old man in a huge balloon bites your hitted hip tenderly.

if japan isn't the greatest country on earth... between this video of "Silent Library," the women, the music, the game shows, Nintendo, Akira Kurosawa, the forgiving spirit following WWII, aibo, the sake, the "theme" clubs, Shinzo Abe, the motorcycle gangs, the motorcycles, PlayStation, the insane population density, mt. fuji, and that festival in Osaka i heard about...

watch the entire video. you won't regret it.

don't fuck wit me cuzzzz ima go get my (water) gun!

Super Soakers!?! oh shit son! i don't how i arrived here, but it's not fucking important. all i know is this was another of the many examples of the paradigm shift that the 1990s represented, marketing-wise.

if you're at or near my age, you have no problem identifying the numerous instances where you were directly and furiously marketed to, with various foods/snacks/drinks, dolls, action figures, vehicles to house said action figures, and movie tie-ins. we were there for the start of this lunacy.

of course, the Super Soaker water gun was an integral component of this plastic and sugar-rich strategy.

honestly, i didn't know the Super Soaker was invented by a black man, Lonnie Johnson. looks like Stevie Wonder needs to re-dub that song of his:

Stevie: "and who invented the most popular water gun of all time, raking in over 200 million in sales for Hasbro, Inc.?"

Chorus of kids: "Lonnie Johnson, a-black-man!"

my parents were extremely trepidatious about buying me any toy that resembled a gun, so it took me a while to get myself into the madness.

at the start, i had the miniscule Super Soaker 30. a sidearm. had to fill it up after every shot. shortly after i got that piece of shit, i got this water balloon slingshot. fucking weak. the balloons were tiny and impossible to fill, and the slingshot itself was incredibly difficult to draw. one day i did get a shot off. nailed a kid right in the face. he cried for hours. didn't see him much after that.

after weeks of my selfish, incessant pleading for an upgrade, my rents finally buckled and copped the Super Soaker 50 from KayBee Toys.

basically the AK-47 of Super Soakers. cheap, reliable, effective and everybody had one. so many summers of targeting the kid who "couldn't get wet," feverishly pumping away, building pressure, forearms aching.

after my 50 was in shambles from a year of mock warfare, i stepped up to the Super Soaker 100. gangsta gangsta at the top of the list.

i must admit, however, that i never got my hands on the 300. this was basically a cannon, with a backpack water reservoir that held something like two or three gallons of water. basically a weapon of mass destruction in the context of backyard water fights. i also wouldn't have minded that MDS shit either. basically a reworked 50 with a swiveling nozzle so you could ice cats around corners. genius.

during my fledgling years of high school, i, along with a few other friends (including one who was on that 300 shit) would drive around, blasting random cats on the sidewalk, laughing our asses off. oh those precious, harmless years of weed experimentation.

we filled our guns with brightly colored, syrupy juices and sodas, so that not only would our victims' clothes be ruined, but so that they would be swarmed by bees as well. fucking hilarious.

but one summer, a bunch of cats on the westside drove around doing the same shit, only they filled their joints with bleach. ended up hitting an infant in the face. bad news bears, of course. apparently babies and bleach don't mix. go figure.

so from then on, the baltimore police dept. was on the prowl for any and all (black) kids wielding Super Soakers.

the end of an era.

but though i've been out of the game for over a decade, it's good to see a new generation of young bucks getting in on what we started. gotta teach these kids to embrace the gun-toting spirit of American masculinity. nice and early.

the power of the internet. web 2.0 working for you!

because it's there, and i wanted to let you know it's there. and because i haven't been 100% irreverent in a while. there is no redeeming value to this. just go with the flow.

god bless Formula Un!

for those who don't know/care, Formula One is the absolute pinnacle of motorsport, a technological showcase featuring ethereal machines piloted by the world's most elite drivers. much like soccer, it's a sporting phenomenon that's wildly popular everywhere but the U.S.

this weekend saw F1 history as McLaren-Mercedes rookie driver Lewis Hamilton, a 22-year old Briton of mixed race, took the vic at the Grand Prix du Canada in Montreal. it was the first time a brown-skinned person had won a Grand Prix event.

Tiger Woods comparisons are being bandied about, which is at least somewhat justified. in six races, Hamilton's finished no worse than 3rd. quite simply, he's dominating.

surely i'm happy for the dude, both inside and outside the context of race. yet in the wake of his win, something did strike a chord with me. listening to BBC World's sports recap, much of the talk was centered around Hamilton's epic win. along with that, a good amount of the conversation also focused on how articulate and personable and well-spoken he was.

hearing all this white laudation of his nicely packaged and easily consumable manner made me kinda wish he looked and sounded a bit more like say, Dizzee Rascal, with the style sense of Ali G thrown in for kicks. see how much cats love him then. shift the paradigm a bit.

because believe it or not, calling me/lewis hamilton/barack obama/etc. articulate or well-spoken is less of a compliment than you think.

if you don't believe me, see Chris Rock's classic stand up "Bring The Pain." like everything else, it's on YouTube.

word.

If the doors of perception were cleansed...

...everything would appear to man as it is. Infinite.

