CIA Sundays

The following message is written in an elaborate code I devised two minutes ago. If you can decipher the code and figure out the hidden message, you are a true Boosh Clown fan.
Good luck!

asdf.ksdjflkasdjflkasdjfl;ksdajfl;sdkajfl;dsajfdsl;kfjdalfkdjsfkl;djsfkl;dsjfdkljfsdklajfsdkl;ajfl;dkjfkl;dsjfkl;sdjfkl;sdjafl;ksdjafl;kdjsfkl;sdjafkl;sdjl;fkjdsfkl;sdjfl;ksdjafl;ksdjfkl;sdjl;fkjsdfkl;fjsdl;kfj lk;j
laksjfl;ksdjfl;
asdkjflsdajfkldsjfkl;sdajfkl;sdjafl;kdsjfl;ksdjf;ldsjfl;ksdjfa
sdflksdjafl;kjsdklfjdskl;fjdskl;fjdsl;kfjsd;lafkj

so;fsdkl;jflkdsjfkl;sdajfkl;dasjf;lkjfal;sdkajfal;sdkfjl;dskjaf;dlsakjfsdl;fjasd
weioqruqwepoiruweiopurweiopuriowpquropiqweuropiewuroiewuropiweurioweuqr
cvn,.cmxnv,m.zxcnv,m.xcnv,mxcn,mvxcnzm,.vncxzm,.vncx,.vnxc,.vm
oewiurpqoweurioweuopriuweqoipruqweoijsdkl;jaflk;asdjfl;k
eoriuweopiruweiopjfkl;sdjaflksdj
lkcv,czx,.vmc,.xvmxc,./dsl;kfjsdkl;jfsdkl;jfwioqeuriopewuriopqweufkljsdklfjasdlk;cxmv,.xcmv,.
xc,.vmxcz.vm.cx/z,vm./cxjsdklfjdsfl;kj
uiweoqrpuweoruopweoiruweopruoweipuroiweurw


Comments:

Billy, from Charlotte, writes:
Dear Boosh Clown,
I think I solved the code. Please call me back at my home residence.
Yours,
Billy
274-343-2123

Carol, from Austin, writes:
To Mr. Boosh Clown,
Your code is a fucking scam. There is no hidden message. I hate you.
-Carol

Mitch, from Minneapolis, writes:
Dear Boosh,
I stayed up all night trying to solve the code, and I found that if you substitute "p's" for all the "a's", "u's" for all the "s's", and "f"s" for all the "d's", you get something that looks like a poem that involves the words "puf" and "fup" to a great extent. Am I on the right track? Thank you for your time. I hear Seattle is beautiful this time of year. My aunt has a cabin in Renton.
Signed,
Mitch

Jason, from Vancouver, writes:
Dear Boosh Clown,
Just about every time I read a new blog post I tell myself it is the last time I am ever going to visit your site. Most of your shit is--well--really stupid. Sometimes I read something you wrote and just get up and go bang my head against the wall for a few minutes. And yet here I am again, writing you a meaningless letter. We're all doomed, Boosh. Every last one of us.
Regards,
Jason

Kelsey, from Little Rock, writes:
Boosh Clown!
You are so hot. I totally want to touch your butt. My uncle has a cabin on the Lake of the Ozarks, do you want to come some time and go waterskiing? I just learned how to slalom ski.
Go Razorbacks!
-Kels~*

Nancy, from Bainbridge Island, writes:
Dear Mark (I mean--Boosh Clown),
When are you going to get a real job? Your father and I are starting to question your mental health. Please call soon.
Love,
Nancy

P.S. I love PCP.

O

!

M

!

G

(!)

In Defense of Chuck

I’m having second thoughts about wanting to pursue a career in journalism. There’s too much hate. Too much cynicism. It seems that no matter what, when you get to a certain point where you’re high enough or working for an elite enough publication, some sour-faced person from management comes and leaves a memo on your desk that reads something like this:

Dear [insert name],

Congratulations on achieving editorial status at [insert name of publication]. This memo is just to inform you that from now on you are no longer allowed to like anything, with utmost stress placed on not liking things that everyone else seems to like. This applies to books, music, movies, restaurants, clothing, the type of beer you drink, etc. You see, if you want our readers to think you are intelligent and edgy and elitist, it is critical that you not like anything they like, thereby proving that you are better than them.
I am sorry if this causes any complications, though if you’ve made it this far I’m sure you’ll have no trouble completing your transformation into a heartless cynic and turning over the rest of your already decaying soul to Satan.

