Pete's Failed Money Maker: The Utopia of Mediocrity

Oktoberfest Weekend (So far away)

2010-09-25T12:45:00.004-05:00

Oktoberfest was initiated as a king's greatest party. A rich man's event to showcases an innovative, spectacle beer. An event to celebrate one man, a man who was fond of his own greatest. How jealous am I that this all doesn't pertain to myself? God damnit, am I jealous! Oktoberfest has been going on now for a good bit. By a good bit, I just don't mean this year's opening ceremonies in Munich or Lacrosse. I don't mean the remnits of the hangover lasting for last night's three and a half hour Rochester Peace Plaza event. I'm talking years. Centuries. Millennium falcons. I'm talking a good fucking while. So now I must come clean. Where am I? Where is Stu Pidasso? Where is Pete? Where is that one name that I used to call myself, the name that I haven't thought of in years cause I've been blogging as much as a Klu Klux Klan member's been following through with a lynching...Dave Truthteller? Johnny Speakright? Damned if I can't remember all the alter egos I used to hide behind on this blog of failed dreams. Anyway, where am I? Stranded in a high class Hampton Inn in Alexandria, MN. Killing time by me-self. Drinking Two-Hearted, waiting for a wedding to begin at 3. I feel like I got a world to say today and no one to listen. Welcome back to blogging, Pete. Have at her! So it's Oktoberfest weekend. My memories fade back to last year's. A memorable event that has me thinking that, maybe, I'm missing out this year. Well, for the record, I am missing out this year. Last year was fabulous. It was fun, down right crazy, and absolutely a time that I don't want to forget. Why? Because...Oktoberfest begins with a Friday in September. At least in Minnesota/Wisconsin it does, it do. And if some euro-educated lad begs to differ, I beg them to slag off. I have no time on this blog for education. Rants last and last alike, no education needed, Einstein. So the Friday fell onto the same night as a Twins game, the same night as a cold, wet evening in Rochester, MN. The same night as an Apollo Liquor Oktoberfest tent event held outside of Mickey's Irish Salon. Fast forward a Twin's lost, 40ish 4ounce beers, 4 or 5 shots of of Red Stag, some uncontrolled drooling, and you got me plucking display beers off of the tables and attempting to snatch leftover cases out from under the tent flaps. Come Saturday, and this is what I've been pointing as to as the main event, I'm in Lacrosse. Fresh mullets abound, drunk Russel's amuck, and beer's flowing like the zumbro through Hammond, MN on a late September 23rd morning. I partake, give and take, played beer pong with shots at stake. It was wonderful. A drunk's drunk event. Come that night, P?M throw down a show at NightHawk's Tap Room. The crowd was obviously too drunk to notice our shortcomings. And, again, obivously too drunk to notice that the response they were giving us was worthy of, well, a pretty decent band. So P?M's show came and went. All survived, tabs were paid, shots were taken, Pearl Street brews were downed. Fast forward a Fuck Knight's set, a trip out to a car impound, a last second grub run to Subway, and I'm walking the lonely streets of UW-Lax's neighborhood under a full moon with two-third's of P?M and the Fuck Knights at 3am Sunday morning. It was at this time that I saw the most amazing, beautiful sight I have ever witnessed on an Oktoberfest weekend. I mentioned there was a full moon but I should have mention that in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, Keystone Light is king. The cheap beer of choice for college students and it's hard to argue why it isn't. 30 packs are dirt cheap in that town. Dirt cheap. And I have a sneaky suspicion why...in Rochester, MPLS, anywhere else. 24pks are $15 or so and the beer is fresh and good. In LaX, 30 packs are $12 and the beer tastes old and strange. I feel as though I've laid the ground work. There's lots of Keystone Light drank in Lacrosse and on oktoberfest weekend, when it's drank in excess, and garbage cans are ignored or abandoned, people just toss the cans in the yard. In fact, they toss MANY, MANY, cans in the yard. So to be one of the few people walking through this neighborhood at 3am, as the full moon glares down onto the hundreds of blue-silver tinted, empty Keystone light cans that litter the yards...was amazing. A beautiful sight that I hope the whole wide world could see and appreciate. Fast forward being locked out of a house, turned away from an open apartment full of couches to crash on, and I'm discovered by police while tossing garbage cans onto a balcony. So the cops make me pour out some beers and they tell me to not only leave the apartment compound that I'm hanging out by, but they inform me that it's best to leave town, and soon I'm trying to find a ride back out to the car impound that I was just at 2 hours before. Luckily, I get the back seat on the ride home cause I pass out pretty quick. Now, today, to be thinking about this all in Alexandria, I got to bring some of this Oktoberfest excitement to the wedding reception tonight. I hope someone appreciate it.

Inspiration for this blog:

Boredom
Fat Daddy's Bar and Grill
34oz Bell's Two Hearted Ale x 2
http://jameshyland.bandcamp.com/album/celestial-navigation
Three Men and a Tenor
and a tad bit of Elliot Smith's Baby Britain

Snow Closes I-70; Pete Forced Sit Idle In Parking Lot For Hours

2009-01-21T21:32:00.003-06:00

What do you get when you combine twelve straight hours of driving, the Rocky Mountains, a blizzard of monsterous porportions, and a Conoco parking lot? Sleepy time in the western world for three tired out rug rats. As for myself, I braved the storm, fought off Mr. Sandman, and kept my eye on the prize. What prize, you ask? The little road block gate thingy that prevented traffic from heading west on Interstate 70 near Copper Mountatin, Colorado.

Brand NEW! Hillbilly Heroin Music Video!!!

2008-12-09T20:43:00.001-06:00

How The Magic Happens...A Glimpse into the Empty Red Sessions

2008-10-02T21:27:00.003-05:00

P?M - Shitmonger - www.myspace.com/drunkensermons

!!!Empty Red Sessions out soon!!!

Backstage...Empty Red Sessions

2008-09-08T22:22:00.002-05:00

www.myspace.com/drunkensermons

Soon...soon...raccoons...soon.

Dead At 14

2008-08-12T17:15:00.002-05:00

Step aside, Bernie McCullough, and quit hogging the spotlight, Todd Bachman, cause there's been a true death in the Money Maker family and I don't need anyone else cramming for attention here. I don't want to shock you but I can't figure out a way to say this without leaving anyone in shock. Best if I just say it, I suppose. Well, here goes...my 1994 Ford Taurus is done dead and gone. It sleeps with the fishes, or soon will as soon as it gets dumped from it's tow truck grave and left for scrape on some metal graveyard in Grand Meadow. A couple weeks back, I was driving the Taurus down Elton Hills Drive, just a block or two from my house, minding my busy, whistling a happy tune, when shit suddenly it the fan. I didn't hear a clunk, I didn't see smoke, and I didn't hear a plutter or a poot but the car just stopped working. My best guess is that it caught a stray bullet from one of Rochester's notorious gang fights and got it right square in the heart. A quick and painless death which I, for one, am glad for. If the Taurus died the same way as Isaac Hayes, by getting weirded out over a prolonged period of time by Sciencetoligists, I don't think I could have handled this as soberly as I have. I admit, I was in denial about the death of the Taurus for close to two months. I kept the car for that long in my driveway. I figured all it needed was a little rest so every so often, I would go outside Empty Red, turn the key, and hoped to all hell that it would start again. I thought that if it ever would, I'd drive straight to Duluth and pull up on the banks of Lake Superior and have one last Grain Belt behind the wheel. It would be the most proper farewell to that car that I could think of. After that, if it broke down again, I'd, at least, would have felt that we had our last hurrah. Sadly, when the key turned, the Taurus just coughed and grasped. Finally, I summoned up the courage to call a scrape yard to give proper burial to the car I held so dear. It was tough seeing 192,000 miles of good times, at least 100,000 miles of those mine, being carried away to rest but, Summit in hand, I held it together. Things just aren't going to the same anymore and I can't think of any other way to put it.

Conversation We've All Had

2008-07-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

Bang Bang Bang.

2008-06-16T19:54:00.001-05:00

Just going to post songs

2008-06-13T18:02:00.001-05:00

And it's come to this...

2008-06-13T17:56:00.000-05:00

Tones of Joe's

2008-05-01T17:54:00.001-05:00

Gitchee Gumee, Round 3

2008-04-13T11:39:00.003-05:00

Now having somewhat of veteran status at the annual Gitchee Gumee Brewfest in Superior, Wisconsin, with three years of experience, I can now say that I have mastered the ins and outs of this particular brewfest. How can I be so sure you say? How can I be so confident in the mastering of this brewfest. I base my thinking on one particular area, the VIP Pizza stand. Prior to this year, my visit would always be the same. I drunkenly sneak up to the stand and cunningly try to steal a slice of pizza. Somehow, I'm not sure why since I was so deft with my moves, but somehow, I'd always get caught. Then I'd apologize and start to bargain. I'd start off low, "2 pieces for a dollar", I'd say. "1 slice for $3", they'd counter. "2 pieces for $2" I'd then say. "No, 1 slice for $3" they'd counter. I pride myself on my bargaining skills. The key as I see it on being a remarkable bargainer is to never pay full price. "2 slices for $3" I'd say and the result was always the same at the yearly fundraiser, "1 slice for $3" they'd say. It would go on and on until I'd be asked to leave the stand. It seems that these bargaining amateurs could never handle my skills and would just crumble under the pressure and at a last resort, before I'd probably buy the whole stand for $8.23, they'd kick me away. It would always feel good knowing that at the brewfest, I was the king of haggling, but it was a bummer not having any pizza, especially since this brewfest is a four hour tour of 4oz beers. You can't help but get a little hungry during it. So knowing my trials and tribulations of years past, I came into the 11th annual Gitchee Gumbee Brewfest with a plan that would not fail. Since last year's brewfest, I'd seen a few movies that gave me an idea. Now, the movies will go nameless since my recollection is of story lines, not of how the library would file it. The first movie had Batman and his twin doing magic, the other movie had Edward Norton doing some "there's nothing up my sleeves" moves, as well. So I figured that would be my course of action here, slight of hand. I strolled into UW-Superior's Wessman Arena feeling a little cocky, a little thirsty, and oozing a tab bit of trickery. I made a lap around the arena. It may have looked like I was sampling beers, and I was, but really, I was just casing the joint. Danial Ocean would have been proud. In time, I approached the VIP Pizza stand. What may have looked like volunteer pizza stand workers to you, were obviously astute guards who were not as busy as they seemed. As one approached me to take my order, I thought back to the magician's standard, Shock and Awe. In this case, the Shock was Beerfest Pete, actually pulling out his wallet to by beer. The Awe was that, as the worker was blindsided by my order of two slices for $6 and the cash in hand, three paper plates holding each, one slice of pizza, became two paper plates holding each, one slice of pizza. Yes, it seems that there will be $3 less being given to the Douglas County Search and Rescue this year. Suckers.

New Post For New Post Sake

2008-03-08T08:48:00.002-06:00

Nothing really to say except that this blog thing is hard. Read the archives until I think of something worthwhile to type. I should say that that may never happen.

KFS:BadAssMotherF*cker

2008-02-01T18:45:00.000-06:00

If I read this CNN story right, and I have every reason to believe that I did, thousands in China have been trying to fight off the dreaded, Kung Fu Soldier of ancient Japanese lore. Once thought to be almost Batmanish in reality, Kung Fu Soldier is as real as a Dojo. The proof is in the photo. Standing on a pile of dead communist looms Kung Fu Soldier, ready to pounce like a simamese cat. Know around the American nations as Karate and Jujitsu, Kund Fu Soldier is a master of all fighting style. That's right, every fighting style, meaning everything from, say, Jujitsu to, say, Karate. So after laying dormat for all this years, what made Kung Fu Soldier reappear to fight all comers? A close soucre to Mr. Soldier has inform me, in a Pete's Failed Money Maker exclusive, that the reason is that China has just really started to suck in recent years. He believed that although China has always sucked, the last few months, they've started sucking at a whole new level. How long Kung Fu Soldier remains in China beating ass remains a mystery but this much you can be sure of, despite his return, China will still suck tomorrow, and the next day, and that day after that, probably will suck forever. But do NOT go away thinking that Kung Fu Soldier is fighting a battle that cannot be won here, go away thinking that China's mass produced children toys are dangerous, shoddy, and taste like lead.

I Got News For You...

2008-01-23T16:11:00.000-06:00

This is not Heath Ledger's Failed Money Maker. No, it is not. That's why there's a new post...to prove that Pete is not some rich, pill-popping, New York livin', actor! I just ain't. The rumours are false. So you're asking yourself, if Pete's not Heath Ledger, than he must be someone famous, right? Nope, just poor, old, everyday, Pete. Nobody special, just a man with a computer and a Blog of Failed Dreams. That said, I drove by a wind farm yesterday and didn't see shit. Some reason I had to think like Mitch there for a second. In closing, and closing is because I got to get my ass to the liquor store to lock the doors in 3 and 1/2 hours, the Blog is right where it should be, failing to meet people's expectations.

Let It Be Known

2007-12-27T18:19:00.000-06:00

If I ever go into some kind of coma, and I'm thinking the Money Maker is where they'll come to find out my eternal wishes, I'd like to go unshaven throughout. Yep, if and when I come out of that coma, I want a full blown, shaggy beard and hopefully it's one Reardon would be proud of. I figure that'd be the only thing that would comfort me during my unconsciousness. I'd be content dreaming all day and think that it'd be alright just to lay there and dream away but soon, I'd probably run out of stuff to dream about. I'd hit reruns of the same dreams and get bored. I would think I'd be all "enough is enough", you know? I'd get sick of it all and try to wake up, probably forget I was in a coma, freak out, and have a mental breakdown. The one thing that might bring back my sanity is my favorite recreational activity, beard growing. Coma nurses don't need to be wasting their time shaving me, I wish against that and a man's wishes when he's comatosed need to be heeded!

I know, It's bad.

2007-12-27T18:12:00.000-06:00

If this blog didn't have its sights set so low, I'm be embarassed by the last month of posts. Lucky for Pete, it's the BLog of Failed Dreams! Who really gives a damn? Benazir Bhutto did but not so much now. I say that I'll start trying again but I don't mean. I need a blog muse. Need one bad. I had Saddam. He kept me going, kept the creative juices flowing but without him and Edsama Bin Lampert, I'm struggling to post. Four Winds can only hold off the dogs for so long.

Gift For Pete

2007-12-25T01:42:00.000-06:00

December Post Number 2!

2007-12-17T17:02:00.001-06:00

December 17th just seemed right to me. Why not post something to please the ever declining faithful of the Blog of Failed Dreams. The question now is what to type? Sure, I could tell you how frustrated I am because you can buy grapes with seeds and grapes without seeds but that's an old roast now. That was last week for Pete. I posted a comment about how I'm trying to get back in sandwich mode but that's not blog worthy. I could tell you how disappointed I am that this Christmas there's no chance that out of one of the gifts I open, Saddam would jump out. No, that would only make me even more depressed. I figured I got to come up with something worth reading but failure is once again shining bright on the Money Maker. Maybe later this week.

