Who do I Have to Fuck....?

Maybe soon to become a regular feature here at The Point. I'm giving it a go and we'll see what happens....

Who do I have to fuck....

-To get a decent glass of beer around here? I know where, I'm just asking for one that doesn't make my wallet vomit in its mouth (which is a little too close to my ass for my comfort).

-To find a job listing that actually explains what the job is? I may have applied for a cabinet-level position this week and not known it. Then again, I may have applied to be the 'mop guy' at a friggin' peep show place. That's my point: I can't tell.

-To find a guitar that's half good, not custom, not tricked out at all, for under $1500? Just one.

-To shorten commercial breaks on terrestrial radio? If provided a name, this is the one I'd most likely be willing to go through with. More on this in the next week or so, as I'm a pretty heavy radiophile. Thank god I have Sirius/XM/whatever-the-hell-it-is this week.

-To snap MSNBC out of its Anna Nicole obsession? They're making all non-right-wingers look bad with this crap. Jesus, you're just giving them a gun and asking "Please Sir, please shoot me?".

-To get Van Halen to go on tour anyway? God, I was so ready for this. The kid in the band? Dave with his shot voice trying to sing Fair Warning stuff? This was gonna be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. You owe us Eddie. You owe us at least that much.

-To make the NBA interesting again? I grew up with the greatest talent pool ever playing their asses off making it happen every night. Now I can barely sit through a quarter of a Mavs/Suns game, and I like both of those teams. A lot. It's like when after Tyson lost the title and every champ after did his best to simply not lose the belt. Man, I have a whole thing under the surface with the NBA that I didn't know was there, but that will be coming out soon. Oh yes, it will.

-To find a bottle of Cherry Smash? If you remember what that is, congrats--you're not only old, you're half a hick. Take a number, I'm still waiting.

-To kill half the shows on Adult Swim? I'm looking at you, 12oz Mouse, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Awesome show, Bleach, Trinity Blood and Squidbillies (so close). It should be the big shows (Family Guy and Futurama), Aqua Teen, Robot Chicken, Moral Orel, Venture Bros., Space Ghost (make new ones, rerun old ones, I don't really give much of a shit), Brak, and Frisky Dingo (with some Sealab reruns thrown in). And Aqua Teen, come here: You're pushing it. You know I love you most of all, but you're really pushing it. I don't know if it's the movie distracting you or what, but you need to get it in gear. Ok, sport? Ok. I love you.

-To make sure I never see Fitness Personality John Basedow on my TV ever again?

-To put Tyra Banks and Rachel Ray on the same one hour talk show? I mean, let's just condense the crap if we're not going to get rid of it.

-To outlaw quarter-taking community washer and dryer rooms from apartment buildings? We're already paying rent; now we get to pay for crappy appliances that don't work as often as they do and when they are are being completely occupied by the same family's 12 loads of laundry? Fuck off.

Ok, this is long enough, I think. I gotta save up that anger, you know. I think we'll be seeing this again. I find it cathartic. Of course, if you have your own, add them as comments or e-mail me and I'll include them in a future 'Who do I Have to Fuck...?'

Email bergle79@gmail.com

Peering Up From the Handbasket

Hey there,
I was all ready to go fire and brimstone today watching the coverage of the Anna Nicole/Britney madness. Hours of newstime used up by pics of a bald nutjob and a clusterfuck hearing that supposedly was to determine custody of another nutjob's body? I was thinking about the Post's Walter Reed story this weekend, about all the injured and those who are being injured and killed every moment while we try to turn our heads and look at the shiny things...

...but then something hit me.

The name of the judge at the Anna Nicole hearing rung a bell...I thought maybe he was Judge Judy's husband. For reals. Alas, it turned out not to be the case, just a coincidence where their names are similar. BUT, it also turns out that he wants his own TV show!!!

I'm going to say something here that I'm not proud of and I wish I wasn't able to say: This guy is gold. I was sucked into the proceedings and could not look away despite myself, and he had a lot to do with that. God help me, I want this war to end, I want all of our brothers and sisters to come home and I want the idiot appointed president gone tomorrow but for a good hour or so this afternoon I had me a fine distraction, and his name was Judge Larry Seidlin.

The dude was all over the place, from crushing the attorneys (calling one whom I assume was representing Anna's mom 'Texas' as if he didn't have a name) to telling them what questions to ask to ASKING THE QUESTIONS HIMSELF!!! Unbelievable!! Standouts for me were Judge Seidlin questioning Howard K. Stern presumably to show all these lawyers how its done, and the Moment of the Day: Taking a call while on the bench from the M.E., letting it out over the air and letting it go on for a good minute and a half before asking "Doc, should we take this off the air?"!!

Fantastic stuff, an immediate first-ballot entry for the Jagoff Hall of Fame. Oh my god, I'm just thinking about it and its still stunning. I think this guy topped everything that ever happened on L.A. Law, Perry Mason and The Practice in one afternoon--and I'm pretty sure there was a Practice episode where Cameron Mannheim ate a dude during cross-examination. The only courtroom film I can think of that still holds up is Witness for the Prosecution, and that merely squeaks by due to Marlene Dietrich's performance as The Accent That Walked Like a Woman.

