Essssss...

I'd like to preface thjs with: I'm wrting this on a phone + whiskey. This superbowl sunday, comcast viewers in tuscon were treated to a clip of a woman going down south right as the cardinals took the lead in the fourth quarter. Supposedly this was coincidence, crossed wires.

My faith has been renewed.

I'm pleasantly surprised that so many people who posted on here a couple years/few years/some of you almost a decade ago are still doing it. There are other sites with journal options, but nobody reads the entries on those pages, myspace, facebook, too, I suppose, never used that one. They merely exist to remind you of how many people you're acquainted with and to network. Myspace is great to tell a bunch of people you know in the area that you've got a show coming up. Absolutely awesome for bands. Good for finding people you knew in highschool because everyone on the planet seems to have one. But what do you do... you comment to them and say "HI I USED TO KNOW YOU" and you feel better in the knowledge that you've found them, reconnections and what not, but that's the gist of it usually. "Hey I'm going to be in town next week, want to get a beer?" "Wanna play this show next week at [venue] with, etc, etc." Great for that.

But this thing is unique. There's nothing but words. There's no faces, you don't see a current friend-count on the first page. The "post" page, even though it's changed, compels me to write. I learned to write here, really write, conversationally, comfortably.

I didn't stop writing here consciously. For a while I didn't have internet, then I did have internet, but I didn't have time. Then I did have time, but I didn't have anything to say. Then I forgot. I don't know, I read some of the last things I posted and it was all bitching about the hot dog joint anyway, chasing my own greasy tail. I think I needed a break.

Thanks to everyone who's still here. Glad you didn't let it die. And thanks to livejournal for not deleting my journal like I always figured/feared you would.

That's okay, blogging is huge now, so I'm sure you could log on any number of places to hear:

1. Barack Obama is awesome and sexy, let's all hump his tiny black ass in one big country-wide love pile

2. DAY-AM the economy sucks!

3. Sarah Palin is stupid, but also hot

I can't think of anything else that happened last year. There was something about polar bears, but that falls under 3., uh, groceries are astronomically expensive and nobody who doesn't have work or would like better work has a chance in hell in this state but that's number two, uhhhhh errrr

But back to number one: Isn't it FUNNY that during the campaign Obama was accused of being a celebrity, which of course any presidential candidate is bound to be, but he wasn't REALLY, but now that he will be president in a matter of hours I have to hear about what his daughters are eating for lunch and and what kind of dog he's going to get and "Watch Barack and Michelle's first dance! Right here on ABC!" and yes, Virginia, there is a new Camelot... Don't get me wrong, I like him a lot. I just think it's funny.

On a personal note, the band all lives in one house now. Our drummer lives underneath my bathroom which has most of a floor that is only the tiniest bit composed of cardboard boxes. This is not only funny but has also increased the intimacy level within the band. There are three levels involved in coping with another person being able to clearly hear you whizz and shit:

1. Whizzing and shitting anxiety, accompanied by guilt, shame, and promises to improve ones diet.

2. Acceptance/ambivalence.

3. HILARITY!

Throwing things down the hole is also fun. I never did dangle a dollar bill on a piece of fishing line above his bed, but everyone lives with a certain amount of regret.

Two other bands practice in the basement, so "going to the laundromat" amounts to going downstairs in my jammies and listening to a punk band and drinking beer while I wait to put my shit in the dryer. Score. Our bass player owns the house, but sometimes The Landlord is a separate entity, like when the electric company comes to read the meter and I need to be at the bus stop in five minutes and don't have time to monitor some stranger lurking around the basement. "Naw, landlord's not here. I don't know, man, I just rent the place upstairs. Can't help you, I don't have a key for that door. Bye now." It's fun to pretend.

Last summer-through-fall-through-winter we recorded a 23 track album with Joe Moody, who is a fucking saint and extremely gifted behind a sound board. All that's left is putting the liner notes together, which is a kind of daunting "all that's left" for the in-house graphic designer. I HAVE VERY FEW IDEAS AS OF YET. I didn't mean to scream that, sorry. If anyone out there is interested (is there anyone out there?) we've got a little myspace with some songs on it at myspace.com/almostblindband.

Cool, my game's done loading. Bye whoever still uses LiveJournal! It's still better than myspace! WOOOOOOO

1. I'm in L.A. (just visiting)
2. At 5:30 this morning, I was waiting in line outside CBS Studios along with over 600 other people to get in to see The Price Is Right.
3. Looks like (fingers crossed) our party will be in the studio audience for the 4:30 taping.

