Back on the Beat

(posted by josh golden)

36 Mafia was right: It’s hard out here for a pimp. It may be time for a career change. Something a little more stable, a little less spontaneous…

Oh shit, what is this? I just got a message on my face book.

“Join the LAPD, START TRAINING NOW!!”

The LAPD has a questionable past of making poor decisions, but they just broke their losing streak by coming to me. I am going to become a cop, it’s a perfect fit.

But Josh, you don’t have a degree in criminal justice.  Being a police officer is not easy; it’s tireless work that requires an iron will and a passion for the community. Nuh-uh. The pictures from the add assure me that the days of bureaucratic red tape, standards of procedure, and strong judgment skills are dead and gone. This is not your grandfathers LAPD. This is fucking extreme!

Look, you get a Lamborghini and a license to kill; you even get a uniform straight from the set of the Fifth Element. I frequently get these damn ads for elite fighting groups and I am just waiting for Backwater to give me a call thanks to my listed interests in Nerf guns and Halo.

If you go around advertising the police force as hella-hardcore and balls-to-the-wall to men whose only real experience with justice is The Punisher, don’t be surprised when this happens.

My name is Josh and this uniform makes my ass look awesome.

The Ghost Riders of Silverlake

(posted by josh golden)

I kept hearing noises when I lay in bed at night. Every five minutes I sprung awake like that damn Don’t Wake Daddy board game. What was waking daddy, you ask? I have a theory. You see, just a two weeks ago I relocated from my well-hidden studio in a quiet neighborhood tucked in the Silverlake hills, down to a city street bungalow, and I have noticed a certain difference. I think I have finally been exposed to ghosts.

It makes perfect sense. The sounds of things falling in the night, the figures peering in my window. My apartment is obviously haunted; my entire neighborhood even! These ghosts only come out at night, though, because during the day the only signs of the haunting are found in pairs of tennis shoes tied to power lines. Only a ghost could float up there and play such a devious trick.

One night I was sure I heard the sound of a car possessed by the spirit of a driver who must’ve enjoyed Reggaeton during his living life. I threw open the blinds, my curiousity getting the best of me. I had to see one of these spirits. There they were! Three of them huddled under the yellow glow of a street lamp. Each shrouded in a black hood, like the reaper. Their spirit energy was escaping from their mouths in clouds. I had to make contact!

I stumbled out the door in my pajamas holding an old oil lantern and slowly approach. “Wut up, Ol’ Bitch?!” a ghost booms out, nodding to me. Quickly I pretend that I’m going to  my car to get something, keeping my head down and my mouth shut.

Since then I have made peace with the spirits doomed to wander my neighborhood for all existence, tormented by spells and invisible boundaries.  They’re actually really wonderful. So you see, there really never was a reason to hide under my bed sheets in the first place. From the ghosts. Not minorities.

. . .

Someone should probably tell the South about this. Y’know, because of their racism towards ghosts.

My name is Josh and I’ve got the spirit.

Move It AND Lose It

(posted by josh golden)

Moving into a new apartment is just like being sent to space prison. It’s cold, there’s no power, no Internet, and that new neighbor, the 80 year-old Korean woman, turns out she is your warden and is dead serious with those crazy spells she is casting.

I am beginning the unenviable quest to procure utilities when the warden calls lights out, so I reach for my space age iPhone that I snuck in and over the next hour I sit answering robotic voices with simple “yes” or “no” answers. I try to spice things up with the really professional-sounding ballbuster prompt I have code-named Linda.

Linda: You have said that you want to start your service. Is this correct?

Josh: Yeah, that’s right!

Linda: Please respond with a less emphatic yes or no.

Josh: Yeah.

Linda: I am sorry, I can’t understand you. Goodbye.

Why so distant Linda? I go through this dance with every major service provider of any type of service, sitting on my cell floor craving human interaction. Then, when the light at the end of my tunnel seems too dim to see, a voice cuts through the darkness.

I pick up the sound of heavy breathing, the occasional chewing of food. Her voice is sloppy, irritable, nasally. It’s someone alive, like me. I name her Carol; she sounds just like a Carol.

Josh: Oh thank god! I am just trying to set up my gas connection-

Carol: If you are calling to start or stop service (throat clear) please press one (chewing, followed by light breathing).

They are becoming…

My name is Josh, please shout obscenities if you would like to be connected to an operator.

I Give Up!

(posted by josh golden)

It’s been a week and I am starting to feel left out. All my friends are busy missing cupcakes or scratching a tally into their arm of how many days they have till their girlfriend will sleep with them again, and I don’t get to miss anything. I want to give something up for Lent!

Drugs? Candy? Women? I really only have one of those things in my life. Then it came to me like a flash from another faith’s God: For Lent I am going to give up Judaism!

It’s going to be tough but I think I can make it. I already called in to the diamond mine I own in Perth (conflict free since 2003).

Sure, I’ll definitely miss my hair falling out and my mother guilting me about things I literally have no control over. But I will not miss diamonds or neurosis nearly as much as I will young whippersnappers fresh out of their first Liberal Arts school Humanities class blaming me for the entire Israeli/Palestinian conflict, even though in two years when they officially switch from a dependent they will be funding the thing directly. Probably both sides, by paying taxes and buying their first hookah.

My name is Josh, and my Lent starts now… Shabbat Shalom… FUCK!

VIDEO MAO!!!

(posted by josh golden)

The game of Russian Roulette is a pretty well-known standard in extreme party games. You put one bullet in a revolver, spin the chamber, hold the gun to your head, and pull the trigger while praying that a metal slug doesn’t come sailing out.

This game, thankfully, has been adapted into an interactive online experience. Just replace the gun with a web cam and keep pulling the trigger until you get a face full of stranger and you have chatroulette.com, a site that asks you to ignore the one thing you were told over and over as a child: “Never talk to strangers.”

I tried to abstain. I tried to stay strong. But yesterday the white panel van of Chatroulette came rolling down my street with a grocery bag full of candy tied to the mirror and I, like an unaccompanied child, ran up to say hi.

I only had to try my hand once at this social game and I struck gold. The first person to come up on my screen was a beautiful twenty something girl who must have had some Persian in her. Stunning is the only word I could use to describe her.

She waved at me. I sheepishly waved back. She giggled. I chuckled. Three hours later she was still laying on her stomach on a purple satin bed hanging off my every word, and I hers. She only lives thirty minutes away and is coming over tomorrow for dinner.

I really think she may be the one. Who would think that in a game of chance like Chatroulette I would find such a wonderful woman. Of all the people in the world. What a crazy thing the internet can be.

Don’t believe me?!

That’s because it is an entirely false and preposterous story. If you want the truth all you have to do is replace the hot Persian girl with a deranged pervert’s genitals and you are pretty much back on track.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And there is no better example of this then chatroulette.com; a site that was meant to bring everyone across the world together through random video chatting but is no more than another alley in the seedy underbelly of the Internet. It is a place for three types of people:

• Single dudes staring blankly at their screens repeatedly hitting skip when they see another man, while praying for that Persian girl.

• Creepy single dudes pleasuring themselves in front of single dudes repeatedly hitting skip.

• Pockets of underage girls who are interested in neither.

My advice is simple: Get comfy with grotesque male forms. If you can, Chatroulette in a group. And if you have any history of addiction, stay far away from this site.

My name is Josh. SKIP F9.