Whoa!!

Where'd 2012 go?

I was counting on the world ending, but I didn't expect to for a whole YEAR to
disappear.

This is IT.

Here's my post for 2011!!

What America Needs

Christmas Greetings!

Hi, my name is Virginia (no relation to "yes Virgina there is a Santa Claus, for god's sake) and I'm generally a pretty normal person, I guess. But every year at about this time, I turn into a complete and utter psycho disagreeable person.

Oh, This Is Pathetic!

I just happened to check the date on this journal today. I couldn't resist adding this to my non-existent oeuvre. Maybe I should just dump this thing into the nearest trash can. The dates on these last two entries are the real dates, by the way. There is nothing wrong with your TV. Oh, that gives me an idea. But I don't have time to follow it up now. Check back here tomorrow.

(update)

Sorry I haven't written anything (as if anyone reads this or cares!)-- it's been a rough summer (and spring) which I don't want to talk (or write) about, and I've responded to my woes with strong drink of remarkable little variety. Maybe it was the move, too. I just can't move around like I used to. I need to settle in somewhere (besides a barstool). Oh, well, I'm not promising anything, but perhaps in the future, I'll at least get around to describing my surroundings, my job (i.e. the way I make money), and my obsession with everything I have an obsession with. That includes more than one thing, which is partly why I am distracted (and partly not).

Middlefield Center

That picture (below) is not really where I live, I just liked the picture, because it's actually a satellite map, and you can zoom back away from it. It seems like it must be a very exotic place, which is exactly the opposite of Middlefield Center, my new home. Why did I move to Middlefield Center? There are no jobs, the rent is too expensive, there is no cultural diversity (that made me laugh, to write that). This is the kind of place where half the residents would FREAK OUT if they were building a Taco Bell. So why did I move here? One reason is because there are no Taco Bells. Another is because Beck doesn't live here. Another is because vodka is still used for screwdrivers, not martinis in a place like this. And another is because there is like one bar for every two people in this town. Therefore, presuming each bar needs some kind of bartender to run it, there is a good chance that you can always find a place to drink more or less alone.

Here I am!

View Larger Map

Happy That It Exists New Year

It's been a long time since I've written anything, even a ransom note. I'm still around, however-- the question being, "around what."

I pretty much couldn't put up with Milwaukee anymore and left town. I realized that if I saw one more crappy building go up I was going to start drinking again. As it turns out, I started drinking again in another city, anyway. But it's not the same. It's very much not the same.

It took me all of autumn to move, and even longer to get my internet connected at my new place. It's a good feeling to open your email after all those months and see absolutely no spam! Nothing but a lot of really useful offers, we miss you notes, love letters, and, well, just a few death threats. I deleted it all, however, and I'm starting over fresh.

But I'm not, at least for now, saying where.

Things are looking up!-- oh, no, I was wrong.

This is a building on the corner of Wisconsin and Broadway in downtown Milwaukee, and there is a national chain sub shop there. A lot of that crappy brown material is cheap facade, added to the building at some point-- why? To make it look crappy brown? Anyway, at some point the brown crap came off or was removed from the support column revealing that the column underneath was decorated with cheerful green and white ceramic tile. You can see the one row of tiles still visible above the brown facade. While the tiles were exposed, I walked by there and was elated, hoping that they were going to remove all of the crap facade and make the building beautiful again, as it must have been at one time. Then a few days later, the brown crap was put back up.

People love the ugly and the uninspiring, I guess. They enjoy being angry and shat upon. If all I wanted to do was make money, I'd open a fluorescently lit slaughter house, play an endless loop of Harley engine noise, instruct the employees to insult customers and beat them with gravel filled socks, and serve feces on moldy white bread. But what would I do with all the money I would make? Buy a condo to store my ugly clothes for three months out of the year?

Liquid Lunch

I was recently asked to write an occasional article or review for this new, local, Milwaukee online journal called Lunch is just Life. http://lunchisjustlife.blogspot.com/

It's new, there's nothing there yet really, but whenever I write something, if I do, I'll make a note of it here.

It's about restaurants, mostly, though I suppose that could include bars that have food, or particularly wholesome drinks.

The main focus is Milwaukee, but I guess they are open to some out of town stuff, too. We'll see. I don't know how much longer I'll be in Milwaukee. I long to return to the Venice Cafe, but I'm not sure it still exists.

Diagram for a Shitty Drink

I walked by the new steakhouse, Mason Street Grill, again yesterday and noticed a couple of banners hanging above the doors that said, “Discover the Hangout before it’s the Hangout.” This kind of turned my stomach and made me not want to go there, which is too bad because I had almost gotten over that stupid cocktail sign they had up before they opened. Martini parts: vodka, vermouth. It’s hard to have confidence in a place with a sign like that. I mean, you could order a steak and it’s made with compressed turds or something.

But I really like the Pfister, it’s such an old-fashioned hotel. And I’m still kind of exited this place opened. But I don’t know… then they do something stupid like put up those banners. I guess I’ll just have to go there sometime and see what’s up. But at this point, I’m expecting the worst.

An admission of guilt

I have to admit something. I have been in a weird state since I quite drinking. I have spent most of my time on weird obsessions. The most unexpected and bizarre one is this obsession with Frankenbury and Count Chocula cereal. I have no idea what this is all about.

Quit drinking and it nearly killed me!

