Justin Achilli

I went to get a burrito for lunch today. I love burritos. They’re like Mexican sandwiches, and we all know how a man like me appreciates a good sandwich. Also, “burrito” means “little donkey” which is an awesome thing to say you’re having for lunch, particularly in the native language. It’s like if we had a food item called “monkeys’ faces” here in the US of States.

“What are you having for lunch?”

“Magnificent.”

Today, however, did not want to let me acquire and enjoy my little donkey in any reasonable manner. It was as if the burrito gods were furious at me, lashing out against me with ordeals that I had to overcome in order to prove my divine worthiness of wee mule consumption. It was sort of like the 12 trials of Hercules except it didn’t involve Hercules (it was me), there weren’t 12 trials (there were five), and I didn’t have to endure them to redeem myself for killing my wife and children (I only wanted a burrito).

Trial One: Uruguay Explorer
I don’t normally allow SUVs to change over a lane in front of me. First of all, I can’t see around them, so I’d rather not have them in front of me. Second, I hate them and I think the people who drive them should be dragged into the street and shot a dozen times in the face, so I tend not to do nice things like integrate them in the flow of traffic.

It was not so easy with Uruguay Explorer, though. Uruguay Explorer was a big, white Ford Explorer driven by some hellbent bitch whose whole driving philosophy was “use the no-look at all times” and had a big, blue URUGUAY sticker across the back window. You know — so people would know she was from Uruguay. She probably got asked that a lot and figured it would save her time in the long run just to put the sticker on her truckasaurus.

The no-look is hard to use. It consists solely of not looking when you change lanes. It takes balls — cojones, perhaps, given that we’re talking about Mexican food — to use the no-look because the principle behind it is being so righteous that you take the lane, and to hell with whoever’s already there. It says, “This lane is mine, and I scoff at your ill-claimed right of way.” Only dudes who are supposed to be there use the no-look.

Well, not Uruguay Explorer. She didn’t take the lane out of divine right. She took the lane because she wasn’t paying any attention to the road and OH AT THE LAST MINUTE DECIDED THAT SHE NEEDED TO BE IN THE OTHER LANE SO OVER SHE SWERVED.

SUV people do this a lot. By nature, they’re selfish cocksuckers, as evidenced by the cars they drive. When cops stop at accident sites, they usually ask, “Where’s the SUV?” even if there’s not an SUV involved because SUV drivers are so monumentally stupid and self-absorbed that they cause all accidents, even the ones they don’t cause directly. It’s true.

Anyway, Uruguay Explorer did this — and then did it again a block later.

At the following light, I shouted at her and spit on her Uruguay Explorer. Then she looked at me like I was the asshole.

Trial Two: Fat Woman Patience Test
I’m at Willy’s Mexicana Grill. Great burritos. Far better than Sodium’s… I mean Moe’s.

The fat woman in line behind me is talking about whatever she ingested the night before, and remarks to her in-line compatriot, “I really need to cut down on carbs.”

No, you loathsome sow, you need to engage in some physical activity, and sweating while you think doesn’t count. Fixing one’s diet isn’t something as simple as simple as cutting down on carbohydratess, and–

Wait a minute. You’re at a FUCKING MEXICAN RESTAURANT. IT’S ALL CARBOHYDRATES HERE. Beans. Rice. Chips. Tortillas made with bleached fucking flour, for Christ’s sake.

People who count “carbs” are rotten from the brain on outward. They’re like those people on the Internet who put “(sp?)” after words they think might be misspelled, just to show you they’re so smart that they know they might have spelled the word incorrectly, yet they can’t be bothered to make the effort to look the word up or actually correct it. Talking about “carbs” — the word is “carbohydrates,” you beasts — shows the rest of the world that the beefasaur in question is so smart she “knows” what’s supposed to be in a balanced diet (even though she’s completely wrong), but that she still wants to pack in the grub.

So fuck you, you fat broad. May you die, go to Hell, and be forever punished by counting the “carbs” ingested in this earthly Limbo by your fellow gut-pigs.

Trial Three: Cell-Phone Asshole
People who use cell phones in public are, as the French say, “used diapers marinated in douche.” I’m not talking about taking a quick call to coordinate plans or using one to find your buddy. I’m talking about the fucksticks who carry on conversations in public.

