Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine Volume VII, Issue 5, AD MMII Monday, March 11, 2002 ISSN 1482-0471 ------------------------------------------- ... and on top of all this, this girl is so fucking sexy, I would kill members of my immediate family just for five seconds alone with her bicycle seat. Or, as someone else put it once, I would crawl through a barrel of broken glass to put matchsticks in her shit. -- 665 http://www.sixsixfive.com/184.html ------------------------------------------- Tim stole a fish from me yesterday. It's a little fish ornament. The fish is in a judicial robe holding a scroll. The caption says, "Carp Diem" and the scroll says, "Seize the Worm." Tim enjoyed looking at it immensely. I said he could have it (I guess it was my mom's. We have a lot of crap here.) -- Dan Foster ------------------------------------------- 1. Editorial 2. The last (half) straw 3. A WASP Speaks 4. CoN at the Movies 5. Hurricanes and Hand Grenades ------------------------------------------- This week's Golden Testicle award: Why dating your boyfriend's boss is a bad idea. http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/media/player2/1,4566,2410176,00.html?fid= 2410176&mt=&bw=&refsite=&rcid=&prn=&it=&pop=&lid=&cch=3 ------------------------------------------- 1. Editorial Something Purely Brilliant By Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro Something purely brilliant is really what this Editorial should've been. The idea came to me while I was driving the other night, in between the thoughts of how good the slice of cake I ate had been and how the car I was driving has two settings for temperatures: hot and hell. That the idea was pure brilliance, however, is the only thing I remember about it. I've been sitting here, on and off, staring at this file, trying to remember what it was, but the only thing that pops to mind is the fact that, back when the idea popped to mind, I realized how brilliant it was. That's about it. Of course I should've stopped at the side of the road, looked for a pen and a piece of paper and jotted down that idea. I usually carry with me the basic essentials to make MacGyver look like an inept child. That includes pen, paper and whatever is needed to build a glider using my pants and this piece of plastic I found under the seat. However I seem to lack the basic knowledge to write down a fresh idea before I forget it. Writing things down, though, seems to sort of defy the whole purpose of doing it. Because once you've written it down, it's like you can never forget it. Maybe, really, that's the trick. You write something down, to ensure that it stays with you without having to look at the paper every five minutes. Unless of course you loose the paper you wrote it on. Then, promptly, you'll never remember what it was. People of course are all understanding and helpful and provide you with useful tips on how to regain lost and forgotten thoughts. "Think backwards!" they tell me. The idea here is that you start from your most recent thought and then you work your way back to whatever it was that you were thinking of. This has never worked. I seem to manage to go off in a tangent once again, except this time, in reverse. Someone else suggested going back in the car, doing what I was doing and seeing if the place would help my recollection. Indeed how good that cake had been popped to mind; the fact that the stupid heater in the car only has hot and hell as settings; and, naturally, that the idea was so damn brilliant it wasn't even funny. It also occurred to me that a few nights ago I had been stopped by police. I still am not sure as to what may have caused them to grow all suspicious on me, but perhaps the fact that I drive a beater and that I was going 40 in a 50 zone, following them, rather than passing, might've made me highly suspicious. They pulled up after me in the driveway, checked my ID to make sure that a guy that looks like me and drives that thing actually lives in this relatively decent area and then we discussed how their on board computer runs Windows 98. But I'm digressing and I still don't know what the brilliant idea was. Lastly, someone said that I should associate what I'm thinking with a specific word so that when I think of that word it will `unlock' my mind. It's my guess that just the word `brilliance' won't do the trick here. Some people have no bowel control; I seem to have no mind control. My mind and I seem to be two different creatures sharing the same body. We both want to do different things and argue about it. But, ha ha, brain, I managed to write so much drivel even without remembering what the idea was about in the first place! Of course, my brain will find a way to stall me when it comes to writing the closing paragraphs, but then again, I seem to have problems doing that on a daily