It is definitely the most tedious, annoying, and soul-draining experience possible. You have to battle the most ignorant drivers in the world just to get to the mall, risk life and limb just to get a parking spot, sift through tons of stores that never have exactly what you want, and...oh yeah....wait in lines that average 50 people, with screaming, bratty kids that you want to silence with one of those compound bows from Dick's.

What do you end up with at the end? Some socks and an ass warmer for the Ice Bowl, but nothing for the people you actually wanted to shop for. Best Buy has dick for music DVDs, unless you're one of those people who listens strictly to distasteful, shitty music that I would ban in a New York minute (minus The Who's new documentary, and one or two other things). For fuck's sake!

I went to New World to alleviate the pain, trying to forget the racist and offensive "The Chosen Keyboard" sticker set I saw the last time I went. I took a photo on my cell phone, but really wanted to find the owner and squeeze his throat for allowing this in what I used to consider a great store. Yeah yeah, my keyboard won't work on Saturdays - HAHA, funny, you fucking schmucks. I guess Buffalo hipsters really do want to emulate the Euros.

Anyway, New World is the only store I know of that has a good variety of music DVDs, so I was willing to move on with life. When I got there, I found they don't have a DVD section anymore. They are all scattered among the various artists, so if you don't know exactly what you want and just want to browse the DVDs, you are shit out of luck. No DVD section, but they sure as shit made tons of room for action figures, repackaged gum and candy with various "clever" labels, and said racist sticker set. Needless to say I left empty handed. Who buys that shit?

The last refuge for a frazzled shopper is the Internet. Everything you want is at your fingertips, and you don't have to deal with any of the things I've already bitched about. You can be in your jammies, smoking a cig, drinking a beer, and have a much better experience, right? WROOOOONG. Oh no, you have a whole new set of hurdles and problems to deal with.

For example, what if your brother is a soccer fan? Well, you have damn few options if you want something along the lines of a book or DVD. This sums up the experience:

- Look on Amazon for Book (Book Not Available until July 2008?)
- Call various shops in the area (Book Not Available in the USA!!!)
- Look on Amazon.UK (Available, but shipping is 2x the price of book)
- Look on Amazon for DVD (Not Available)
- Go to Chelsea Megastore (They won't ship to the USA!!!)
- Go to USA Chelsea Megastore (Not Available)
- Look on multiple soccer shop sites (Not Available)
- Look on Amazon for another DVD (Not Available in USA, won't play on USA DVD players anyway)

This is the point when you just throw your hands in the air and give up. Now I know why Gift Cards were invented - if I had just did the thoughtless thing and gotten a Gift Card, I might have avoided all of the stress and blood pressure fluctuations. This is about me now, not you, jerks! Now imagine if I had a girlfriend - everything would only be multiplied. Shopping for women is more sweat-inducing than sex. I don't think I've ever worried more about anything than a girlfriend's reaction to a gift, especially if I tried really, really hard to get something she would like. I tend to want badly for her to love what I get. Thankfully, I avoid that drama this year.

When it's all over, and you just want to sit at home with a friend and decompress, and your phone is in a dead spot so you never get the phone call, you realize things just aren't going your way. I am so done with Christmas shopping. God help me if I have to go out and do it again this weekend. Someone will have to give me a tank and mask (pumping herb into my system), and a wheelchair.

For three years, I have been on this site, using rhetoric as a means to an end, sometimes to make a point forcefully, other times to give the soft touch to an issue that commands some delicacy.

By now, anyone who has been reading me, or anyone who has ever met me face to face, should know exactly what the shtick is. I am not so naive or presumptuous as to assume that any of you are like your blog, because we use it in different ways. For me, it's a way to blow off steam and have fun. 85% of it has always been tongue in cheek.

Now, just because some of you don't get the shtick, does not mean that I am open to you policing what I write. You know how I feel about that. I don't feel the pathological need to police what I feel are bullshit, nonsense opinions, otherwise I would quickly suffocate every single post I see that even has a whiff of politics involved. I leave you alone most of the time. I'm a live and let live kind of guy nowadays.

So, please, for God's sake, leave your embarrassing "Grow up" and your assumptions about what kind of women I attract, or comments about what I honestly think and feel locked up in the basement where it belongs. I don't particularly give a shit, respect, or lend any credibility at all to that, for good reason. Most of the time I'm just doing what I always do, use rhetoric as one of the many tools in the bag to get my point across.

