What’s up with me being so down?
By now we know about the bad joke that my moods and emotions are. Hell, I even joke about it most of the time. But over the past few weeks, it’s gotten a lot worse. I’ve been feeling very down and I can’t seem to get any of the bad thoughts that I have in my head to go away. This has caused me to feel weird and to not really want to go out. I stay at home with my wife and my dogs and just kind of exist. I don’t really live. I just sit there and stare vacantly at a computer screen. Sometimes I read. Other times I don’t.
This all came to a head for me a few days ago (Monday, to be precise). I was having a particularly bad day both at work and in my own head when on the way to Franklin everything came crashing down around me.
Fuck Asheville and Fuck Social Media (a paranoid screed about Tedx, Jen Saylor and marketing)
If you happen to belong to Facebook or twitter like I do, you’ve probably heard every bottom feeding member of the social media plankton going on and on about Tedx Asheville, which happened tonight in town.
For those of you not familiar with the Tedx phenomenon, let me explain it to you. Imagine a group of maladjusted computer nerds attempting to place their enthusiasm for technology attempting to mingle with a bunch of idiotic hipsters and star fuckers while talking about saving the world (without actually doing anything about it). That is Tedx Asheville.
The entire thing has made me realize how much I hate what Asheville has become, social media and new moneyed cokeheads all over Western North Carolina.
Jason Bugg: Bad Ass
I’m not a tough guy. I’ve done things in past that might make people think that I’m some sort of tough dude, like getting in fights, working as a bouncer at a bar or two in Asheville and even talking smack to strangers, but I never considered myself the tough guy. I was the little yappy puppy that ran along with the gigantic and tough dog.
That is until Friday night.
What’s better: soccer or the in-laws?
I’ve been holding in a gigantic soccer rant since the World Cup started (in what seems like) a lifetime ago. I loathe soccer. Actually, I guess that’s not true. I don’t mind the actual sport; I just treat it as I treat any sort of children’s organized sport/women’s basketball- it’s really fun to watch the participants try to be athletic and the game to be engaging, but it’s even more fun to watch how red-faced and idiotic the people who defend said sports tend to sound.
Look, I get it- you either have a hard on for all things Europe or you hated the people who played real sports growing up. I know it was hard for you to use your hands to dribble, pass, throw or hit the ball, but don’t take baseball off of ESPN for a month because of it.
But anyways, in the name of fairness and in the spirit of sport I tried to watch the final game today between Spain and the Netherlands. What I saw was an endless ping pong match between the teams: the soccer ball flew in the air back and forth and each time it hit the ground, a player would fall down (whether or not he’d been touched) and the referee guy would give a yellow playing card to the other team. It was like Magic: the Gathering, only a tad more effeminate.
Seriously, there were more greasy-haired dudes diving than at a Greg Louganis look-alike contest. The only time I saw a guy actually get tripped up, the guy who did the tripping helped him up and gave him a hug once it was done. What the fuck was that?
But despite this crap, I gave it an honest go for the sake of my friend Miguel, who hates football and yet watches the Super Bowl every year. His father’s side of the family is from Spain and he had a horse in the race. I figured muscling through the game just because I knew it’d make him happy to have someone to talk about it later with would be the friendly thing to do. Dear lord I was miserable because of it. The next time I think about taking one for the team and doing something nice for someone, remind me instead to just run my arm over with a car instead. I hate soccer and I’m glad I don’t have to hear from the bottom feeding loser culture of soccer gimps for another four years about how I should try to enjoy a “match”.
On a brighter note, last night and today Jessie’s parents were in town. Last night, they came over to our house, ate dinner and stayed until nearly 11 talking and laughing with us. This morning, we all got up and left the house early to head up on the Blue Ridge Parkway to eat lunch at the Pisgah Inn together.
My normal joke about the Parkway is that I never went up on the road because I don’t like the outdoors, I had no girlfriend in my twenties, and I didn’t do drugs that often, thus negating any reason that I would have to travel on that road. But this morning it was beautiful up there. We stopped at a view overlooks and I just took it all in. I tried to count the layers of ridges and got dizzy, and had my breath taken away by some of the huge rocks just jutting up out of those green green mountains.