basis. I don't think he's to blame. Richard Campbell writes: Con should not give me a hard on Indeed. We only give testicles. Please return the defective issue to whomever gave it to you. ------------------------------------------- 2. The last (half) straw By Revscrj I'd been reading my poetry at this place's open mike for quite sometime when, lo and behold, I found myself unemployed again. Times weren't all that hard though. I was sleeping in a sleeping bag in a room of the barren two bedroom apartment I shared with another writer friend of mine, Johnny. Our only furniture was a bed in the living room that simulated a couch -- neither of us slept on it -- and a bucket filled 2/3rds with water to use with a gravity bong. Rent was cheap, overhead was minimal. It was, unfortunately mid-month, so I had to come up with some income pretty quick. The result: I got a job as a barrista in this poetry dive coffee house run. My boss and owner, Barbara, was probably the outright stupidest person I ever worked for -- the kind of person who'd forget why she was yelling at you while she was yelling you -- and then have the audacity to ask you if you remembered. I mean at first I thought it was some kind of asshole-ish trick to see if I was listening to her but quickly I realized that she literally could not hold a train of thought for more than like 90 seconds. I learned to use that to my advantage a number of times: "Sean?" "Yes Barbara?" She'd come up to me slightly hunched, face balled up in an expression of possible irritation, but conveying an air of total confusion. "Did you just give that guy a double mocha for coffee price?" Of course I had, he's a friend of mine, so I say: "Yes Barbara, you said that I could make my friends drinks for a dollar as long as I wasn't using ice-cream in them." Total lie. "I did not." "Well, you did, but I'll stop if you want." "When did I say it?" "Geez... about a week or two back." "Hmm... well lets just say half price okay?" "Yeah sure, whatever you want -- 1/2 price?" "Yes" In actuality she had originally told me that my friends couldn't get discounts, but hey, that was like a month or so prior. Anyway, apply that model to any confrontation I might have with her and you can begin to understand the entertainment factor this job offered... at first... This one day she asks me to do inventory of all the goods in the shop. No problem. I ask her if that also means the perishables in the fridge, which are generally monitored more closely, and as I ask she waves me off -- which I translate into "No." An hour passes. I give her a list of goods, she says: "What about the produce? GOD SEAN- 'INVENTORY' is a SIMPLE concept!" I swear my hand twitches in want to knock her down. "Sure Barb', no prob' mein Fuher!" Her stares daggers at me. I inventory the produce and give her the now complete list... "Sean?" "Yes?" "This says we only have 3 and a half straws left. I can see more than that on the counter, and why do we just have half of a straw? Throw that away." I am vaguely dumbfounded by this, "...uhh -- heh -- No, that means we have three and a half boxes of straws left..." "THAT doesn't tell me how many straws we have left!!" Openly dumbfounded now, "...Barbara? Are you saying that you want me to count the individual straws?" "INVENTORY IS A VERY SIMPLE CONCEPT SEAN!" "RIGHT. Surrre. I'm on it Barb'." I think the grand total was somewhere around 3,650 straws... 4,800 some odd amount of swizzle sticks and roughly 1600 napkins. I counted them all aloud over the course of the rest of my shift and anytime anything, especially her, would interrupt me I'd "lose count" and have to start over. For some totally inexplicable reason this behaviour seemed to totally placate her! I ended up quitting this job when she decided one day, on the spot, that we needed to change the chocolate ratio we used in the mochas we made. That thought apparently consumed her so much that she grabbed my hands, in front of a bunch of customer, and literally tried to physically restrain me from making the drink INSTEAD of simply asking me to stop. I don't care who you are you just don't do that kind of shit unless you're saving a child from grabbing a pot of boiling water. I slammed the pitcher down and we both got splashed with near scalding milk. She jumps back. I look at the guy who is at the front of the line and he looks at me with both pity and confusion (as to whether he would get his mocha any time soon or not). I calmly walked over to copy down my hours and Barbara stands with her arms out, supplication style, and busts out with: "YOU'RE GOING TO FINISH THAT MOCHA, RIGHT?" People in line even laugh at her. I shake my head and walk out. It was either that or rip something off the wall. Next time I saw her she was chipper and cheery. She gave me my last check like she'd just sold me a latte and