Greetings from the other side of the mind! That’s right, Rodney and me are finally back from our bi-yearly trip to ExoticaFest. Nothing like 10 days in the Arizona desert to help you lose your ego. I have to tell you, I lost mine at least 7 times in these past 10 days, and only twice to Rodney. The other 5 times were to a nice older couple with teardrop tattoos. They even gave me one, but I rubbed it off after taking the peyote suppository Aston gave me. Yeah, Aston came too. Speaking of Aston, he insisted on wearing that gay sparkly T-shirt thing ALL FRIGGIN WEEK!!! I told him it was gay, but he didn’t seem to mind. He also put more of that glitter cream on his dick. Despite Aston, I did have tons of fun. I saw all my favorite bands and independent performance artists. I saw Puddin’ Stone, Captain Starlight, Rascal Flats, and The Amazing Giant Rainbow Machine. The Amazing Giant Rainbow Machine wasn’t as cool as it sounds. Yes, it was a machine that made a rainbow, but you really couldn’t call it a giant rainbow. It was only about 30 feet tall, which is tall, but most rainbows are tons bigger than that. This one did have a pot ‘o gold at the end, so to speak, but I really don’t see what was so great about it. I didn’t come to freaking ExoticaFest to take a damn shower, even if the water was kind of yellow. Of course, Aston was really excited to get his golden shower. Don’t worry, we all made the obvious jokes and made him feel sufficiently humiliated for wussing out and taking a shower. But he can’t fucking take a joke so he spread shit all over my damn nose while I was passed out from those pills the guy with the sailor’s hat gave me, and, of course, the only damn shower was the one at the damn end of the damn Amazing Giant Rainbow Machine. Believe me, I didn’t want to, but I had to get that asshole’s shit off my nose, so I took a shower. I’d love to say that the water tasted like chocolate and I came out covered in gold, but it tasted kind of like piss. I’m sure it was just the gold coloring they put in the water. Aston told me that it was, in fact, piss they were using and that he had donated his piss but that it was mostly horse piss. I don’t believe that shit, though. Would the lead singer of Rascal Flats take a shower in pee? I don’t think so. He was in there while I was and he totally pointed out what he thought was some shit on my dick, but it was just a mole. He even tried to wipe it off for me. He’s really nice. Anyway, next time he’s in town I’m going to let him chill at my apartment. In return he’s going to take me to this place called The Players Retreat. Have you guys heard of it? It’s his favorite bar when he come to Raleigh. Anyway, I’m still getting over all the fun I’ve had this past week and a half, so I’m going to end this now. I’m going to Sadlacks to get a warm cheese sandwich. I hear they have cheddar now.

The following is a true story.

I recently held a benefit dinner for my favorite benefit event: benefit dinners. The cost of the event was to be 12 mosquitoes and a subway token. Because subway tokens are no longer in use, I assumed that I was safe in assuming that it wouldn't hurt to assume nobody would be able to come and I prepared no food and I made not provisions for the preparation of food. The benefit of this benefit to benefits was, if it's not completely obvious to you now, that I would get people excited about benefit dinners and perhaps encourage the use of the benefit dinner when one wants to benefit something. I could not come up with a better something that I wanted to benefit as I am in a bit of a funk as of late.

To my chagrin and embarrassment, which is only slightly different than chagrin, but significantly different for me to include both here, over 70 people showed up to the benefit dinner. Fortunately only 12 stayed after I informed them that there would be no food. Of those 12, 6 were children and I hit them on the head until they just kind of wandered off. The other 6 were adults and, as I'd hoped from the beginning, we formed an awesome band based around the characters of Jan Karon's Mitford series of books. I got to be Father Tim (yes!), and I play bass guitar. Our band is called Happy Endings, which is the name of the bookstore in Mitford, where the Mitford series is set.

The band got off to a good start, playing shows in both Cary and at the Streets at Southpoint. We didn't just want to copy the books, so all the songs were about characters from the book doing dirty things to each other that you don't read about in the books. The soccer moms still loved us, though I don't think they could hear the lyrics through Chesty's stage attire, which consists of 20 blankets draped over his head. After we played 2 shows, Chesty got a big head and decided to go solo. He now sits out next to the fountain downtown and gives homeless men and women blowjobs. I have to admit, all in all, that his performances is much improved over his Happy Endings days, but I wish he would have taken the rest of the band with him on his artistic journey.