I'm trying to be diplomatic here, and not resorting to dropping a 2 ton verbal sledgehammer, which I most certainly will do ad nauseum if this bullshit persists. I have opened myself up completely two times when it comes to women, once with a letter to my friend Janine, which I promptly deleted the day after when I was horrified that I wrote it publicly, and the second time being a recent letter I wrote targeting my ex Nicole, which was dripping with grief, when I addressed my disappearance from her life completely.

I know damn well how women behave during dating - I DATE WOMEN. I know that the generalizations do not apply, and I know that people who don't date women will never get the jokes I make about the dating game. I know that what I write is not technically correct. That's not the point, and it never has been. If I want to blow off steam, just like the rest of you do when you talk about what people are wearing, what they should be driving, what they should be cleaning with, who they should be voting for, why guys keep on disappearing from their lives, then I am going to do it.

In staying with tradition, I have to once again rant about some things that will appall you and make you respect me less.

(e:Ladycroft)'s motto is "Say what you mean, and mean what you say" and I thought about that for hours last night. Okay, Jerry is hooking up with his intern, a freshly minted 21 year old, and he wanted me to go with him to this girl's apartment party last night. I thought, "Oh, shit,hell naw bro" until he introduced the tease: There would be plenty of hot chicks there who are going to WANT you, Jason! Well holy hell who could say no to that? And then over the course of the week he sent me links to pics of the girls who were interested. Needless to say I was absolutely excited about the prospect.

Despite not feeling my best for a few days I went with him, really only because he promised me hot ass, otherwise I would have stayed home. I cleaned up, shaved, got all nice smelling and whatnot, put on my costume (Monk re-hash) and got in the car. When we got there I met the girl Jerry's hooking up with, and she was actually a decent enough chick, but where the fuck were the girls Jerry told me about? Some fat bitch asked me where my little boy was ("I'm a MONK, not a priest, you retard!") but the girls Jerry told me about were nowhere to be found. Ummm, what the fuck?!?! It was at this moment when I realized I had been utterly BAMBOOZLED and tricked into accompanying Jerry to this travesty so that he wouldn't feel weird. How could he do this to me?!?!?

But oh, does it ever get worse - I was relegated to third wheel status as we jetted around town, my bitterness and discontentment reaching critical levels with every bar visit. Some chick grabbed my ass at Gordon's, which I guess is better than nothing. Faherty's was alright, but said bartender who hooked me up with a nice shot of Jameson's earlier in the week was having absolutely none of it from me. Too bad because I would have totally respected her and treated her the way a woman deserves to be treated, such and such and so forth. Hell no, I would have drilled her like a Texas Oil man. The closest prospect was a friend of a friend, a known Swinger but that fell through at the last moment as her brother pulled her out of the joint. Fat Bob's was okay, but really at this point I was about 6-8 drinks in the bag and in a terrible mood. When you were tricked into being a mobile support group and third wheel you tend to just want to throw caution to the wind and pickle yourself.

I began to think about how Jerry basically hoards the girls, putting many on the back burner while one gets his attention, all the while making vague suggestions about maybe pushing one of them off to me. Never happens. I also thought about the ridiculous comments he made about Walt "dominating" when he came here. It's times like this when you just have to admit to yourself that you have a hot friend, and you're the equivalent of the ugly chick who tags along in the hopes of getting some runoff. Jason, you're never going to get what you want so just fucking move on and live with it!

If he would have just been straight up with me to begin with I might not have gone, or I might have just because he's my best buddy, but the worst thing to do is tease me with hot ass, promise me a fun, nasty, sex filled night and then end up being a total liar. I am fucking PISSED. I wish I would have just stayed home, unshowered and stoned and perfectly happy. At least I only paid for one drink.

Yes, we have further proof that the media is way out of touch with normal Americans, with more or less every media outlet trumpeting the arrival of Babi Suri. Oh, let us also not forget the media trumpeting the arrival of a bronze sculpture commemorating Baby Suri's first solid shit, and oh boy did Baby Suri ever let loose.