The Guy Is Evil

2007-12-02T00:54:00.000-06:00

Evil freaking Knievel is dead and Pete thinks that it's about time. He was 69 and did more crazy shit than I could ever dream off. I remember this past June, for no reason what so ever, I felt like doing some daredevil sommersault. Imagine, a 26 year old tool, doing a summer sault on a bar room floor. Hell, I felt the urge to do it. Don't know why but damint! I wanbted yto . by the way, spell check has left he building, this is real, this is Pete with a few drinnks and just typing his, my, heart away. So it was June and I wanted to summersalt, mheng. Common sense told me that I'd break my neck but fun and light headedness told me that I should go fot it!! Moral of the sotry is that Evil Krenivevil did some crazzy shit and I thought about doing a sommersalt and if one man was put up against another, I be living and he be dead. It is what it is, cousin.

It Is The G-Biz

2007-11-23T22:02:00.000-06:00

.

www.shitmonger.com
www.g-biz.net

Money Maker Mailbag

2007-11-16T21:43:00.000-06:00

Pete, perhaps you can dish out some good money maker advice on what could be a reasonable plan of action for someone who is unemployed and upemployable, and soon to be homeless and unemployable.

Thanks,

Fred's Unemployment Can Keep Eating Dump

Dear Mr. Fucked,

First things first, the sooner you accept the fact that you're not going to get a job, the better off you'll be on your unemployment joyride. If not, you're going to waste a ton of your time filling out apps, going to interviews, scanning newspapers for openings. That sucked just typing it, imagine actually going through with all that. Talk about hell. Between that and Auschwitz, I'm leaning slightly towards Hilter's playground. I guess, Fucked, you already said you're unemployable so perhaps you've accepted your spiral into unemployment, aka Wonderland. Wonderland's name is what it is. Unemployment is a wonderful place but Fucked, what makes you so much of your name is that you state that you're soon going to be homeless. Yikes, man. That drops that Wonder all out of unemployment and just leaves with Land. Land is a little rougher, little tougher than Wonderland. Land is where all the clawing and scratching takes places and for most people, that ain't a good place to be. You're not just fighting with humans for survival, you're up against wilderness, too. Dogs, cats, grizzly bears. All of them are in Land with you and there are only some many half eaten chicken wings in the trash. So what should your plan of action be? Get your hands on a Tepee and head for higher ground. You don't want to plant your tepee in an area that floods. Nothing worse than wet socks, Fred's Unemployment Can Keep Eating Dump. The good thing about tepees is that you can easily pick it up and move it. Say you came across a few dollar bills blowing in the wind and you want to head to the bar and get trashed. You're broke and can only afford a few drinks and you sure as shit can't afford a DUI. Think ahead, stake your tepee outside the bar door so you don't have to drive home. Just stumble out the bar door and right into bed. Now, I'm kind of mad at myself for buying a house and not a tepee. What was I thinking? A tepee makes so much sense! Anyways, with a tepee, you're no longer homeless and you're not fighting some troll for a spot under a bridge but if you want to stay away from dumpster diving, you're gonna need some cash. The easy way out would be to stake claim to a street corner and ask for coin but I don't see much enjoyment in that. I say you find a place to sell your blood and start bleeding pints. A little cash in one hand, a little less blood in the other. Next time you drink, you'll get drunk faster so you'll be saving money on that front, too. I only wish I had better advice to offer but I ain't Bubs.

Some Things Just Ain't Worth Living Without

2007-11-13T21:17:00.000-06:00

No tiptoeing around the subject today. I'm just going to come right out and say it. I'd rather be a dead, drunken elephant than some straight laced, big-eared oaf on the square wagon to sobriety. It's true. Get me drunk, point me to the closest downed powerline and I'll stand in my own puddle of urine while I grab hold tight. Ask an old man how he'd like to go out in life and he'd probably say, "peacefully, in my sleep." Ask that same question to an elephant and it'll spit out in 'phant speak, "electrocuted, on a drunken Meghalaya binge." It's all the same in my book. It's kicking the bucket on your own terms, doing your own thing. Who am I to stand in the way of that? Dang, I'd be crazy to with all the sloshed elephants rampaging about. Hopefully, you get my point. I'm not so full of myself to think that I should have a say in how someone wants to leave this world. That said, Paris Hilton I am not. She's got the nerve to be up-in-arms about the AP story of a tribe of Asiatic(whatever that means) elephants running amok in a small village after hitting some farmer's fermenting sauce. In another AP report, Hilton was quoted as saying, "It is just so sad. The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them." First off, that quote is so ridiculous, I'm ain't believing it to be real but since the Blog of Failed Dreams has no journalistic integrity to it, I proclaim it to be true! Cheers to no journalistic integrity! Shit, I ain't the only one drinking right now, right? Second...well, if I had a second point, I forgot it. Where was I going? Fuck it, it doesn't matter. What matters is that, obviously, a shitfaced elephant is probably a danger to itself and a tiny Gauhatian village but maybe that's all these elephants got going for themselves. Maybe the stress of poachers and the boredom of the, Mark Twain be damned, country of India tears these big, dumb animal's insides apart. Maybe some booze makes life a little more worth living for them. Who am I to say.

Three Cool Little Kids

2007-11-09T16:02:00.001-06:00

I ventured out into the cold last night and realized it wasn't all that cold. At least at first. Then I realized it was all that cold. Smart thing for me was that I brought some layers and I got myself warm real good, real fast. Anyways, I was watching a football game and people were cheering and all seemed normal as far as the cheering went but I noticed that the three kids in front of me were cheering a little more hardcore than everyone else. I got curious real good, real fast. For a time, I thought these brats were just trying to be stupid and annoying. Like most fourth graders, they were accomplishing that real good, real fast, but for some reason, I felt that there was more to the story that meets the eye. Something was afoot. I perked my ears a little and to my surprise, I learned that these three little twerps were the coolest three kids I had ever met. "Come on! You got to yell louder!" The one in the middle screamed. "I'm trying" Another yelled. Here was my in, "What you trying to do?" I questioned. "Lose our voice", one of the kids replied. The look on my face must has said it all because the one in the middle piped up, "Yeah, I lost my voice last week and I didn't have to go to school!" Then they all screamed for no other reason than they wanted to skip out on some boring old school. My shock of how great of an idea this was soon turned to extreme disappointment as I realized that as a kid, I wasn't smart enough to come up with this plan. These kids were cool and that was for sure and if you still need a little convincing, I'll leave you with this..."Hey,"One of the kids yelled, "If we don't lose our voice tonight, we got all weekend to scream to lose it!"

Videos Require No Effort

2007-11-05T22:58:00.000-06:00

You're Wasting Your Time

2007-10-29T20:25:00.000-05:00

As I drove between my higher paying job and my street cred job today, I drove under one of those highway people bridges and man alive, somebody sure got their time wasted by me. As I drove under the bridge, my eagle-like vision was able to read a big ol' sign two dimwits were holding up. "Don't Bomb Iran" the sign said. I couldn't believe the nerve of these people! Thinking they knew me and all, thinking they were inside my head, knowing my every thought. Well, they had Pete all wrong! See, I never intended to bomb Iran. It's true, it's true. Personally, I'm not into bombing things, never really been my thing. Truthfully, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I suppose I could get some gun powder and some of that long fuse string but how would I even get to Iran? Where's Iran anyways? Europe or something? Those sign holding kids got me all wrong here and they wasted their time holding up that sign for me to see. I started thinking about where they got that idea that I wanted to bomb Iran and the best I could come up with was all the times in my life when I said that I hated that I ran, not that I hated Iran. Simple miscommunication might have come back to bite me in the ass...again. Now, even if I wanted to bomb Iran, I wouldn't go about doing it myself. Hell no. When you order a pizza and they stick you with that up front delivery charge, do you go driving to pick it up? Nah, you let the pizza guy bring it to you. Same goes with bombing Iran, I pay my taxes, why should I go bomb Iran when the US is going to do it for me?

Now You Know

2007-10-28T16:31:00.001-05:00

Elephants have big ears.

RIP: Gaylord The Ostrich

2007-10-08T22:44:00.000-05:00

I read things and many times, what I read is completely useless rubbish that will never benefit down the road. Every so often though, I come across a bit of serviceable information that will help me down the road. Such was the article I summed up below.

SAN FRANCISCO - A man was sentenced to five months in jail after he and a friend, acting on wounded pride, gunned down an ostrich that had kicked them as their female companions laughed, a newspaper reported Saturday. The powerful flightless bird, named Gaylord, kicked Timothy McKevitt, 19, and Jonathon Porter, 21, last October when they trespassed on an ostrich ranch south of San Francisco after a night of drinking, the San Francisco Chronicle cited attorneys as saying.

I consider that to be a Blog of Failed Dreams public service announcement. Like me, if you spend your nights and days craving scrambled ostrich eggs with a side of hash browns and wheat toast, you know how tempting it is to avoid those jacked-up black market prices and head to your nearest zoo, exotic wild life refuge, or some Sanfrisco ostrich farm and snag a few fresh eggs. I was always under the impression that when I came upon a struthio camelus, the bird would get spooked and bury it's head in fear. Now, because of the dynamic duo of McKevitt and Porter, I know that stealing ostrich eggs may be a little more daunting than I grew up believing. I might actually think twice the next time, I mean, the first time, I hop a fence to steal some bird eggs.

Run Forest Nuge, Run!

2007-10-07T13:26:00.000-05:00

Five hours and twenty-nine seconds. Congrats to the Nuge for finishing last place in the Twins Cities Marathon. It's widely believed that the Nuge was very bored during the race and extremely disappointed that his aerodynamically shaved legs could only get along at 11 minute and 28 second per mile click. In the same time that it took the Nuge to finish last place, I was able to take a nap, bake a potatoe in the oven, eat said potatoe, watch 6 different TV shows, day dream about something besides old men in skimpy running shorts, shower, shit, and shave. Ok, maybe I extraggerated, I didn't shave but I did everything else plus two more hours of random time killing acts.

6 Dead Black Things

2007-10-02T21:36:00.000-05:00

Six flies perished at my hand today. That's right, I killed them in cold blood. I wasn't defending myself, I didn't feel threaten, I wasn't even going to eat them to aid my survival. I killed those damn flies cause they bothered me and didn't know that I meant serious business when I said, "shoo". So what's to be done now? Someone going to calls the cops? Will this make national news? Will the headlines tomorrow read, "Pete Slaughters Six Flies in Liquor Store." Is PETA going to picket? I doubt it all. Society throws a hissy fit when a drunk bites off the head of a hotel duck, PETA goes bananas when Michael Vick arranges a dog fight, but no one comes to the defense of the befallen fly. I'm a serial killer when it comes to flies and nobody gives a damn. I started young, swatting flies when I was a toddler and I haven't stopped since. My numbers have got to rival Auschwitz's and there ain't no stopping me. Look out Joe Stalin, your Ukrainian famine ain't got nothing on me! Laugh, laugh, laugh! Making matters worse is the fact that I don't even feel remorse. I could care less that the family and friends of 6 flies are left without their loved ones tonight. That thought never even crossed my mind until I typed it and even now, as I think about it, I still don't care! It's so easy to kill a fly, too! Think about it, want to snuff a few flies tonight? Get yourself a fly swatter and have at her. You can't go to the store and buy a Caucasian Grenade, Mexican Poison, or some kind of Japanese Killing Disease but you can sure as shit buy a fly swatter that has the one purpose to kill flies. Go ahead. Turn a blind eye towards me and my fly killings. Pretend it ain't happening and go on with your happy lives because this little thing I got going on is too much to handle and most of all, becasue you don't care about flies.

Boredom Mixed With MD 20/20

2007-09-28T21:49:00.000-05:00

Raccoons are fast. Faster than mice. Faster than man. Faster than Japan. They like chocolate, marshmallows, and Graham Nash. They favor the night and damned if I've ever seen one in the sun. They are sneaky pickers and carry around various forms of diseases. They crawl through trash cans and bins, eating everything from day old sausage links to empty Skoal tins. Damnit, raccoons are cool and they do NOT go to school. Admire them for what they are. Admire them for keeping in real in this world of phonies. Don't be like the Forest Rangers of the world, always banging pots and pans, yelling "scram" and "get lost". That ain't cool and they must be IN school. Raccoon tell stories with their fur, too. I'm surprised you didn't know that. Each stripe on it's body represents a heroic struggle with a grizzly bear. Grizzly bears don't match up well with Raccoons and never seem to get the best of them. Not a lot of people know this but Raccoons taste like koala bears. Simmer a Raccoon in eucalyptus leaves and you got yourself a meal fit for Saddam himself. Take it from me, I know. I know how Raccoons run, how they eat, how to eat them, and most of all, I know how much they hate mimes. The passing of Marcel Marceau sparked an enormous celebration in Raccoon community. It rivaled the party of 1999 and a great song was written. In a Blog of Failed Dreams exclusive, Pen Vandiver did me the favor of translating this song from Raccoonlatin to American. It goes as so...

Oh, the 'Coons would come far away
They danced all night till the break of day
When the caller hollered, "do-se-do"
You knew Marcel was ready to go
Late in the evening about sundown
High on the hill and above the town
Marcel mimed the fiddle Lord how it would ring
You could hear it talk
you could hear it sing
He played an old piece he called "Soldier's Joy"
And the one Pen wrote called "The Boston Boy"
But the greatest of all was "Jenny Lynn"
To Raccoons that's where pickin' begin
But Coons'll never forget that mournful day
When Marceau was called away
They hung up his fiddle, and they hung up his bow
They knew it was time for him to go

Pluck Off, Timmy

2007-09-26T22:53:00.000-05:00

Days late on breaking the news to the world of a man who ripped off a duck's head in a hotel lobby, the Blog of Failed Dreams will attempt to some kind of news and that be the news that the general counsel of the Minnesota Federated Humane Societies, Timmy Sheilds, doesn't know what the (insert your favorite cuss word here) he's talking about. What am I talking about? Talking about this guy saying in local press that ducks who inhabit hotel lobbies are in a goose poo load of trouble. Maybe even trouble with a capital T. Gasp! Think about it, a suit case wheel can squash a duck like a pancake. Worse, somebody could step on Donald. Double worse, immigrant custodian help could befriend the feathery bastards! Timmy thinks that hotels should be like every other unimaginary hotel out there and fill their lobbies with underwater fish because he thinks it's a safer environment. Apparently, two feet of water is the Fort Knox of hotel barriers but let me tell you, if I can grab $1.36 out of a hotel lobby pool, I can sure as hell grab me a fish or two and once they're in my grasp, they ain't safe! Anyways, take whatever side you want on this, I'm a firm believer that a duck in a hotel is ten times safer than a duck in the wild, a duck that gets harvested each year by thousands of men with rifles. Those same hunted ducks have to find their own food or hang outside of Subway to eat while the hotel ducks gets served on hand and foot by Gaudamire. I just don't see the danger of a duck staying in a hotel and I really don't see why I felt the need to bring Timmy into this all but blah. Blah, blah, blah.

