I just had a very sad day of flying. It snowed A FOOT in Dallas/Fort Worth, which messed up the airports. Plus Texans are like what is this white stuff y’all and it’s like yo, buddy, it’s SNOW but you don’t have to DRIVE THREE MILES PER HOUR IN IT. I mean seriously, Texas. It’s snow. It’s not like small Chinese orphans lining the street. You can actually drive on TOP of it and no one will die. However, I have to say Texans are like the nicest people. Everyone was saying hi and thank you and it was just totally off putting. I was like no one has told me to fuck off in two days I feel a little lost. I need a hug. And a swift kick in the nads.

It also snowed a thousand feet in NYC, so it messed up those airports. I happened to be flying through Dallas to go to NYC so I was double punched. Pow! Pow! So what that means is that I spent a lot of quality time at the airport and then spent quality time on the runway. And then we spent quality time in the plane while it was getting de-iced. And then I spent quality time in a cab sitting in traffic. So much quality, you guys. It was restaurant quality, in fact.

The cabbie was UNREAL though. We were sitting in traffic because, hello, it’s rush hour and before a three-day weekend, and I was trying my best to direct him around according to the Google Maps traffic fairies and the dude just blows up. Laying on his horn, yelling at people, yelling at ME because it’s obviously my fault that everyone wants to leave NYC over Prez Day weekend. And then, we’re on the streets and there’s this fire engine trying to back up into its garage and the cabbie flips out and is laying on the horn. AT THE FIRE ENGINE. I was like dude, it’s a fire engine! And it’s like one of those firehouses where half the guys died in the towers on 9/11 too so there’s always flowers and candles and photosin front of the firehouse so the cabbie is looking like an even bigger monster prick. I was totally embarrassed. So I was like come on, just let the dudes park their truck, it’ll take five minutes, tops, and then he totally ignored me and kept on laying on the horn. What I mean to say is that the cabbie was not projecting a very positive image.

So now I’m home.

What a better way to relax than watch some shiba inu puppies! Warning: You may squeal.

Hello friends, happy New Year!

People have been saying LET’S MAKE THIS THE BEST YEAR EVER! And this is all peachy fine. HOWEVER, I’m thinking why should we make this year the BEST EVER? Why not just make it NOT suck? It’s not that I’m a pessimistic person. I’m just more into setting goals that are achievable. I mean BEST year? How can you possibly know that this year will be the BEST EVER? I mean you haven’t lived all your years yet, so “BEST” is kind of a hard thing to judge. This year might be the SECOND best or THIRD best. I mean maybe in five years you will have a really really awesome year and THAT will be much better than this year. So what I’m trying to say is that let’s just make this year not suck and it will bound to be better than 2009, and, quite possibly, the best, but it certainly doesn’t have to be THE BEST. If 2010 is better than 2009, then we can be happy with better. We can be happy that it doesn’t suck because honestly, not sucking is truly a big accomplishment and we can be proud of that. I’m already proud that 2010 is not sucking, erego, I have achieved my New Years’ resolution of not sucking. DONE AND DONE.

Also, I’ve also noticed everyone saying how 2009 was truly the WORST year ever. Again, you have no way of judging that. There might be really really shitty years to come. Also, I can think of a few other years that sucked more than 2009. The year was BAD, maybe, but it wasn’t THAT bad. I mean it sucked, yes, but I thought 2008 was actually worse. There were probably some years during the 50s that sucked too. I bet you year 1 sucked too. Transitional year and the whole year-re-numbering thing probably was a real pain in the ass. Like you know how after daylight savings you get all confused? I rest my case.

Los Angeles was fun blah blah blah except for the part where my family forgot to pick me up from the airport blah blah blah. It was like 3:00 on Christmas and I get off the plane and I’m like YEAHH I’M PARTYING IN THE CITY OF ANGELS! I go outside, call to see where my ride is and my mother’s like “Airport? Is that now?” And then I fall into some insane rage and I’m like did you FORGET TO PICK ME UP FROM THE AIRPORT and my mother says I didn’t forget to pick you up from the airport, I just thought you were coming at 3:30. And I say no, it was always 3:00. Keep in mind that my parents live about 45 minutes from the airport (WITHOUT traffic) so even if she thought it was at 3:30, she should definitely be ON the frickin road by 3:00. Which she was not. And she starts backpedalling and being like, no actually you’re brother is picking you up. And I’m like oh is he already here? And she says no he just left. Sigh. So I spent a good 45 minutes hanging out at the airport and suffering from acute rage. Yay. I love Christmas. So of course I’m at the airport yelling on the phone being like why do I bother even coming here for Christmas. Why don’t I just come another time when it is easier and cheaper to travel, we don’t even celebrate Christmas, it is just like any other day in our family. And then I realize I’m totally that asshole who is yelling on the phone at the airport on Christmas. And people are like all staring at me and my eyes are like spinning in my head and smoke is coming out of my ears. The works. Then my brother picked me and I said don’t you guys realize that if you fuck up I’ll write about it? Have we not learned anything? And he says no, do you have $2 for parking I have no cash on me.

