Remember the first time you got hit with an existential crisis? And I don’t mean that time you were splitting your skull at the end of your marijuana-and-breakfast-burrito fueled freshman year, trying to decide between the bland Plan II and majoring in Paleoanthropological Cultural Studies. Because that wasn’t a crisis. That was just a braveless soul-hole being a pretentious asshole by arguing with themselves over how few job prospects their super-smug future would hold. more ›

The thing about the rain here is that it's almost as if our ground has no idea what to do with it. Like birds and coconuts. Penguins and high-fives. Magnets and Juggalos. If our rain doesn't have somewhere easy to park itself, like a downstream flood-friendly town of some kind, then it just rushes around breaking sh*t around whatever hapless area it pissed down on. A mindless, listless menace. I can't tell you how many times I've come out to my street-parked vehicle in the morning to find what looks like a whole goddamn bail of hay, peppered with used diapers, wrapped around the most uphill tires. Obviously the work of a sh*t-river which, having no where else to wreck havoc, took over my street while I slept. more ›

Two windows down, with an arm hanging out the driver’s side. Round about the roundabout on Riverside by Long. One ear has an iPod dripping down from it because the radio’s shot, but having both buds in place combines with the oppressive air temp and makes me feel too confined. Like a coffin of boiling music. A blazing cocoon of last year’s not-hot list. Tunes of was-hot which are no longer the now-hot that targets the aged and baby-like. So, so, so crippling, and the back of my seat is damp from my body’s tears. more ›

It’s been too long since we last spoke to one another, in earnest. Too much has been going down for so much distance to have rifted betwixt our talking parts. The parts that used to have coffee at Bouldin every Saturday morning. Avocado margaritas at Curra’s every Sunday. The Austin I used to get in slap fights with in the alley back behind The Ritz. more ›

It’s rather strange how expectations are built up. More often than not, they’re based in some alternate reality where everything and everyone’s interests revolve around the single individual (or group) who is building those expectations. In the case of absinthe: ME. As if their (my) needs trump those of the entire universe. Folly (genius). more ›

The weather turns a little more chilly, which gets me frisky. My friskiness leads me to think that my liver’s not perpetually on crutches and that it’s totally acceptable for me to go lounge at any ol’ bar somewhere on a random Wednesday and get absolutely whiskey soaked by warm candle light. Then go eat something large, fatty, and fried. Like a whole pig, wrapped in mesh-weave of crispy bacon. After all the poison and that cornucopia of death, I usually stagger back out into the cold night air, lost and confused, with all my booze-soaked blood rushing to my stomach to get that mess processed and OUT. Then I walk home. Sometimes for miles. Sometimes it takes hours. more ›

Lawn jobbin’ on their way back home from Chuggin’ Monkey, three piggy-pink bro-hams plow over as many election signs as they can, counting them as they go. “Damn Jeff, that’s fifteen you dickface!” Then they hit a possum, and Jeff cries a little, on the inside. Whatever your bend or motivation, please, PLEASE go vote. more ›

took one of the most wretched shits of my life inside a Chinese toilet in the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing, where the only toilet paper to be found within four square miles was in my treacherous memory and the air was thick with the scent of dodged death and heavy with a Marlboro Reds haze. more ›

Dear Austin, It’s been a while since we’ve talked, and that’s because I’ve been super-busy. What with all the non-Austin related shit I’ve been up to and, well, frankly, the avoiding-of-the-murderous-heat. You know how I do. more ›

Immediately after pulling the mirror from the wall, I noted a strange vertical squiggle in the newly exposed sheetrock. Before closer inspection, it simply looked like a tear in the surface, as if some adhesive from the mirror’s back side had anchored well and I’d ripped a piece of the substrate off with. But something wasn’t completely right about that assumption. The mark was about six inches long and perhaps a centimeter wide, with specks of dirt around the edges like a halo of broken dreams. more ›

I personally believe that racism is little more than lazy analysis, for which every human who has ever existed is guilty. Generalizations of any kind, whether drawn along lines of race, gender, sexual preference, eye color, juggling ability, or gastrointestinal fortitude, are simply the product of a lazy, bullshit short-cut. more ›

You may not realize this, but in 1492 when George Washington wrote the Constitution, the entire world was watching on closed circuit television. It was like we were the baby Jesus in that barn, with England and France as our virgin parent-handlers, and the rest of the infinite universe as the sheep being watched over by Germany, Earth's kindliest human shepherds. more ›

On the day after tomorrow. more ›

And just before I completely blacked out from severe blunt force trauma (her hams against my head), Sweet Cream and strawberries all over everything, I noticed that my torn left ear had fallen into my lap. Yes, I just made that last moment up. more ›