So shake it up!

ogacihC

2007-09-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

Not sure what to make of that? I'm with you. I don't have the slightest clue. I feel like going on a beer tour, like eight stops in six hours. About right, I'd say. I should figure out some kind of ranking thing. Maybe come up with a scale up to 10 or something. At least, a scale that I can respect. So beer tour on thursday it is! Eights stops!

Behaving When Trouble Make You Stop

2007-09-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

Money Maker Faithful will remember a post from a little bit more than a year ago. I described in short, my talk with one of the most humbling men in Dakota County. Instead of putting you through the hassle of bumming through the archives, I'll save y'all the trouble and repost my year backs thoughts

He's a wise man, a reasonable man, a man who slightly resembles Earle Hyman. He dresses in black like John Cash, and has a deep voice that shouts authority. He's a man of compromise and common sense. He's cool with Pete and Pete's cool with him. He's tells me to behave for a year, and two large bills later, I'm now my way. The future looks bright for the Money Maker, bright like Encyclopedia Britannica.

Doubt was in the air a year ago. You could cut it with a knife it was so thick. Yet, here I am. One year later. One full year if behaving myself. That's right. I made it, schmohawk! The Minnesota Amateur Baseball State Board didn't think I could make it. First Avenue didn't think I could make it. The Explorer windshield didn't think I could make it. Late Night Broadway Kwik Trip guy didn't think I could make it. Guy In Security Shirt Outside The BreakRoom did his best to end my behaving ways but my will was strong, strong like Moses. For one full year, I was all about behaving! I set my eyes on the behaving line and I walked it one step at a time! I tell you what, I passed up trouble left and right. Yes sir, trouble would come my way and I'd just wave it bye and say, "No thank you, Trouble. I'm behaving today." I had to behave. I just had to. When a dead ringer for Russell Huxtable tells you to do knock it off for a year. Best if you knock it off. Sure, crossing off calendar days made the task a little daunting but when shit gets daunting, it's best to get undauntable. That's how I did it. I just took that undauntable highway to Behavedom. It a quiet place, Behavedom is. It's a place a man can go to collect his thoughts and whistle the night away so that's what I did for a year, collected thoughts and whistled Dixie. Swell time it was. Just plain swell and daisy. You'd be surprised how easy it is to go to sleep at night in Behavedom. See, in Troublestown. Every night is spent staring up at the ceiling, counting off every second in each statute of limitation. Those make for long nights. It makes you wish an officer would get off his ass sooner, rather than later, and let you know that your gig is up. Hearing the words, "extensive damage" was a sense of relief when I was in Troublestown. It set me loose, it freed me from those sleepless night and set me on my course of behaving. One full year in the books. Somebody look me in the face and tell me I didn't behave. You can't do it cause I did and as far as John Law is now concerned, June 29th 2006, Pete did not conduct himself in disorderly fashion. It's off the books and is as true as Eskimos.

Fair Is Fair

2007-09-01T12:19:00.000-05:00

Last night, I found myself in quite the predicament and looking back, I think I'll find myself regretting it. Here I was, at a local drinking establishment, minding my time, watching an entertaining man mimic the movements of a velociraptor, or maybe it was the movements of a deinonychus, I wasn't quite sure. No. No. I'm pretty sure it was a raptor. I guess that has nothing to due with my predicament. I do that sometimes. I ramble one way when I ought to be rambling the other way. I'm not sure way. Maybe it has to do with my lack of interest in a topic, maybe not. So there I was, near the bar, yapping it up with a guy about the short falls of American civilization, when I entered my predicament. I seemed to had entered the presence of an extremely large man, think Tree from that movie Malibu’s Most Wanted. He wasn’t a happy man and why he wasn’t stabbing people at the time was lost on me. He had this thing about shaking your hand where he tried to crush your metacarpals, it kinda hurt...and he wouldn’t let go for a minute or two. We were friends from the first crushed bone. Now, I didn’t get his name when he told me and I sure as shit wasn’t brave enough to ask him to repeat himself. Pretty much, what this guy said, I agreed with for fear of getting the snot knocked out of me. For the sake of this post, we're going to call the man Tree. Tree was fond of tequila, specifically, he liked Patrón, which was probably the only thing on earth that he liked. Like I said before, Tree was not a happy man. Let me correct my earlier statement, he liked Patrón and I'll gander that he liked the smell of fear, that's my guess as to why he tolerated me. He had an aura of anger surrounding him that I found overwhelming and he liked to make akwardly long eye contact. Tree made a comment that, "Money ain't shit to me" and with that, he offered to buy me a shot of his favorite tequila. I didn't quite know what to do. My thoughts raced to the old urban legend of Robert Johnson going down to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil for the extraordinary talent and skill to play blues guitar. Johnson's deal made him a legend, my deal was going to land me a $6 shot of booze that, frankly, I could do without. Whereas, Johnson's trade off was his soul, I was scared that my end of the deal would be becoming one of Tree's bitches, driving getaway in some late night convenient store robbery. I thought about accepting the shot long enough to draw the ire of an impatient, redwood sized Tree. Another bone crushing, long handshake made me realize that you don't turn down a offer from this man and I figured, at the very least, the shot would numb the soreness of my right hand.

You Blew It!

2007-08-28T17:33:00.001-05:00

The photo says it all. Everyone makes mistakes and right now, nobody has made a bigger mistake than that little kid in the photo. He had his chance at stardom and he blew it, man. Perfect setup, perfect platform and damned if he didn't spell every word on that sign correct. I look at this photo and wonder what could have been. How hard would everyone had laugh if the kid misspelled a word, threw in a backwards "R", or messed up the alternating red and white colors. It would have been brilliant! He'd be a staple on mass spam photo emails forever. You'd receive that photo at least three times a year from three different people for probably the rest of your pathetic email life. We could have had it all! This had a chance to unite the world and possibly end corruption and terrorism in the world as we know it! Instead, we are left with some bullshit A- sign that has no intention other than to tell people that we all make mistakes. Well, you fucked up, perfect sign boy. I hope you live with that mistake for the rest of your life.

Puke!

2007-08-22T13:38:00.000-05:00

I kinda ran into a little shocker in my life today. Here I am, enjoying my day off, reading an online newspaper, pirating music off the Internet, when I stumbled across this stunner out of Little Rock, Arkansas. Apparently, tests of two Chinese brands of dog treats sold at Wal-Mart stores found traces of melamine, a chemical agent that led to another massive pet food recall in March. Yeah, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. quietly stopped selling Chicken Jerky Strips from Import-Pingyang Pet Product Co. and Chicken Jerky from Shanghai Bestro Trading in July, after customers said the products sickened their pets. I could care less about whatever this melamine stuff is but imagine my surprise when I realize that my favorite 'tween meal snack was dog food! I knew chicken jerky strips were too good to be true!

No Reason Not To Be There

2007-08-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

Some Things I Get

2007-08-14T20:56:00.000-05:00

Some things I don't. More so than not, I probably don't get it but deep down, I'm thinking, "Yeah, some things I get." Boogie Chillen? Hell no, that is one thing I have yet to get. I hope to some day. I'm really curious about that one. Country Caravan? Now, that one's pretty simple, I got it down real good. I'm never quite sure where I'll end up on the "thing I get or things I don't get" scale. That's another one I don't get.

Things To Do At Night

2007-08-08T00:18:00.000-05:00

So This Is What

2007-08-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

It hard to blog when it's hot. It's a struggle. You think of one thing, then a second later it's gone and in its place is thoughts of sweat and the everlasting search of cool breezes and chilly air. For example, I thought of a hilarious set of circumstances earlier today. I said to myself, I said, "blog that shit". Then I felt the heat of the sun, glaring through my Empty Red windows and I said to myself, I said, "find some shade, dude." Sure there's a simple solution to the problem I have with the heat...central air. In the year I've owned Empty Red, the AC's been on for a 36 hours stretch. It was wonderful. I slept like a fog on a lily pad. So why don't I keep the thermostat on 65 all day and blog all night? Because of coin. It's not being plentiful enough. Hopefully, that problem, a problem that we all have, is short term but for no, I can live easily with the heat and the limited blogging. I think back to last winter, when the heater broken down in this 40 year old house. Looking back, it was glorious. Empty Red was hovering just above freezing, at 44 degrees, for 3 days. Sure, the laundry soap in the basement turned into a sticky goo that fucked with me for a month, but in this heat, I'd take those frigid mornings over the sticky of today. So blogging in the heat is a no-go, that's why I think my new outlook on life may help me. See, I think I spent way too much time trying to go to sleep at night. The sun would go down and I be like all thinking about, you know, going to sleep. I'd lay down and nothing would happen. Just Pete and his "can't-get-to-sleep" thoughts. Yikes. I wouldn't wish those thoughts on my worst enemy. So my approach now is to not go to sleep. I mean, yeah, "go" to sleep but not "GO" to sleep. I figure on just moseying around until Mr. Sandman drills me in the face with a bucket of sleep sand and I just fall over, sound asleep. This plan's been in action for a week, a week and a half perhaps and I tell you what, I've taken to it. A few hours of sleep a night, a few asleep at the wheel moments during the day, and I'm go to go! I'm probably prevaricating my sleep deprivation but if these recent chest pains are of any indication, I guessing there's something to it. I don't know, maybe that last trip to the doctor had something to do with it. Getting bit by Dr. Acula got do some pretty messed up things to you. So less slepp mean more free time, free time that can be used to bore the Blog of Failed Dreams Faithful with tales of me being awke!Anyways, word to the wise, when you finish mowing your yard and your going to put the mower in the back of your '94 Taurus's trunk so you can take it back to your brother, be careful not to burn the shit out of your forearm. Or don't, I don't care. I don't want to get all preachie and shit but damnit, it stings! Back to my anyways, first, I tore the bird's nest off the "gutter meets Empty Red" area, threw it in the yard, watched to see if robin's were cool living on the ground, maybe they're flood scared, they weren't about it. Again with the anyways, first, I threw the nest in the yard, today, I rolled a super-fast turning metal blade over it and tore it to shreds. I felt powerful and god-like. I destroyed a home and watched it blow away, a thousand separate pieces at once. I felted like Moses when Katrina sweeped down on New Orleans. Once more with the anyways, liquor stores are fun to work at. I know that now. Some guys want orange pop and they'll make a fool of themselves looking for it. I suggest that all liquor store employees hid their orange pop. Take my word for it, it'd be hilarious.

Once You Pick A Name...

2007-07-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

You got to stick with it. About a year ago, July 27th 2006 to be right on, I made a decision, a mistake, whatever you want to call it, to sign papers to procure a home that has now been famously dubbed Empty Red. Red house, no amenities...bing, bang, nickname! Empty Red. A year later, the house is still red but I grabbed enough good will offerings that this place ain't empty. Once you pick a name, you know. I had saved this and now I'm starting up again again drinkin g a big biottle og SCOTCH!!! The house has been greatr./ It's coo. I've drank a hel of a lot of damn Johhnnny WALKER reD. yES, SIR, i have. Yeha! Bank account is gone! Long gone! One more y3ear! Maybe. Tighten the damn belt, Pedro!!!. Ice. Scotch! Ice!!! Bird nest is toast! I tossed it! Hey yeah!!! Waka Waka!!!

Mr. 300

2007-07-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

Guess how many posting have been on this awesome blog? 300! Yeah! That's super, man! Anyways, it's summer. This Blog of Failed Dreams does not operate well in the warmth. I need cold, dude. Fall. Winter. Spring. You know, chilly stuff. Celebrate the 300th post on your own, I'm going to go sit in front of a fan.

KaPow!

2007-07-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

Funniest Line Ever

2007-07-08T02:53:00.000-05:00

"Don't touch, it's hot!"

"Donuts!!!!"

Burnt mouth here....

The Great White Wiener Winner!!!

2007-07-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

You heard his name first, here, on the Blog of Failed Dreams. Well, maybe not, but really, yeah, you did, right here. Joey Chestnut. Joey "Mr. 66" Chestnut. Sir Joseph of Making Kobayashi My Bitch Chestnut. The title belt for Nathan's famous July 4th hot dog eating contest is back in the US of A thanks to Joe Chestnut eating 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes flat. In doing so, he knocked off six-time defending immigrant and alleged Nazi-sympathizer Ichiro Kobayashi. Suck on that, China! And take that, Hitler! Serves all those Commies right for wanting to equally share everything. I feel good. Yep, I do. Why? I got 453 reason why. Pete won $4.53 when Mr. 66 took gold. Probably will get to retire early now. I got big plans for those cents, big plans! Probably put it away in a savings account. Save it for a rainy day or something. Maybe buy something. I don't know. I could do a lot of things. More thing now that I got $4.53 than when I didn't. I feel good. Yep, I do.

The OG Goes to Africa

2007-06-21T19:59:00.000-05:00

****Felonious Fridays: Not for the faint of heart. Being offended IS a definite possibility. Don't read this. Seriously, just wait two weeks for the next post of normal hogwash.******

The OG Goes to Africa.