But the rest of my vacation was rad and did not suck! Mission accomplished! My bandmate Andy Burne got engaged to his ladyfriend Julia! Nathan and his ladyfriend are coming to visit in February! I saw the Bauhaus show at Moma! I got cushions for my shoes! My apartment is really clean! And according to the Weather Channel “It feels like 1°F”!

Also, please note that Annietown has migrated. Things should be all awesome on your end. One of my best friends in L.A. Micah is taking over and hosting Annietown from his living room which may or may not have mice. Special thanks to Ravi who has been hosting the past 2 years and being a good sport about my asshole texts at 3 am OMG RAVI ANNIETOWN IS DOWN. Ravi I love you and you continue to be awesome and full of win and bacon, you’re two favorite things. Now Micah will be my bitch.

Micah! Fix my sidebar! (uh when you get the chance?)

I’m considering doing a redesign of Annietown. Part of me is like, why change it? It’s fine, it doesn’t have to be fancypants, I’m just sharing WORDZ here, not doing anything insane. Then the other part of me is like, well I could make it snazzier? i.e. HAVE MORE EXPLOSIONS. I shall ruminate.

HOLY SHIT IT IS SO COLD IN MY APARTMENT RIGHT NOW. BLAAAH!

I am wearing a puffy coat. It is like one of those coats that’s like a sleeping bag with sleeves. You know this, yes? It is ugly precisely because sleeping bags are ugly and a sleeping bag with sleeves on it is even uglier. I have yet to see a sleeping bag with sleeves that does not look ugly. It’s kind of like how I’ve never seen a pigeon that is not ugly. The shit does not exist. Like freakin unicorns. (In an aside, when I was nine I met this girl who was convinced that unicorns were real and lions were make-believe and I remember being like, dude, you are an idiot, and she was totally adamant about it. I even busted out the encyclopedia and showed her an entry for lions and then she showed me the entry for unicorns and it was, like, a really confusing time for me.)

Anyway I’m wearing one of those puffy coats INSIDE my apartment and I am STILL cold. I am also wearing over the knee long socks that are so tight and thick that they are cutting off circulation to my vagina, not to be crass or anything. I am also wearing Pikachu slippers which are like sticking your feet into two large stuffed animals. I am also wearing a hat, a scarf, and fingerless gloves.

AND I AM STILL COLD.

In addition, I am boiling a large pot of water to heat up my apartment. It is…not working. It actually does work if I stand right next to the pot of water, but unfortunately my legs are getting tired FROM STANDING NEXT TO A POT OF WATER. THIS IS WHAT MY LIFE HAS BECOME.

It is FUCKING COLD AND I AM FUCKING ANGRY. I AM IN A FROZEN RAGE. A FRAGE! FRAAGGEE!

Landlord has not returned calls. I don’t think he is there. He is certainly not here. I mean if he were here, he’d be like WTF WHY IS IT SO GODDAMN COLD IN THIS APARTMENT SOMEONE SHOULD TELL THE LANDLORD and then I’d kick him in the sac.

Out of curiosity I googled “what to do if your toaster oven catches on fire” and then the first hit was a review of my fucking toaster oven on Amazon. Here are some quotes:

“The turd of toasters”

“Great way to burn down your house”

“Substandard product”

“Worst product ever, buy fire insurance”

“Expected better from Black and Decker”

These were all one star reviews. The average review was two stars, and it’s only because one asshole gave it four stars and killed the curve. Either way two star rating is pretty bad because it’s not like Amazon stars are like Michelin stars, you know what I mean? Fucking hot mitts and pot holders get 5 stars on that thing. You have to SUCK IT HARD to get low ratings. Seriously. I am a big fan of Amazon ratings by the way. I’d love to edit a book of awesome product reviews, but I’m pretty sure that book exists and I’m pretty sure no one read it.