Daniel Pinchbeck, vaunted member of the hallucinogenic pantheon (Leary, Kesey, Hofmann, et al), reading from his book "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl." Given recent experiences, a guy like this should be my mortal enemy, but how can I hate this lovable fuck? Once those ol' gilded doors open, they can't be shut entirely. not by anyone or anything.


epilogue
"You haven't made it in New York until you've vomitted out of a cab and you've fucked Daniel Pinchbeck." - Some chick in an interview whose name will go unremembered. Welcome to Bat Country

the devil and paris hilton: hands down the most poignant thing you'll read about the miscarriage of justice that is the paris hilton saga.

this was the first picture of Paris i ever laid eyes on. i remember thinking, "what a piece of ass? who is this chick?" what a difference a sex tape/slew of reckless driving incidents/utterance of racial slurs/reality series/probation violation/premature release/courtroom sobbing episode makes.

i guess that head wasn't right. a little too much tooth and not enough tongue, perhaps? because fuck knows that back during the middle stages of all this, at least the judge caught a domeshot from young Ms. Hilton. or else we wouldn't be where we are today.

but, as i'm sure you've heard, our lengthy national nightmare has seen its temporary resolution. and already, the denouement is proving to be hilariously tragic. apparently, prisoner 90210 (you like that don't you motherfucker? of course i stole it!) is not eating or sleeping. she's also been doing a lot of praying apparently.

hunger strike? daily prayers to Mecca? such a beacon. such a ray of light that lass is. a display of determination and self-discipline not seen since Martin Luther King penned his Letters From Inside a Birmingham Jail.

or maybe it's just a healthy serving of simultaneous withdrawal, with a heavy helping of desperation gravy, ladled on nice and thick. did you ever think of that? yeah, that's it. withdrawal. she's freaking out man! jonesing! chronic withdrawal symptoms, on account of the plethora of drugs Ms. Hilton is clearly addicted to. dope sickness is no laughing matter people! though according to Reuters, her shrink has been giving her "psychoactive drugs." you call them psychoactive, i call them Naltrexone and Antabuse.

every step of this seems to have been a slap in the face to the "ordinary American majority."

"'Mom, Mom. It's not right,' she wailed as she was led out of the courtroom. Her mother, Kathy Hilton, also sobbed."

what the fuck? it's amazing how distraught she and her mother have been (mother sobbing; daughter is allegedly on suicide watch; what the fuck?), given the fact that millions of mothers have seen and will see their sons and daughters dragged off in cuffs and jumpers knowing that they won't see them ever again, much less in three weeks.

it doesn't anger as much as it saddens. but along with this being a manifestation of the importance class plays in our judicial system, this is an embodiment of the American Individualist ethos. surely not exhibited solely by the hyperwealthy.

fuck walking a mile in your shoes! i wouldn't be caught dead in that Payless trash!

yet it goes without saying that the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," "i got mine, you get yours" state of mind has done more harm than good, and quite frankly, is outmoded. has been for generations. with diminshing exception, empathy has all but vanished from the American sociopolitical landscape. and we're seeing that in, among other cases, Paris's bitchass reaction to a class-blind, functioning justice system.

as far as the development, i wasn't indoors to see the Paparazzi earning their keep in front of the Hilton home the other day. but i have to wonder why formerly respectable mainstream media outlets felt that news of a spoiled slut socialite being rightfully remanded to the L.A. County Sheriff's custody was on par with say, 9/11 or the Invasion of Iraq or the VT shootings. or for that matter, the Battle of Los Angeles 15 years before. interrupting my stories for this shit? oh fuck naw.

have we fucking gone mad! someone certainly has.

before entry, paris said that she was going to "serve her time the right way" and serve as an "example to young people out there." good talk Paris. because if anyone's going to serve as an example around here, it's going to be you. teach these girls how to go out there and be somebody. or do somebody. a lot of somebodies. rich somebodies.

an example.

that worked out. surely money alone didn't lead to this delusion, though it most certainly helped. no. the prime suspect in this murder mystery is you. and me. and those we know and love. and those we don't. keep paying attention, keep giving yourself to this, and this is what's going to happen.

i can't really say that i'm glad she's back in jail. not because i sympathize, but because "back in jail" should not even have been a topic of discussion here.

in a state where the "3 Strikes" mandate is constantly fucking up the lives of (Brown and Black) people throughout California, crowding its jails and straining its budget, and given LAPD's repugnant, yet rightfully earned, reputation, you'd think this would be the last thing the judicial system there would allow for.

our need to feed on this foolishness begs a question. one of cultural norms. one that many of us won't be alive to see the answer to.

considering that half a century ago, Elvis gyrating his hips was regarded as obscene by the troublesome and damning American concensus, and given the no holds barred media clime of "today," (i.e. "One Night In Paris" being Ms. Hilton's "big break") where are we headed next?

in the next 50 to 100 years, given that planet Earth isn't more like planet Mercury, how drastically will we, and our sensibilities, (d)evolve culturally? anything goes, maybe? a full hour of "Monkeys Fucking Kids with a Wide-Angle Lens" anchoring NBC's highly prized "Must See TV" Thursday night lineup?

regardless of what "tomorrow" brings, i guess the most comforting message for both Paris and a sickly American mass would be that Hope Springs Eternal. we're gonna get through this babydoll. just gotta know we can.

i guess i'll hold that message dear to my heart should i ever be sentenced, YHWH forbid. maybe i'll pull a Wayans Brothers and hire some Hollywood makeup artist to transform me into a white broad. that seems to be my best hope for this situation, eh? wish me luck.