Does anyone REALLY care about Baby Suri? This pisses me off! You have the biggest publicity whore in the world eating out of the media's hand, with his brainwashed marital leech/groupie wife dutifully doing basically whatever the hell he wants. She has this glazed over look in her eyes that tells me something is definitely wrong. I'm almost certain the wife and kid are nothing more than accessories, tools to be used to further his fame and to keep him in the news.

Now, I don't know too much about babies, okay, but do four month old babies wear a fade? Who else thinks this sicko put some kind of baby wig on his child for the Vanity Fair photo? And anyway I have to ask again, who besides the media is salivating over this fucking mess?

It is long past time for this Baby Suri saga to slide into irrelevancy. I know by writing I'm extending the life of this pathetic story, but at least I'm doing right by my readership in letting everyone know how wrong things have gotten. You were fuckin MAVERICK, man, what happened?

Jason

I got my paycheck recently, and you know what it said? $115. That's right, that's all they paid me for TWO WEEKS of work (I wasn't in every day, but still). Not only that, but they haven't been giving me my copy of the sent timesheet, so I do not have the (FACTUAL) information that will get me my money. I am shaking I am so pissed off. I am a very dangerous man today. God help the poor asshole who dares to argue with me about this shit.

Jason

I am a man with numerous issues. I wake up every morning thinking, "Jesus Fucking Christ, I can't believe I have to go through this shit again." Although the doctors tell me it is a detriment to my health and mental well being, I drink and do drugs on a regular basis because life is so excruciatingly boring, ugly, pointless and nonsensical. There are so many things that make me want to give the world a middle finger and check out of this mess.

I hate the fact that someone who is higher up than you on the corporate food chain feels like it is his God-given right to belittle you and tell you how idiotic and appalling you are. They talk at you like you are a lesser human being. They hold their position of power and your own job over your head as if to say "yeah I'm fisting you in the ass, you'll take it and you'll beg for more." This makes me want to go on a Buckhead-esque killing spree to rid the world of these assholes. Nobody would miss them anyway but their gold-digging ass trophy wives, and even they would only miss the lifestyle.

I am sick and god damn tired of people thinking that an act of kindness on their part deserves reciprocation. Not once in my life have I ever done something for someone thinking, "man, I wonder what I can get out of this one!" If you do something nice expecting that they should reciprocate, you are a disingenuous asshole. Just don't bother. I'm at the point where I don't want anyone doing anything for me because I'm afraid they have alterior motives, or they will get pissy with me if I don't give them anything more than a thank you. I hate being this cynical.

Ladies, I love you and I hate you at the same time. You have no idea how intensely I can love. I would jump into the middle of a fight and take knives and bullets to defend your honor. I would bleed every drop out of my body before I would allow you to be hurt. Yet I am looked at with contempt and made to feel I am not worthy or good enough to even share a conversation. You go for the most superficial, thuggish, despicable behavior possible and I am always caught off guard. It always surprises me and it always hurts. Worse yet, I can be as selfless as possible and it will still always be about you and what you want. What men want and need just isn't important to you. I've allowed you to turn me into a self-absorbed, cynical, angry human being. That's my fault but FUCK YOU for thinking that humility, grace and mercy are nothing more than words. At this point I just want me to be happy, not you. For once I deserve to be happy god damn it. No, I am not going to bend over backwards trying to cater to you. If you dig me it does not mean that I have to dig you, and don't make me feel uncomfortable about it because I will become furious at your uncaring attitude towards me. Sometimes it just doesn't work out but I will always be respectful and I will never put you down or think that I am somehow better than you. All I want from you is unconditional love and understanding but my god it's like I'm asking you to change the way our planet spins on its axis. I am so frustrated that I'm giving up on the idea of having a family someday.

About the war on terror - everyone goes way out of their way to tell us how evil Christians are, yet they routinely ignore the islamo-fascists out there who are killing indiscriminately all over the world to intimidate people, to force them to see the world their way. You don't check out the BBC and hear these people, in their own words, say how they want to raise the flag of fundamentalist Islam over every nation, but I do. They hate Western Civilization and see it as immoral. They have a bloodlust for killing unbelievers and we're sitting over here sipping lattes and waxing philosophical about how bad we are. I wonder what level of violence it will take for us to wake the fuck up. Terrorism SHOULD be fought, not just by the US Military, but by the entire globe. It's actually a very simple situation - Islamo-fascists want to kill you or convert you, regardless of your status as a flaming liberal, for no other reason than their disapproval of Western civilization. They kill their own brother muslims all the fucking time for not being muslim enough. The evidence is right in front of your face every day but you refuse to see it. The world needs to take action. For me it's not a matter of "is it winnable", it's "terrorism MUST lose." If you want to give up, if you want to NOT fight the war on terror, then you must like the idea of a world dominated politically by the Islamo-fascists and their bombs. Better them than the Christians, eh?