The good news is that I bought this toaster for $20 at Target and it’s probably because they wanted to unload this garbage.

The other good news is that my apartment smells like a toaster oven.

The other good news is that I probably have to get a new toaster because I think this shit shorted out. This will be my second toaster oven in one year. My god. I mean I really love toast soo this is kind of heartbreaking. I feel like I lost a friend. A shitty, asshole friend who stole my money and broke all my dishes.

My good friend Karina lives in Brooklyn and has this backyard where feral cats just roam where they please. Totally not a problem. Karina traps them and then gets them spayed/neutered and then either tries to find homes for them if they can live alongside human mammals or ‘releases them back in the wild.’ The Wilds of Brooklyn.

So the other day she started seeing this cat that had a rope tied around its middle. Pretty tightly. So tight, in fact, that the beast had a big gash from it. The cat was not in good shape. So, Karina trapped the beast, and took it to the vet. He sewed her up and said the cat was most likely PITBULL BAIT.

DUDES. PEOPLE. STOP BEING ASSHOLES.

I know we raise cows and all that to eat. Yes, it’s cruel. It’s horrible. But to go through the trouble of training dogs to be complete killing machines because you can exploit their ability to follow orders and please their owners is a real dick move. Most of those dogs die, and probably not from wounds, but from infections. Which is a horrible way to go. I much rather get shot then die slowly of gangrene. But then to use a cat to tie it to a stake somewhere to get your pooch all riled up is like adding another layer of assholery I don’t even get. A lot of cultures have some kind of cruel animal fighting thing. But a lot of cultures also have that folktale where a kid kills a little bird and the dad is all, dude, you killed a bird, why would you do that? It can’t feed a family, you are a dick, etc. One of those harsh life lessons about mortality and precious life blah blah blah. There’s no Native American folktale where the kid trains dogs to fight and dad is like GREAT JOB KID HIGH FIVE.

Anyway this cat escaped, probably by chewing through the rope. The vet’s office made Karina name it, so she called it Houdini. While at the vet, Houdini got spayed. So now it’s recovering.

She is pretty cute. Looks like she got ink on her face. Karina can’t keep Houdini because her husband is more or less deathly allergic. He is in my top five most unhealthiest friends. Seriously. He might be number two, after my friend Doug who’s allergic to anything made up of atoms. Neither here nor there.

Right now, Houdini’s in a cage at Karina and John’s, shaking and cowering. Karina can pet her head and touch her nose and the cat appears to sniff her. The choices now are to release her back into the wild after she recovers or find a home. But it’s not clear whether she’s a domestic cat that just got Admiral Shaft or if she is feral. She’s not hissing or snapping, but she’s also in some kind of strange comatose state of fear. Anyway, the ideal situation is to find a home, if the cat seems domesticated. But she wouldn’t be a very cat-like cat. I mean she could eventually, hopefully. But she probably needs a home with patient and sensitive owners.

I’d take her but if you saw my apartment you’d think she was better off living in a cage. So there you go.

If you’re interested, email me.

New thing that is happening from inside my human body: When I walk, my left knee clicks. CLICKS. Loudly. Like it sounds like I’m wearing heels, except I am not and instead of it being from a heel, it is from a knee. Dude. Like click, click, click. It is SO annoying. Click, click, click. Can you imagine that sound following you wherever you go? I want to rip my knee out. And I can feel it too. Like some tendon or something ‘catches’ on a piece of bone and then I feel pressure build up and then it clicks. I will spare you the details. The point is, my body is making noises and it’s not coming from my mouth, nose, or butt, where is in general where all the noises should come from a human body. OK I guess I could add hands because you can clap and snap. You guys all know how fond I am of clapping and snapping. Hah. You know, no one ever says that. I LOVE clapping! It is not one of those things adults like to do. I cannot wait to go to the rock show so I can CLAP!

Speaking of rock show, my friend Luke Top opened for Peter Bjorn and John this weekend. Three SOLD-OUT ROCK shows, two in NY and one in Philly. Shows were great. Two other friends are in his band, Micah Calabrese (of Giant Drag, ex-Giant Drag, and now Giant Drag again) and Kangmin who is a man of few words but then when he talks it always blows your mind or makes you laugh. That is the opposite of what I do. I am one of many words, and only few blow your mind. My strategy is to machine gun an area and hope I hit the target, but in the process, I end up killing a lot of old ladies and children and the occasional seal pup. Anyway, I was trying to convince them to do rock squats and guitar solo back bends but they weren’t having it. I hate them. If YOU CAN’T DO A ROCK SQUAT ON STAGE WHAT IS THE POINT OF LIVING?