Look, people: A cell phone is not a sign of affluence or importance. They’re cheaper than home phones. All you’re talking about is what movie your bestial, carb-counting wife wants you to bring home with her rashers of bacon. The call can wait until you’re back at your desk. No one thinks you’re wealthy or important or has any iota of respect for you.

But not for cell-phone asshole. Cell-phone asshole waits in line — and it’s a long line, but I’m not complaining about that because that’s what happens when the food is good — and then, right when he steps up to the counter to place his order, decides that that’s the best time to make a call.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH THE 20 MINUTES YOU JUST SPENT IN LINE? You were too busy waiting in line to make the call, and did it only when the relatively less complicated process of ORDERING YOUR LUNCH WHILE EVERYONE BEHIND YOU IS STILL WAITING arose?

It’s even more maddening when the dude behind the counter is all “Sir? Sir?” while your stupid fool self is jabbering about your child’s ADD*.

To conquer this trial, I shouldered past cell-phone asshole and placed my order while he was still figuring out where he was. Also, he had a really big head. Even bigger than mine.

Trial Four: DMB
It’s a restaurant. People are trying to eat here. Why are you playing the Dave Matthews Band?

I’ve read before about restaurants playing house, drum & bass and hi-NRG music so that people eat more quickly and get the hell out, thus freeing the tables for more customers, who also eat quickly and hit the road. I can only assume that the principle was similar here, except instead of increasing the speed at which people ate, they induced nausea to convince them to vacate their tables.

Fucking hell. Playing the Dave Matthews Band at a restaurant is like accompanying a pair of people on their first date and screaming “RAPE HER AND THEN MUTILATE THE BODY” the whole time.

Trial Five: Latina Accord
As if Uruguay Explorer wasn’t enough, I had traffic woes on the return trip, too. This time it was a mid-80s Honda Accord with a woman in it who was obviously a space alien sent to Earth and told to infiltrate us by mimicking our customs. The problem was that she couldn’t actually drive, she could only sit in her car and go through the motions of driving.

Latina Accord waited for a good four minutes before pulling out from the parking lot and turning left, with me behind her and honking (and cursing) the whole time. The way was clear, and I contemplated going around her, but I knew that such an act would suddenly be seen as the perfect moment in which to turn and she’d T-bone me.

After finally pulling out from the parking lot, Latina Accord stopped in the center of the intersection. Not because any traffic was oncoming. Not because she was going the wrong way. Simply because she had no earthly idea what she was doing.

By this time, I had the room to whip around her and haul ass back to the relative sanctity of my office, where a nice, solid door keeps the Trials of Shiticles at bay.

* I call bullshit on ADD. It’s not attention deficit disorder, it’s bad parenting and lack of discipline disorder. Give your kids some structure and their made-up affliction vanishes.

It is rad to have an awesome art director.

Someone needs to come fix me breakfast.

Apparently, I punched through either the windshield or the rear window. It is a strange thing to be covered in one’s own blood.

Sunday Munich, “Prozac”
Cocteau Twins, “Seekers Who Are Lovers”
Nine Inch Nails, “A Warm Place”
Vangelis, “Damask Rose”
Radiohead, “Climbing Up Walls” (Zero 7 Mix)
Pray for Rain, “Taxi to Heaven”
Switchblade Symphony, “Monsters”
Massive Attack, “Black Milk”
Moby, “Look Back In”
This Mortal Coil, “The Lacemaker II”
Dntel, “Last Songs”

I’ll look into the realities of a higher-quality recording, too, since some of you want a version that doesn’t sound like mixdown went through a filter called “Mud.”

What’s up, fiends?

Click on the big ol’ square below to hear the demo mix for a new downtempo night I’m trying to pitch. The sound quality is low, but that’s so I’m not misinterpreted as stealing other people’s music and also to keep the file size down. This mix is about 36 minutes long, and about 8.2 megs worth of mp3 format. This is perfect for two to four in the morning, for when you’re winding down. Do not listen to it while you are drunk.

Also, there is a giant bee outside, crashing against my window and trying to get in. I don’t think so, giant bee.