I don't think it was because she was trying to amicably usher me away, but in fact that she just simply could not even retain anger for longer than 90 seconds. Dope addled hippie burnout. --- REVSCRJ is a writer/musician living in Monterey, California. Constantly on the verge of homelessness, he hopes that you enjoy his work or else his life has been in vain. Contact REVSCRJ at revscrj@cloudfactory.org to lodge complaints, notify of lawsuits, or receive spiritual advice. ------------------------------------------- 3. A WASP Speaks By Cliff Yankovich There are some interesting things going on in the world today, are there not? Before I go any further I want to emphasize that the violent actions of any group of men and women which result in pain and death to other people sickens me. No matter what their skin color, religious and/or sociopolitical motivation may be. That said, I must confess to some sort of odd feeling of vindication lately. One bit of background, not only am I a white Anglo Saxon protestant, (if that were not enough these days), I happen to be a male, heterosexual to boot. Yes, I am a member of that most nasty of all groups - the feared straight, white male (SWM). You know us, the group responsible for all the oppression, slavery, corruption, and any other bad thing you can think or name in the world. Personally I think Hitler was a sick, twisted man deserving of some form of eternal punishment. There is no racial pride in my life - for the simple reason that I, along with so many other Americans - am a mutt. My father is Serbian and Croatian (how on earth that is possible is beyond me!) and my mother is a blend of English, Irish and whatnot. (You have never heard of the Isle of Whatnot?) When you consider the "diversity" of my genetic make-up you would realize that I could be at the top of the hip list except my hair is too brown and my skin is not brown enough to have anyone notice my diversity. Tiger Woods is certainly ethnically diverse, but he isn't any more so than I am. His diversity is hip these days, mine ain't. Anyway, my purpose today is to challenge you to put aside the last decade of learning that the White Male is the source of all evil. We aren't. Sad fact of business is that mankind (or should I say "person kind") of every color and stripe is sadly capable of evil. From everything available, there seems to be no evidence that the guys who flew the planes into the WTC were even remotely white or protestant. Of course there is the white boy from California who aligned himself with the terrorists, but we can cut him slack because, after all, he is from California and therefore must have been cleansed of any lingering SWM genes. I have it from a good source that he turned to the Taliban because of his oppressive, white father. Pardon my sarcasm - I shall reign it in. One can crack open the paper or listen to the radio and learn that Hindus are killing Moslems by the droves over in India. Not for the first time either. Yeah, you know India, the belly button of peace, love, and harmony. Seems that there exist men, women and children of the Hindu religion who have such a low tolerance for men, women and children of the Moslem religion that they heard them into houses and burn them alive. From my limited research it seems the reason for these hate crimes is that the Moslem population in India wants a little better treatment by the predominantly Hindu government. This seems to greatly irritate some Hindus. Odd, isn't it - our public schools can't teach anything remotely getting close to the "white man's religion" because it is so intolerant while at the same time many Eastern religions are held up as shining moral beacons. Hmmm, guess the facts just don't support that very much, do they? I am not saying that atrocities committed in the name of Christianity are any less atrocious. What I am saying is that we should not fool ourselves - people are people all over the world. To put the other religions of the world on some kind of pedestal while ignoring reality is no different than someone trotting off to church on Sunday while they cheat and oppress people the rest of the week. Hypocrisy by any other name remains nonetheless "a false claim to virtue". In our collective white guilt we have a tendency to make heroes of people, cultures, races, and religions other than our own. Am I saying that the treatment of the Native American people by white men fuelled by manifest destiny is something to be proud of? Nope. But we cannot forget what some of the Indian tribes did to other Indian tribes. There were hostile, war loving Native Americans who did some very atrocious things to other Native Americans, okay? Native Americans killed and stole property from each other. Let's not pretend that ALL Native Americans were docile, peace loving respecters of all life forms. It is