*Warning: Due to some graphic language and blasphemy, reader discretion is strongly advised. *

As Gesus and his merry group of followers approached the African border, tension within the group was growing. The mission to Spain had as many fails as successes and word from the Pope was that failure would not be tolerated for too much longer. Making a big splash in Africa was a must and everyone but Gesus seemed to be overly stressing about it.
"Gesus", John complained, "I've been reading over your African arrival speech and I think we need to drop the 'OG' line."
"Won't do that, Toilet." Gesus answered, "I need that line to connect with the people. You think the Crips and the Bloods are going to relate from some old geek off the street? Hell no. I'm keeping the line cause it's true. Gesus 'Hollywood' Christ, OG. Original Gentile."
"Gesus, you're Jewish."
"Only a technically, pal. The line stays or I don't go on."
"John, let's not worry about that now, we got bigger things to worry about." Moses stated. "This just came in from the Pope and I tell you, he's not happy about it. Gesus, do you remember your departure speech from Spain."
"Mexico?"
"No, Spain."
"Mexico?"
"No, Gesus, Spain."
"Oh, Spain. The Spanish Mexico. Yeah, it's a blur but what ain't nowadays."
"In the question/answer portion, you stated, for no reason other than that you were confused by a simple question, 'In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey.'"
"Yeah, that's just Beck." Gesus said.
"Gesus, people are taking this the wrong way. People are saying that you believe in evolution! We've been preaching this 'God made the Earth in seven days' story for the last 5 years and now, one idiotic line from you ruins it all."
"That's a bummer, dude." Gesus replied.
"A bummer? That's all you got to say? A bummer?"
"Yeah, what happened is what I would qualify as a bummer. It's a bummer, man."
Moses could no longer hold his silence, "Dammit, Gesus! When are you going to wake up and realize that you need to take this all a lot more serious! Your life, death, and resurrection will be the basis of the Christian message of salvation! We can't have you, of all people, sending mix messages here!"
"Shit, Moses, if I knew you felt so strongly about this, I would have paid more attention to your faggy little outburst there but I tuned it out. No clue what you just said there. Anyways, that's all in the past now, man. I hate those Q/A's anyways. Being put on the spot like that, it's bucket." Gesus complained.
"We'll damage control, Hollywood." John said, "We can figure all that out later. Right now, our arrival in Africa should be our top priority. I think it may be best to start out with a nice, good old fashioned parable."
"Hell yeah, parable's rock." Gesus spoke. "This OG's got a good one in store. Learned it a while back from the Dawg and Jerry."
Crossing the borderline of Africa and heading into Compton, the country's capital, Gesus's klan of merry followers were nothing but optimistic. Their time in Spain was nothing but mixed reviews. For every good event, there was an equally bad, sometimes even worst, outburst by the Original Gentile but now the stage was set, the time was now, and for some reason, Gesus refused to go on stage.
"There's something wrong with the vibe here, guys." Gesus quipped. "I ain't getting past it."
"Listen here." Mark replied as he stepped forward, "This isn't nothing more than you haven't done before. Sure, it's a big sized crowd but you score twice that size every time in Rome. "
"It's not the crowd, man" said Gesus in a uncharacteristically nervous tone. "The Comptons. I took a peek through the curtains while I was having my smoke. They got face paint on. It's giving me the heebies jeebies, man. Ever since we got chased out of India by those guys with the war paint, the thought of it just messes with me."
"It'll be fine." Moses comforted, "Just turn a little, and I do mean a little, water into whiskey just to take the nerve off, you'll be just fine out there."
"Alright, fuck it. Get me a shot of water!" Gesus proclaimed.
John quickly filled a cup while Gesus did his premiracle routine of yelps and hops. Soon the water turned brown and down the hatch it went. Gesus gave the thumbs up and the curtain was raised. Looking out onto the face painted crowd of African Comptonites, Gesus began his speech and breezed through the intro until the parable hit.
"Well, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, they were the best of friends." Gesus began "So when Frankie Lee needed money one day, Judas quickly pulled out a roll of tens and...and...ah...um.." Gesus froze, lost in thought.
"Hollywood, keep going!" Mark whispered from stage left. "What's wrong."
"Screw you, man." Gesus whispered back as the crowd stood silent. "I just noticed a couple of them are strapping spears and that, coupled with the face paint, dude! Pull the curtain!"
The merry men pleaded to Gesus to finish his tale. Reluctantly, Gesus went on but still seemed fazed. He continued, "So Judas pulled out a roll of...um...tens...and ah...placed them on a footstoll...and...you know, placed them on the footstool..." Sadly, Gesus had forgotten his lines and not wanting to seem like too much of douche and to avoid further embarrassment, he pulled out of his back pocket a story that, no matter how many Inguns or Comptons were in the audience, he'd be able to finish. "In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey. Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie with the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables, fog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose..."

I Hate These Guys

2007-06-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

I'm not sorry for the few weeks break for posting on the Blog of Failed Dreams. Why? Cause I had stuff stuffing around. Why apologize for that? I will make an excuse, though. Empty Red was encountering some Internet failure. It was frightening. So now, to appease the Faithful, I want to let you in on something I hate...Interns. Overachieving slimy dirtdags, they are. Walking around trying to pad their resume, thinking that they need to get ready for the "real world." Well, I'm in the "real world", Inturd, and we here in that world don't have clothes as nice as yours. Hell, I get paid more than interns (hopefully) but they always seem to have nicer shoes than me, shinier ties, ironedier shirts than me. How? They're supposed to be broke college students! They make me sick, thinking the sky's the limit and all. Life is what you make of it, they say. They say you get out, what you put in. Foo-foo is my response to all that. Foo-freaking-foo. They're spoiled little brats who think that when they graduate, they'll already have a job lined up. Bunch of losers. But hey, it's going to be easy to get a job with a 5 month mentorship with a big corporate office on their resume. How bout you try getting a job when the first two jobs you list are lawn mowing and scoreboard operating, Intern. It's tougher then. You didn't see me taking the easy way out and getting some lame shirt/tie job during the summer. I kept it real, Homes. Bunch of jerks probably won't even give me a promotion when they're my boss in 3 years. What about all the times I helped you out when you were ain't knowing nothin'! Figures that they'd forget the little people on their way up the latter. Assholes.

Things Would Just Get A Little Too Complicated

2007-05-23T22:08:00.000-05:00

Spiders find my basement appealing. Sadly, I don't find spiders appealing. Something's got to give, I can't just sit here and do nothing. If those eight-legged things paid rent, it'd be different. What they are is a bunch of free loaders. They just keep getting their load for free. I hate it. Hate it like Boxing Day. The problem is that the spiders have no source of income. How can I shake them down for coin? I can't. I can only squash their bodies and swat their cobweb out of my face. Seek and destroy is all I can do. I'm a pleasant guy, I mean, for the most part. I'd prefer not to slaughter spiders in the bowels of Empty Red but they leave no choice. I pray for a choice but, at last, not even Mohamed could provide with a choice. You can't count on spiders. Can't count on them having taste buds. If they did, my plan would be simple. A nice trail of Reese's leading from the basement, up the stairs, and out the door. A mass exodus at its finest. With my luck, that plan would backfire on me and instead of spiders going out, I'd have a half-ass Jim Henson creation scooting in. Then things would get weird. I'd have to start locking up my beer and would have to get my hands on a bicycle. Two things that I really not want to do. Even in a valiant bike ride escape from pesky scientist in white suits, I'd still be labeled a douche for using an alternative means to gas in my getaway effort. Then we'd have the heights to worry about. This is all getting to be a little to much for me, I'm tired and dizzy just thinking about it. No, no, I think I'm going to leave the spiders be. Let them alone, I say. I don't need to be caught up in some spaceship rendezvous with a bunch of freaks.

The Brothers Avett

2007-05-17T23:10:00.000-05:00

Steal The Rainbow

2007-05-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

Years back, the Chewy Spree Bandit terrorized America's candy industry. With his late night, drunken heists, no Kwik Trip, Casey's or Super America was safe from the Bandit's thievery of sugared treats and salty vittles. Recent times have had no such reports of the brazen capers that the CSB was known best for. The title of World Best Candy Stealer had laid dormant for some time now. Sure, some young punk has made it out of Casey's with a pocket full of Twix and a few bags of Reese's mysteriously disappear from time to time but is that worthy of the title? Heck nah and double heck nah. Well, it's time to dust off the trophy cause 22 year Alan Chavez has shattered the record books and stolen $250,000 worth of Skittles. The dude must be on 'roids. Unfortunately, Guinness doesn't list a world record of most Skittles stolen in one attempt but I'd wager it wasn't more than a box and Chavez E Chavez stole 28 pallets of them! What could one man possibly want with all those delicious Skittles? My educated guess, my hypothesis, is that he's feeding terrorist. These assholes were planning on blowing shit up, poisoning water supplies, and killing innocent Americans all while having their stomachs chock-full with the five fruity flavors of the Skittle. Don't think so? Come on, moron, the guy's last name was Chavez! That name ain't from around here. (Closed circuit to the United States' CBP Border Control, what the hell, guys?) And worse yet, the slim chance this guy isn't a terrorist, he's probably some tree-planting hippie whose got the munchies for some chums. It's a toss up of what's worse, we're dealing with either a douche or a turd sandwich. It's lose, lose. Now, all that aside, I shouldn't judge this guy two harshly, he does deserve a certain amount of respect for what he attempted. I'd like to see Danny Ocean shanghai a truck in Dallas. I don't think he could pull it off. I mean, with all the vigilante cowboys done there, all rocking the 2nd Amendment, you got more to worry about than just the local Fuzz. I guess I tip my hat to Chavez. Terrorist, hippie, or otherwise, he got pinched trying to pull off the greatest candy caper that I ever heard of. That deserves a certain amount of respect, like the kind of respect given towards those courageous Canadian who brave the ice and cold of their frozen land to pummel to death baby seal so they can feed their families and provide a fashionable fur to our society's elite.

Final Week Ramblings

2007-05-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

If their is one thing that I would never wish upon the Money Maker Faithful, it's having them left without a reason, distraction, or Blog of Failed Dreams frenzy that would keep them away from studying and getting a good nights sleep for their college finals the next day. With that said, for your reading pleasure, I'm going to ram my head into a wall, knock loose some cobwebbed drivel, some claptrap if you will, and dumb you all up pretty good so you don't go high score on me. Now...head into wall...the pathetic thing is that I actually did it...still smarts a little...and we're off! An unfortunate pregnant lady had the pleasure of sitting close to me at work before she went into labor. I found this to be quite amusing and I would try out some routine on her just throwing shit against the wall to see what would stick. For the most part, everything said was inappropriate but being the good sport that she was, she didn't file any complaints regarding me, at least formally she didn't. How bad could it be? On or around the day of Groundhog Day, I asked her when if her unborn child ever stuck his head, saw it's shadow, signalled 8 more weeks in the womb. One day, we got on the subject drinking booze. She couldn't do it while she was gravid and told me that ever after we gave birth, she still had to breast feed for a while. Screw that I thought. I told her to give the kid a treat by drinking some vodka and Kahlua, thus giving her kid a nice Caucasian. I always felt the need to document that shtick but you know now why I didn't. Let's see, what else is up there in the ol' mind attic...ok, not going to talk about why geese walk across the road and don't just fly...that's all yours, Nate...I got nothing...head into the wall again...I didn't actually do it that time...here we go! For reasons unknow to me, I'm losing forks. Maybe I just didn't have many to begin with? Not sure. I bought some, like 6 or 7 of them. Got them at Walmart and have yet to stick anything with them. Two of my work socks are missing, too. I have no idea how they got lost between the washer downstairs and my room but they're gone. Now, that I just typed that and actually thought seriously about it instead of giggling about centipedes taking them, I bet they're under my bed. I'm going to go check. One second... and I'm back! Found them both and I'm an idiot. You know they're good socks when you know they're missing and they had been for a month or more. I never looked for them. Not once. Just now by grabbing a flashlight and getting down to look under my bed, I found one sock and a shit ton of dust. Side note, hardwood floors throughout Empty Red have taught me that dust collect on these floors like ants on a watermelon. It's ridiculous and in three seconds I'm going to rip off some line from some movie. Three, two, one...I'm thinking about tearing up the hardwood to see if there's carpet underneath. So under the bed, I found one of the socks, the other was found easily by taking a quick glance on the floor of my carpet. Again, why I never put forth even the slightest effort to find those socks is probably the same reason as to why this blog sucks. One second as I turn to my left and yell, "Hey Bobby!!" Just plain happy now. Some few short weeks back, I asked a question on this blog, I asked if, "Anyone got a problem with anything relating to the word, Felonious?" I should have asked if anyone knows what I'm getting at when I say the word, "Felonious." Do you? Do I need to give you a hint? Anyone opposed to a guy traveling to Africa? Nevermind. That post would be flagged. Speaking of Flagging, and this was brought to my attention by the Nuge, maybe we can boost blog attendance by flagging this thing so ComputerNerd 1 and 2 have to check it out to make sure it's kosher. Then again, maybe they just shut it down without checking? That may just be a blessing in disguise. Maybe I'll do a little flagging myself.

More Horrible Thought Ever

2007-05-07T17:43:00.000-05:00

One day my car will stop running. God forbid that that day ever comes, but when it does, I hope and pray to Saddam that I would have used up all my refrigerant. I can't imagine the terrible thought of having a dead car with cool AC left in the bank.

Cornfield with Pigeons

2007-05-01T19:19:00.000-05:00

Most days not so past, I've found myself look at this wheatfield with crows. Don't ask me why, I can't tell you cause I ain't got the slightest idea why. I don't know if I find it appealing, galvanizing, gloomy, bemusing, or what but I look at the damn thing. Look at it more than I think is healthy. Than again, maybe it is healthy. I don't know cause I scientist, I am not. There just something about a murder of crows flying over a wheatfield that interests the hell out of me.

Stupid Bird Brain

2007-04-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

I heard the noise before I saw the stupid bird with the tiny bird brain. For a few mornings straight, I kept hearing this strange clunk in Empty Red. I didn't have the damnest idea of what it was. During the colder stretch of the season, those noises were commonplace with the furnace huffing and puffing around but with the warm weather, that guy's been shut down. Every morning this week, the clunk was present and I was lost in the big, bad, world of wanting to know what the hell that noise was. I think it was Thursday morning when I discovered the cause of the sound. I was walking around Empty Red barefooted with a glass of V-8 in one hand and animal crackers in the other,(V-8 and Animal Crackers have somehow became Pete's Breakfast of Runner-ups), when the clunk clunked. It came from the back window. Hot on the trail of the noise, I rushed to north end of my house and the culprit was found. A bird was perched on a wire outside my house and I immediately thought to myself, "that bird can't be that fucking stupid." Well, it was. As I looked on, the bird flew into the window for what must have been, at least to my knowledge, the 50th time. I could see this happening once or twice but constantly? Won't this bird just learn? In mid-thought, another clunk. I snapped to, what if this bird was trying to get to me, be inside Empty Red and breaking the window was its only way in? I moved close to the window and stared down the bird, "Saddam?" I whispered. Immediately, I called myself a dumbass for even thinking that. I held back the urge to fill up a saucer of whiskey and I went to work. 8 hours passed...very slowly. Back at Empty Red, I couldn't get the thought of this bird out of my head. I went back to the window to take another gander at the thing. The window-crasher was nowhere to be found but I happen to notice a half-made bird nest at the end of the wire where the bird had once perched. First thought...Saddam the Robin was trying to build a respectable home to lay an Uday egg. Second thought...Pete, you're a moron. Third thought...that stupid bird is too stupid to raise kids. The world has enough stupid birds and in my opinion, it don't need no more. So I got myself a little bit of a dilemma, tear the nest or not. Lucky for me, I have a while to bounce this around. Al Borland this bird is not, it's going to take awhile for it to have it's nest egg worthy. So now I ponder. Ponder about breaking this twig house. Part of me wishes that I had another mule kicking in my stall cause then I would have to tear it down.

Centipede Number 2...down for the count.

2007-04-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

A while back, I wrote of seeing two centipedes in the bowels of the Empty. A shorter while back, I wrote of one of the centipedes invading my bedroom and getting napkinned squished. Now, I write of the foot stomping death of the second centipede that had made its way into the room that I had dubbed the Minnesota State Flag Room. Yes, my foot came down swift and hard on that many leg creature. I feel, now, that the Empty Red is safe from all animals and bugs with more than ten legs. Centipede always travel in pairs of two since they believe that three's a crowd. Now that both of the Empty Redipedes are goners, I can once again sleep in peace knowing that the only thing to fear now is the dreaded sound of the alarm clock.