To me the world is so fucked up and backwards that it is unbearable. I don't know why I care so much. I should just not give a shit and do like Nero, happily playing my lyre while watching the world burn. I don't think it's fixable - the human race is spiraling down the fucking toilet and who gives a shit as long as we get our free social benefits and are allowed to go on living our uncaring, misanthropic lifestyle! Fuck it, I am locking myself in my apartment for a while and I'm not coming out unless it's to get food or other essentials. Fuck everyone, fuck me fuck you fuck the planet. We deserve to perish.

Jason

I have ZERO respect for assholes who hide behind "Guest" and start bitching about the site. This moron said they were an adult - you know what adults do? They make their name public and stand up for what they say. That's what I did. Only a Grade A pencil-dick would hide themselves and get on with the hate. That's the same thing the suburbanite pussies do when they yell shit at me and then drive off in a hurry. They're not man enough to stand face-to-face with me and tell me what they think. So it goes with the anonymous hate in Freedom Chat.

This person bitches about Artvoice. So do I but I actually make arguments concerning what it is I'm complaining about. I'll bet that jerk works for The Beast, based on the extent to which they are intellectually cross-eyed and lacking in the guts department.

Jason

It's been a while since I've let off a good ol' rant.

I thought about this when reading (e:Paul) discuss the yuppie-isation of Elmwood. The more I think about this the more pissed off I get. When I moved here almost 5 years ago Elmwood was a very different place. I came here and the local business owners on the block made a point to say hello and welcome to the 700 block. For the first time I felt a sense of community and I loved it. Looking at Elmwood now I see it as a playground for suburbanites when they get bored of the ho-hum of suburban existence. I see greedy assholes who want to take advantage of the neighborhood in order to fill their pockets. I'm surrounded by suburbanites now and my neighborhood feels about a million times less cool.

First of all, I have new neighbors next door to me who love to get drunk and start shouting vulgar insults and whatnot to random people on the street from the safety of their third floor balcony. Only an A Grade suburbanite pussy starts doing ridiculous shit like this. Ask (e:Ladycroft), she can testify, I'm beyond sick and tired of these sackless, pussified morons and their trashy girlfriends. I can't wait until the day they try to fuck with me and I make them put up or shut up. In fact I'm looking forward to it eagerly. It would be such a joy for me to bludgeon their faces with brass knucks. Someone needs to teach them a lesson their lazy fucked up parents couldn't be bothered to teach. It reminds me of the day I was walking down the street when two suburbanite cockless bastards drove by and said "You suck, Moulds!" (I was wearing my Moulds jersey, it was game day). I started hurrying my pace and sure enough these pansified pencildicks scooted off down the street.

Secondly, I used to look out over my porch and see such a varied mix of people. The diversity of the neighborhood is what made Elmwood so great. Lately I look over my porch and I see suburbanites infesting my neighborhood as far as the eye can see like cockroaches. Instead of punks, white and blue collar types, grad students, etc...I see bottled blondes and their juiced-up guido boyfriends strolling the hood. Everybody is the same. Jesus Christ, you are making my neighborhood so much less interesting and fun. You are draining the soul and the buzz out of Elmwood. You are turning it into Amherst South which is the most stomach-churning outcome possible. Aren't there people in the 'burbs who sell cocaine as well? I've always said it is the people in the neighborhood who make it great and you are ruining it for everyone else.