Right now I'm at K-mart checking out the prices of electric stoves, power tools, and Prep-H. Wish me luck!

Shane and I have been in Houston for the past few days, more on that later when I have time, but I felt a civic duty to report this:

Sasquatch and the Sick-a-billys, local Providence band who recently won the prestigious WBRU "Raw Cunt" competition, were detained by Secret Service for six hours after a show at the Ocean Mist in Matunuck. It is unclear if Secret Service were present at the show or if they were called in via TIPS just after the show.

Lesson to musicians: Don't tell the crowd to kill the president. He posted something on his myspace, too, which I understand he was questioned about, proving my point once again: Livejournal is way better because nobody reads it.

Okay, so what does it mean when you've reinstalled Windows 98 and everything seems to be working fine except that your display is maxed out at 16 colors and you can't expand beyond 640 X 480?

So, I was invited to this "Artists Dinner" Sunday night with a show to follow in March, and I'm supposed to talk about my work or something. Only, I'm a hack, so I don't know what to say. "Well, I like spray paint because all my brushes are mucked up with book binder's glue, but lemme tell you, you gotta open a window when you use that stuff! I mean, look at this crap, the fumes got me so high that I thought this made sense!"

Did you know that the tattoo gun is a based on an invention by Thomas Edison called the electric pen?

I went to the Living Room last night to see the Nice Ups. It was an early show, aimed at highschoolers to take advantage of the school holiday. As the Nice Ups switched from raggae to ska, a group of three kiddie-punks in checked kneesocks and pigtails and mohawks and hoodies awkwardly skanked in line to the beat. I mentioned to Shane that four, five years ago, I had the desire and endurance to skank through half a set and pogo through the other, so aged I am at twenty-four!

In the van, after the set and after the two bowls after the set, someone said, "I'll bet you could get one like that in Japan, I bet they've got PCs on wristbands over there," and I thought about the kids in the club and how little the basic rock and roll ritual has changed in the past ten, twenty, thirty years. Nevermind the current state of the music industry, the kids still dance the same. What was once current and novel is now a culture that has sustained three generations.

Kennedy Plaza comes to mind. The groups of young people in baggy pants and what looks like their mothers' nylons stretched over the tops of their heads mingling with homeless people and toothless wanderers and maybe one guy in a suit, holding a briefcase. A group or two of fourteen year-olds in black hoodies, Invader Zim backpacks, and graver pants. Same as it ever was, except they all have cellphones strapped to their heads. Cheap ones, because as humanity's technology is advancing exponentially, the standard of living in the United States is declining. The educated and ambitious had children twenty years ago that aren't interested in education or ambition. Our culture is stagnating. Our parents are going to die in an unimportant country.

When I think about this, walking around the city becomes surreal. The kids and twenty-somethings dress in vintage clothes to emulate the past. A good idea has become something that repackages something old in a new way. It makes me nervous, but it also makes me smile despite myself. I have that primal urge, inside my gut, to live simply, to live in some kind post-capitalist tribal landscape in which the familiar imagery of my childhood and early adulthood, assumed to be temporary, disposable culture, is given an indefinite stay. I tredge from one end of town to another with a thirty pound backpack, cargo pockets, and a hood, all practical, but it's the rock and roll, the (also practical) leather jacket, that makes my role as urban peasant something that I can happily embrace. The slovenly coffee-slinger too lazy and poor to drive is (voila!) a traveling vagabond looking for adventure, on the bus, on the way to serve coffee. A crappy band on the cover of the Phoenix is The Jam because they look like them. The kid in the doo-rag is a powerful thug because he scowls at people in Kennedy Plaza and says "nigga" alot. After all, we were all raised on television, and if TV taught us anything, we learned the first step to immortality is in looking the part.

Somehow, I don't think making everyone who takes public transit wait in the 8 degree windchill for limited holiday bus service was part of Martin Luther King's agenda. I don't think he'd be cool with everyone having to wait an extra day to cash their Friday paychecks, either.

Course, he's probably spinning in his grave over what happened in New Orleans this fall, so why split hairs now?

You guys make me feel so freakin' special. I missed you, too.

Simple pleasure: Blowing a wad of thick canary mucous the size of a baby's fist out of your nostril after being sick for three days. Boy, that's refreshing.