a great fantasy but it merely represents a delusion brought when the pendulum of correction swings too far. There were some crazy, murderous, mean-spirited Indians just like there exist the same kind of Hindus. To personalize it, I mentioned above that my father is a mixture of Serbian and Croatian people. Hello - those two groups of people are supposed to be at each other's throats, not marrying and having kids. From what I read, there isn't too much to be proud of on either side in that "religious" war. So called Moslems and Christians are doing some very nasty things to one another. On my mom's side there are the English and Irish - whoops, I just read a review about a novel telling the story of a young Irish girl sold into slavery to English people way back when. It seems that was a common practice. And I may be wrong, but the Irish and English have been carrying on at each other for a long time - shooting, bombing, and burning one another. The Irish have been oppressed, but let's not forget that they blow up men, women, and children. Is such murder heroic? Yes, white people calling themselves Christians enslaved black people. Nothing to be proud of there. But a scan of history also tells us that certain African tribes used to enslave other African tribes AND even sell members of said captured tribes to the white slave traders. We love to romanticize the simple, humble, gentle people of Africa hey, guess what - Idi Amin was an African who shot Africans for Sunday afternoon fun. He was a non-moustachioed, bloodthirsty, very black version of Hitler. Africans can be very nasty to each other. Hmmm, maybe reparation should be ultimately sought from the first link in the slavery profit chain - the Africans who captured and sold other Africans. Let me play one more card - sexual preference. Gays and lesbians have been outcast and discriminated against by white Christian men. No doubt this is a bad idea and a deplorable plan of action. Jesus admonished that the person with no sin could throw stones. Read the account, everyone dropped their weapons and left. However, let's not ignore the truth that militant gays have interrupted church services by doing vile acts - destroying property and urinating on carpeting and pews. This is wrong and disgusting. It is just as much of a hate crime as when somebody screams "faggot" and throws a punch. Is one disgusting action more noble than the other? When gays make snide remarks at the expense of straight people is their hate crime somehow cleansed because of their gayness? Can you join me in saying aloud "Hypocrisy is hypocrisy"? When a Hindu burns a Moslem alive is it somehow a more peaceful death than when a Christian burned a living Native American? I would suggest that the "Hindus" burning Moslems are no more a representation of Hinduism than the "Christians" who burned Native Americans represented Christianity. Were the Moslems who killed thousands of innocents on September 11 following the true path in obedience to God? Not the God I believe in. I am an American, protestant male of a diverse, albeit not so- colorful, ethnic make up and I am not sorry about it anymore. --- c Copyright 2002 Cliff Yankovich www.chimeradesign.ws ------------------------------------------- 4. CoN at the Movies With Jeff Wright This is a re-write. Leo told me that what I originally submitted to him was the worst thing I've ever written. Boo hoo! I'm not changing the stupid headings though. F you Mr. Editor-in-Chief!!!! MOOZIE ONE: BOOGIE NIGHTS I love me my BOOGIE NIGHTS. I've said it before a couple times, maybe even more. I however, don't care. I shall promote it yet again. Y'all know the story. Boy with big cock becomes an overnight success in the 70's porn biz. This is all ruined of course, by drugs, egos, and bad haircuts. I fucking love this film! I said that already, didn't I? Go watch BOOGIE NIGHTS. "Oh how I wish that I had Jesse's girl! Why can't I find a woman like that? Like Jesse's girl." MOOGY TWO: MEN WITH BROOMS Don't watch this movie!!!!!!!!! Have I seen it? No. Should I? No. Should you? No. Unless you're retarded. In which case, I still encourage you not to go see it. You're retarded, and should stay indoors with your un-employed mother. And while it is a perfectly good reason not to see it. The fact that it's a comedy about curling isn't even close to the top of the list. MOODY TREE: FREE ENTERPRISE Don't watch this movie!!!!!!! Have I seen it? Enough of it. William Shatner does not even come close to saving this wretched piece of s.h. Where's George Takei? He's the man! DOOGIE WHORE: BODYGUARD FROM BEJING Leo and I watched it Saturday night. It was good times. Jet Li plays a bodyguard who has to protect a spoiled girlfriend of a rich guy. There's some pretty cool action in the flic, and really funny supporting characters (Did someone say 'Fat