Monday, July 25, 2005

Faggot!

Jesus, Onstad is such an ass. Now it turns out he's NOT paying anyone for their poems anymore! Well, if he's out of the game then there's really not any point in me wasting my precious works slamming down his RIDICULOUS ego. I'll save them for submission to my regular roster. Check the pages of Mother Jones, The New Yorker, and Chomskript in the coming months to find more of my works.

Alright, alright, I'll get to my search for a personal injury attorney. Hold your horses. As you know, I like to interview my attorneys extensively before hiring, because you can really get some lemons. I've narrowed my search down to two at this point: J. Preston Norwood, who specializes in MVAs, and Siccio, who mainly handles labor mediation, but had a little time on his hands inbetween strikes. I get the sense that if Siccio sees the case not going our way, he'll just take a midnight drive in his jogging suit and whack everybody involved with a lead pipe. I have no problems with the ethics of this, as long as I am protected. I am NOT paying fifty dollars for that terrible haircut.

Friday, July 08, 2005

There's a REASON barbers shouldn't make much money!

Oh boy, am I seeing red today. You're about to find out why.

I have always hated barbers, and have never gone to the same one twice. This is because they invariably butcher my hair and tickle my scalp beyond belief during the shampoo. I cannot stand this, but I also cannot go around looking like a member of the disreputable band Phish. I'm over a barrel on this one, and looking forward to the day when I am entirely bald. There is a nobility in baldness, I have always thought.

Regardless of that, I needed a haircut today if I was going to continue to show myself in public, so I ducked into an as-yet-untried barber shop in the Hidden Hills Annex, "Hair Have You Been?" I guess there is a reason no one had recommended it to me: all of the barbers there were HORRIBLE, BUTCHERING MORONS WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GRAIN OF SENSE.

First of all, it was a mixed-gender barber shop, more of a "salon," really, and all of the haircutters were women. They made me wait over twenty minutes for a turn, and by then I was livid. My barberess, "Patricia," was a despicably average person in tight blue pants and white platform shoes. She led me to the bowl, where the scalp-torture began and lasted a full five minutes while she chattered on and on with the barberess at the next bowl about god knows what. I could have drowned down there, or had a tickle-induced coronary, for all she knew.

Then it was on to the cut. She was more than a little incredulous when I simply told her I wanted a "good, simple men's haircut." She jabbered at my face using terms like "finger-wave," "tousle," "buzz," "fade," "texture," etc. I just wanted a damn haircut, not a beauty school education, so I dismissed her with a wave of the hand and said, "just start cutting. I'll tell you when you're done."

I don't know what she thought that meant, because she started putting various sections of my hair in all these mortifying pink barrettes. I looked like a damned fruity samurai is what I looked like. Then she laid into another barrage of babble about prime-time television, a subject in which I have not a SHRED of interest. Apparently a man named Kirk or Jason won or did not win a contest held by a celebrity executive, if you see what I'm driving at.

When she was done and handed me my glasses, I just about fell down dead. I looked like a god-damned magazine person. She beamed and fluffed my horrific hair around with her fingers, and said the names of actors I am sure I don't know. I had been transformed from fruity samurai to "alston kootcher," or whatever she kept saying, which the neighboring barberess echoed gleefully. I removed the smock and headed to the reception to settle the bill.

I took out my checkbook (I would naturally stop payment on the check as soon as I got home) and asked how much for the men's trim. The fucking bitch receptionist said "fifty-five dollars." I said "don't quit your day job" and readied my pen to scribble down a more reasonable sum, such as zero dollars or as much as six.

She did that thing where an idiot laughs, and then repeated "fifty-five," reminding me to tip the barberess. I don't need to tell you I wasn't about to stand for that kind of extortion so I closed my checkbook and strode towards the door.

I hadn't noticed the security guard (I guess a lot of people leave without paying for these terrible haircuts!), who promptly tackled me and pinned me to the ground. All my tai-chi training was useless against this Boston butt of a man and so I lay there gasping, planning my litigation.

Things escalated from there and I was manhandled off to jail (or, as I like to think of it, "pre-trial"). I was released on my own recognizance, as well as $10,000 bail, and am at home now looking for a personal injury attorney. I want the nastiest snake in the book, the kind of attorney who will go after each and every barberess's family assets. The coldest of the cold. I want a man who will stop at nothing to destroy the life of every last person on earth besides me (and, to a lesser extent, himself). I am livid. The world needs to be taught a lesson.

—Pat.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Poem Four, you moron.

Alley of Sickening Riches

Ten twenty-one.
The sewage runs down
Nob Hill.
The Bentleys and Bugatti run down
Nob Hill.
They take the shortest route
to the freeway.
The diners, doors locked,
look straight ahead.
The Tenderloin.
The worst of this city.
Hidden in an alley
off Larkin and Ellis
Black tar mother
Her legs, her arms,
hanging, curdled flesh
Her two dead children
Sleeping bag mummies
in her stolen Safeway cart.
The Tenderloin.
It's below Nob Hill.
Come say hi.

- - -

See you in your nightmares, Onstad. I wrote this one from LIFE. Took the train up to the city a couple weeks ago, opened my notebook and WIPED it across the blighted Tenderloin like the toilet paper that I know you are.

More soon; did you really think I'd give up?

— Pat.