Thirdly, I want to re-hash my beef with Brodo. When they came into the neighborhood I thought "Hey, it's nice that there isn't an ugly empty area there now" - little did I know what was to come next. We had the debacle on my birthday where they blatantly disrespected and embarrassed (e:Joshua) and I. We felt like we weren't welcome at a restaurant across the street! I've spoken with other neighborhood residents who feel the same way about that particular establishment. Then came the parking scandal where I went totally apeshit. Now as you may know because of Brodo's incessant bitching and whining about "not being able to give all of their customers a parking space" the lot next to Globe Market is totally off limits to anyone but customers of a few shops, even during the overnight hours when the stores aren't open. I parked there for 4 years, then Brodo came and all of a sudden I can't park there overnight, even during the winter when you can't park on the street at all? Hello you greedy penny-pinching cocksuckers, your customers take up nearly every spot in the lots, on Elmwood and far up Cleveland. You don't even realize it is a neighborhood and a community, do you? You think of it only as a vehicle to exploit our neighborhood's uniqueness for your profit. I noticed there is a Brodo in Williamsville now - THAT is where it belongs, not Elmwood! Keep your fucking pretentious "stomp on your neighbors" attitude in the suburbs where it belongs!!

Lastly, has anyone been to Faherty's lately? That used to be my #1 favorite bar until some idiot decided to turn it into an establishment that is no more than Chippewa-worthy. Now it looks like Brink's. Yippie-kai-yai-fucking-yay. What was wrong with Faherty's pre-bastardization? Absolutely nothing! It was a great neighborhood bar with cool people, good music and good drink! Somewhere along the timeline someone thought it would be brilliant to put up some plasmas and re-do the interior so the suburbanites don't feel like they are dirty by sitting down. Fuck those assholes! Nice job contributing to the yuppie-isation of Elmwood. I'll bet a dollar Baha Men are in the fucking jukebox now.

So thank you everyone involved for turning Elmwood into a suburban miasma of filth and pretentiousness. I hope those dollars are worth it! #@^#@#$%$#

Jason

Leave your comments to yourself. I'll just go and delete them anyway. I'm not interested in your frothing at the mouth counter arguments. I did not sully your pristine, shinier than shiny name. I did not drag your name through the mud. If that were my intention I would have brought up many other more personal, more scathing things that have pissed me off over the past years, and my words would be full of bitterness, not sorrow.

This is MY SPACE, the ONLY SPACE that I have in the world to air my grievances, as neither you nor any of our friends are interested in hearing me out whenever I have a problem. If I'm upset I am forced to bottle it up and let it fester. Do you really think that I'm going to let you manipulate what I say on here, by showing me your obsessive/compulsive behavior when someone says something that pisses you off, no matter how true it is? Do you really think that you can make me "check myself" on my own journal?

To paraphrase Jesus, it is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, it is what comes out of his mouth that makes him unclean, because what comes out of a man's mouth comes from his heart. I think about this very carefully before I say something about someone. Do you? I did not do you wrong. I laid out a factual account of my grievances and I'm sorry that you're upset but what do you expect when I can't talk to you about any of this? You don't want to listen to me. It's either I air this stuff out somehow, or I lose my shit altogether.

Jason

PS - Contrary to what you might think, yes I am depressed.

Here's what I had to say to some jerk who is anti-gay and started using the Bible to justify his bigoted view of homosexuals.

Some of you people subscribe to the Jerry Falwell definition of what it means to be a Christian - but what is so amusing about these types is that they cling to the literal word so tightly on some occasions, and then ignore the literal word on other occasions. Hypocrites, all of them. If you believe in strictly interpreting Leviticus, then you also believe in condemning to death anyone who curses the name of the Lord. You would also wash your body and clothes before you sit anywhere your menstruating wife has sat, and also many other things. Do you do all these things as instructed in Leviticus? If not then by your own definition you are not worthy to be called Christian. Don't question my faith, look inward, read the teachings of Jesus and understand that if you condemn homosexuals or anybody else like you do, you will have a very difficult time finding the pearly gates. Worry about your own soul.

Listen, we don't use the Holy Bible as THE basis for our law, and the Christian right has to come to grips with it. There is nothing wrong, unconstitutional, or more importantly anti-Christian about letting homosexual couples have a civil union contract that gives them all of the same legal protections, benefits and such that straight married couples have. You can protect marriage and be for civil unions. Do you believe everyone in America should be equal in the eyes of the law? Isn't that the way that it's supposed to be? There are homosexual couples raising kids all over the USA and the reality of that situation renders inadequate far-right definitions of family. These people ARE families and the law should not discriminate against those families in a society where everyone is supposed to be equal under the law.

Comments?

Jason