Sincerely,
[insert name of management]

I bring this up because yesterday I found out that Chuck Klosterman is coming out with a new book September 16th (he'll be at Elliott Bay Book Co. on Sept. 22 at 7:30pm to discuss it) and after reading some reviews online it would seem that not everyone is nearly as elated as I am, which is disconcerting for me because I have always kind of assumed that every rational-minded person in the world liked Chuck Klosterman. I assumed that people enjoyed his anecdotes, his obscure references, and his lines like “we argued whether or not a bear could be ridden, assuming said bear was muzzled.”

I assumed people liked to laugh.

But I was wrong.

We live in an age of cynicism, and that cynicism is no more apparent than in popular youth culture, where scenesters compete to have the funkiest glasses and apathetic hipsters compete to have the shortest cut-off jean shorts and the skinniest fixed-gear handle bars. We live in an age where it has become uncool to like things, and way more cool to hate. Liking something puts you at risk of being shot down and ridiculed, whereas hating is almost always a safe bet.
After all, no one wants to get hurt. We put up walls and defense mechanisms to prevent people from making us feel bad. We think twice about going out on a limb. However, it seems that these days no one at all wants to go out on the proverbial limb. Everyone is too jaded from past rejection, past let-down, past failure, past criticism, that stepping out on the limb has just become too risky.
Chuck Klosterman is a person that still steps out on that limb. He steps out on it all the time, and he steps confidently. Sure he hates a few things, but he loves even more, and when he does love, he proclaims his love from a mountaintop, like the copper-dirt lined one he runs up in Killing Yourself to Live in North Carolina on his way to the Skynard crash site.
He loves music, he loves women (at least specific women), and he loves the ’87 Boston Celtics. He loves Kiss and Billy Joel and The Real World. He loves Diane and Lenore and hair bands called Tesla.
And he loves to love these things, because it feels a whole lot better than hating them just to try to be cool.
I think reviewer zombies that hate on Chucks work are completely missing the point. They read his writing and look for something deep and dark and moving. They read it looking for the kind of hate they feel in their cold black hearts, and when they don’t find it, it drives them crazy. So they cope in the only way they know how: they hate. And they hate some more.
But none of that matters, because Chuck Klosterman still loves. And he has inspired me to love. And not to think twice.

Da Doo Doo Doo

Have I posted this before? It is my favorite music video of all time...

The Newest Song I am Completely Obsessed With

Girl Talk's newest album, Feed the Animals, is completely balls-to-wall fuckin' awesome. He samples Kelly Clarkson, The Beach Boys, Nirvana, and that one rap song where they yell, "If you don't give a damn, we don't give a fuck."
My favorite track by far on the 49 minute mash-up is "In Step," which I have provided below for your listening pleasure (play it while you listen to the rest. Come on, live a little. Boosh Clown don't disappoint).

It is a beautiful day in Seattle! Today I drove my mom to the airport and pulling away from departures my parents beige Toyota Avalon (featured in Fast and the Furious 8: Bainbridge Island Drag) promptly broke down and refused to accelerate. I was able to coax it all the way to Georgetown before it gave in completely, necessitating a phone call to a tow truck who towed it up to Seattle and I held in very high esteem until he weasled me out of 20 bucks claiming that the drive was too far beyond the allowable mileage limit set by the insurance company.

But still, it is a beautiful day.

And now, I get to take my bike into REI for the second time in two days because it is having mechanical problems as well.

But it is a beautiful day.
So...effing...beautiful.

Serenity now, insanity later.

Just kidding,

Boosh Clown

Boomp3.com

Voodoo Like You Do

The Sounders are becoming an MLS team. Hooray! Guess who is going to be the commentator? Kevin Calabro. Shit. Remember when Sal Masekela, the dread-locked dude from ESPN, started commenting on skateboarding and snowboarding and all "action" sports only to then start commenting on basketball as well? It was horrible, and Kevin Calabro is about to do it with soccer. Stick to what you know, Kevin. Stick with basketball. If I have to hear "flyin' chicken to the barnyard" when someone has a breakaway I'm going to stick an ice pick in my ears.
Birds of a feather...

