this eco-washer.

   A washer that uses little water and gives the earth lots of hand jobs.

   I am addicted to fluff and fold and the dry-cleaners, even though most of my clothes are “vintage.” I know that convenience is evil. That’s why cocaine gets you more jail time than vodka.

   Helping the earth usually involves dirty hippies.

   Dirty hippies tend to be very irresponsible and annoying.

   So BusTard orders his washer two weeks ago (or three weekends ago) from this place in Vermont.

   “Browne, I ordered that washer,” BusTard.

   “That’s awesome!!! Tell me when it gets to your place so we can experiment,” me.

   The following week nothing had come (his credit card had of course been swiped though.) No receipt, no nothing, so Bustard sends them an email asking “What the fuck?” Of course he does it totally nicer than that, but still in a “What’s up with my eco-washer?”

   Three days later, after I am assuming the dirty hippies had smoked his money and had come off their high, they send BusTard an email that says, “I’ll send you a tracking number.”

   What the fuck???!!!

   Why do you have to send an email about sending a tracking number about something ordered two weeks ago? Why not just send the tracking number? Why send an email? Oh, I remember so you can stall and smoke some more pot. That’s why you do that.

   So we wait and three days later BusTard is like fuck this, so he cancels the order. Dude emails him back and is like, “Why are you so hostile?”

   Fuck I hate hippies. They inconvenience you, fuck with you, take your money, kill your dog, smoke all of your pots and then when you can’t take it anymore, they are like, “Why are you so hostile?”

   Anyways Bustard is like just send me my receipt and they send him an official email and in it they took the time to write the reason for the return and the reason they stated was:

__________________________________________________

Difficult customer.

__________________________________________________

Petty bastards.

I hate hippies.

__________________________________________________

by Browne

Punk rock writers. West Hollywood. 12/13

In New York during a release party and signing for a retrospective of the rock magazine Creem a fight broke out. People came to blows. People who have books on Harper Collins came to actual blows and afterwards people defended the adult men who came to blows by denouncing the offending party (which depends on whose side you are on, who is offensive and who is not) by attacking their manhood.

That is punk rock right there.

The above are the many reasons I love New York people. Even in the day of chatrooms and blogs and angry 3am emails they will actually take the time to come down and kick your ass in person.

Fuck success.

Fuck money.

Fuck doing jail time.

If your big mouth and cocky attitude wrote a check for an ass kicking a New Yorker regardless of financial status or success will definitely cash that fucker. And they will do that shit in public.

Will a fight ever break out at a LA book signing? Nope, reason being is that most LA writers are gutless ass kissers. Even the badass ones aren’t really badass. They are simply wearing a costume. Like people who dye their hair green from a hair dye they bought at Hot Topic in the mall.

Who goes to the mall anymore?

If you go to the mall how can you be anti-establishment? Dyeing your hair green isn’t even anti-establishment anymore.

Mick Farren is in the wrong city. He wrote for Bomp. The LA version of Creem. I understand that LA has great weather, but I think Mick Farren should have gone to New York. There is no one here to fight with. Of course the women are better looking, Detroit is a harsh place, but in LA the above scenario will never happen.  There is no one that will jump up in the audience and go, “You’re a fucking liar,” or “That shit didn’t happen,” or “What the fuck is this?”

In LA no one will ever say that to anyone that is doing a reading, a concert, an art show because the reason people are at events in Los Angeles isn’t because they appreciate anyone’s work, but to network and kiss ass. Not that they don’t do that in New York, but that’s not the main purpose.

In New York they have an opera. In New York they have an opera that they don’t have to give away almost free tickets, to get people to show up. People care about things other than TV and fighting with idiots online.

Fights are to be done in person.

In New York they have magazines and newspapers, lots of them. Not just one major and two weeklies and glossy shittily produced adwells pretending to be magazines. In New York they’ve got several dailies, dozens of weeklies, and plenty of ‘zines. They have a culture of writing and it shows in the writing and the spirit of the writers.

Writing is a craft that is respected on the east coast.

Maybe the east coast is where the gods are. Maybe the reason that people in LA are such chicken shit, is because they know that they can’t survive just on their words or art alone.