I'm still in Milwaukee. Well, I haven't been here all this time, but this seems to be where I've ended up for right now. The Venice Cafe isn't in Italy, or Venice Beach, by the way, it's in Kent, Ohio. I don't even know if it still exists. It's conceptual at this point, especially because, at best, it's there and I'm here. I had to quit drinking for awhile, and that was a drag. But my New Year's resolution is to start drinking again, eat at a new restaurant at least once a week, and... well, I have a lot of them, but I'm not sharing them. Okay, I guess to write something for this piece of shit blog once in awhile.

Where does that SNOT come from and where does it go?

I haven't written anything in the journal for quite awhile, and I was thinking of just chucking the whole thing, but I recently was able to get ahold of some mood stabilization medication as a special side offer from my crack dealer, and that's been working really well, actually. I'm not so ANGRY anymore, or at least I don't care that I am. I'm too tired to be angry at the things I used to be angry about, and too busy concentrating on not throwing up to be able to spend time and energy complaining about cultural stupidity!

Well... I was just out in Portland for awhile. It's not easy being bi-coastal, or bi-anything for that matter. I'm talking about Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, where I am now. Milwaukee is on the coast of Lake Michigan, and if you don't think of the coast of one of the Great Lakes as a coast, well then, you're just a geography snob, and fuck you. The good thing about being out in Portland is the cheap drugs and the optimism. The bad thing is that they don't have the internet out there yet, so that's why I haven't been able to update this.

I was trying to go out to breakfast at some kind of a brunch or breakfast buffet this Sunday morning, since I've gotten so thin it makes me sick, though not as much as the men who like thin women. I love those buffets that have salty scrambled eggs with ham chunks, and really dry pancakes, and burnt waffles, and greasy link sausage, and barely cooked bacon, and unripe melon chunks that taste like meat, and hardened gravy with grey sausage, and greasy homefries, burnt on the bottom. But you can't find that kind of buffet in Milwaukee, it's all champagne brunch with smoked salmon and crepes and shit like that. I called Pieces of Eight to ask how much their brunch was and some snotty asshole answered the phone and said some absurd price like $23.95. Now come on! Just make it $25 (or be really absurd and make it 24 dollars and fourteen cents or something). No one can afford that kind of brunch except for the over-eaters or people being taken out by their rich grandmothers, anyway. You're right, snotty asshole on the phone at Pieces of Eight, I can't afford that, I don't care about your view of the art museum wings, or the concrete grey sky over Lake Michigan, or "fresh squeezed" orange juice. Where's my Capn' Crunch and my pills?

A Grievous Error

There are misspelled words on tombstones and monuments and tattoos all the time, it's no big deal. But last week I saw something that really made me go through the roof. I was walking by the Pfister Hotel, and they have put up all these murals for the new restaurant that is going in, under the parking garage, which I'm looking forward to, or WAS, until this incident. There must be something about "PARTS" in the name of the restaurant, because there are all these diagrams of like a chicken and a pig and it says "chicken parts" and "beef parts" -- something like that, and somewhere else it says, the best new restaurant coming to these "parts." Something like that. That's all okay, but then there is a martini glass, and it says, "martini parts" and on the diagram there is vermouth and VODKA. I mean has it gotten to this point, where it is just assumed you're going to make a martini with vodka? The way you turn on a TV and you automatically know it's going to be shit? I hope not, because that's not a world I can live in. Maybe it's just an unfortunate trend and will go away. But for now, I guess if there is anyone at all paying attention, PLEASE, if you are going to call your drink a MARTINI, it must be made with dry vermouth and GIN, okay? GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN! Am I getting my point across? GIN GIN GIN GIN! Do I feel strongly about this? YES! GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN GIN!

Dating Again

I've recently started dating a Carthusian monk, so that I can get the recipe for Chartreuse from him. So far I've got about 20 herbs nailed down, but the proportions are going to be hard to figure out. This monk is hard to figure out, actually. He loves TV, but can't have sex, swears like a sailor, but otherwise if pretty quiet. It's a real challenge, but I'm making progress.

Tripple Unanswered Question on the rocks

I was a little drunk and kind of out of it when I wrote that last entry, and I'm not much better today. It's really hot, and even though I'm in the AC, I can feel the strange fatigue behind my eyeballs that feels like being half drunk already, so why not cool off with something extra stong?

Anyway, I was going to go back and delete that last thing I wrote, but then when I logged into this piece of crap otherworld it wasn't even there, so I guess it saved me the trouble of getting rid of it. But it's kind of disturbing, becasue I really thought that I DID write it, and post it, and publish it, as it were, in this here realm. There are a lot of unanswered questions that just flew into my mind, but later, for all that.

I'm looking for a new bar

If anyone can point me to a decent bar in the Milwaukee area I would forever be in your debt.
I may not stay in this shithole long, but for now I'd like to get out occasionally and have one or two cocktails, maybe seven. I've been frequenting this place that I won't mention, because even bad advertising is more than they deserve. Someone has got to tell them that a mojito is not made with mold that floats from the bottom of the glass once it is revived by the cheap ass rum they tried to ignite. Why not make a flaming version, if it's already going to be toxic? This is the same place where the asshole lit my rayon shirt on fire trying to light my cigarette. Drink just a little bit less guys if you're contemplating those smooth moves. In the meantime, I'm experimenting at home with that Midleton Irish Whiskey some guy left here when he was too embarrassed to come back for it after he puked on the foyer.

never trust bartenders on sunday

The next time someone serves me a martini made with vodka they're going to get it right back in the face.