Me? I'm planning my next benefit dinner. This time I think the price of admission will be 200 tiny radios all tuned to Radio Disney and I'll serve old fashioned candies that I'll have to buy at a general store or Costco or something. The results will be sublime. Won't you join me?

In my many conversations with friend and some actual fans of mine in the last few days (they do exist!) I realized that a lot of people have trouble deciding what they want to do. I'm not talking about what they want to do with their lives, but what they want to do on a moment to moment basis. It's easy to get stuck in a rut of surfing the internet, watching Sportscenter, or just plain old sleeping with strangers and not doing anything constructive. If you find yourself in a similar situation right now I want to try to help you. So here's what you do: read my list of suggestions of things to do below and do one of them. I think you'll find it's better than doing drugs or asking your parents for money.

1. Get some cheese (a hard cheese is best) and a decent nonstick frying pan. Put the cheese in the pan and cook it until it burns. Eat the cheese. This is a good replacement for slitting your wrists. Anytime you feel the urge to slit your wrist, eat some burnt cheese...and call your therapist/support group mentor.

2. Wrap your head in bandages and go grocery shopping.

3. Pee in a cup and then pour the cup into the toilet. Discard the cup. Interrupting such an automatic function as urinating with an unnecessary step causes us to stop and think about our waste and what we do with it. This might help you stop drinking, especially if you just peed in your only cup.

4. Go to McDonald.

5. Find a child in a park and give it a stick. Tell the child the stick is magical. Cherish the child's wonder and amazement in the magical stick.

6. Walk up to a stranger on the street and say, "It's a wonderful day to be Jesus!"

7. Kill a spider and then thank God for giving the spider life and for letting you have such an essential roll in controlling the spider population.

8. Resist the urge to have your spider spayed or neutered.

9. Try to hit a squirrel with an acorn. You probably can't do it, but if you do you'll feel guilty and that's probably good for you. You've probably done something far worse that you don't even know about.

10. Pet a kitty cat while whispering scandalous (but not sexy--you don't want to get confused) secrets to it. Who would you like to kill? What albums by Matchbox 20 do you own? What's your middle name? Tell the kitty cat. They'll judge you silently, but still let you pet them.

Well, now that everybody's favorite horse has won the Kentucky Derby, let's take a moment to remember those who didn't win:

Sat on a Cracker- This horse performed well in regional derbies, but couldn't catch a break in the big show. He came in 12th despite the fact that his jockey peed on his back during the race!

My Wife's Lawyer- Named after the owner's wife's lawyer, this horse is actually a crocodile. Needless to say, it wasn't even in the race.

Talk About Gross- Talk about gross indeed! This horse has three gigantic testicles sticking out of its forehead. I guess the extra testosterone counteracts the loss of aerodynamics; Talk About Gross came in second.

Glittery Mustache- This horse is a magnificent mystery.

Deputy Ding-a-ling- I don't remember anything about this feller.

Goodnight.

Wow, you get to listen to another episode of Jonathan's Radio Program. Isn't that wonderfull? Isn't it great. God is on the throne, GWB is the Prez. and REO Speedwagon is getting back together. What's not to be happy about? Download here or stream here. Enjoy everywhere!

This blog entry is going to be a "potpourri" of small things I've been meaning to blog about for a while, but never wanted to devote an entire entry to ;)

1. Why doesn't blogger's spellcheck recognize the word blog? Weird right? And annoying!

2. BK's chicken fries are very different from what you might expect from the pictures. The pictures make them look like they have a light golden crust when it's really more like a mozzarella stick crust. They're not too bad, though, and they seem to have a wide assortment of sauces.

3. The guy that works at the photo center at the local drug store looks and talks an awful lot like Patton Oswalt.

4. Why are people so afraid of other people's opinions? If I think a certain President is a douche, that doesn't mean I'm going to make you eat a shitburger. Now if I MADE you EAT the shitburger, THEN you could get mad.

That's all for now,

Jonathan

It's a wonderful day indeed...for you! Jonathan's Radio Program is now online! In episode one Jonathan sort of interviews Louie Anderson and Diane Warren. He gets discouraged when he finds that he's made a terrible mistake. Stream or download it here!

I usually don't post links to other sites on this blog, but this is just too delicious!