Po'?). Jet Li's supercool, and Leo said he'd fuck him. :) So did I though. :( LOUVIE FIVE: EVIL DEAD Because I saw it last night in a theatre, and it's fun. Later. --- Jeff only said he'd fuck Jet Li, so Leo didn't feel awkward. ------------------------------------------- 5. Hurricanes and Hand Grenades By Eric Rosenfield I went to New Orleans for the weather. That was my joke, anyway, the weather being about thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently they get one week of cold in New Orleans, and it just so happened to be the one week I was there. It was literally like some cliche' - it got nice on the day that I left. My idea was to go to New Orleans and play music on the street. I ended up in Jackson Square my first day pumping out the only two songs I knew with "New Orleans" in the lyrics - Proud Mary and Tangled Up in Blue - a couple times over, then I played "Short People" and some old lady who was the only one who remembered the song came over and give me a dollar. Street performing in the cold is a bad idea for so many reasons. It hurts your voice, it warps the neck of you guitar so you're constantly out of tune, it makes your strings break, and no one wants to stop and listen to you and most importantly, give you any money. So eventually I gave up and went into a strip club. I got into the strip club for free, the guy was giving away tickets and it was some kind of promotion. Here's how to get a lot of attention in a strip club: Go sit in the corner and look moody. Every time a stripper comes up to you, whatever she says, she just wants to give you a lap dance, so tell them that you don't want a lap dance within the first 5 seconds or so. That way if they stay, then they're just there to talk to you. Don't watch the dancers much. Sigh heavily to yourself, as if you cannot take the overwhelming heart-ache of your own ennui. Soon the strippers will all be fascinated with you. It helps if it's not a busy night and you're the only guy under thirty. Try it sometime. Bourbon street is kind of like Times Square was supposed to be. It's an ugly glitzy tourist trap that few locals in their right minds would ever go to, but it also held onto the sleaziness in the same way Vegas did - there are tons of strip clubs and sex shops and gay leather shops and whatever your fetish might be - there's even, in the middle of January and in the middle of the week, still hoards of frat boys getting drunk off of really cheap beer and throwing beads to women on balconies so they'll take off their shirts. It's an adult town, is all I'm trying to say. It's also an incredibly drunk town. Even the pizza places here - little pizzerias - have fully stocked bars. People just don't stop drinking, they wake up in the morning and drink until they fall over sometime the next morning. There's the touristy drinks - the hurricanes and hand grenades - tropical concoctions of rum and fruit juices, but mostly people drink beer. For four dollars I got the tallest biggie size plastic cup of Budwiser you've ever seen, and it came with two free refills. There was also this thing where the clubs would pay these girls to girl around with little vials of brightly colored drinks and put them in places in their bodies (like their mouth, cleavage, pants) while tourist men drank from the other end. I had never seen that before, but it struck me as one of the most singularly stupid things to pay for ever. There are a lot of really truly crazy people in New Orleans, and while there are certainly a lot in New York as well, I think the ratio in NO seems to be higher. At one point while I was street performing a guy walked up to me and grabbed my hand and started staring intently at my palm. Then he said "you have a nice bear there". Naturally I looked at him like he was out of his bleeding head. "Nice... nice little grizzly bear". He patiently explained to me that my animal totem was the grizzly bear and his animal totem was the timber wolf and grizzly bears and timber wolves don't get along so he couldn't talk to me. Then, despite his own warning, he introduced me to his friend the "dragonite" ("dragon knight"?) and that's when I carefully removed myself from the situation. And there was Keith the Cabby, the decisively overweight, long- haired sunglass wearing cab driver who drove me from the airport to the hostel, where I stayed. He saw my guitar and well, nothing would stop him from telling me all about how his band was signed to Geffen records and he had to leave because he got his girlfriend pregnant (I nod nod nod) and how he was a big player back in the day and, well, there's nothing like having two women at once let me tell you (I nod nod nod), and his wife was fucking some other dude but that didn't matter because he was fucking some other chick too and that wasn't what was really important (I nod nod nod) and