Whiskey Hibernation

2007-04-22T21:34:00.000-05:00

What's the date today? April 23rd or something? That's probably not right but no sense pulling up a calendar to be correct. What matters is that whiskey season is almost over. October 1st to April 31st is Pete's Whiskey Drinking Season. I know that most people drink the devil juice year round, and I have a lot of respect for those who do, but the warm, summer days leave me drinking more along the line of the beers, vodkas, and gins of the world. For a while now, my mixer of choice has been water. The soda mix is just a little too sweet for me, water just seems to work better. Normally, I'm not too picky on brands. Usually, the mix is tap water and rail whiskey but I figured I might as well go out on top during this last week before whiskey hibernation. Last night after the Empty Red Spring Shindig, I made a slushed up appearance at a nearby bar and had a few words with bartender regarding how I would like my whiskey water to be cooked up. My budget only allowed a slight upgrade over rail whiskey so I went with Crown Royal. Tap water just wasn't going to cut it this time. I wanted a whiskey Aquafina but no dice on the Aquafina at this bar. No Desani or Evian, either. I ended up hoping the bar had a jug of Culligan in the back room but this place lacked that kind of water elegance. In the end, Crown and Tap was what I was served. It was delicious but not the sendoff I was looking for. Lucky for Pete, May isn't for another week or so. It's like April 24th or something so I got like 7 days to find a ritzy bar with Aquafina to serve.

Ball In Hand?

2007-04-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

A week and a few days time back, I was schooling some dupe in a skilled contest of billiards. Actually, I was drunkenly hanging on by the skin of my teeth in a pathetic display of driving small balls against one another into pockets with a cue. The two of us were just out on a Monday night, killing time at a Rochester bar, while engaging in one of the longest games of pool in the history of time. I prayed for this game to end but the damn eight ball was untouchable that night, my friends. As we both chased the #42 ball around the table, a bar patron walked up to our table and threw down some quarters. Now, I knew what this meant, I knew that this putz wanted to take on the winner of our game. I've always had a problem with this, I don't like strangers butting in on my good times. The guy's expecting the winner to play him, well, what if I don't feel like playing another game? What if I'm embarrassed by my play and want to shadow it from the rest of the world? I've thought about all this before but I'd never won a game of pool, either, when random coin was on the table. Well, it just must have been my night cause somehow I managed to pull off a Shell's Dark fueled victory. The initial feeling of triumph soon turned into disgust as I saw RandonPoolPutz pulling out his trusty, two-piece, brought-it-from-home, pool cue. Personally, I play with what the bar has to offer but that's just me. The guy racked the balls and came over to me for some clarification. He asked if I played bar rules or league rules? I believe my comeback was something along the lines of, "I just hit the balls hard". And with that, the match was on! I broke the balls, two stripes went in. I hit a another ball in and rocketed another stripy into the side pocket. My buddy yelled with amazement. Neither he nor I could believe how good I was playing. Deep down, I knew my skilled play wouldn't last but somehow I figured that the billiard gods were channeling strength into me so I could make a fool of this stick-bringing putz. I got a little cocky and that must have displeased the gods because my next shot missed every single ball but a whole heck of a lot and went into one of the pockets. So I was asked, "Do you play 'ball in hand' or 'kitchen'?" I believe my comeback was something along the lines of, "I just hit the balls hard". The next few minutes became a blur as I got trounced by the RPP. This was something I didn't need, a stranger beating the snot out of me in pool. I mostly don't even like playing pool. Mostly.

What Have I Got Myself Into?

2007-04-14T10:11:00.000-05:00

The Following Is Taking Place Live, as I type on Saturday April Whatever The Day, 2007.
10:12am: Yikes, not sure what I got myself into. Last year, a coworker of mine invited me to crash his annual "case race" with his old college buddies. Those of you not familiar with a case race, let me enlighten you...one man, one case of beer, just got to finish it. Yeah, I felt I was a little old for it, it wass a tad be childish, and I didn't think I was in the right drinking shape to do it but all that be damned cause I went ahead, case of Bud Select in hand, and ended that race in some 7 odd hours. 7 hours be no where near any kind of city, state, or Andre the Giant record, but stillgood enough to beat up on a bunch of out of shape UMD grads. A year later and it's time to go at it again. I was kind of pumped leading up to the event but as I wake now, as I wake after being out late last night watching the Wild lose yet another playoff game, I really don't feel like drinking 24 beers. Especially, don't feel like drinking 24 Miller Genuine Drafts. Yes, I went heavy this year. Bud Select was just too easy, I wanted a challenge and thought that deisel beer was the way to go. The event being at Empty Red, I figured it be fun to keep a live update going on the blog. We'll see how it goes. It's 10:23am, a song about fake plastic trees is playing, and I need to get a nice, solid, base of food in me. Later.
11:05am: That was close. I ran out to pick up my secret weapon for the case race and almost wasn't able to get. I went to Erbert's and Gerbert's to pick up a few loafs of day old bread but they were out. I asked for some today bread and the guy tells me that he only seels day old bread. I panicked and begged and finally, the guy gave in and sold me today bread for the low, low price of day old bread. Score one for Pete! However, I was so fortunate at McDonald's. I figured their breakfast menu would suit my stomach perfectly and without paying any mind to the time, I pulled in at 10:43am. Damn breakfast was no longer being served! I panicked and begged but it was to no avail. I had to go with a few cheeseburgers. I'm not happy about but I think I'll be alright. It's 11:10 now and I got 50 minutes to prepare for the shotgun start.
11:46am: Big Balls In Cowtown on the airwaves! Pre-race predictions...I'm going to say that my finish time will be about 8 1/2 hours. So hopefully, by 8:30 tonight I can be done with this god for staken contest. I should probably inform you that I'm one of only two competiters in this event. I know. Pathetic, right? Nobody wants to touch this thing with a ten foot pole but as I am one to live my the great words of Walter Sobchak, "Fuck it, dude." I commited and I'm going through with this.
12:01pm: And we're off! Cold Filtered Miller Genuine Draft vs PBR Light vs Pepsi.
12:32pm: On beer number three. Right now, the conversation is on how Light Beer is made. We have no clue.
12:52pm: I miss my mouth slightly and spill on myself.
1:09pm: Watching the Departed, not a bad flick so far. The Beer is going swell enough.
1:36pm:Took my first piss. The soundtrack to the Departed is awesome. SOme Stones, Some Allman Bros. Some good stuff.
1:53pm: I got sushed for yapping too much during the movie. I feel like yapping, tough.
2:13pm: Departed is good but a little too heavey for me right now. I got a Bobby D song in my head and that's got my attention. Cracking beer number 8. I'll just say, Fare thee well!
3:41: New York Matt just checked in! Good to hear from the guy. One beer down during the conversation. Now on beer 14. Crazy Jim is in the house! And he has something to say, "Nothing's too hard if you don't have to do it yourself." Words to live by! And another, " If it wasn't this way it'd be different." Drink up, mother suckers!
4:03: sIMPLE YOUR NEVER FORGET THIS!
4:41pm: So Officwe Space is no0w own, and I've abandoned spellcheck and the little word corrections I do on my own, I'm on berer 1445, I know I u cked that up but I'm not going back. And it anitn;t no use to sit and wonder why!
4:50: So the masses are against me! PBR Light-10 Pepsi-6 Pete_16! Anyhoosss, Office Space is in the DVD player......................................Time to entertain myself myself. Bobby Dylan song is still in my head.......I just had a sandwich consisting of brea, mayo, and pepper!!!
5:18pm: Now I'm mad. I'm sick of the people I'm with. Office Space has been seen a thousand times! I just want to finsih this shit and move on into the nuigt!!! Spell check is for jerks and assholes! 16 and I got to kick my self in the ass and get moving! France is for lo0sers!
5:34pm: I missed my mouth completely and spilled all over myself. I burped big time!!! I think if I kick my self in the ass I finiah pretty qquick. We'll see!!
5:43pm: A lot of beers in and I got to say that this shit is in the reach of Pete!!! Yeah Brother sucker! Deal with it. Pete will win, cousin!
6:22pm: I have no fucking idsea!
7:07: 21 Mother Fucker!!!
7:07: When asked for typing advice, this cute girl said that I'd tried to ram her like a bulll!!! Fuck the Nuge the NUGE, he's at the Twin's game, he's a douche!
7:26: Dude, Fuck off! Three mnore beers to go!!! Tequila!!
7:30: 21 beers! Last year's shit is in sights!!! Buckle up mother fucker@@
7:44: Take it easy says Mack
7:44 Motivate me to drink easy says Pete
7:45 I'm putting Trampled On says Pete...you'll love this shit!!!
7:47 You may like it. you may not.
7:47 Please sit here so i can talk to you!
7:48 Where's my phone????
7:49 Where the FUCK is the question mark............
7:50 Found it!!!
7:50 LinASS gets away...oh no.....i love dogs.....mmmm....this tates like a beer and a half!!!!!
7:51 Is that it???? FUCK!!!!!
7:51 COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRREEEEYYYY LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
7:52: 23 beers! I'm doing this for Chubs!!! He's got on ehand!!!!!!
7:56 It's getting hot in here...we're calling for Nellie.
7:58 I love Nellie!!!!!
7:59 Mumble Mumble from Pete
7:59 Now I'm drunk, I' don't want to throw up...shovel it Matt...juggle it...not you!!!!
7:59 I DON'T WANT TO THROW UP!!!
8:00 THIS IS IT...HEY..PETE IS ON BEER # 23!!!!
8:01 Pete is waiving that towel like a Homer Hankie!
8:01 Pete is rubbing on Matt!!!
8:02 Ha ha..
8:02 He's about to go down hard here!!!!
8:03 What's he doing....running through the yard....don't worry I locked him out....
8:03 DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
8:03 Look how dirty your socks are.....they're off.......
8:04 HOW MANY BEERS!!!!! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! LET'S DO IT!!!!!
8:05 There we go BAM....BAM....BAM.....BAM....UP TOP...B
8:06PM: AND WE'RE DOMNE12111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111!@12!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8:08 Keep typing says Pete as he destroying Kevin's tree with thoughts of pissing on it
8:09 It's OVER -- Pete wins...Pete Wins
8:09 Wait it's a ladder match!!!!!
8:10 PETE IS DOWN PETE IS DOWN!!!
8:11 Match continues.............
8:11 Pete having issues with the final can...
8:11 I;ll fuck you up stay away...fuck my toes my toes
8:12 THERE WE GO!! IT'S NOW OVER
8;13: Pete is done mother sucker!!! Deal with it!!!! Fuck it, dude, let's go bowling!!!
8:42: Hell yea h peolpe, fuck this =and that!!joe d!!!!!

Douche of the Year

2007-04-11T18:20:00.000-05:00

Greetings From Gitchee Gumbee

2007-04-04T16:34:00.000-05:00

The wheels were set in motion a year ago on April 1st. I had just experienced my first Gitchee Gumbee Brew Fest in Superior, WI and I wanted to do it again. My 7oz plastic cup went empty for a year until it was finally filled once again last Saturday, March 31st. Straight out of the gates, I hit old faithful, Grain Belt Premium Beer. I know, I drink that stuff all the time and when I finally have a chance to try 100 different kinds of beer, maybe I should have passed on the Premium but damnit man, I just flat love that stuff too much. I couldn't resist. One cup down, I think we hit up the Surly stand next for an interesting 9% alcohol coffee drink from hell. I remember the color being as black as an accountant's heart and the taste being about as bad as real coffee. Never the less, down the hatch it went. I know I was only two beers into my brewfest but I believe it was here that things began to get blurry. I think Lake Superior Beer graced my glass next. I think I went with the Kayak Kolsch before going with their Special Ale before I gave into the temptation of some old man tale of some great beer they had in this little keg. Being the stand next to Superior's, Capital Brewing meet Pete next, followed by Goose Island, and I think some Angry Minnow beer was next. Eventually, I found out that Bell's Two Hearted Ale (an old personal favorite that was not present last year) was not quite cold enough. The winner of the Pete's Failed Money Maker Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellent was the next brew I threw back. It was housed at the Fitger's Brewhouse stand and was known around those there parts as a pepper ale. It was hot, spicy, and in my humble opinion both intriguing and delicious! No one agreed with me and everyone thought I was a jerk for making them try it but I found it to be exhilarating. I'm kind of craving another one, too. Now, I fall deeply into the blurriness of Brewfest. A lemonade beer was tried, a beer here, a beer there. A hassling security guard was pointed to the Gluek stand for violations they did not commit...suckers. Food stands were hassled, popcorn was had, popcorn was throw. Spotted Cow was good, their employees were great at catching would-be shirt thieves. Beer here, beer there and next thing I know, I'm camped out at the Lake Superior Beer stand once again, tossing back Special Ale after Special Ale until the damn thing ended. Good times.

(boo) BORingAT

2007-04-03T19:43:00.000-05:00

One downfall of a Brew Fest is that sometimes it leaves in difficult, annoying, frustrating, situation. I'm not talking about being stuck in Superior, too drunk to drive, fighting 100 people for a cab ride back to Minnesota. No, I'm talking about the Brew Fest aftermath of being on a couch, too drunk to walk out of the room, and being forced to watch the horrible film of (boo)Borat. Alright, maybe I wasn't forced and maybe I could have walked out of the room but forget about all that, just know that that movie sucks worst than a Dustbuster. The main problem I have with the movie is the title character, (boo)Borat. He's got to lose the accent, man. It's annoying and is just plain unnecessary. Second, I don't know if this movie was scripted or not so I'm going to tell you what's wrong with each angle. If it's scripted, it's just not funny and should have been used as kindling to the stove that burned up the body of Mick Jagger's father. Second, if it's all improv, just one douche fucking around with a bunch of hard working Americans, than come up with something a little more creative than trying to hug a stranger or let a chicken loose on a bus. I loved Tom Green as much as the next but laughing at a Canadian is one thing, laughing at some British figure skater is another. (boo)Borat is about as funny as this blog and we all know how bad this is. It just has no place in America cinema.

Answer?

2007-03-28T22:54:00.000-05:00

Anyone got a problem with anything relating to the word, Felonious?

They're Up Too High

2007-03-27T17:25:00.000-05:00

I was cool with them in the basement. It's to be expected of. You got a underground bunker, it comes with the territory. I was very cool with them in the basement. But my bedroom, the room that holds my bed, where I sleep soundly, where I close my eyes and know that I'm safe., where I dream of having a blog of Completed Dreams, well, they don't belong there. It ain't tranquil with them there. It just ain't. Loyal readers of the Blog of Failed Dreams remember November 14th, 2006. You don't? a little read here then. Anyways, the billion legged insect, the dreaded Millipede, braved the unknown crevasses of Empty Red to squirm its dirty way through cracks, vents, dirt, dust and worst of all, the muck and the mire to infiltrate my safe haven. I woke two days back to see this lone beast clinging, spidey-style, to my wall. I pounced. Within seconds, with a paper towel as a guts protector, I was squishing scores of legs together. Scores and scores of legs. I flushed it. Flushed it swiftly. Evidence lying around just ain't good for the impeding accusation of the other bugs.

Mi Night

2007-03-22T22:23:00.000-05:00

Pete Posting From The Future

2007-03-21T22:17:00.000-05:00

Feels good to be in the future, feels mighty fine posting what I thought of two days back. The future holds many truths. For instance, trees grow leaves. Believe it, man, they do. The future has new episode of South Park but the future still has the same, seen-them-a hundred-times, episodes of M*A*S*H. The future is kind of funny like that. Funny like that joke I just heard but you won't hear for three more days so now I'm laughing again because the joke is now on you. Sucker. I would tell you what puddle to watch out for but I'm a jerk so I won't. The future is kind of like the present but more things have happened so it's kind of different. You wouldn't understand.