It was a lovely time and I’m so thankful I did it. Hopefully that was just the start of more mountain adventure. Sue and Dale (Jessie’s parents, whom I’m still not sure what to call them to their faces), were really fun. We traded stories and Dale and I even got confused when Jessie was speaking to her mother about the differences between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians (we thought that the ladies were talking about woodchucks for some odd reason). I know the common comedy cliché is to bitch about the in-laws, but I’m not going to- and that’s not because Dale occasionally reads this blog- it’s because I like them.
Now I’m sweaty from my nightly walk with my wife and the dogs, and settling in for a nice long work week. Life is pretty sweet.
Until later, be good.
Liz the G.O.A.T.*
Dear readers of The Bugg Blog, what you are about to witness in the coming weeks is a torrent of sophomoric humor, witty insights, daily bullshit, odes to obscure music and even a few paragraphs about my wife every now and then all because of the pretty girl in the picture (the one on the right). Her name is Liz, and she’s started something very big. What has she started? I hear you asking through the tubes that make up the internet, and the answer can be found in this entry, just after the mucky muck about the last few days of my life. So read on!
Actual Conversations: Traffic Court Dickery
Today I had traffic court in lovely Jackson County, NC. Without getting too far into what happened, I’d just like to say that I am innocent and will be cleared off all the charges. Also, I should be allowed near schools within the next three years. With that being said, let’s get on with the humorous anecdote that stands and my reason for finally updating my blog.
I stood in line along with every other person with minor traffic offences waiting for my chance to speak with whatever Assistant D.A. that had been assigned to handle today’s round of ticket griping, proof of registration showing, and prayer for judgment requesters. I was thirty people back in line and decided to make conversation with someone.
To my left was a guy taller than me who had at least three visable tattoos that were various company and sports team logos. He had a UNC Tar Heels logo on his neck, a BMW logo on his forearm and a Nike swoosh on his bicep. I thought for a moment that he’d been paid to place those logos upon his body, but I decided that would just be too logical. To my right was a short, rather petite pretty girl names Cassie who was a bit more wholesome than should be allowed. She had no visible tattoos and was wearing a creamsicle-colored dress with a white button up sweater over her top. She smiled and said hello, and I decided to make small talk with her.
For a few minutes, it was a dream- I was in court making small talk with someone who was delightful and witty. I imagined that if I had played by the rules and joined the square community after high school I’d have gone off to college and had tons of boring friends like Cassie. We’d sit in our yards and drink iced tea and talked about quick ways to get to work. We’d both agree that something had to be done about the way things are significantly worse than when we were children and remark about how Dave Matthews was awesome but his new stuff just has no soul. We’d laugh and then I’d tell her husband my lawn care secrets. But then, just as I was thinking about how Cassie and her husband probably made the best strawberry shortcake in the world reality (in the form of my big mouth) ruined the moment.
We both noticed at the same time the court reporter heading over to an open window in the wall of the court room. She opened the glass door that was in the window and removed a hard plastic cylinder that contained those telltale tri-folded court documents. Within moments she had removed the papers and then placed other papers in the tube, closed the glass door and pressed a button to send the cylinder off in a vacuum-swirl of air.
“Oh neat, they have those pneumatic tubes in the courthouse” she said.
“Yeah, those are neat,” I replied, “did you know that in Buncombe County and most other places they have computers that will send those files electronically?”
Cassie let out a light laugh and stared at me nervously. I continued.
“In fact, while I’m sure that it’s impressive to you that Jackson County is using 1950s-inspired technology, the year is 2010.”
Cassie turned away from me. I stood there for a minute before it dawned upon me that I am a dick. It’s like I can’t control it. I see an opportunity to point out something in the rudest way possible, and I do it. At times I don’t even realize it until the moment is long passed. I have no idea how or why this happens, but it does. I was having a pleasant conversation, learning about the admissions process of WCU from a non-student’s perspective while dreaming of garden parties with Cassie and her as-of-yet-unnamed husband and I ruined it by calling her a hick. I might be the biggest dick in Jackson County.