This is what I know: If I did a rock squat, my knee would probably give out.

I think, maybe just maybe, I am getting old. But it is hard to say.

I went to the dentist YET AGAIN yesterday. This time to get a permanent filling. My final appointment. So I’m sitting in the chair and the dentist comes in and asks, how are you? And I say, pretty good, and sorta you know, do a half smile. Like how good could one possibly be at the dentist finishing up a root canal? OH YEAH I’M FANTASTIC, I HOPE IT HURTS SO BAD IT MAKES MY GUMS BLEED FOR WEEKS AND THIS TIME I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO PAY AN EXTRA $500 JUST BECAUSE I FEEL SO GREAT RIGHT NOW HEY LET’S BE BROS AND GET BEERS. Anyway, I’m not rude, I’m just reserved. I am not what people would “bubbly” and “effervescent” or “chipper”. And he just kind of stares at me and says “How come you’re never happy?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is SO unbelievably rude, even if he meant it as a joke. We are not “girlfriends” here. He can’t ask me that kind of shit until we’re friends first. And we are not friends. I wanted to take the suction tube and strangle him for being such a toolkit.

Then he got snippy with his dental assistants for not getting the cementy filling stuff prepared in time. And he gets all flustered with them and says, I’ll just do it myself. No. NO. I’ll just do it myself.

You know how your parents never yelled at you in front of guests? Or, if your my mother, not yell at you as bad. Like they are on better behavior? It was awkward. I felt as though my dentist should’ve been on better behavior with me sitting there with toobz in my mouf. But I guess not. Sure, the assistants probably should’ve had everything ready and all that, but like, be nice in front of guests. I dunno, I know I am not “BFFs 4 eva” with this dentist so I’m hypercritical. But come on, dude. PLAY NICE.

Anyway, this makes me realize how much I love my regular dentist, who is awesome and professional and his office is from the future and also he is from Pasadena and his dental assistants make fun of him for saying “awesome” and “fabulous” too much. If you guys want a fierce dentist (who sadly does not do root canals), go to mine. I would marry him if he wasn’t gay. I would love to have his gay dentist babies with perfect teeth.

So, it’s over now. I am going to eat potato chips because they are crunchy. I’m very excited about crunchy foods right now. Crunchayyyyy.

Oh my god, I’m going to eat a gigantic pile of carrots too.

I will not lie to you, friends. It’s been a tough few weeks. Do you want to hear my sad, sad story? No? Ok, then go to another site now. Or read a book. Go blast your quads at the gym. Do whatever you want, I’m giving you an out. It’s like when your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse says, honey do you want to go to the office Christmas party, you totally don’t have to, it’s OK. And you think, hmm, is this a trap or can I really not go to that party, I hear there will be caroling and dude, I’m Jewish I don’t know any of those songs except for Dreidel Dreidel and you know they will not be singing that, and your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse says no really, it’s an out. This is what I mean. It’s an out. You can leave now. I’ll even wait for a second while you leave because I’m nice like that.

Still waiting.

OK. Cool. Now that no one is reading this, on to my story.

As I mentioned before, I pulled a muscle in my neck. That sucked.

Then a few days later, I woke up with an ache in my mouth. I thought, whatever, I’ll just eat cereal and it will go away. Cereal solves like 68% of my problems. I eat my cereal, go to work, and by 11:00 in the morning, I’m in curled up in the women’s bathroom wanting to die. Toothache. It hurts so bad it hurts to think. It is like someone has punched me in the mouth and then blackjacked me on the left side of the head. (Blackjacking is when you fill a tube sock with rocks and hit someone with it. It sucks, dude. It happens to me at least once a week.) So, I call my dentist, he says, guess what? Sounds like you need a root canal. I go to a specialist recommended to me by a coworker because my dentist doesn’t roto-rooter.

I go to this dentist. I get xrays. This is what it looks like.

I have bad teeth, yes, I know. The one causing problems is the big white dude. There’s a crown on it. I just got the crown in December/January. It is a new crown.

He says, oh yeah, you’ll need a root canal, but I have some bad news. You’ve used up the deductible on your insurance (on the crown), so you’re not covered. Do you still want to get it done? I mean what am I supposed to say? Oh no, doctor, it’s cool, I’ll just live like this forever and never eat anything ever again except squishy bananas. So he doses me up with Novocaine, and then proceeds to leave me to work on other patients. He’s gone for forty-five minutes. I begin to take pictures of things.