So, I don't know why I was surprised that the cable guy who showed up to slap an ethernet card in the back of my computer was a cable guy and not a computer expert. For some reason I assumed that because both services were included in the deal that the installer would be well-versed in both technologies. Instead, I got a couple of grunting, ass-scratching monkeys. I explained to the first guy three times that the smaller of our two TVs would need to be hooked up to the cable because the sound's broken on the big one and we're sending the audio and video from the smaller to the larger in order to use the smaller's speakers.

"But don't you want to hook it up to the big one?"

"The speakers are broken on the big one, so we're using the small one for the sound. The big one is already connected to the small one, don't worry about it."

"But don't you want to hook it up to the big one?"

When I finally turned on the two TVs, he was awe-struck.

"How'd you do that?"

His supervisor showed up about a half an hour later with the ethernet card that no one told him he needed. They slapped it in, put in the driver CD, and when they were unable to immediately connect to the internet, they opened a few inconsequential windows in the control panel, scratched their chins, and announced that my computer would not be able to access their service. I asked why.

"Some of these older computers just don't respond to the high speed internet."

"But why?"

"Not enough memory... not compatible... but you never know until you try and install it."

Okay, first, yes, you should know, because you should have a list of system requirements and that list should be the first thing you check before you even start to install it. Essentially, he's used to installing the internet on systems with XP (in which case it's pretty much plug-and-play), and he either lacks the training or the work ethic to spend any time trouble-shooting systems with Win98.

His professional advice: Buy a new computer.

I said, "Okay, maybe I will, why don't you leave the modem in case I do. Can I have the driver disk?"

"Oh, you won't need it, but here."

Before they left, I was chit-chatting with the younger of the two and he told me he usually gets paid $200-$300 a day. He complained that he gets paid by the job, and he wouldn't be making that much today. That's great for his kids, I guess, but it still makes me want skewer my head with an ice pick.

After they left, I ripped open the information packet and found an install CD. I checked the system requirements which were all kosher except, surprise, bad network adapter. I installed, uninstalled, fiddled, reinstalled, uninstalled, tweaked, rinse, repeat for about an hour and obviously my computer is capable of accessing their service because I'm on the internet right fucking now. I don't even know what I'm doing, and I made it work.

A grand a week! I bet they have health insurance, too. Probably a drug test, though.

So here's the story: about... ahhhh... February I stopped paying my phone bill. If I recall, I had a good reason, that being that I had spent the last seven months slinging hot dogs for seven bucks an hour, thirty hours a week, and I couldn't afford a phone. Almost a year later, I still can't afford a phone because I owe Verizon about a buck fitty. However, I can afford to get cable TV (cue singing monks) and high-speed internet, imagine that. But, you ask, how have things changed to allow me these vast luxuries?

I make lattes now, which, besides leaving me smelling like a freshly-roasted bag of beans, is, for some reason, significantly more respectable than slinging hot dogs. That leads to a higher level of job satisfaction, higher base pay, and buttloads of tips. Let's talk about tips for a moment. What's the worst hazard you encounter behind the counter? Here's a template scenario:

You, counterperson: How may I help you?

Her, middle-aged suit on her lunch break who resents your youth and easy-going lifestyle: I'd like a double-decaf-latte-skinny with half a shot of sugar-free vanilla and a toasted scone and could you pierce your pinky finger with this sacrificial dagger over the margarine and could you spread that for me?

You: What size latte?

You make her latte, you listen to her other sharply-delivered demands, and when it's all over and you hand her the change, and she puts a bill in the jar. What is the message behind that bill, boys and girls?

"Thank you for not fucking up my drink even though I have three or more abrasive personality disorders."

That bill is why I have cable. That bill allows me to write to you right now. That bill makes all the difference.

- - -

But to be completely honest, this job has softened me into a piece of always-helpful-and-mostly-responsible customer service putty. I mean, come on, I get to wear whatever I want, I had a mohawk all summer, and I've got a big ugly pink mullet now, and I never hear a word. I'm a manager, so I have other stuff to do besides being chained to the counter. The owner's nuts, but at least he's bipolar, so it's like good-boss, bad-boss, 50-50. Yup. I'm fat and content and making a living wage, so long as you exclude seeing a doctor and having a car from the definition of "living wage." Which I do.

