I'm in love with that one girl in the indie rock band.

So it's no secret to anyone that knows me that I'm a sucker for bands that have hot girls in them. In fact, I'm also a sucker for clubs, offices, or grocery stores that have moderately not-ugly girls in them. And everyone should also know that my penchant for chick bands has led me to many wonderful different sounds, including Metric, The Yeahs Yeahs Yeahs, and Joanne Newsom. Not to mention my adoration and absolute devotion to M.I.A. ( If you have no or only passing knowledge of any of these groups, seek help immediately. IM me, or if only curious, go here and search for samples. Truly amazing. Email if you need suggestions. "You want opinions? We've got plenty of opinions here." )

And all my lesbian crushing, soft hearted, cigarette smoking, indie rock suckerness has blown me toward maybe one of the coolest groups I've ever seen - Tegan and Sara. ( Anti-climax! I know they've been around forever and I'm an idiot, but how's a straight guy from Missouri supposed to hear these things without help from cool Riverwest kids in Milwaukee or friend of a twin of an exgirlfriend to point them out to me? It just takes longer!) Seriously, these two identical Canadian twins form the most amazing folk and rock melodies that I have ever heard. And yes, I'd have to place some of their songs under my "Don't-Listen-To-Unless-No-One- Else-Is-Around-Because-This-Sounds-Like- Your-Girlfriends-Music file." (fyi That's inbetween my "DanceDanceRevolution eXtreme" and "DMX" music files. ) But for the most part, their songs are really intricate, complex, folky, indie rock songs that I'm really glad to have found.

And to bring this crush into full blown stalking, I just read perhaps the funniest revue of a Tegan and Sara show from Australia. It's on a fan blog, here.

I left in a vacuum where all I could picture was my life being completed in holy matrimony with one of these girls, the only dilemma being that the chances of this happening are non existent and I can't decide who was the coolest out of the two.

This drunk guy is me! Only Australian!

Love,
Junk


ps Other cool bands equals them, these guys, him, her, and that one girl I'm in love with.

A thought about the media.

Okay so I was listening to NPR and as per usual I was getting upset at something the government was doing. And I had planned to come home and rant and rave about personal freedoms and the unique role of the legislature and the judiciary to circumvent the will of tyranny but, also as per usual, as soon as I turned my screen back on I went to tunasherpa instead and then got myself caught up in a rant about literature and the difference between fiction and non-fiction and Dan Brown and for some reason that makes me want to talk about the misconceptions of Darwinism. So instead, I think I'm going to start really slow, and work my way back up to ranting and raving.

First of all, NPR is a crock of shit. ( Way to start off slow, Josh. Smooth. You idiot. ) Let me explain.

I'm not going to claim for even a second that I'm the poster child for any one political, social, or cultural movement. And we can all thank G-d for that. But I would like to address the idea that there are only a few bless-ed sources of media that I still trust. And with that trust I like to include the idea that I'm getting REAL information. Hell, that's the whole reason I stopped listening to all the OTHER news stations. I thought I was being lied to. I was being fed information. They were telling me what they wanted me to hear.

And in my extreme idealism, I was sure that National Public Radio would have the foresight, no - the common decency-, to withhold their own standards of publication; I was solid in my foundation that NPR would stick to its guns and give its listeners only the most relevant, the most up-to-date, the highest of quality news and reports. Now, before anyone rails me for being so gullible as to trust the liberal media, first understand that I realize that everything has its perspective. I'm not trying to get un-biased news. They're is no such thing, right? Every event, every report, every person has their own set of circumstances and perspective. I get that. I have mine, for sure. I know that NPR is going to support those programs and reporters that will be listened to more often. Everything is always about money. Nothing new there.

But recently, as I turn to 90.3fm ( the St. Louis/UMSL affiliate of NPR and PRI) I'm deeply grieved by the almost revolutionary tone that is set by a number of their staff. I have listened to stories and reports of which I have extensive knowledge and have been offended by the sway this information receives before being passed down to listeners. For example, a couple weeks ago I was listening to someones account of US governmental policy in South and Central America, and how those same practices were being implemented to affect the Haitian elections. Over a large course of time, I have become increasingly interested in Third World politics and History, and especially the colonial role that Western Nations (especially now the United States) play during those nations rise into international power. So I've watched the last 20 years of Haitian news an history with fervor. I know a little bit about it, anyway. And this guy that was on the radio, this political and historical analyst for NPR, was saying a lot of the same things that I had come up with.