Everybody knows what a goddamn haiku is, right? Well here’s some goddamn haikus that focus on reviews of albums, some new and some old. After all, if an album review can’t be distilled down to 17 goddamn syllables, the reviewer’s talking too much without saying enough.

Mouse over the album covers for artist and title. Click on the Killers cover to see their video. Click on the other covers for… other stuff.

Fever rocked so hard
Body Language is sleepy
What the fuck happened?

Half rad, half okay
N’sync should have quit sooner
As good as JT

A return to form
Good beats but too many words
Music to fight to

Who the fuck are you?
HOLY SHIT, YOU FUCKING ROCK
These guys will be huge

You curse more than me
Please be my art-school girlfriend
It will end in knives

Yeah, I know it’s short notice, but I’m working at Flux tonight in case anyone wants to come by. Free cover!

LATE ADDENDUM: Last Night’s Playlist

Ladytron, “Mu-Tron”
Britney Spears, “Toxic” (K.O. Level Five Toxicity Mix)
Radiohead, “Pyramid Song” (Black Forest Mix)
ATB, “Let U Go” (Clubb Mix)
Orbital, “Much Ado About Nothing Left”
The Faint, “The Conductor” (Thin White Duke Remix)
David Gahan, “Dirty Sticky Floor” (Junkie XL Mix)
Overseer, “Horndog” (Larry Tee’s Electroclash Mix)
Chicks on Speed, “Euro Trash Girl”
Swayzak, “State of Grace”
New Order, “Crystal” (Lee Coombs Mix)
Fischerspooner, “The 15th” (Felix da Housecat Vocal Mix)
FC Kahuna, “Machine Says Yes” (Tiga Mix)
Wolfsheim, “Once in a Lifetime” (Club Mix)
Kraftwerk, “Tour de France”
Tiga & Zyntherius, “Sunglasses at Night” (Radio Edit)
Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill” (Infusion Mix)
Paul van Dyk, “For an Angel”
bt, “Somnambulist”
Felix da Housecat, “Madame Hollywood” (Tiga’s Mister Hollywood Version)
The Crystal Method, “Born Too Slow” (Nubreed Remix)
Portishead, “Sour Times”
Peaches f/ Iggy Pop, “Kick It”
VNV Nation, “Electronaut”
Seabound, “Hooked”
Apoptygma Berzerk, “Nonstop Violence” (CNN Version)
Benny Benassi, “Satisfaction” (Club Mix)
Miss Kittin & the Hacker, “Sweet Dreams” (NDA Mix)
Legowelt, “Disco Rout”
New Order, “Here to Stay” (Felix da Housecat Remix)
The Faint, “Glass Danse” (Paul Oakenfold Remix)
Fischerspooner, “Emerge” (Dave Clarke Mix)
Covenant, “Dead Stars” (Version)
Ellen Allien, “Bullet” (Ellen Allien Flow Mix)
Apoptygma Berzerk, “Kathy’s Song” (Beborn Beton Remix)
* Peaches, “Fuck the Pain Away”
* Miss Kittin & the Hacker, “Frank Sinatra”
* Nitzer Ebb, “Captivate”
Scissor Sisters, “Comfortably Numb” (Tiga Remix)
Meat Beat Manifesto, “God O.D.”
Frost, “Amygdala” (Qwerty’s Coldwave Mix)
Soviet, “Commute”

I’m listening to the Blade Runner score while working on the Book That Ate My Life.

Chad and Fred just texted me from Florida, saying that they were hanging out with Roy Batty and Priss.

It is rad to listen to the Blade Runner score. It makes me want to kiss a replicant full on the mouth.

Convention season begins next week.

Convention season is the yearly terror that spans from early March to late September/October. It is a whirling sausage-grinder that takes giant chunks of your life and forces them through a series of crushing gears along with your sobriety and sleep and eating habits and expunges them into a casing made of your own intestines. It is a bottomless well into which all light and fun falls, but those occupy the same space as the soul’s bleakest darkness and visions of one’s own mortality. As a metaphor, convention season is snorting a kilo of cocaine, drinking a case of someone’s homemade whiskey and jump-kicking a variety of security guards. In fact, that’s actually probably more literal than metaphorical.