- - -

We're no longer in the heart of Pawtucket. We're now on the edge of the freeway, a good spitting distance from Pawtucket, behind two gas stations and a Burger King. Heat's included. Before we found this place, we started out squatting in a breadbox on Charles St. that, as it turns out, was once home to four different friends and acquaintances and had most recently been dubbed "The House of Tweak." We found a the skeletal remains of a massive server in the basement, along with a suitcase containing a broken waterpipe, a VCR, a mini-fridge, and a fish, which Shane gave to his daughter. Technically, we were staying there to watch the place for the owner while he renovated the place, rent and utilities free of charge. He implied to us that we would be able to move in semi-permanently. So, we lived in this flea-ridden shithole for about three months with all our belongings stacked against the wall. No fridge but the beer fridge, no heat, and descending winter. I kept asking when we could move into one of the newly-renovated apartments, I asked the workmen what they knew, I asked the owner, nothing but "we'll talk next week," and evasive shrugs. Finally it came out that he had intended to sell the building all along and we would have to leave either way. He said, "don't worry, I'll find a place for you guys," meaning he would either rent us one of his crappy places or send us off to squat at another property. We'd actually spent so much in getting our friends drunk and high to help us move, plus paying for a UHAUL, not to mention gas and time and energy... we didn't pay rent for three months, but we didn't save anything either. No debts were paid off, we didn't get new tattoos or do anything cool except live like filty, highly inefficient nomads. However, I did get a football thrown at my head:

I was walking down Charles St. toward the Wash Haven, dragging my laundry behind me in a wheeled suitcase. As I approached the hot bed of Providence "urban" culture, which only amounts to a lot of people standing on street corners in baggy pants, I noticed a bunch of kids throwing footballs to eachother across the busy street. I thought to myself, "One of those little assholes is going to throw a football at my head." I carefully timed when I walked past them on the sidewalk so that I wouldn't accidentally get hit instead of the passing car. When I was several feet past and finally breathing a sigh of relief, I felt the familiar thud of pigskin against cranium that briefly transported me back to fifth grade gym class. While it has been suggested again and again that I should have taken the football, I didn't, just turned around and told them to watch what the fuck they were doing. But when the little bastard caught me on my walk back from dropping off my laundry and told me I should go back to West Attleboro (I'm still not clear what that means, and there is no West Attleboro), I told him he was lucky I didn't call the police.

"Fine, call the police."

So I did, and the police showed up a little while later. They tracked the kids down and harrassed their parents, and maybe that'll be the one mark on their record that sends them to juvee before they impregnate someone.

- - -

Awww, dude. South Park tonight is an astute satire on the '04 presidential campaign. Gotta go.

Did you know that for $50 you can purchase a program for your computer that will simulate a three dimensional character (facial features, hair, and clothing of the user's design) that will do whatever the user specifies, but mostly eat, sleep, grow old, and die? Is there anything more boring, more banal, than simulating mundane life experience on a thirteen-inch screen? Anything more addictive? No, and no. I left my little teenage Sim 2 alone in a "community lot" for five minutes and came back to find her making out with her female school chum in a public bathroom. I was able to capture the moment in a low-quality avi. file. Captivatingly stupid. Instead of merely watching the maid run around in her frilly fetish outfit, in this new version of the game, you can talk to the maid, you can flirt with her, you can invite her to stick around when she's done working, and then you can fuck her cross-eyed. You can invite her to move in, get her a job as a cop, and then the old maid can seduce the new maid, get caught, and receive a savage beating from every member of her appalled family. Oh yes, the possibilities abound, squeezed in between making sure everyone in the house has eaten and used the shitter.

In the meantime, I haven't eaten or used the shitter or found a new job. I picked up my last check from Spike's to find out that my pay rate hadn't increased with the promotion, which means that the G-man was planning to stiff me the fifty-cent raise to $8 that usually follows becoming a supervisor. Good riddance. I miss making hot dogs, I miss working on Thayer Street, I miss getting a paycheck, but I don't miss the paranoia that comes from working for a moody egomaniac whose M.O. is to become as friendly and casual with his employees as possible so they won't quit when he stabs them in the back. Of course, my M.O. is to become as friendly as possible with my employer and work like a dog so I can get away with stupid shit like habitual lateness and smoking pot on the clock, which is more or less the same thing, but at least I'm discreet and I'm the only one who gets hurt when I'm too stoned to juggle a hot pan of dogs and a hot pan of bread without burning my arm. The problem with G and I was this: you can't play an employee who's already playing you. It isn't possible to use "but I thought we were friends" to get someone to stay if they know you're full of shit. I think he knows that, though, and will probably be more careful to hire idiots in the future.