Hooray for...Jean Shorts

We all wear uniforms. Your mother, your brother, your hot date, your teacher—all of us. Not baseball uniforms or waitressing uniforms--the ones I'm talking about are the uniforms we wear everyday. Mine consists of the following: New Balance 574s, plaid shorts or jeans, and a t-shirt. Sometimes the t-shirt has color and a logo and very rarely it is substituted for a button-up, but more often than not it’s just a plain white “t”.
Last night at Linda’s on Capitol Hill I had the fortune of getting to take in the new component of the hipster uniform: cut-off jean shorts. Half the guys in the outdoor seating area were wearing pants that they had mangled with scissors or some other kind of sharp edge (mutilated Pabst can?) and here is the reason it was so flabbergasting:
They were only doing this semi-ironically.
Now let’s go back three years to when I attended UW and lived on 20th Avenue NE in a seedy but morally fulfilling student house. One day our house hosted a barbecue, and my friend and I decided it would be hilarious if we wore extremely short cut-off jeans. Emboldened by gross amounts of Olympia brand beer and three-inch inseams, we strutted around the yard, giggling stupidly as we watched girls pretend to recoil in disgust. Except for my t-shirt, which depicted a large-mouth bass leaping out of the water that I had cut off near the belly to display more of my midriff than anyone should ever have to see, the whole thing was fairly innocuous.
But nowadays things have gotten out of hand.
Two weeks ago I went to Vancouver to visit my girlfriend and was brought by her sister and sister’s her American Apparel “deep V” wearing squeeze to a trendy vegetarian restaurant on 4th Avenue. Outside the restaurant sat a gaggle of twenty-somethings, obstructing the sidewalk as they sat cross -legged playing cards, waiting to get in and fill their maws with PETA approved foodstuffs. Every single one of them was wearing cut-off jean shorts. Some of them, the more “expressive” ones, had on thick flannel shirts accented by suspenders. With their scraggly beards, they looked like skinny, Amish versions of Paul Bunyan.
I asked one of them if there was a liquor store nearby and he said “yes,” and that “everyone should all, like, get some wine and go drink it in his van.” After shuddering discreetly I politely declined, stating that I would rather slit my wrists on and bleed to death on the sidewalk , and our group moseyed on its way.
I had kind of forgotten about this incident until last night, when I was figuratively slapped across the face by frayed denim and “Oh my God, he’s crazy for wearing cut-off jean shorts, I kind of like it” boys exuding self-satisfaction and girls waiting to give it to them. I sat down next to my friend and her friend and after remarking, “What the fuck is going on here/ I feel out of place” we launched into a 10-15 minute debate on whether or not it was OK that I had just judged the shit out of these hipsters based solely on their apparel. The conversation then turned to judgments in general, asking whether or not it is human nature and if one can compare the snap judgment one makes when meeting someone for the first time to one made driving through an intersection trying to avoid a traffic accident. As usual, I pushed drama. I pushed traffic accident.
“The bottom line,” what I should’ve stated but didn’t, “is that these neo-hippy hipsters are no better than the ICP kids that hang out at the 45th Street bus stop on the AVE and talk about how much they hate their parents. In fact, they’re worse. They were horrible sunglasses that make their faces look like bugs and play kickball in your local park but get pissed off at anyone that actually tries. They are striving towards a level of apathetic mediocrity that makes me cringe.”
The debate ended in a stalemate when a jean short-wearing kid with a basketball jersey accidentally bumped a glass off the table that shattered on the ground below. I got up to go to the bathroom and, slipping past a guy in suspenders, made my way to the haven of the lavatory to reflect on the discussion that had just taken place.
“I think it’s good that they are expressing themselves,” my friend’s friend had said, “I don’t think I would have the balls to do that.”
“That’s the problem,” I shot back. “It doesn’t take balls. Everyone here is doing it. It takes balls not to do it. I’m the only one here wearing white plaid shorts and I feel like at any second I might get hit over the head with a fixed-gear sprocket for looking like a frat boy.”
And that is the problem, with hipsterdom, or any sub-cultural movement: what starts of as “individualistic expression” soon becomes the norm, and then you’re just another uniform-wearing patsy like me in my white plaid shorts. Or you in your cut-off jean-shorts and suspenders. We’re all patsies. We’re all shmucks. The only difference is, you look like a fucking idiot.

BOOSH CLOWN IS BACK

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