A working class hero is something to ... Be? Be in? Bean? Enunciate!

Internet! Hly crap! What have I done to harm you?

I'm actually typing this into a series of what look to be lines on a white void... oh, there it goes. Hello! My computer is a hunk of eight-yaer-old gaerbage. With five gigs, yet unfilled with strange, unlistenable music that only I like.

Speaking of which, I think I'm attending the Bitchfork* music festival at some point. I just don't know when. I'm vaguely aware that it's happening - my self sabotage has only just begun. Maybe I can sleep on James's's couch. Maybe I can sleep in an alleyway! Chicago is the town that doesn't exactly sleep, but stays up all night reading and maybe watching a little TV, drifting off around four, until some guy starts puking (like some kind of perverse coo-coo bird) in the alleyway around five.

*I saw someone else call it that, and thought that it was the very height of wit.

Anyway, I'm in a coffee shop right now, and was pretty much convinced that I was just going to be the old-looking, sullen, beardy guy, and then like, eight people older than me came in! One of them, I think, was the janitor at my high school. He may have some kind of infection or maybe his belly is swollen with gasses. Is that a beer belly? So I feel pretty good about myself, since my own beer belly is yet in larval form.

The only other people in the shop (which I think closes in three minutes) are some teenagers with bad hair and black T-shirts and skateboards, and they were gossiping savagely about Karen and maybe where they should go next. I really wish, sometimes, that I hadn't spent the entirety of my teenage years playing dungeons and dragons (omg monstrous manual five? WTF am I going to do with all these monsters? There are not enough dungeons in the world for this. I call shenanigans, dungeons and dragons) and instead making new friends or driving or drinking illegally or trying meth or whatever. Out of purely intellectual curiousity. It's like how I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a girl or good looking.

Anyway, my Iced Tea Latte is rapidly septerating, and the barista is shooting me dirty looks, so I'ma cut this short.

Also, screw the theme week.

Theme Week: And How I Survived Mosh Pits

Mosh pits are great places to be, provided, of course, you know what you're in for.


Most of the time, kids get into mosh pits at rock concerts where bands occasionally request them. Other times, these things just happen and you roll with them.

Depending on the band that's playing, a mosh pit may not be in fact mutually assured destruction, but some guys shoving each other in a circle. If, however, you're going to a Throwdown (Or Madball, or Donnybrook) show, and the guys there are itching to show off their new spin kicks and dance moves, if you're not careful, you'll leave with a couple teeth missing and some fresh bruises. Keep in mind, this is if you happen to be in the mosh pit at the wrong time, and the guys *cough* demonstrating their style *cough* might not even have noticed you yet.

Of course, say you came with your crew. You let people know that you will not be disrespected, and you along with your posse can drop many suckas. A fight could start.

This, as you can probably guess, helps no one. Not the band who is playing onstage as your crews are duking it out for some twisted form of respect who will have to ask themselves "If we play this city again, will another fight break out?", not the venue, who now will have to wonder whether security is needed at these shows, and whether if this kind of thing is going to happen whether the band should ever be asked to return, not for the promoter, who is going to be hammered with the bill for the damage and last but not least, the other concert attendees, who have the show they paid to see interrupted by some macho insecurities.

It is because of this (and other things, like vandalism by those same kids and noise complaints by neighbors) that venues get shut down, promoters see less and less kids appearing at their shows, those same kids get disillusioned, and the police start appearing outside the venue around closing time to "keep the peace". The truth is that in my city, we don't need other nations nuclear weapons to destroy our communities, we can do it ourselves, and I'll be paying the piper all summer...