So, the search is still wide open. I'd like to work at Tealuxe, but it doesn't seem like they're hiring for another couple of months, although I've gotten some mixed messages on that front. I emailed my resume and a writing sample to a syndicate editor, but I'm expecting advice more than a job from that one. I'm thinking Starbucks, maybe, that company's done right by about a dozen of my friends in less than good times. We'll see what happens.

I used to relieve stress by plucking out my leg hairs, one by one. Now I relieve stress by drinking and smoking pot. You've probably done that.

Back when I modeled nude for a drawing class at AS220, I was working in the third floor of a RISD building with a gallery on the first floor. One day, I wandered downstairs on my lunch break and found drawings of me, nude, did I mention, two floors down from my workplace. I didn't realize it at first, but then I looked at the face and it was unmistakeable. Earrings on one side, short spikey hair, and he really nailed my chin. And my ass.

You've probably never spent three days at a nudist campground in the middle of buttfuck Connecticut. I have. And I ran into people from Providence who know people that I know because New England is that fucking small.

You've probably never made up your own religion, made up a catchprase for it, gotten it tattooed on your back above a monkey in a red fez, video taped the high holy day drunk as a skunk, and walked into a McDonalds on said high holy day with David, who grabbed the camera, pointed it behind the register and proclaimed, "I will expose your crack kitchen secrets!" I doubt you've encouraged your friends to stay up for 48 hours straight playing video games in the name of your (semi)fictional diety, nor given a sermon in an alley off Thayer Street post-acid trip while suffering from extreme sleep deprivation.

I smoke pot in that alley now, once or twice a week, on break from work down the street. I don't think anyone else uses that alley, so you probably haven't done that, at least not in a Spike's visor.

(to be continued...)

The Boneheads are participating in a punk rock Battle of the Bands at The Living Room, Wednesday, April 6. More info to come.

- - -

The other night, an ambassador from the United Republic of Rodentia lost his way and became trapped in our loveseat. We were watching South Park reruns and drinking beer when Shane's ears perked up. "Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"In the couch!"

We muted the TV and, yes, indeed, I could hear the familiar scritch-scritch of little mouse claws against the inside of the apolstery.

"Aw, shit."

So, the rescue/search-and-destroy mission was on. Shane tipped over the couch while I stood waiting with a mixing bowl to catch him under. Instead of falling out, as we'd hoped, he scuttled farther into the frame. Shane, muttering about prevailing against the invaders, slashed open the bottom of the couch with a sword to no avail. We eventually abandoned the search. I haven't heard hide nor hair from the ambassador since, so either he found his own way out via the new holes in the bottom, or he died of fright and there's a dead mouse in our loveseat.

- - -

We went to see the Nice Ups on Saturday night, at the German American Club in Mystic, Connecticut. The place reminded me of the American Legion post in Hadley where I saw Voltaire a few years ago. Nothing like it exists in Providence or the surrounding area: Kids, everywhere, young kids with funny shaved haircuts and bad dye-jobs, kids like I remember them when I was in highschool, dozens of them, skanking in tight rows. Downstairs at the members-only bar, a drunk woman in her fifties latched herself to Shane, and pointed at the hanging lights bouncing above the pool table. She beamed with pride: "They built this place right, it was a dance hall back then, and the kids still come here to dance. Too loud for me, though, it's better down here!"

All ages upstairs, 21+ below. Because it's a "private social club," and we were technically supposed to have signed in somewhere, smoking was allowed. A small crew of twenty-somethings in metal T-shirts and rags, almost all with waist-length dredlocks, played pool and drank beer at the table across from us. But the real party was upstairs, kids from the sticks who were just there to dance. I saw one stone-faced twelve year-old boy with a wallet chain hanging to his knees and a T-shirt that read, "I'm not with stupid," next to a picture of Bush. Out of the mouths of babes. All those kids, it reminded me of the punk shows they used to put on at the Missouri City park grounds when I was in highschool, no reason to be there except for the music. We couldn't pay for a crowd like that in Providence, where few people go to shows anymore. I asked the trumpet player from the Nice Ups, who helped organize the show, if ska bands always did this well here, and he said this was only the second ska show ever booked and the kids just came. He's booking us for a show there at the end of the month, which will be a punk-ska bill. I said, "we'll have to borrow your horn section," but he shook his head and laughed.