There are a number of ways in which one can adapt the female-to-female connector issue here. Most are unreliable, and some are almost guaranteed to fail. The most common solution is a ring of wax. That’s right, your body secretions just sort of slide between the two open holes through a brief tunnel of brown wax. It’s like cave science, but in your home. more ›

So there’s a couple of new heads in The Hall, and I have to ask the question: the result of the elections seriously feels like little more than a new layer of paint, and is that what we need right now? With everything that's building up and out around us? more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors more ›

Unmanned, limping and in pieces, that Lincoln with all its suicide-door’d glory, launched over a small cliff on the edge of the parking lot, crossed 37th, and took out the Northeast corner of La Madeleine’s outdoor patio. Destroyed it. Mowed over a dressed cement wall, and violently through some fancy bistro sets. more ›

Sometimes we need to go back to basics. Pure, basic-basics. The bare minimum required. And thankfully, now that I’m old enough to recognize the signs of impending disaster, I can (hopefully) head that bad-boy off at the pass and keep things as kosher as possible for another round or two. At least I’ll live to fight another day. Anyone with any sort of body cleansing procedure, no matter how fucked up and disturbed… my liver’s listening. Intently. more ›

Some friends of mine were sitting at the Vietnamese sandwich stand on South Lamar, just south of Oltorf. You know the one, between the Office Depot and that tire shop that always blinds the shit out of me with thousand spoke rims shined to NASA specifications, all tethered together and splayed out near the bus stop to really piss off those who can’t afford to do anything but ride the Metro downtown. Across from where that other tire shop used to be, where they had another thousand-spoke rim chained to their street sign, but the rim was about three feet in diameter. Like it was designed for a pimp's dumptruck or something. Shit was INSANE. more ›

They were out there, the dudes, standing with slumps, targeted by those police lights. Though appearing pretty sedated, their faces showed a curiously awed fear. Like they just woke up in a stranger’s life. As if they’d Quantum Leaped, or got crossed-up in some weird Memento scenario, blinked, and WHOOSH – car is wrecked and cops are tapping their toes with expectation. Looking at them, you knew that they knew they were beyond help at that point. Chemicals moving through the system, dousing all attempts at neurological focus. more ›

Sleeve tattoos and neck specks (smallish tattoos on the neck, usually a spider web, Mickey Mouse, or a cursive name) are just as popular there as they are here. As are chest tats for dudes in v-necks. Bikes, bikes, bikes. Everyone’s on bikes. Bikes are chained up all over the downtown area. Just about any open post or chainlink fence is coated in cycles like the front of a middle school. It’s quite beautiful, really. more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors more ›

or most of us who simply go to work, ruthlessly stab our livers, mow our lawns, and try to find enough time to fight off sleep deprivation, voting is the most impact you will likely have on the world you live in. SO GO. Vote your brain. Vote your heart. Vote your history. Vote your soul. I don’t care, just go vote for something. STAY FOR THE CAUCUS!!! more ›

Yeah, while you and your other bubble people are mercilessly burning the ghosts of dinosaurs long since passed, I’m out here inhaling your shit results. And man, I gotta say, it makes me feel like a better person than you. Like, Jesus better. While your mouth is all agape with impressedness, go ahead and roll down your window, Rapunzel. Let down your ratty mane of ignorance. Take a long gander at moral superiority. Check my dope shades. Smell the sweat. Yeah. Suck it in. more ›

For a year now it’s been a strange coexistence with these beasts of inconvenience. It’s not like I’d crack open a box of cereal and they’d pour out in a waterfall of crippling disappointment. Or that they’d even be found in the kitchen at all. Normally I’d find one pathetically backstroking on the floor tile in my hallway, and then dispose of it neatly. But every once in a while there’d be an adventurous fucker that would show up on the ceiling above our bed, as we were going to sleep, threatening to drop down like some crazed black-ops periplaneta. All hell would break loose for an hour or so until I could get the thing quarantined and dismissed. Neither of us would sleep for an hour after that. more ›

Nothing quells the squabbling mass’s ire like a fat check. You want those three dudes who pissed in your gym locker to change their tune? Buy them off. You know what will impress the volleyball team? Bomb-ass circuses. What do all bouncers and voters in Florida understand when it comes to deciding whether they like someone or not? Bread. Dinero. Duckets. Dosh. Some-other-D-word-for-money. That’s a uni-goddamn-versal hand-shake that says “if you didn’t believe in my powers of affable superiority before, perhaps the fact that I can magically produce some money for your wallet will change your mind.” more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors more ›

I don’t believe I’m properly equipped to "welcome" myself after yet another year of meeting with you on Tuesdays (sometimes Wednesdays, Thursdays, Whateverdays). And it’s not easy to express my gratitude to people I’ve never met. People who have so many different reasons for being here, for something so irreverently personal. So I’ll defer my copy to the illustrious Mr. Samuel Clemens, as he handed thanks to the Lotus Club in 1908. more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors more ›