But on the bright side I think I can get out of the ticket.
More to come later.
Be good.
Dillard’s Sucks.
I’ve never been a good dresser. My jeans have always fit me poorly due to my big waist and short legs, shirts hung weird over my slouched shoulders and proto-beer belly, so when I went into Dillard’s in the Asheville Mall when I was 18, I undoubtedly looked as if I didn’t belong in the department store’s standard look of faux elegance and upper middle class America’s delusion of being better than they actually were. Dillard’s isn’t a nice store so much as it is a collision of name brands and slightly above Sears quality clothing. But for me, and a lot of other people in Asheville, it was where you went when you wanted something nice- especially for someone older (or where someone older bought you a gift card when they were subtly trying to tell you that you looked like shit).
Why Tron sucks and Justin Bieber doesn’t.
The summer movie season has burst up us like buttons in a fat girl’s changing room, and I’m just as guilty as everyone in America of getting excited about big budgeted, trite Hollywood garbage. I like explosions, I have been known to enjoy remakes, and I enjoy sitting down to a movie and having to make myself not think for a few hours. I like to be entertained, I guess.
This compelling and rather American need to be entertained by utter shit stands tall in my life like a New York City skyscraper, and tonight in preparation for this summer’s onslaught of shit, I let an al Queda-driven airplane called Tron come crashing through my feces skyscraper, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. Now that that long and rather unsatisfying metaphor is out of the way, I’d like to explain why.
I remember Tron’s release in the theater. Just judging from the previews and the few posters that I’d seen of the movie, I knew that it just had to be the most awesome thing ever. For one reason or another, I never saw it in the theater. It probably came out on home video soon after that, and I still never got around to seeing it. The movie always popped in and out of my sphere of geekdom, and I never really sought out the film until a few weeks ago. Until Netflix burst through my better judgment and I placed it in my queue. Today Tron arrived, and after dinner I decided to sit down and watch this movie that had garnered such a cult following that it has spawned a sequel nearly three decades later.
I’m here to say (or type, or whatever) that Tron is a huge steaming pile of black light covered shit. It was so bad that I laughed throughout the entire movie and wondered what was so awesome about this movie that people raved about it for years to me. I wondered what prompted people to dress up like the characters at comic book conventions and I wondered if Jeff Bridges Oscar could be taken away for doing a movie like this.
Immediately after sitting through the movie, taking the DVD out of the player and placing it into the magic Netflix envelope to send back to Send Us More Movies Land, I fired up my computer and checked my Facebook, and noticed at least three friends of mine’s status as being something about how much they hate Justin Bieber. That’s when like a lightening bolt straight from God, or Usher, or even the Master Control program it hit me:
Justin Bieber and Tron really aren’t that much different.
Actual Conversation: Prison Rape
(What follows is the transcript of an actual conversation. I’ve left out names to protect the good reputations of my high fallootin’ friends.)
Friend’s girlfriend: [My boyfriend] is never going to make it. He was doomed from the day that he opened those big beautiful blue eyes.
Me: Isn’t it weird that [your boyfriend] the one guy that we know who is psychotically afraid of prison rape has a job where he puts people in jail?
Friend’s girlfriend: I had no idea that he was afraid of prison rape. Is that a real fear? I am going to have to invite a bunch of big dudes over so they can shower with us.
Me: Ask him one of those “Which would you rather have happen…” questions and let prison rape be one of the options. The boy gets wide-eyed like Walt Whitman talking about the frontier.
Dear Steve Martin
Last night I watched you perform alongside the Steep Canyon Rangers at Merlefest 2010. You were engaging, talented, vibrant, and hilarious. You also played your banjo quite well and had me mesmerized with your songwriting and stage presence. In fact, I could spend a few paragraphs and pamper you with wonderfully flowery prose about all of the things that I liked about your show last night, but I’m not going to- mainly because I know that you’ll never read this.
But if you are ever drunk on red wine (for the antioxidants!) one lonely Wednesday night and you come across this blog entry, I would like to say something to you:
You can go to hell.