Let's all raise a bong to Hunter S. Thompson, who is at least partially responsible for my having tried LSD and for putting finger to keyboard right now. The sort of adventure he chronicled doesn't exist anymore. The kid-in-a-candy-store rebellion of the American '60s and '70s, the day when someone with talent (as opposed to Paris Hilton and her troll-faced associate) could be paid to drive into the desert in a convertible on assloads of hallucinogens is as far away as Don Quixote, but I'll be damned if he didn't inspire myself and countless others to search for what truth and chaos still exist within the framework of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and first-person journalism.

On a related note, today's episode of Dr. Phil will focus on teen alcohol abuse and new "alternate" forms outside of Mom and Dad's liquor cabinet, such as... cough syrup! Look for warning signs in your teenage son or daughter, such as changes in personality and secretive behavior. Because teenagers are never moody or secretive without chugging Robitussin.

- - -

We have a mighty civilization of rodents living in the shadows of our apartment. I was sitting on the pot one day, reading a Playboy, when I caught one running from behind the broken washer to behind the toilet and back under the heating vent. I can hear them right now. I hear them sneeze. I hear their little claws against the ceiling and the vents. Yesterday, Shane heard them topple over one of the dozens of empty twelve-rack boxes stacked in our kitchen that they have been inhabiting like luxurious cardboard mouse condos. When we moved their complex from one side of the room to the other, we discovered their public restroom was on the first floor, near the back, however, their knowlege of waste disposal has yet to advance past that of primitive humans.

We were lying in bed listening to them, and I said to Shane, "It's kind of comforting. It's sort of like having a pet, except you have no responsibility for them, and you have to imagine what they're doing. Hear that? That could be two males fighting for dominance and breeding rights."

Shane said, "I like to imagine they're playing checkers."

So, before I could get them to their new home, the smaller of the two rats died, presumably of natural causes.

When I found him a few days ago, it was clear that the larger rat had made a meal of him.

Pet ownership is great!

Fantasy Ways to Leave Spike's

#6 - Call Jordy, intelligently critique every piece of graphic design in the store, then inform him that he could have a RISD grad to transform his pathetic hole in the wall into a competitive-looking restaurant for cheap, if only he weren't a prissy meglomaniacal retard. Emphasize his failure as a businessman and a human being.

#37 - Start a fight club in the basement.

#56 - Hide a bong behind the ice bin, under the register. When Dave Drake walks in, arm raised, and yells, "Spike Rules!" return the "Spike Heil" and offer him a toke.

#72 - Five words: Sex on the prep table.

#122 - Tell demanding customer, when handing them their cup for soda, "How 'bout a nice cup of shut the fuck up?"

#215 - Install a hidden camera in the employee bathroom. Call Channel 10 News and the Providence Journal.

There's no need for debate. Given that everything to come out of George W. Bush's mouth, as far back as Texas, has been either astoundingly stupid or untrue, why would we want a known idiot and swindler playing around with Social Security? How does anyone think this is a good idea?

- - -

Dude, I had the plague since this weekend. It sucked.

- - -

REMINDER:

Tonight at the Living Room - Bi Anal Ham Sandwich, The Boneheads, Neon Vomit, and The Goners!

So, apparently, in the year or so since I lived with four rats, now that the rats are mine, I'm excruciatingly allergic to them. Like, one eye is swollen shut and I'm sneezing blood. It rocks. Thankfully, they've got a new home waiting for them, and in the meantime, they've got their own luxurious bedroom and visitation periods. What the fuck. Or should I say, who knew?

Walked into work this morning, a little more baked than usual, and who knew? white haired good ol' boy Dave Drake would be behind the counter, wearing a pair of safety goggles and playing with power tools. Spike's is getting wings, and he came in himself to rip the fucking shelves out of the wall to make room for the new fryolator. Apparently, the "Who Knew?" buttons are making a triumphant return later this month to promote our new tuna sandwiches and seasonal fish and chips. On a related note, Bacardi is jumping on the universal appeal of who knew? with a new radio commercial in which the announcer says, "Bacardi blah blah blah, zero carbs and something else, who knew?" Confused amazement. It speaks to the times.