Blast From Past March '05 : Scamrocks and Bullclovers

2007-03-20T18:07:00.000-05:00

Soon, maybe as you read this, it will be St. Patrick Day and I could care less. Just another thursday as far as I'm concerned. What does this day mean to me? Nothing. I'm not irish. My bloodlines can be traced back to the land of Hitler and the Pope, not some car bombing hoodlum from Scotland. St. Patty's Day is a complete mystery to me. Who was Pat? What did he do? How did he make my life better? Was he rich? Does he like Weffles? Has he ever seen a leprechaun ride a tricycle down an abandoned county road? Probably not. Here is what Patrick is, he a crook. He's a jerk. He's probably hasn't even stepped foot on American soil. How do I know this? I just do, and nobody can tell me any different cause nobody knows. I hate St. Pats Day just about as much as I hate MLK Day...I mean Flag Day. Don't get me wrong, I like flags as much as the next guy but do they need their own day? Do shoes have their own days? Do wheels? Fires? Black people? No. No. And double no. The days of having days should be behind us. We, as a society, should move on to bigger and better things like years and follow the lead of our asian brothers to the west, the Japanknees and name them after animals. Only then can we celebrate buffalos all year long.

Wanted: Investors With Paper Money

2007-03-19T16:04:00.000-05:00

I've been tossing this idea around for a few years now, just tossing it around. Throwing it one way, skipping it the other, bouncing it off walls, basically doing all I can with the idea without really doing anything with it. Well, the time has come for me to go through with this brilliant scheme of mine. More importantly to all you Money Maker Faithful is your chance to get in on the ground level and make yourself some big bucks. How you might ask? Water fountains. Just plain, old fashioned water fountains placed strategically in malls and hotels. I tell you what, this plan is adroit, dude. It's frickin' adroit. There are all kinds of buffoons out there, buffooning it up, just being stupid buffoons. The beauty of these buffoons, what makes these buffoons truly beautiful, is that they got what we all want...change. Nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies, these people have them all, sweetheart. What they lack in common sense, they make up in cents, lots of cents! These idiots walk into malls and see a pool of water with a little sprouting action going on and they throw change into it like it's going to make them money. Dumbasses. What they're really doing is making us money. These people just don't get it. Why they throw their change away is beyond me? Lightyears beyond me. What it is is that it's probably a hassle for them to carrying change around. Well, it sure ain't no hassle to me to throw on some scuba gear and fish those quarters out. No hassle at all. So what are we talking about to get started? All we need is a little cash flow, some mall real estate, and a bird bath. Start small and end ginormous! That's what I'm talking about. One bird bath in Rochester's Apache Mall will turn into another, then another, then another. Soon, we'll upgrade to larger kiddy pools, then once we get rolling with all that fat change being dropped in, maybe then we can splurge on one of those fancy water fountains that you see in the movies. I know what you're thinking, what if these buffoons don't toss their coin into out pools. The answer is simple, ignoramus, if the buffoons aren't tossing in their loot, pin up some phony baloney, Red Man story of luck and prosperity and we'll have to get one of those kickass bank coin counting machines to keep up with the coin flow. How can this fail? Corruption at the top. But never mind that. Think of all the buffoons in the world, think of all the change they have. No way we don't all get rich off this.

Night Light Savings

2007-03-14T17:34:00.000-05:00

Spring back and fall forward and mess with your clocks and screw up my sleep habits. Day light saving blows and there should come a time when we all realize the ridiculousness of all this and just stick with one time that works. All this clock fucking commotion is apparently done to save daylight, make days longer. I think they got it all wrong. I want to wake up to bright sunlight and I want it dark by 7pm. Sun glare ruins my prime time TV watching and darkness makes me stay asleep. Two reasons why I dislike Day Light Saving and two reasons are all I need to want to destroy the concept of turning clocks to and fro. The sun should be out from 5am to 7pm, that just my highly thoughtof opinion.

The Best Of All Alleys

2007-03-07T21:29:00.000-06:00

It's A Lucrative Business

2007-03-06T18:35:00.000-06:00

Twenty-seven pounds of aluminium turned into seventeen some odd dollars which turned into a much needed, going-to-sneak-whiskey-into-PioneerPlace, stainless steel flask. Ah, the life of a can collector. It's a good life, a sticky life. My two-headlight strong Taurus, trunk packed with cans, went down to the recycling center today. Three, filled to the brim, garbage bags and I strolled into the weigh center and were greeted instantly by two of the dirtiest, stickiest men in Olmsted County. I was impressed with the mass amount of soda they must spill on themselves and as a can collector, I was honored to be in their viscid presence. The End.

Drive Carefully Pete Crazy

2007-03-04T10:01:00.000-06:00

Weather's bad out, drive carefully. Road's a little slick there, drive carefully. Morning mist's out on Highway 52, for the love of God, man, drive carefully! A bit extreme, don't you think? Thus is my life in a referral lab business office. Countless emails, countless reminders, countless times I want to take my stapler and puncture my jugular. People mean well and maybe I'm just mean but I understand the concept of bad road conditions. Yeah, it's slow moving and at times, it can be a bit treacherous, but it doesn't mean the world should end. I know this concept isn't new, I know it's the talk of the papers and radio shows, they all complain that the slightest bit of cold rain and snow, people forget how to drive. If it sounds like I'm going in that direction with this here post, I apologize. I'm intending to go in the "before you even step foot in your car" direction. This day and last, Roch-what's up now, DM&E!-ester has felt the ill effects of rain, sleet, and snow and by watching the scrolling cancellations on the bottom of local TV stations, the town has basically become crippled. I saw school closing, 2nd shift cancellations, R!ah Salon closed which was news to me since I didn't even know R!ah had a salon. The scroller even informed me that the National Day of Prayer was cancelled because the roads were bad around some church in nearby Mantorville. Just imagine the millions of people all cross the globe, all ready and raring for a National Day of Prayer, just imagine how disappointed they when 1,000 residents strong Mantorville couldn't hold up their end of the deal. Well, no praying this year, I suppose. I was surprised, I mean, sure the roads had snow on them, travel time would surely be slower but this National Day of Prayer thing required a lot of planning and organizing. Should it be cancelled because your normal 5 minute travel time turned into a 13 minute jaunt? It easy to walk around on some "bad weather" days and tell any one and everyone to drive carefully, it's not so easy to walk around telling any one and everyone to nut up and drive.

Big F-U To You, Charter!

2007-03-01T22:25:00.000-06:00

For a while now, I had been receiving the NHL Center Ice Package for free from my cable provider. No, I didn't complain to get it. No, it wasn't given to me cause mysterious sun spots distorted my premium channels. I don't really know why I got it. I figure some burnout just forgot to turn off the free preview of it. The time I had it was simply, and quite frankly, glorious. Every single goddamn NHL hockey game right there at my fingertips. Glorious. Every fight, breakaway, shootout, high stick to the throat could be seen live inside Empty Red. It truly was glorious. This last Monday, to my horror, I discovered that it had been taken away. Glory turned to disappointment and depression. For a time, I was devastated but I soon remembered that all good things must end so I just said fare thee well. I was handling it pretty good until tonight. See, Rochester cable doesn't get Twin Cities Channel 45 and when the Wild are on that channel, I can't watch. The NHL Center Ice Package allowed me to but without, I'm stuck peering at the ESPN Live box score. Peering at it, wondering what the hell is Boogaard doing out there. Peer at this:
TIME PLAYER PENALTY DETAIL
15:08 Derek Boogaard: 10 Minutes for Misconduct
15:08 Derek Boogaard: 2 Minutes for Roughing Steve Staios
15:08 Zack Stortini: 10 Minutes for Misconduct
15:08 Zack Stortini: 2 Minutes for Roughing Derek Boogaard
15:08 Steve Staios: 2 Minutes for Roughing Derek Boogaard
15:08 Raffi Torres: 2 Minutes for Charging Derek Boogaard
What the hell happened! Three verse one? Screw peering at some lame box score, I want to peer at live televised action of this! To my curious dismay, later on, I see this:
TIME PLAYER PENALTY DETAIL
6:07 Derek Boogaard: 2 Minutes for Roughing Steve Staios
6:07 Steve Staios: 2 Minutes for Roughing Derek Boogaard
6:07 Raffi Torres: 2 Minutes for Crosschecking Derek Boogaard
Dammit, I wanted to see that. Big F-U to you, Charter. Don't take away my free not-supposed-to-have-them channels!

Onward and Downward.

2007-02-28T22:44:00.000-06:00

The two year anny is thankfully behind us, and why I said us and not me, I don't know. Anyways, it's behind me. What a relief. All that pressure of having to post something. Now, nobody expects a post until Feb 22nd '08. Pressures off now. If I think of anything, I'll write it.

Your Comments All Suck.

2007-02-25T09:41:00.000-06:00

Here's your two-year anniversary blowout. Hope you enjoy it because it took me way too much time, hence 2005 only. Anyways, as much as I love what I write and think it's the greatest damn thing in the whole wide world, time to time someone posts something that I find the slightest bit interesting, funny, or offensive. I took the time to pick out the best comments, in my Money Maker godly opinion, and post them all here for your viewing pleasure. If you don't see any of your comments below, don't feel so bad. Your comments were probably sane and intelligent, most of the ones below are not and they really show what kind of people we are(we since I threw in a comment of mine). None that I read this over, I considered not posting this but the hell with it, it's done, it'll be posted.

Anonymous said... February 25, 2005 1:31 AM
you might not be employed much longer if you keep calling the Mayo Medical Labratories "MLL"
Million Dollar Advice said... March 06, 2005 11:36 PM
Pete, let me give you some words of advice. When the man keeps knocking you down, you have to get back up, brush yourself off, look at yourself in the mirror, and say...I need to buy me a slave. Having Virgil was the best thing that happened to me, before he got greedy and tried to swipe my million dollar championship. The scenerio that you are presently going through is very similar to the one I experienced many years ago. You see when I got sick and tired of going through the hassel of chasing the WWF championship, I went out and bought it from Andre the Giant. Now I was thinkin, "Hey, what could be better...I didn't have to work my tail off and now I reap the rewards." But then that rat-nosed fink, Jack Tunney stripped me of my well deserved championship. Looking back, that was much like the situation you are in now. You found a way to take the man for all he was worth, and now you are stuck feuding with Jake the Snake. In conclusion You need to find youself a slave and find and realize that every man has a price.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sincerely, Ted DiBiase
thenuge said...March 08, 2005 6:02 AM
cri-ket
Gesus H. Christ said... March 11, 2005 10:17 AM
You are going to hell.
Frankie Yankovic said...March 29, 2005 9:32 PM
face it pete you are not getting into the big house anyway. where you are going it is going to be hot hot hot. Hesitating on desisions like this make me wonder about you...it makes me wonder if you really do care. the pete i used to know would have taken that quarter and then gone to a gas station to get chewy sprees...but not to pay for them.. oh no ... instead steal them by the pocket full. your display of moral aptitude disgusts me. there is only one way that you can gain back any disrespect that you have earned throughout your years of being an asshole...you must kill a bald eagle. a federal offense, yes, but when has that stopped anyone.
Walter said...April 02, 2005 9:33 PM
I didn't bring it bowling...I didn't rent it shoes, I'm not buying it a fucking beer, it's not taking anyones fucking turn...
Peter Jennings said...April 08, 2005 5:42 PM
don't forget me either, I was just diagnosed with a form of uncurable cancer!!!! Yippee for me!!!
blake said...April 11, 2005 7:44 PM
Geese are mysterious and devious creatures. Don't fall into their trap. Once a bunch of geese were waddling along a pond by my friend's house on an afternoon on the last day of school acting like they wanted a bunch of drunk kids to throw rocks at them. Well, I took the bait and threw a rock at one. It lay on it's side and was quacking and creating a ruckus until some old lady neighbor spotted it and called the cops. Sure enough, the goose got up and swam away with its mom and I was slapped with 4 hours of community service at an animal shelter. If you do take it out, make sure you don't miss and that no one else sees you. I wonder if this goose is the same goose I see every summer working for the city that has a gimp leg and can't stand on it, and takes a divebomb into the grass when it tries to land? If it isn't, I'll inform that goose of this piece of land down on HWY 41 in Rochester.
moose said...April 28, 2005 1:18 PM
i agree the carpet bouncers are a bunch of fags. when i was bustin a move on the dance floor, some chick thought she keep up with me and joined in. well needless to say i pratically broke her ankles with my sick moves and she went down quicker than the nuge on a footlong. anyway some meathead grabbed the lady and tossed her out. I tried to reason with him by telling him that she just wasnt on the same dancing level as i was, but alas, it didnt work. he did tell me that if i didnt stay out of it that i would be out too. so i told him to take her away and i went about my way bustin a move to that funky groove.
G said...May 05, 2005 6:09 PM
no pete, the public does not want gesus back...he was not fun, at all...
motown madness said...May 07, 2005 10:31 AM
.....cri-ket.......
yogi said...May 13, 2005 10:09 AM
that was unbearable
motown madness said...May 23, 2005 11:51 AM
What was the other thing he always says??? Something about pig-fuckers...or beerhogs.....what the hell else does he say?
Pete said...May 26, 2005 12:28 PM
The most pathetic thing about Rollie is that when I was at his show, playing golden tee and trying to put money in the jukebox, he comes up to me and invites me to his birthday party. Honest to god, Rollie invited me to his own party, at his own house, where he would be performing his own show. That redneck was too dumb to see that I had no interest in him or his party. Nuge, did he invite you? I forget if he invited anyone else I came with. Everyone else was loving it up on the dance floor and he invites the guy playing golden tee.
Big Bird said...June 09, 2005 3:16 PM
Yeah they're a bunch of butt priates. So is that grouchy ass oscar, him and snuffleupagus have been going at it since '83. Thi biggest homo of the all is the count...who wears a cape, i mean really. It's one big homo fest excluding me.
Grim Reaper said...June 26, 2005 6:44 PM
R.I.P. Pete's Failed Money Maker
Ima Yankntitz said...July 01, 2005 7:19 PM
Hey pete i was doing the news at the polka trailer and there was a story about someone in crotchester trying to burn down a mosque...now they said the culprit was drunk at the time. My question is...what were you drinking cus i know what you were thinking.
Commentor #1 said...July 09, 2005 10:14 AM
This is a very exclusive, non-douhe-like blog, we all share in the utopia that is Pete's failed money maker.......why should we live our mediocre dream out in other places, there is enough room here for all underachievers....you seem like a douche yourself....or alomst Eddie Lampert-like in your comment, so "anonymous" or should i say Edward "I fondled 4 year old balls" Lampert. I think I am going to go fuck with your blog more now....you just can't let well enough be can you? fuck.
matte said...August 05, 2005 1:29 AM
Just remember, when you drink Coors, you are drinking a non-unionized, white supremacist advocating beer. Just think of all the neo-nazis you are supporting while you barf up that nice fresh Coors.
thenuge said...August 08, 2005 8:17 PM
Before you go any further....you fucking sell out! I lived my lazy life vicariously through you Pete!!! HOw could you have done this to me....to Blake...to all of us! A job??!??! A fucking job!?!?!? with benefits???? Why don't you just move to Boulder, where the weed flows like pot and everyone is cool, because that is what you are the equivalent of now. You spent close to 3% of your post-college life unemployed/slightly employed. What's another 97%??? HOw are we suppose to feel good about ourselves now?? What am I suppose to tell other people? What is the highlight of your life now Pete???? pathetic....sell out.
motown madness said...August 11, 2005 7:18 AM
I looked up sell out in the dictionary, here is what it said:sell-out (cel-ahug-ht'): 1) Qualities pertaining to or relating to Moosisms or Polka-related activities. 2) Getting married. 3) Getting a job at a prominent healthcare facility in which many arabs live in and patronize 4) Becoming a fan or claim to be a long-time fan of a sudden "positively streaking" pro or sports team (i.e. Fresno State circa 2001). 5) Originally live in Southeast Minnesota. 6) Still live in Southeast Minnesota 7) Your hippie friends still live in Southeast Minnesota. 8) Your cracked out drug addicted wanna-be friends live in Southeast Minnesota. 9) All qualities related to or pertaining to Southeast Minnesota. 10) Someone who does not bring a calculator to an god damn accounting final 11) Showing up drunk to said Accounting final with no calculator 12) Moose. synonyms: Ralph truspeak, Mayo Clinic, Fresno State.
antonyms: Motown_Madness, thenuge
Saddam said...August 15, 2005 10:58 PM
I was tough but fair what else can you ask for?
Hurricane Katrina said...September 08, 2005 12:30 AM
i didnt think that there could be anyone who blows more than i do...but nugget you take the caaaaake. Lameo bandaid excuse. if youd just quit masturbating your blisters might go away. so long for now, im gonna wipe out some more of those poor, down-trotten, disenfranchised people (blackies).
the authority on readership interest said...September 20, 2005 7:21 PM
unless you post a new topic, you are going to start losing your readersNobody said this was going to be easy to keep up.....well shit, look who I am talking to, anyone associated with this blog hasn't accomplished shit in their lifetime anyway, where the hell was this blog going to take them.....
Death said...October 04, 2005 8:04 PM
unlike dying a fly's death...quick and painless...pete's money maker is dying a slow painful death...very slow and very painful.
A noted "Pete" Observor said...December 26, 2005 10:06 PM
How would these actions differ from any other night where you try and ruin people's fun?