Mick Farren (he’s “punk rock”, but not punk rock, but in spirit, “punk rock”) gave an interesting anecdote at West Hollywood bookstore (a store which needs to fucking have their reading in the annex and not in the cramped front with SIX chairs, what the fuck!!! they used to have eight, but they had to put some cheesy Chronicle Playboy books in the last row. Chronicles you're not Taschen, please stop, seriously you're not helping the print world at all...)  last night about a writer who loved Keith Richards. He paraphrased that this one particular writer (he gave the name, but I can’t remember it exactly), was doing the whole “I know Keith he is my best friend blah, blah, blah…”

One day Keith invited his “best friend” to his house and he put out a giant line of heroin, he took half and gave his “best friend” the other. His “best friend” ended up waking up three days later in the hospital.

I guess the moral to that story is if you want to party with the gods, build up a better tolerance to hard street drugs…or maybe not.

by Browne

Child rearing advice or how dirty hippies broke Browne's heart

Sometimes people want to know why I have such a bad attitude, I have to say mainly it is due to the fact that I really believed the counter culture movement.

I was born with parents who dropped acid and smoked pot and had conversations about the “man” for hours and hours. They said things like, fuck society, fuck this, fuck that, up with the people and down with corporations. They didn’t believe in marriage or god or anything, because those were all the kinds of things that oppressed people.

When I was born in the tail-end of the 70s that’s the world I came into and then after all of that, the booming rhetoric and big party stopped.

No more communes, no more drugs, no more nothing 1990 came along and the people that I was raised by decided they weren’t doing that anymore and essentially said, “just kidding.”

What the fuck do you mean just kidding? So now you want me to go to school, pay attention, listen to the man after all of that bullshit. Well fuck you, because now it’s too late. I’m totally fucked up now.

I mean how could you raise someone in that environment and then go, “just kidding.”

How fucked up is that?

What’s the point of my post? This is the point, all you hipster assholes with kids that give them faux hawks and temporary tattoos and take them to art gallery openings at 9pm, don’t be surprised when you figure out that whole free love alternative shit doesn’t work with kids. It makes them into little heathens, not artful connoisseurs with taste and culture. Once you figure that out and you want your kids to go to a good college and not be complete burn out losers and you start with the, “you should stop using drugs honey,” they are going to tell you to go fuck yourself.

Seriously that is what will happen, because that is what you told them to do. You told them to not respect authority and you being the parent which is the biggest authority in a kid’s life that means they are not going to respect you.

When I was 12 years old I told my mom to shut the fuck up and she just stood there. At that point I came under the false impression that I was invincible.  I think had she back slapped me, I’d be a better person today.

I’m a big believer in if you have kids have the courtesy to let them be kids and figure it out for themselves. That means setting limits and believing in something, something other than figuring out yourself.

People often ask me do I think I’m better off having been exposed to so much, so young and I answer emphatically “hell fucking no.” I’m not better off than my friends with normal parents that didn’t teach them how to roll a joint at eight years old. I don’t feel my world view is helping me deal with the actual real world, because I don’t understand the real world.

I have no idea how to wait. I have no respect for authority. I have no understanding of consequences. I have no clue of code of conduct. I just do whatever, but you know when you just do whatever in the real world and you’re 29 years old no one thinks that shit is very cute, but what can I do? This is who I am now. I am not necessarily blaming my parents, but you know I do blame those damn hippie counter culture poseurs.

I believed, what you believed in. I still deep down inside believe all of that shit. I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that it was all a fad.  I didn’t know it was a fad.

How is a ten year old supposed to know you were all just kidding?

Browne

PS Where is my fucking Pepsi?

Cocaine vs. cannabis: World Prices in 2005

Unlike the ridiculously serious media of America, a demeanour of which is made all the more appalling for the ludicrous subjects promoted, the straight-ahead mindset with a dash of humour found in rags such as The Economist (always one of my favourites) allows folk to figure out which way they want to think about things that most media will not mention without overtly peddling some agenda.

Here are two examples:

Cocaine

Cannabis

YOU decide!

-BusTard

"Dazed" is the new "drunk."

Could District Attorney Steve Cooley be Rocky Delgadillo's cretinous twin? Or is Stevie looking to get on board for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary's next explosion of new and detourned vernacular? Either way, what usta be termed "drunk" now appears to be "dazed." Could what usta be known as a "weak chin" be now termed a "gutless gob"? Stevie makes me wanna sing this song.
The domino theory seems to be in big play in L.A. politics, what with the way all these schmucks—Tony, Rocky, Stevie—are being knocked back by half-assed celebrities spewing unfounded excuses (too bad they had no script on hand) who are too stoopid to hire a driver for all the millions they make. Maybe they are all being shat out by the Andy Dick school of Stoopid over near MacArthur Park, albeit with better lawyers and more than enough money required to keep them out of jail?
Few on the street know, but as a man, lemme make this clear: Steve Cooley, you are a fucking schmuck to me. I would not let you dry my hands on the way out of the toilet.