I'm not sure where I was supposed to be going with all this, but I think it was this:

With the world as it is today, with all of the dangers and threats and stupidity (plus the stuff that happens outside the White House), where everything is serious (especially what you laugh at) and none of us have any future unless we have the right name or fuck the right person(s), where the possibility of waking up to major landmarks burning is too real and too probable, it's ok to find comfort and release in something stupid for a little while. So watch the hearing solely to gauge Howard K. Stern's creep factor. Photoshop Britney with different wigs (or a Smurf cap, I'm still waiting to see that), read some gossip. Just don't do it for long. We used to do it all the time, remember? Look what happened.

Opposite Day

I've been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me today. I woke up at an unusual hour for me, went to a job interview that I was really excited about and left deflated and soured on another job that I almost took yesterday. More than that, everything feels wrong. Something wasn't just wrong with me; I wasn't thinking big enough.

Today is an opposite day. Everything that was good and right had been flipped on its head and was showing me its ugly, diseased ass (except, of course, for my girlfriend). Everything that was going my way had slammed on its brakes and decided to just go on home.

Unfortunately the thing that hasn't changed is DC driving habits and abilities. Word of advice: If you own a small two-door thing that couldn't drive through three inches of snow if your life depended on it please do not try to climb up an iced-over hill with it. Especially if I am sitting RIGHT BEHIND YOU. It's not worth it. There are other exits, downhill-facing ones even! Christ, I know that this area is full of people from all over the world, so whenever we get any kind of weather some percentage of the population has no idea what the hell to do. I get that. It's ok, even. But just a thimbleful of friggin common sense! Not much, just enough to not get me killed.

And I'm just so sick of everything today. I know I'm not the cheeriest bear in the cave but I usually have some perspective. Not today. Everything makes me want to throw my hands in the air and toss them about as if I had little to no regard for those around me. I checked my email for a message that should be there, and when it wasn't I kicked a Kermit the Frog doll that was on the floor. I love Kermit. Rainbow Connection and shit.

It seems like everywhere I turn there are problems; not all of them huge but all of them adding up--like drinking Tequila or Liquid Cocaine shooters. While I'm at it--I think any booze with the letter 'Q' in it should be approached with caution. Good life rule, that. Anyway, I see the laundry I don't have the money to do ($10 for a roll of quarters is a big deal right now), the streaks I can't get out of the coffee table, the jobs I can't get or shouldn't take, and it all snowballs until I'm thinking about what I want to do with my life. Then the TV starts with the "I'm going to lose all sound now for no reason" thing and I'm fixin to pop. If I have to go out again for any reason, god help us all.

I think I may need a vacation.

Random Thoughts

Hey there,

Had about three things I wanted to write about and never got to so I'm going to just throw some stuff out there.

--I'm so going to the Police show. That made me so happy when I saw them playing together.

--Beauty and the Geek rules. I can't believe that I got sucked into watching crap like this but man does that show payoff. Nate essentially tanking his team because his partner is cunty is maybe the highlight of the television year. God I need to go out more so I don't find myself reduced to blogging about reality shows.

--I'm on a job hunt right now, and I have to say it's a frustrating thing. You find one job that you're not really into, but the pay seems to be good and the hours are livable. On the other hand, you find a job that you might actually enjoy but it means never seeing anyone you know ever again. And forget about any other interests you have. If I could combine the hours of one with the other I'd be pretty well off. Oh well.

I guess that's all I wanted to talk about. More later when I'm not so distracted.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

So I hop out to run a couple errands, and when I come into our building, I see something posted on the inside of the door. It's a print-out of a web page review one of the tenants wrote about our building. A scathing review, I might add, but entertaining nonetheless. Here it is in all of its glory:

"This place is a God-forsaken dump! Every week there seems to be a plumbing leak somewhere. The A/C doesn't seem to work during da summer time. There's plenty of heat all da time, though. If you live under somebody, you'll hear 'em mf'rs loud and clear bcuz of da stellar hardwood floors. And da people bellow you will hear ya too. Da carpets are old, the paint job in da halls is sh@#$y, and maintenance, what maintenance!!!! The new mgmt co., what a joke!!! The thing that irritates me most is that some tenants like to cook that smelly-ass fish & they stink up the halls. Yes, the demographics here is too diverse! Viva La Migra! And no, Im not white, Im asian."

This is a fascinating piece of writing. The writer is Asian and throws out just about every kind of slang in one paragraph as they can. It's actually an achievement. The writer's also dead-on regarding this building. He/She fails to mention the roaches (I've seen them, thankfully the Gergle hasn't or there'd be a blog about a 25-year-old woman having a coronary), which are VERY large. Or the mice. I'm assuming mice, because we've only seen one, but there have to be more.