well, fuck it all, I'm driving a cab now and who gives a fuck about anything anymore anyway because nothing really matters and I just hope my son does better then me little brat he's just like me (I nod nod nod)... And of course I had heard about the much vaunted "Gothic" scene in the home of Trent Reznor and Anne Rice, but all the Gothic clubs were pretty small and lame and I ended up one night escorting two Gothic girls through a really bad neighborhood off the French Quarter in the middle of the night to get to a club where they were supposed to be having a "Heavy Metal vs. Punk Rock Night", that we got there just in time to miss. We ended up having a drink and being joined a man who called himself "Chris the Dick" but who I prefer to think of as the Single Most Pierced Man Alive as he regaled us all with the brief and fascinating life of his Prince Albert. "Yeah, so I got everything pierced except for, y'know, that, and I tried it once. I had it, but like, you can't y'know DO anything for like WEEKS after you get it and man that was just two much because not four days after I got it did this girl who I had been after for like ever and suddenly she was into to me and I was like " - makes funny mouth noise - " off it comes, y'know." And the story of his ex-girlfriend - "I mean fuck, girl fucked with me once but fuck, look at the tattoo on the back of my neck, okay?!" (tattoo reads: FUCK OFF in big, bold letters) "So the fucking bitch dumped me on my birthday, right, can you believe that shit? She dumps me on my birthday so, you know, I went out and found some other bitch and we had a fucking great time. Then the fucking first bitch is like 'how was your birthday?' and I was like 'great! Better without you in it!' y'know, I'm such a dick, I remember I was moving my stuff out of her apartment and she had some other guy over there and I like had a threesome the night before and I'm like 'yeah, sorry, I gotta wipe all this shit off my dick before I can talk to you, yeah, that's it'. I'm such a dick." Then there was the polar opposite characters down there. I was talking to this little Christian girl who was very sweet ad nice and she was telling me about how she had never been further north then Atlanta and that she thought people from the north were scary - they're just scary, scary people. So, naturally, I mugged her. But the moment that felt most New Orleans to me was when I was walking down this street which is right on the border of the French Quarter (which is the touristy district) and the really bad neighborhood. I was heading for an open mike night at some bar when I heard some people calling out to me. I turn and there are these two short-haired old ladies - in their sixties at least - sitting on their porch. "Play guitar for us!" they called out, "we'll give you wine!" Not one to pass up free wine, I went up there, and these two little old ladies told me that they had just gotten married that night and were celebrating. So I congratulated them, and though I didn't know any old lady lesbian wedding songs, I did my best. And it was there under the cool night playing New York songs for this strange couple, on a nice wooden porch on a nice wooden house that could have been a wooden porch on any wooden house in any little town in the world, when I saw a palm tree out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly had a sense of vertigo that made me dip and let go of the guitar. It was the first time in a long while that I had felt like I was in a truly alien environment. That, and New Orleans is probably the only town that can make a palm tree creepy. ------------------------------------------- CoN would not be possible without the great help of Scriba Org. CoN: Even at one in the morning, there is some freak waiting to vomit his religion on you. All I wanted was a tea. Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine "media you can abuse" In memory of Father Ross "Padre" Legere Published every second Monday (or when we get around it) Disclaimer: unintentionally offensive Comments, queries and submissions are welcome http://www.capnasty.org ISSN 1482-0471 A bi-weekly electronic journal. Subscriptions available at no cost electronically. Available on Usenet newsgroups alt.zines and alt.ezines. This mailing is sent exclusively to those poor souls who chose to subscribe to the Capital of Nasty mailing list. Spread the word! If you have friends who would like to receive CoN, ask them to send email to join@capnasty.org. If you'd like to unsubscribe because such email aggravates your pagan burning intolerance, simply send an empty message to leave@capnasty.org. Brought to you by C.C.C.P. (Collective Communist Computing Proletariat) Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro Colin Barrett ZimID 708EC8D1 1994/09/14 EC B0 97 59 1D FE 7C 32 7E 04 2C 66 47 41 FB 7D