-BusTard

Depatterning Societies, Anarchy, Pure Capitalism and The Stench of Semantics

In Naomi Klein's not-so-shocking title titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," the shock is that it seems shocking.
Indeed, one should be shocked that the rest of the world outside the western world, or at least the U.S., wonders why Milton Friedman's desire for a "state of pure capitalism" is merely a gentleman's way of introducing anarchism. To let the market dictate the ways and means would be one hell of a circus about bread, except that the circus-goers tend to pay whatever price those in power advocating "pure capitalism" desire. And it is these same folk what make such a hue and cry about the abominations of violent dictators who wiggle from out of their capitalist control.
To be sure, I am not advocating the abolition of any western government, nor anarchy of any stripe (anarchy, after all, is based in a responsibility to self; "anarchy" is not possible in a western world where even fat crayons are beyond the comprehension of the middle class) or any fashion of new idiocy.
A daily 99¢ burger at the local fast-food joint is a bargain to none other than junkies; the small bit of change saved for the day will be compounded by the dreadful paucity of quickly diminishing health. Milton, were he still alive, would not hesitate to inform such a fool as what thinks a few dollars a day at the local "fry & die" is done in the name of not spending money for "expensive" food, that the health benefits would be well into the red.

Bon appetit.

-BusTard

"No, I'M Brian!" Now, where's my money? MY NECK HURTS!!!

from today's L.A. Times:

"Buses were used to transport riders until the Gold Line was back in service about 11:30 a.m., Sheriff's Lt. Ron Kegel said.

'About 20 people were on the train,' Kegel said. Officials have located 12 passengers and are trying to find others who left the scene after the crash."

for those who do not want to scroll down through the many pages of memorable quotes:

Centurion: Where is Brian of Nazareth?
Brian: You sanctimonious bastards!
Centurion: I have an order for his release!
Brian: You stupid bastards!
Mr. Cheeky: Uh, I'm Brian of Nazareth.
Brian: What?
Mr. Cheeky: Yeah, I - I - I'm Brian of Nazareth.
Centurion: Take him down!
Brian: I'm Brian of Nazareth!
Victim #1: Eh, I'm Brian!
Mr. Big Nose: I'm Brian!
Victim #2: Look, I'm Brian!
Brian: I'm Brian!
Victims: I'm Brian!
Gregory: I'm Brian, and so's my wife!
Victims: I'm Brian! I'm Brian!...
Brian: I'm Brian of Nazareth!
Centurion: All right. Take him away and release him.
Mr. Cheeky: No, I'm only joking. I'm not really Brian. No, I'm not Brian. I was only - It was a joke. I'm only pulling your leg! It's a joke! I'm not him! I'm just having you on! Put me back! Bloody Romans! Can't take a joke!

Zeno the Junkie Robot Boy

After drinking a carafe of wine from Palermos the other night (thought I'd keep it clean you know) I woke up from being passed out briefly and caught a freaky robot on TV . His name is Zeno.

I drew the picture of him, because I didn’t want to lift a picture and have someone saying that I couldn’t use their picture to mock something.

Good thing I’m a talented sketcher.

Why does the robot look like a junkie?

Who would buy their kids a junkie robot doll?

"I need more junk, that's why my eyes are dead and my mouth is happy. I can't go cold turkey. I'll get the shakes then I'll have to rob  you and I'm a robot, so guns and tasers won't work on me," freaky junkie robot boy.

You won't be smoking my color TV robot junkie boy.

--ShametrainLA

Were it not for beer, we'd eat each other.

There is that rare night.
Kinda like the way six allotropes want to make plutonium and that one last unstable one makes it bounce the wrogn fucken way: and yet they all come together to make it all come apart.
ShameTrain collided tonight, after an evening of exchanging snarls and stares with the LAPD at Palermo's (sorry, Tony).
One of us could not make it home to pee, and the rest of us snickered on the way there. And most of the ass—er, allotropes, tried not to make noise in the background, of course.