I love convention season and I hate it. I see old friends and make new ones, but I get in fights with inanimate objects and I spend approximately half of the season’s seven-month stretch detoxing from the trials through which I’ve put myself.

The problem is that I don’t know how not to. It’s foreign to me to go to a new city, stay in a place that I don’t have to clean up myself… and then just get to bed at a reasonable hour. I know it’s the smart thing to do, as the next days hold a stretch of 12- to 14-hour work days that are a combination of physical demands, mental exercises and social graces, punctuated by the nightly hobnobbing that constitutes a good quarter of my business’ convention-season duties.* I should stop this. I’m too old for this. Even last year, I lamented that my decrepitude made this a distinctly losing proposition — but I did it anyway.

Add to this the superior strain I’m under at work right now. I have a huge — huge — book due into editing on Wednesday. According to the schedule, it’s actually due Friday, but I’m going to be in Florida then so it has to arrive early. This book has chewed my life. I’ve been working on it for about a year now, and I first turned it in to the editor back in December. After that first round of editing, we all decided we wanted to change it more, so I went back and wrangled its guts with more ferocity. Thirty percent more, by my estimates. I took what was, by rights, a finished title and then climbed back inside, red pen in one hand and a human head in the other. The changes, though, aren’t the point — the point is that I have been living this book for a year and it’s been kicking my ass and it’s about to be done. I’ve been at the end of my rope for almost a month now. I’ve been clean for almost a year, but that ended a few weeks back as I got back in. I’d been scaling back on drinking for almost a year, too, but I’ve been on more benders in the past four weeks than I can count. I’ve been drunk on Mondays — Mondays. And now that I’m getting to a point where I feel I can consciously shake that monkey off my back–

–I’m getting into the cycle of “let’s do it all again.” I mean, I guess I could stay in my hotel room instead of going out. I could find some pick-up game and get involved with that for a few hours each night. I could go see local sights or take along another book to outline or go down to the hotel gym.

But I don’t want to do that. I read at home. I outline books every day at normal work. I go to the gym four or five times a week anyway. What are other cities for, if not an epic personal invasion, heavy on the consumption, heavy on the ruination and light on the actual significance? I don’t want every day to have value. If every day had the same density of meaning-of-life, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

I guess my job’s been weighing on me. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s good to know the milestones I’ve achieved and those milestones make me even more ambitious. Through these books, I’ve reached hundred of thousands of people, if not more than a million, and I’ve given them innumerable hours of entertainment. I don’t plan on stopping, either; I want to do that more and more. I’m not content to take what I’ve accomplished and drink it away. I’ve achieved what I’ve accomplished in just eight years, and I’m thrilled (but more than a little scared) to see what my next 30 have to offer.

On the other hand, it’s demanding. My ideas always need to stay ahead of the curve in order to keep my work edgy and more than just what’s expected. That gets harder and harder the older I get. Further, it’s actually work. I don’t just sit around all day and play with toys, have a squirt-gun fight, read comics, order a pizza and roll some dice. I’m an actual managing editor at a multimillion dollar publishing company and I’m responsible for at least 10 books a year — plus the public face of conventioneering, plus approvals on scripts and licensing, plus generating ad copy and marketing material, plus whatever else the job throws at me, like packing things out in the warehouse and developing new ideas outside those that are seen in my regular IP line.

Too much of that, however, turns thoughts morose and makes for a bitter, resentful man, which I’m not interested in being anymore. It was amusing for a while, being the Angry Young Man, cynical beyond his years. That’s gone, though, and in wanting more, I need to make room to enjoy that which is comparatively less. Friends have bought houses; friends have married and had children. I’ve focused less on family and more on career — and that’s fine — but I need that room to relax, too.

So I drank one; it became four, and when I fell on the floor I drank more. Hello convention season ’04.

* “Do you want to write for this book I have coming up?” “Did so and so turn his work in to you on time?” “What do you have coming out in September?” “Here’s what we wanted to do when we printed Title X.” “LET’S HAVE FOUR SHOTS OF JAEGER, DANCE WITH THOSE GIRLS AND THEN FIGHT THOSE GUYS.”