The noise is not so bad for us, but we have no upstairs neighbors and carpeting, so no big shock there. The hallway noise is surprising, though. We don't hear a lot of our next-door neighbors, but the Indian family (I'm assuming Indian; they're not Arab) at the end of the hall is noisy. But only in the hellway. Yes, that was a typo but I'm leaving it.

I've lived in this area all my life. I went to school with kids from 100 countries. But it took me 27 years and this building to discover that Indians don't whisper. They have no low conversational voice. This family walks by speaking at a volume that is appropriate for a busy Starbucks or a bar with medium volume music on. It doesn't matter if it's just the husband and his wife, or the whole lot (and there are a whole lot--how many I can't say for sure).

They're nice enough and I don't mean to say I don't want them as neighbors. I just want them to pipe the fuck down when they're walking through the hallway. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, right on, Asian guy. But you forgot the pool that wasn't open last year (spent the money trying to fix the a/c), the ONE elevator that makes moving in or out a bitch, the noisy roof (I can overlook you missing this one) and the overall shitty condition of this place. Then again, in five years this place will probably be a parking garage or a new office building, or the parking garage for a new office building, so who gives a shit really.

Would you be my--fuck--COULD you be my neighbor?

Cunty?

Ok, so my lady wrote about the things that she hates about D.C. I have to say I agree with all of these, but there's one aspect of her little rant that I feel a need to focus on. Here's what she had to say:


"The Bergle came up with this one and I agree wholeheartedly: why are there so many “cunty” women in DC? I grew up in northern VA and I went to school with some of these girls with their houses in McLean and Potomac and very rich mommies and daddies. I can spot them a mile away (Tiffany jewelry is usually a dead giveaway). Their ultimate goal in life is to have the upper hand, be it through condescension, the “I smell something icky” look, and of course their signature the “Oh my, this apartment is so quaint” backhanded compliments. Go f*ck a congressman."


Now, I was going to delve into why these girls are the way they are, and I spent a good chunk of time thinking it over. I was going to talk about the void of suburban life and the status wars that ensue; I was going to be nice. But I can't have that on my conscience.


Gergle works in D.C. and has a point, but she grew up in Vienna. I'm from McLean. If you just shuddered or felt a chill up your spine, then you know what's up. The richest, the elite, the ginormous homes, all of it. Just as background, my family moved to town when I was 4, parents broke up when I was 6, mom and I moved to Vienna with her mom but she kept me in McLean schools so I'd be with my friends. This kept up until Junior High, when we moved back to McLean as a single mom and her kid. She busted her ass for the sake of me not losing one more thing after her and dad split.


I got to see and hear it all from these little girls with their rich parents. I got the stares when I revealed that we didn't have cable. I actually had to explain to people that my mom didn't go to college, doesn't make a lot of money and neither does my dad, and even if he did he's got another family now and doesn't really bother to help out so NO I'M NOT GOING SKIING THIS YEAR.


Not every girl was like this. Not every girl was a spoiled cunty brat. But even the ones who weren't aspired to that level. I knew smart girls; personable, funny, gifted, beautiful girls who tried to fit in because their friend was cunty, or their friend's friend's. It was inescapable, like the Borg.


There was one girl in particular that I remember: She was smart, beautiful, funny, all of it. We ended up in one class together every year and every year I had just the most horrible puppy dog crush on her. Of course she didn't know this and I had no plans on telling her, but she was just about everything I could ever ask for. She wasn't a 'popular' girl per se, but she had a couple friends. Over the years those friends got in with the In Crowd and by proxy she orbited the fringes--dressing a little more 'upscale', telling tales of the weekend parties, etc. The girl I knew was still there, but you could hear and see that she was a little drunk with her new standing. I could see her questioning herself before laughing at something I said when once she just laughed.


I ran into her out one night with a couple little cunty girls. It seemed like we were happy to see each other, but the un-interrupted walking of her 'friends' drew her out into the sea of BeamersBenz's. To paraphrase Robert Smith, I found myself alone above the sea that stole the only girl I loved and drowned her deep inside of me. In fact, I always thought the Cure sucked ass up until that moment, but then I got it. Now I love that damn song.


But I digress. It's not girls being cunty that makes this area suck: It's the damage left in their wake. It's everyone that they make feel small, or poor, or worthless. I personally didn't let it get to me too much; my mom raised me well enough to be able to say "Fuck the world" when I needed to. But it was situations like the one with this girl that pissed me off. I saw good people around me hurt everyday because they weren't some spoiled brat's idea of Good Enough.


With that having been said: If you're a cunty girl, Fuck you. Fuck you all day long. But IF you are, and you happen to be reading this, please send this to your mummy and daddy. I have something to say to them:


Ahem...


You fucked up. Your children were born to privilege, and you taught them to squander it. They are going to run this world someday and they are going to fuck it all up because you couldn't be bothered. On behalf of 'the rest of us' and all of our children that we're going to have someday, thanks. Thanks a bunch.


This ended up more serious than I though. I'll bring the funny next time. Promise.

Bergle