"Yes," I said, when he said that the US was fully accountable for ousting Haitian ex-president Jean Bertrande Aristide.

"Absolutely!" I said, when he said that Rene Preval was a student of Aristide's and would be the peoples choice for the elections. "He promises to bring Aristide back. That's what the people want!"

And when this idiot starts ranting about the failure of diplomacy and tyranny and how the US has never done anything right and we shouldn't be involved in any other country's business, I'm still nodding but he's screeching a little. Like he's not being heard.

"But you're preaching to the choir here, buddy! You don't have to be so dramatic, " I says to myself. But he just keeps climbing and yelling and talking about how the US deserves to be attacked and that we're setting ourselves up for South and Central America to terrorize us in twenty years and I still sort of agree but I wouldn't have put it like that and I really don't want to agree with anything this guy says anymore no no no because it sounds like revolutionary action and hes the reason independent media isn't taken seriously. So shut the hell up!

And then I realize that we all are seriously fucked. Because NPR is just as bad as FOX. Google is censoring the Chinese Internet. The freedom of information made possible by blogs is being used to pass around pornography of some Singaporean college student doing her boyfriend on her mobile phone. It's all bullshit. Hyped, stapled, packaged for individual servings, advertised using e-mail free lists, purchased on eBay for a retail plus $1 and consumed by a eager mass of hungry mouths. I feel like that video of ducks in France, with the tubes in their throats, getting force fed to death only so that their liver can become 75% fat and be harvested for foie gras and eaten by some piece of shit Michelin critic who doesn't deserve oxygen compared to most of the world but instead is catered to and eventually comp'ed because his write up is important for the third star.

But whats the solution? If I knew, I wouldn't be ranting on some backwater internet page. That's for sure. But somebody's got to know right? But I guess that's the problem. And not just of our generation. With humanity. Everybody thinks about culpability and action but waits for someone else to do the work for them. Or scarily enough, some are willing to put everything they believe in to the test and sacrifice the only thing that is sure in this world, LIFE. They blow up themselves and a building and hundred of innocent people because their religion isn't getting the respect they think it deserves. But they're stuck in the middle ages.

And I'm geting more positive political theory from a science fiction book than I could ever suck out of the headlines. Because they're all a sham. So supposing that anyone wanted to know any of this, and if so then maybe they ask, "Why Josh? Why would you write at all then? What's the point?" And I'd be speechless. Which, maybe, wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

"The Whales do not sing because they have an answer. They sing because they have a song."

Ashes and Snow

I'm late.

I'm hungover.

I just thought I'd leave a positive message for the world, today. And that message is:

"Yes!"

That's about as positive as you can get folks.

Here's my daily click list, that I go through in sequence so that I may know whats going on with my friends, my family, the world, my sore diaphragm, etc.

GMail - if you don't already have it, give me your email address. I'll refer you. It's truely amazing.

Last.fm - becuase who've thunk that something called audioscrobbling could be so cool? No one did. No one thought that audioscrobbling would be cool. And they were right. But I'm nerdy, so thats okay, too.

Blogger - and more specifically tunpasherpa.blogger.com because thats my fix.

OkCupid, ESPN, everything that Natalie Dee is involved in, Jaci's home page, and finally, if I have time I goto flyguy or do a crossword.

Peace out

Junk

oh ps I realized yesterday, after three hours of resetting, that my computer no longer allows me to post images on blogger. That's cool. Everything has it's reasons. This probably has something to do with some gods being angry at my poetry. I'm not upset.

Treasure Trooper?

Sounds like a really bad 80s movie with Goldie Hawn. But I've tried this thing out and it actually works. I'm such a sucker for marketing schemes, I know. But I just got $22.25 put into my paypal account. Like, for real. And I didn't put any money into it. All I did was start a bogus email account (junkthemainman@yahoo.com - just in case anyone is interested...) that I will drop like bad habit if I have to, turned off all the spam blocking and then registered. I sign up for all these ridiculously horrible offers, but get paid like $1 everytime I do. Sometimes it's surveys and such, but you can skip most of it. I've made $20 bucks in about a week. I know that's not a lot of money, but it's a lot more than the zero dollars I had before the week started. The real question is where is all this money coming from? I started the whole thing because I thought it would be fake, but I'm actually holding money in my hot little hand. WTF? It's not stealing ( as far as I know ). It's just like taking advantage of those "free brunches" that condo companies will take you on to promote their sales. Except that it's in little itty bitty installments. Try it here. And yes, that is my reference number because I get like $20 if you sign up. The whole thing is crazy!