G - uitar - one

2007-02-23T17:23:00.000-06:00

Two Years. Two Fucking Years....

2007-02-21T18:35:00.000-06:00

What have I been doing with myself? Pete's Failed Money Maker is two years old. Two years! This thing doesn't even make any money! It failed at that. Failed miserably. Failed like many breathalyzers throughout the years. I think back two years, unemployed and happy as I was, and look at myself now, employed and blah as I am (blah being the best word I can think of to describe how I feel right now) . What the fuck, man? Have we gotten anywhere? Have we accomplished anything by this non-sensical blogging? We killed time, I guess? But really, why? I find myself asking, why? Have I written anything worth reading in the last 4 months? 4 months is being generous, so how about the last 2 years? Sure, it's been fun making fun of recent deaths of celebrities and taking cheap shots at the Nuge but do other people enjoy that? I type as though people actually read this, makes me feel blah. Basically, The Blog of Failed Dreams was created to click on these god-awful ads, earning half cents and pennies by the hundred click just so I had had enough cash in my pocket to pay off cold, black-hearted Weffels every month. Well, as of honestly 10 minutes ago, I severed all ties with that interest-raising jerky bank for jerks. I consilidated my loans, not because of a better interest rates, hell, this new student loan company could be a scam for all I know, but I consolidated for spite and spite alone, damnit. So that's it. I've done with Weffels and I feel good. Yep, I do. Nothing to do now but move on, turn the page, buy another case of beer. Two years and here's where we're at. Right here. This is it. So long.

Church.
Priest.
Tabernacle.

Ins/Outs 2007 - Unfinished Because It Sucks

2007-02-21T18:23:00.000-06:00

I'm posting this cause I don't really care and it's just sitting there pissing me off. I'm not going to finish it because I can't think of anything remotely funny or interesting to write now or even so far this entire year. It done, so there.

As most of you learned last year, I'm hip to the currents of the street. I got a feel on what's cool, what's not. I got my ear listening to the pop culture and basically, I know what's up. So since the old year is gone, I figured I'd, again, compile a list of what is in and what is out for the year 2007. I know this is cliche' and most everybody has done their own lists weeks ago but right now, doing this weeks ago is out while doing this now is in, douches. This is in a perticular order so feel free to figure it out,

In: Paying your morgage
Out: Paying your rent
In: Hanging out to dry
Out: Hanging for no reason other than killing a bunch of Kurds
In: Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo
Out: Fergelious
In: Dirt cheap, free on the curb, worn-down couches
Out: Expensive, store bought, urine-soaked couches
In: A long December
Out: A long year
In: One headlight
Out: Two headlights
In: On time
Out: Late, you inconsiderate assholes
In: Pet Sounds
Out: Wild Sounds
In: Last year's list
Out: This year's list
In: Shoveling
Out: Snow blowing, you rich bastards
In: Charlie Poole
Out: Swimming Pools
In: Jack Maggs
Out: Judge Dread
In: Backyard Tire Fires
Out: Backyard gardens
In: Spacemen in Ohio
Out: Spacemen in space
In: Dropping out
Out: Graduating

Failure or Scam, It's One Or The Other

2007-02-19T16:36:00.000-06:00

Saturday afternoon usually leaves me with a little bit of hunger to cure. I was traveling north on HWY 52, Minneapolis bound. I say that I was on the road becuase that determines my meals. Home it's turkey and rice, on the road, it's usually God's gift to truckers, gas station food. Earlier in the week, as I was overcoming my battle with what I classified as SARS, I was in a generic NightQuil daze reading stuff about these flavored pretzels. Now, days later, I wasn't sure if I could believe my mind on this one, I thought I read that there were these Hot Buffalo Wing Pretzels on the market but I also thought I was dying of SARS. Well, the Zumbrota gas station proved my brain to be true. The good people at Snyder's of Hanover, or good people I thought of them at the time, made such a pretzel. The packaging even contained picturesque chicken legs doused in hot sauce while boosting that is was "bursting with flavor!". I bought them right up and shortly thereafter, I grabbed a handful. Right soon I was crunching these pretzels down. You could say my mouth was bursting with flavor. It was spicy as buffalo sauce usually is but something was missing. I thought of the picturesque chicken legs. Where was the chicken taste? The package stated plainly, Hot Buffalo Wing. Not hot sauce, not buffalo sauce. Throwing in the word "wing" meant chicken and chicken was not bursting my mouth with flavor. So now I'm left to ponder, did Snyder's just fail miserably at trying to capture the artificial flavoring of chicken or did those sneaky bastards try to put a fast one past the American public by hoping the spicy hot sauce would cover up the lack of chicken? I don't know, I've emailed the company and hopefully I'll get my response soon because as you know, ponderment can be a bitch.

Thanks to Crazy Jim's household for not allowing stuff inside which has lead to me reading stuff, stuff such as stuff about flavored pretzels and as well as other stuff.

An Excuse To Have Frosty's!

2007-02-14T12:14:00.001-06:00

I don't think I have karma to blame for this but perhaps I do. You do few bad things over the weekend, a remark here, a push there, and you end up in a situation that isn't good. Although, when a remedy to your current sitution is a chocolate Frosty from Wendy's, well, the situtation can't be all that bad. I'm kind of in one of those moods where people need to be brought down to my level. Someone's on cloud 9, let's get them down near Pete but I can't find the words or tone to do it in. I wanted to review Trampled by Turtles new disc, Trouble. I wanted say that by adding some drums and electric guitar, they did what the Yonder Mountain String Band did 9 months ago. I wanted to let them all know that to shed the bluegrass label, they going to need to do a little more than what they've been doing. I wanted to but I want to nap instead. So long, awakers!

Some Kind Of Bird

2007-02-13T17:42:00.000-06:00

Some kind of bird is hanging out in the front of Empty Red, mostly by the butter exit, barely making a sound. I don't know what to think about it, yet.

Absolute Bullsh*t

2007-02-07T16:24:00.000-06:00

Ponderment has lead me down some pretty strange, pretty revealing paths in my day and my ponderment today was a ponderment like no other. It was cold outside and warmer inside (side track item: my new favorite quote, although a month old, is, "Just because it's cold outside, doesn't mean it needs to be warm inside."), I opened up some janky weather page and saw the temp to be exactly 0 degrees Fahrenheit. A mean case of ponderment set in, set in hard. I thought if zero degrees was the absence of temperature. I know it's cold and in my head, the absence of temperature wouldn't even be felt but I thought of the absence of color, which is not black but it's white or maybe it's the other way around. Anyways, I started to think about it and then I decided that I was probably right, absence of temperature was abound! Ponderment has some crazy twist and turns to it, you never know what you might encounter on a ponderment trip. Well, I encountered a damn thing called Celsius. Damned if my prior conclusion was thrown into the shitter. So now I was pondering the better of the temperature measuring tools. Would I go public with the fact that 0 degrees Fahrenheit was the absence of temperature or would Celsius provide me with my meal ticket to an intelligent comment? I was lost in the sea of ponderment. I couldn't decide which side I would take. Sure, Celsius had the the interval between the triple point of water and the boiling point of water doohickey thing working for it but it was also the international, aka nerdy, way of reading temperature. On the other hand, Fahrenheit has some kind of snow and salt mixture thing going on, that can't be trusted? Can it? Often ponderment require compromise to end it. It's best used when the giant undertow of Ponderment Ocean is taking you under and and the last second possible moment, a life jacket(compromise) is thrown into your arms. The compromise was that whether being in Celsius or Fahrenheit, temperature being in either one at zero was the absence of temperature. So now I was feeling pretty damn good about my intelligent self, thinking that all those times they were right, I was a smartass. I figured I was in the clear, ponderment season was over and I put the safety on my ponderment six shooter. A hard lesson I learned in life is that once you're past ponderment, don't turn back, it's never good. In this most recent case of ponderment, I wanted to confirm my ponderment conclusion by verifying my outcome with one of the greatest high school science minds of Chicago. I sent out an email and sure as a pig's ass is pork, the reply came back with an answer contradicting mine. Turns out there's some kind of theory out there called Absolute Zero(Pete's Failed Money Maker One Liner of the Day!: Vodka O'Douls, it is not). Some absent-minded science whiz determined that -273.15°C or -459.67°F is the "theoretical temperature characterized by complete absence of heat and motion." That's BS if you ask me, I could pluck to numbers out of the sky and call them Absolute Zero and no one would even know, or even care for the matter. Only reason cared is that I had a mean case of ponderment and I was stuck in it. So now I don't know what to think and I'm scared to think any more about it for fear of ending up at the bottom of a ponderment well.

Pete Goes To See Alcatraz

2007-02-05T22:06:00.000-06:00

I'm not saying that I had anything to do with the mayor of San Francisco coming out today saying that he is seeking alcohol treatment but I think an impression was made by Pete in that city. Really? No, not at all. Sancisco was a pretty tame experience for me. Just the sights and sounds basically. Still a great time, though. In the end, I spent a total of 32 hours driving to SF and a grand total of roughly 31 hours in the actual town itself. You might be saying to yourself that the trip wasn't worth it, just a waste of time and TV. That's ignorant, you're being ignorant. Traveling the American highway was what it was all about. 3M-Mike and I started out as two little fools on the road, just bound west and thinking about nothing else. Leaving Minnesota, on Wendesday, went fast. Iowa, no big surprise here, came and went without much of an incident. Nebraska left it's mark. See, I've driven Nebraska before. Few years back, I got my first taste of the state with a weekend trip to Omaha. A great impression was made. Fewer years back, I ventured down to Las Vegas and had the privilege of taking I-80 to the I-70 split down into Colorado. No ill feeling were had after that trip. Again, year back, I jolted through Nebraska down to Denver. Both trips went the way of the Interstate 70 split. I didn't know it at the time but continuing on I-80 after that split is the stretch of that drive that made Jeffrey Dahmer take up killing. It was rough and at midnight it was rougher. Things looked bleak for the Dynamic Duo(aka 3M-Mike and I). Half a day in a car, tons of caffiene, and NeNothingThereska was being a little bitch and wouldn't end. Would we turn back. No, but for story sake, we were about to turn back before we received a sign from the HighwayGods.

For the last 650 miles, we had driven perfectly. We swerved in and out of lanes while using our blinker, the passing lane was used for passing, we sped up and down according to the conditions of the road and the speed of our fellow drivers, we made the miles without incident. People took notice, more importantly, truckers took notice. While passing a conversion van, we noticed a Semi fastly approaching us from behind, we knew the hassle of hitting the break, ruining your perfectly set cruise control so we hit the gas. We quickly pass the van and moved out of the way of the truck containing valuable American supplies for the American people. As the truck passed us and veered off into our lane ahead, the trucker gave us the validation we so desparately needed. He flashed his lights at us. The great highway thank-you was given to the Dynamic Duo was a true American trucker. A lonely four-wheeler, that we were, earned the respect and admiration of the big ol' 18-wheeler. My smile was ear to ear, my friend. A tear...almost fell...down...my face. After that, the road was ours for the taking and lame west end of Nebraska be damned, we made it to Wyoming. That night was spent in Rock Island, WY and that next morning was spent at the breakfast buffet held at Wingers.

9 hours, on Thursday, were spent driving to Reno. We got there and left 12 hours later and that's all I'm saying. Alright, I'll also say free booze and gambling. Fill in your blank to this question in the comment page. Free Booze + Pete + Gambling = _________?

We had a short little jaunt from Reno to San Francisco left for us on Friday. I think it was a 4 hour trip, rush hour traffic made it a little longer but our destination was reached. That night we were lucky enough to take the advice of Mr Langhorne Slim and checked out the Avett Brothers. Those Carolina boys were plain really good and basically made this trip 10 times better.

Saturday was a tiring day of drinking, walking around the pier, and driving through an old military base in hopes of seeing an old face and screaming, "fuck off, Tommy!" before tearing away. Sadly, Tommy was not found.

My flight left Sancisco at 12:35 am Pacific and arrived in Minneapolis at 6:15am Kickass time. Little detour was taken to have breakfast with Grandpa and ma before entering the doors of Empty Red around 9. Hit the sack, woke up an hour and a half later and took off down the road, across broadway, right, left, right, for some pre-Super bowl Bloody Mary's. And that was that which was.

War Eagles

2007-01-29T17:24:00.000-06:00

My cell phone was alarming very annoyingly this morning. It was early 5:30 and I was feeling shabby, damn shabby. With an hour drive ahead of me, I slipped on the Rockports and walked my trembling body down to the Taurus and left St. Paul. I had spent the majority of the night before drinking various beers ranging from Summit to Grain Belt to Leinenkugels to Bells Two-Hearted. That was before I settled on Old Style. Yikes, my good friend, yikes. Every passing car blinded my watery eyes, every blink caused temporary double vision, every blank stare caused my tired self to veer off onto the road side rumble strip. It's a wonder I made it home this morning in time for work. Even had time for a quick shower. No shave though, tis Money Maker hunting season again.