All of this is going in my mouth:

This is what they do: They drill a hole in your tooth. In my case, they are drilling a hole in the $753 crown I just got in Dec/Jan. And then they jam spikes into the hole in order to kill the nerve inside it. Then they pull out the innards. That yellow crap is some kind of ‘medicine’ they shove in the hole to keep it from getting infected. It look like a booger.

So then the dentist comes back and says, oh I better give you more Novocaine, it’s been so long I bet the other stuff is wearing out. The man doesn’t know how to juggle patients, it is obvious. So he sticks me. And then leaves again. Half an hour.

I don’t know what these two machines do:

But, you know what I always say, “It’s not clean until it’s LeClean.” And I also always say, “Oh man if ONLY I had a sensimatic electrosurge, then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

So he comes back, FINALLY starts to do work, over an hour I’ve been sitting in that chair wanting to die, and as he sticks a spike into my tooth, I feel searing pain into my brainparts and I do that thing where you wave your arms in the air and go MMMF MMMF MMMMF MMMMF and he says, oh you’re not supposed to feel it, I guess the novocaine is wearing off again. So then he gives me another shot. As he is working in my mouth, I feel this tearing pain in my neck, because as I mentioned, I had pulled a muscle in my stupid neck. When he’s done my entire back feels like I’ve been moving pianos to a fifth floor walk-up.

He puts a temporary filling in and says, come back next week and we’ll finish the job.

The entire next week, my toof still hurts. I am on extra special drugs and they aren’t doing much. I also drool at night. A lot. It’s gross. It’s like sleeping in mouth-pee. I do not understand what’s going on. My coworkers all say it’s not supposed to hurt, but, dude, I say, it hurts. It hurts to exist. I go back to the dentist. He says, oh? It hurts? It’s not supposed to…I guess it means you didn’t give any recommendations for me to your friends.

HE ACTUALLY SAYS THAT. When he looks at me, all he sees is a big dollar sign. It’s so outrageously offensive. I mean at least try to HIDE IT. What a ginormous prick and a half. He’s trying to play it off as a joke, but it’s not funny. At all.

He says I guess I didn’t get all the nerve tissue out. We’re gonna have to do more. More root canal. DUDE! More! Root! Canal!

This is where I want to burst into tears, but I’m so angry I want to stab him with that hook scraper thing. You know what I’m talking about. The Hook. Rip his guts out of his mouth. From what I understand you can see all that stuff on the xray, so he could’ve seen that he hadn’t gotten it all out, if he had just taken some more xrays.

So. He goes back in there, and digs some more canal. It is like Venice up in my grill.

The whole thing will cost me about $800.

So basically I paid this guy $800 to screw me in the mouth and the whole thing took HOURS to complete, even though it should’ve taken an hour. Seriously I clocked in two appointments that were almost three hours each.

This is on top of the $2500 computer I just bought.

That is my story.

Oh, and I have to go back next week to get it filled.

I’m blogging live from Chicago O’Hare, which is currently sucking my soul dry. It’s hungry for my soul and I have so little left to give. So little. Currently, my flight is very delayed. Like I’m here for FOUR HOURS. YES FOUR HOURS. AS IN ONE MORE HOUR THAN THREE AND TWO MORE HOURS THAN TWO AND FOUR MORE HOURS THAN ZERO. Damn you math.

I’m wandering the airport looking for a free outlet to plug my computer in so I can at least get some work done. No luck. Every plug is occupied. We need wireless power already. I mean what year is this? Where is my jetpack and where is my mf wireless power! Where is my teleporting? Scientists, get on that shit. Why must you disappoint?

Anyway I hate flying to Chicago. I love the town but clearly they don’t want you to leave. They want you to stay here forever in the airport. It really does feel like Times Square here. Like people are just oozing from every corner. But they are mostly unhappy. Their flights are delayed too.

I was here for 24 hours for work. I spent the bulk of it here though. Actually I’m lying.

I wasn’t in Chicago. I was waaay outside of Chicago. My hotel was near a “gentlemen’s club”. There were many gentlemen indeed. Apparently the first hotel I was supposed to stay at had a beetle infestation and flooded among other issues. So I was rebooked. Beetles dude. Beetles!

Anyway, who’s at the airport? Let’s get beers!