What has the world come to? Mass marketing, Internet advertisement, Approved Lists etc are all just different names for duping the little guy into giving the big guy more money. I don't want to be the little guy or the big guy. I want to live someplace where there IS no big guy or little guy, just a lot of cool guys like me. So I think I'm going to dupe the nameless big guy out of like 200,000,000 installments of $0.01 and then buy a company that protects little guys. It'd be like the internet version of Robin Hood. I'll probably call it RobinHood.com or some silliness. (It's totally open!)

junk

A Beach Sits

A beach sits, as an island, on

the precipice of fog and dreams.

Ideas glisten and sweat in a cloudy sun.

The air is cool and moist. It smells

like the lake and like the city and like

the damp earth. It blows my hair

into a swirl and I smile.

A beach is the crossing point,

connection, convolution of grass and

sand and air and lake. The sounds

are all wrong for that sort of place.

Green grows between grains and boats

like trains wait endlessly passing,

with motors and sails and children

laugh and play and tease and confused

seagulls dive and sit, perched hungry.

While in that cold sucking air

the sand hits my face like the planes

overhead hit a runway, touch and go

glancing like dragonflies or birds on

the water.

The pier's closed! But the sailboats and

adolescents and sunworshippers still glisten

like sheet metal in a hurricane whipping

with wind. The grass tickles my back.

White foam rolls thunderously with four inches

of fury.

My sunglasses fall and the paper won't blow

and I arch like a tree filled with blackbirds.

The beach aches with the knowledge of

feet and silt and sun, shadows like rain lie, fall

with amber sweetness on the sand.

A beach wants it's mother to know that

it's happy and peaceful and changing and stormy and

sunny and foggy.

There are boys playing football and a couple

rolling in the sand and there are children

on the jungle gym. There is a sunbather with a black bikini that smiles

at the sun with squinty eyes.

Ghosts of university pass complacently

through the halls of my mind. I will not

wander forever. There must be a time in

every man's life where he either seeks the home and comfort

of his mothers breast or needs to conquer a

new mountain.

The water is cool against hot feet and the

sand is cold and the water boils.

The grains stick to my back.

Sophie the dog runs with her tongue out

across the water's edge and her troop of

humans follow laughing and chasing and calling.

Everyone smiles and lovers kiss and

young explorers pull clam shells with

dirty fingers and secret giggles and their jeans

rolled up to their knees, muddy.

There is a boat that sits offshore

that I will never be. The lake is

too vast for me to swim and the earth

calls to me. I am a mix of sand and

water and air and fog and trees. I am ground

and dreams, sails and roots. I am

indecision. I am rocking in the waves.

I am blowing in the wind. As a tree.

As a sail. As a grain of sand. As

the wind itself, carrying conversation and

the laughter of children across a Sunday

afternoon.

5 September 2004

I've decided I need to be cooler.

After doing a lot of thinking, refer to title. I was reminded earlier today (by a highschooler from Baltimore) that I'm actually not that cool. See, this doesn't match well with my self-image, seeing as how I put myself right inbetween Allen Ginsberg and Gandhi on the coolness scale. ( My glasses are cooler, so I'm a little cooler than Al, but not as "almost holy" as Ghandi.)

In response, I'm going to be putting a lot more pictures on my blog.

And sometimes, the pictures will be displayed with poetry.

This is all in an effort to make me cool. 

Josh Woodburn LLC

Everyone sit down. Good.

So I am now the owner, founder, and sole proprieter of Globe Creative LLC, a small (ha TINY) creative design brokerage company based in St. Louis. I 've just finished signing paperwork.

There is a bank account.

We are scheduled to place our first contract bid tomorrow. If everything goes well, it means that I'll have contributed to probably the first POSITIVE business transaction in my life. I'm excited.

I know everyone, of course, wants to immediately throw their business my way because I'm so loved and sought after in the community. But unfortunately, I think we're gonna have to take things really slow for the time being. So for right now, if you want some really nice business cards or fliers printed for a lot less than anyone else will do it for you (including internet companies), call me. I've got the goods.

And I'm wearing a suit and shakin hands. Fuck yeah.