Triple Rock Social Club was the venue for my Sunday night belligerence. Langhorne Slim was reason I was there. The guy just kills. Hell of a performer, a must-see from now on for Pete.

F In Geography

2007-01-28T11:19:00.000-06:00

Teacher must have been asking the wrong questions in my Geography class(On a side note, I wrote Geometry twice before realizing/correcting my dumbass mistake) because somehow I passed. I know, maybe the location of San Francisco in comparison to Minnesota fell in the 30% of questions that I got wrong, I guess only Moses would know for sure. As I'm preparing for my trip out west, looking at yahoo! maps and figuring out a route, I'm finding myself more and more surprised about how little I actually know about where certain states lie. For instance, I know that Washington and Oregon are north of California. I know that San Francisco is in northern CA. I'm in southern Minnesota. Ask me how to get to SF and I would quickly respond to head west, SF is probably straight west of Rochester. Maps are telling me it's a little more south than I think. Maps are also telling me Nevada's not really that far south and that same map is letting me in on a little secret called Wyoming. It's kind of shocking of how distorted my perception of the US is. I'm joking about the existence of Wyoming but it's one of states that I never really thought about. Now that I think about it, I know the Lower 48 states, I know where they're located, but my mind doesn't map them together. It's very strange having a mind like Pete. To explain this any further would just bore me so selfishly, I leave you all confused on what I'm trying to say.

In closing, when you sign up for the graveyard shift at Kwik Trip, expect to see some weirdos, some tripped out stoners, and expect to see some drunks stumbling into the freezer glass. Get used to it and keep your mouth shut. It's better for everyone that way. If you happen to open your mouth, a rendition of "The Shape I'm In" should be expected. And believe me, the performance ain't good enough to warrant calling in an audience. Police have better things to do than to see my foot stomping and finger waving.

Nonchalantly, I Might Add.

2007-01-22T17:52:00.000-06:00

Two weeks back, I was in Mankato for an uneventful hockey game. Minnesota State-Mankato zero, St. Cloud State zero, final score. That's right, I said an uneventful hockey game. Game concludes and I'm out the door to some underground pool hool. Pool concludes and I'm across the way to Buffalo Wild Wings. Upon entering the bar area of the restuarant, I get carded by a bouncer to confirm my old age, I pass with flying colors and am rewarded with a square ink stamp. Approached by a waitress at my table, I, nonchalantly, order a beer. The waitress, perhaps only doing her job, asks to see my ID. I reply to her question by explaining that I got carded on the way in and nonchalantly pretend to not be able to locate my stamp of approval. The waitress developed an immediately dislike of Pete, as most all waitresses do, and insists on seeing my ID. Being the good patron, I give in, hand it over, and eventually receive my Budwieser. Unbeknownst to me, the waitress told my table companions that Pete's drunk and she will only serve me one beer. I, upon having this message relayed to me, disagree with her accusation and quite frankly, I was a tab bit annoyed by it. Minutes past and the waitress made her way past my table. Seeing this as good as opportunity as any I grab her attention and proceed to, nonchalantly mind you, tell her that I would like to order 683 beers for myself. The waitress made me aware that the Buffalo Wild Wings in Mankato doesn't even have that many glasses. I began to wonder just how many glasses they did have so I tried to order, one by one, 386 beers, 295 beers, 174, 98, 76, 32 beers before she left my vocal range.

A few random thoughts came to me as I drank three scoreless periods of hockey away that same night. I got a glimpse of one of the coaches in his nice, fancy suit and immediately thought back to the good days of playing boothockey in St. Cloud for Denis Property Management. One faithful night, Moose came home from the bowling alley early and drunk. Early enough to come to our boot hockey game and drunk enough to put on his "court clothes", grab a clip board, and make a fool of himself trying to coach DPM to victory. My second random though was of one faithful night in Duluth when, fulled by a bottle of blackberry brandy, the Nuge and I cheered the SCSU Lacrosse team to a sounding defeat at the hands of team Duluth. It was a great time before, and after, Vanny (SCSU forward) told me, mid-play, to shut up. Why would the Experience say that to me? To this day I don't have a clue. One thing about random thoughts is that they're easily forgotten so I only got those two. Surely, there were more but Pete no remember them much.

Large heating bills are worth the comfort the heat provides. I got clothing that can be layered for a reason.

Kill some time, stream the new album online. Backyard Tire Fires are way better than backyard gardens. Take my word for it.

No spell check on this one. It's naked, it's from the heart.

Little Weasel Prints

2007-01-17T17:43:00.000-06:00

Snow is just nature's way of showing me that there are a whole hell of a lot of varmints trespassing across my property. Empty Red's yard ain't big enough for me and whatever critter who's looking to take the shortcut to 17th avenue. If it wasn't so cold, I'd be out there, shovel in hand, making sure all those rabbits stay away. If I wasn't so tired, I'd be out there all night long, talling both chipmonk and squirrel alike, to scram. If I wasn't so dumb, I'd be out there building some kind of elecrtical wall to zap every rat, dog, and cat that touches it. If I had more time, I'd continue.

Looking Ahead

2007-01-10T18:00:00.000-06:00

San Francisco. A place that I probably shouldn't go to. A place that seems awfully strange to me, just very queer. A place in California. The very same California that I vowed never to return to. A place located on the Pacific Ocean. The same Pacific Ocean that I drunkenly urinated into. The same urine that I told to go west, go west and splash upon the shores of China. Urine and San Francisco. Hand and hand, my good man. Hand and Hand. There by car, home by plane, that the life for me. That's the life for Pete. Cars and Planes. San Francisco and Urine. Cars, Planes, San Francisco, and Urine. Hand and hand, foot and foot, all wraped up in scotch tape, thrown into the trunk of a car with an attached Post-it® reading, "Headed for the 'Frisco Bay." San Francisco is west, way west. Wester than Denver, wester than Texas, wester than a lot of things to the east. Rarely do I find myself looking west. Sure, on occasion I've been known to take a quick glance, time to time I fall into a western stare, I've been know to look the way of the Rockies but rarely, rarely do I find myself looking west. Maybe I just don't noticed it, and by "it" I'm referring to Pete catching Pete looking west. Anyways, and that's a big anyways because I'm switching topics dramatically, in once Boogaard hit the ground last night, my heart broke. It's like seeing Superman die or Al Bundy succeed. You just can't imagine it happening. Anyways, and by anyways I mean where was I, San Francisco. And urine. San Francicso and urine and I'm in Minnesota. Time shortly, urine Minnesota and I'm in San Francisco, but not for long my good man, not for long.

I Got Older Today

2007-01-07T14:35:00.000-06:00

Can't really think of anything to type up so I will leave you with this...bloody mary's are good and I like them a lot.

National Day Of Baloney

2007-01-02T17:34:00.000-06:00

It seems like I'm always the last to know about national days of mournings. I went about most of my day today acting like some asshole who didn't give a damn about the death of President Ford (most famous for his self portraying role in episode 13 of The Simpsons 7th season). I jumped out of bed this morning, whistling the happy bluegrass standard, Turkey In The Straw, which, right then and there, ruined my chance at having an accidental day of mourning. That song just doesn't have one murmur of anguish in it. Anyways, I had a little giddy-up in my step all morning and into the afternoon. I tell you what, everyone must have thought I was the biggest jerk alive, walking around with that look of glee. Now, I try kind of hard to get along with the people I work with, try to come across as a nice guy, holding back smartass comment after smartass comment, and what does me in? What ruins my character? Glee. Goddamn glee. I mean, United States post office employees were so devastated by the death of President Ford that they got the day off and here I am, smiling at everyone, wishing them all a happy old year, unmourning all day long! I'm just a rascal. Just a big, stupid, sober rascal. When I finally found out that today was a national day of mourning, imagine my shock, imagine my horror. I felt terrible being in good spirits all day, having the same mindset of some no good, sleeper cell, terrorist. It was too late in the day to make up for my previous joyfulness. I thought about going through with a drastic staging of a Presidential Ford, tear-filled, meltdown to save face but Turkey in the Straw resin prevented my "down in the dumps" game face from shining through. Just not an ounce of sorrow in that damn song. So here I am. A victim of not being informed of national days of mourning. Sure, the sun comes out each day. I know when's it's morning but where are the bright lights that signal mourning! I can't be a total fault for this? The worst part is that there's no way to prove that I was in the dark about all this. No trial to prove my innocence, no chance to speak my innocence. People saw me today. Saw me being happy, not a mournful bone in my body. That's what they'll remember.

Happy Old Year

2007-01-01T17:04:00.000-06:00

Money Maker Faithful, I hope 2006 was good to you. Nothing you can do about it now, it's dead and gone. Time to move on. Happy Old Year.

Saddam Tribute.

2006-12-29T23:06:00.000-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snQW28vYH8s

And Boogaard Just Wants To Play Some Hockey...

2006-12-28T16:49:00.000-06:00

The Minnesota Wild hockey team is playing soft and losing about every game they play on the road. It's really painful to watch them play so bad and even more painful to watch Derek Boogaard not fight anyone. For the record, he was hosed out of an assist Tuesday night in Toronto, but that's strictly for the record. If the Wild aren't going to win on the road, they may as well loosen up the reigns on the Boogyman and let him do what he wants to do, that's play some hockey.

The D In JD Must Stand For Undaunted

2006-12-28T16:33:00.000-06:00

Big congrats goes out to my big brother, known affectionately referred to on the Blog of Failed Dreams as JD in Roch. Following in the footsteps of my best friend, Joe has become a Certified Public Accountant. I swear that he failed that test more times than a guy who failed one certain test an undetermined amount of times. In the end, he can finally use his business cards that were given to him 4 years ago, business cards that mistakenly had CPA printed after his name. There were collectors items, now they're simply a small sheet of paper with a bunch of worthless contact information.

Countdown: 30 Days, Hopefully Less

2006-12-26T13:55:00.000-06:00

It's gonna happen now, Saddam is going to the gallows. Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail. If I didn't believe that Saddam death would set in motion his reincarnation as a duck living at Empty Red, I'd be devastated. But since I do, I now rejoice in the thought of Saddam's hanging. As a man who been convicted of the crimes of Jeff Reardon, Saddam has been a class act his entire trail. Sure, he's had a few outlandish political tirades during his time in court but for the most part, that was cause by hunger. Hell, if I went on as many hunger strike as that man, I'd snap at my own death sentence, too. In a Pete's Failed Money Maker exclusive interview, Saddam seemed to have already accepted his fate. When asked how he felt about his situation, he spoke, "Hang me, oh, hang me, so I'll be dead and gone." A bit taken back by his response, I followed up with a question regarding whether or not he was bothered by the court holding up the appeal. He told me that he had told them, "I wouldn't mind your hangin', boys but you wait in jail so long." Saddam obviously thinks the afterlife as a duck is uber better than wasting his time all day in jail but still I thought maybe Saddam had more to live for in this lifetime. When pressed, he responded with, "Oh Lord, I been all around this world." I guess he's done about all there is to do in his Hussein body. It shouldn't surprise me, the man has been rich and powerful for a hell of a long time. Fame and fortune allows for a man good times and comfort but Saddam's had the burden of running a nation and being punished for the crimes of another man. What I really think is that Saddam's ready for retirement. The peaceful, quaint life of a whiskey loving duck is right up his alley. I'm not the most knowledgeable guy when it comes to the timeframe of reincarnation so once he's hung, I best start putting out the whiskey filled saucer and bread crumbs right promptly. We can't go about having Saduckdam sober and hungry for too long, right?

Hell On Earth

2006-12-22T11:41:00.000-06:00

I've discovered Hell on Earth, otherwise known as a Scrapbooking store. Never in my life have I felt more unfortable, annoyed, and clausterphobic in the same damn place. It was a terrible, ugly place of stickers, paper, and ribbon. It was complete hell. I needed to get a Christmas gift for someone, turned out they wanted scrapbooking items. First thought I had was, "What the fuck is that?" I did some asking around at the workplace and realized that people like to cut and paste pictures on colored paper and throw stickers around them. To each their own I suppose but that doesn't each with my own. I strolled on into the store and immediately became angry cause there was more than one item in the store. I should have known it wouldn't have been so simple. Anyways, I got into this situation because the person wrote under their favorites, "scrapbooking", well apparently they didn't pay attention to my favorites, "not doing stuff." Try to put that in a gift bag and hand it to me! Better yet, another favorite is not shopping! You know what I like? Gifts that I can give other people. Give me somthing that I can turn around and give someone else! I like what she likes! Give me some scrapbook glue and make sure I get it before I need to give so and so a gift! Bah! I say, Bah!

Merry Christmas To Some, Happy December To Others.

2006-12-21T17:52:00.000-06:00

Time to lock it up, put on a happy face, grin, bare it, and barrel through another holday season. Count down is about two, three days before I do the ol' friends and family dinner and gift thing. I can't hardly wait. Wish me luck!

Not What I Had In Mind

2006-12-14T19:03:00.000-06:00

I read the words "Blind Sheik" and the first thing that comes to mind is a big green orge running into a tree. Imagine my surprise when I open up an article titled "FBI warns of attacks if ‘Blind Sheik’ dies" and my orge mind picture turns into Muslim Stevie Wonder. Talk about disappointment. Not known for any chart topping hits, Blind Muslim Steve Wonder is known for stylish Blue Blockers, an unkept beard, and a deep hatred of western civlization. He does have a popular form of noodles named after him and favors the flavor of chicken. That's all I know about this blind cleric. Feel free to research more of Omar Abdel-Rahman on your own time. Thank you.

Hunter or Gartherer

2006-12-12T18:47:00.000-06:00

Weeks ago, curiousity got the best of me yet again. It had been a month or two since I let the facial hair go and I was hoping to all hell that I could finally grow a kickass beard like Saddam's. I looked ahead at my schedule and figured the time was right. I think I started on a Thursday and breezed through the weekend. Monday morning greeted me with a few double-takes at work and by Wednesday I was starting to get questioned by a few of the clean shaven Pete fans around the office. Damned if everyone didn't think my shaver was broke. Having a shread of comon sense, I decided to keep my fanticiaztion with Sadam's beard to myself. The questions about the random stuble arcoss my face didn't seem to end with my answer of, "slag off" so I bounced a few other answer against the wall and finally got one that worked. "Oh, I'm just growing it out for hunting season." By God, it worked. People would hear it, nod and walk away. Further questions would have a hefty serving of "it's cold outside, gots to keep warm" thrown in their face. Further harassment by a male would lead to my rhetoric of how, "I'm a man. By natures definition, I'm a hunter. I'm supposed to put food on the table and feed myself. My beard reflexs that. Your clean shaven face is that of a gatherer. That of a women who stays home, nurses a child and cleans dirty laundry." Now, I realize that 75% of the year, I fit that "gatherer" definition but at the time, I needed to put that thought out there while I saved myself five minutes every morning.

Sheltered From The Powder And The Finger

2006-12-10T14:29:00.000-06:00