Sublime, Unending Hobo Knife Fights

So my friend and I are debating the possibilities of going hitchhiking this summer. I have always been interested in the idea and have wanted to have some sort of adventure while the days of my youth remain halcyon. Hell, I have one more semester left in school: Soon I will need a job. Like, an actual real style job where there are no bagels or irate customers. Something related to what I've been wasting my time on these past four years. Yikes. The prospect alone is pretty unnerving, and I want to have some sort of youth-defining experience before I turn 25 and am hence old, withered and useless. Hitchhiking seems like a pretty classic way of having some good old-fashioned American youth-driven adventurism. Lots of the older set that I know have hitchhiked at some point and got some interesting stories out of it. The moral of all these stories, however, always seems to be: "NEVER HITCHHIKE." They'll go on an on about how fun a trip they had and all their interesting experiences, but the main thing they want to stress is to NEVER EVER DO IT. It's apparently way too dangerous to even fathom doing, and that to stick one's thumb out near a road is liable to attract hordes of murderous psychos and bears with swords. There's this impression now that if you hitchhike, the only people who will be willing to pick you up are those who intend to chop you up into little pieces and keep you in the glove compartment. At the same time though, people who see a hitchhiker on the road will refuse to pick them up because the hitchhiker might also intend to do his share of disemboweling and the like. To me, this implies that there is a quantifiable section of the general population who are axe murderers, whose sole purpose in life is to kill random people for the joy and satisfaction it must bring. I don't really buy this claim that there are so many axe murderers just roaming around the roads waiting for their next victim. How can there possibly be so many of them out there? I feel like we would have seen some shifts in the policies of this country as axe murderers come out to vote if there were really so many of them. If they were to band together and organize, all the axe murderers that must be out there could really get some change done, such as making murder with an axe a misdemeanor or making it legal to conceal and carry axes into department stores and hair salons. I highly doubt there are that many people out there with such insatiable and random bloodlust, and I feel like the depiction of hitchhikers in movies and other media has really soured their image. Every hitchhiker in a movie is a bad dude. Its such a movie standard to have a sick psychopath want to get picked up to lop of some noggins in a rest area somewhere. But what about those of us who are actually trying to go someplace? And on the other end, people are so scared off by picking up hitchhikers that the only people who would be willing must also be axe murderers. This whole axe murder thing seems a bit ridiculous, and believe it or not I have a little better faith in humanity than that.

Regardless of whether the world is truly flooded with sadistic sickos, hitchhiking is still a dead art. No one does it because, well, no one does it. It seems that no one really can hitchhike anymore due to the lack of people willing to pick people up. Less people are willing to pick up hitchhikers because it has become less of a thing, ie there are less hitchhikers around to make it seem like a legitimate form of transportation. Chicken eats the egg or whatever: There's nobody to pick them up because there's nobody to pick up because there's nobody to pick them up. It seems like a difficult prospect even without the whole "mercilessly flung in a Hefty bag" thing. Without people to pick you up, the whole prospect is futile. You'd just be a dude with a sign, and dudes with signs get little to no respect in society. Plus, I don't know how long such a thing would take. I've heard different stories where someone was able to get halfway across the country in a short period of time, but with so few potential rides out there it seems like it might take upwards of a month to get anywhere. In order to do this I'd have to take time off from work, and since I don't know how much time I'd need this could be a clincher.

It seems like my friend is set to do it with or without me. I would like to go at some point in my life, but I don't know if this summer is the right time. But then again, if not now, when? Has anybody done this that can weigh in on the subject? I'd like to hear some perspectives on whether this is something I should do, if its worthwhile, or if its even possible anymore.

Jack's Professional Web-Blog of Proficient Professionalism

So I haven't really written anything in a long time, as those of you who may be still out there may have realized. Given that my last post was about how much snow was on the ground, it may have seemed downright abandoned. But that's not something I want to do. I enjoy writing here, but I haven't had a chance or really taken the time to do it. I had a busy schedule and I was basically tired of writing after taking two writing-intensive classes which expected a couple of pages of writing every couple of days. My typical moments of boredom were often filled with homework or simply falling asleep. But I'm going to try to keep it up, as I'm about to start working as a blogger for the school paper and I want to be in the habit again. This summer I'm going to be doing an Arts and Entertainment type blog for The Wake magazine concerning the local scene in the Twin Cities. I'm going to try to keep this one up more consistently alongside the new one.

I am living with my girlfriend in a one bedroom apartment in Minneapolis. She is moving back to Rhode Island in the fall. I have one semester left of college and then I will go live with her in January. I am currently unemployed and have resorted to my old throwback ways to get paid: Working at the gas station and opening my veins for scary laboratory experiments. Tomorrow, once again, I will wake up very early and spill my precious life-fluids into giant vats for money. The next day I work at a gas station over in St. Paul. I am poor.

I have released three CDs recently; you can listen to songs here. One is a full-length electronic and hip-hop instrumental album, one that will be out soon is all rap beats I've been working on lately, and one is a 5 song EP of me rapping (under the H.A.R.V. moniker, for lack of a better MC name) with my partner in rhyme Kid Step. Harv and Kid Step rocked a basement show one time. Expect me to skyrocket to international fame very shortly.

I went abroad to Mexico over winter break. I had a great host family and I had a wonderful time down there. I did not get Montezuma's Revenge like I did last time I was there, but my stools were certainly not smooth going at all times. My roommate got it while there and had similar awful experiences. He returned with the same big-eyed expression of shame and disbelief I retained after witnessing the bowl covered in what looked like a crime scene where the weapon was Arby's chili. He was in bed much of the time, getting up every five minutes with disturbing regularity to go take a shit that must've felt like the devil punching his way out of hell. I pitied him not, for such is the nature of Montezuma the Mighty's terrible vengeance: There are no winners. The custom in Mexico was to wipe your ass and throw the toilet paper into the trash rather than flush it as it is not good for the plumbing. This often leads to piles of shit accumulating next to the toilet. I am glad this is not the custom in the United States as I rarely take out the garbage and I'm afraid some of my assorted dump leftovers will begin to feed on themselves and come to life. Don't ask me why the first things I think about coming home from a foreign country are both so shit-centric, I suppose I should be talking about mountains or something. Anyhow. Mexico. That is where I was for a little bit.

Uh, I don't know, I guess I worked at a bagel place. When you cut a bagel in half, stuff can go in it like cream cheese or eggs. Many people thought I should cut their bagels in half and apply cream cheese to both sides. That is often what I did, though other demands were not without their place. I also cashiered in the same cafeteria. It was so exciting I think I'm done writing about it.

It's summer now and I've done some fun things. I went rollerskating and also I think at some point I drank alcohol with people who thought it was a good idea if a bunch of people congregate and drink alcohol. Noise came out of a guitar I own. I saw some movies. I applied for jobs I didn't get. Oh! I cleaned the fucking house. I wrote lengthy papers about rap music. I made a little computer animation thing which I suppose could be put on that whole YouTube thing. Hmm. Yep. That sounds like a collection of things I did.

I don't know of what to write, as is often the case. I'll try to be better about writing in this thing and will come up with something to say eventually.