is redundancy a word?

this is my rambly "i haven't been posting" post. so, i haven't been posting. my legion of fans must be exhausted with the hours spent awake waiting for me to write, hanging on my every hypothetical word. well here comes the profoundery, brace yourselves....

life is the balls. it's seriously amazing to be alive.

amy: "what's your secret? why are you so happy all the time?"
me: "i just love being alive, it's hella fun. even when it's bad, it's still pretty good."

which is exactly how i feel. the older i get and the more i realize my own powerlessness and the wackiness of the universe the more i am humbled by it, it's beautiful. here is a list of things that are awesome in my life right now:

1) music, the listening to and playing of
2) school, the giving and receiving of massage of
3) music
4) yoga
5) having a job
6) breathing
7) playing sho nuff in a music video
8) writing blogs
9) wait go back one

did you catch that?!?!!?! zach called me the other day to ask me if i was willing to play SHO NUFF IN A MUSIC VIDEO. which finally gives me the incentive to build that costume from scratch, which i've been meaning to do for the past 12 halloweens anyway. michelle's gonna help me with sewing and she directed me to a place called mister s leather (parental advisory: imminent leather-clad mancock if you dare click) in the city for my leathering needs, which means i get to go on a field trip to a gay leather clothier warehouse in the city. awesome!

so anyhow, if you're out there and you're reading this, try to think about the things that you have that you're grateful for. chances are there's more than you give life credit for. personally i'm grateful for all of you to be here sharing this time on the planet with me. that's pretty cool of you guys.

love,
petur

in passing....

"hey did you know more people die from slipping in the tub than from lightning?"

"that....makes perfect sense."

"i know, but isn't that embarrassing?"

deep thoughts....

i love my school.

"Ever get in one of those moods where you're hyper-aware of the fleeting nature of everything and you find it impossible to care about any of it?"

"That was my 20's."

intimacy...

i've touched more man-ass in the last week than i have in my entire life up to this point.

when i was a teenager i really liked giving massages. mostly because it was a great excuse to touch girls, which was something i liked even more than giving massages. as i grew older i learned to appreciate the ability to relax and ease tension with touch, and altho i stopped massaging for the most part i always had it in the back of my mind that i'd love to go to NHI and learn to do it for real.

cut to two weeks ago: my mom was turning 60 the following week (happy birthday momma!), and i realized that if there was one thing i could do to help my parents feel better as they age, it HAD to be massage therapy.

so two days later i was approved for my student loans and enrolled at the school. i LOVE it. it's freakin' awesome. the material is fascinating and every school day ends with giving/receiving massage. seriously, i never though school could actually be fun.

anyway, i've historically had problems running my thoughts through an appropriateness filter before allowing them out of my mouth, so here are my greatest hits so far upon massaging my fellow male classmates (i know better than to make jokes to the girls):

{while massaging man-ass} "this is the most intimate i've ever been with another man"

{whispering quietly} "sleeeep....sleeeeeeeep"

and my personal favorite: "im getting in the trust tree....are you coming with me?"

me being me, i'm just gonna have to ride out this buffoonery wave until we get to the "professionalism" part of the curriculum. jokes comfort me.

oh crap

i forgot this is a "comedy" blog, not a "please listen to my existensialist whininess" blog. you know what's funny? my homie brent rose. god that fucker is funny. just in case you haven't seen the massive d-bag that inspired brent this week, here he is, please to enjoy!

self inquiry. or not.

somehow i've gone from having an insatiable lust for life to having an insatiable lust for absolutely nothing. there was a time when i would spring up out of bed and gaily prance about even the most mundane of activities. nowadays i have major difficulties peeling my face off the pillow in the morning, and PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING has futility attached as a giant mental disclaimer. here's what my internal monologue sounds like these days:

"god i love being alive. mmmm i love the smell of fresh air. i'm gonna close my eyes and listen to the sounds of life around me. i hear the cars. i hear the wind. i hear people walking on the street. i can feel the sun on my face, it's giving me warmth and life. thank you, the sun. wow, it is beautiful to be here existing right at this moment. i wonder what it's like to be dead oh shit we're all gonna die."

"hey lady. yeah you. you are fine. as hell. like, i wanna hold your hand and eat ice cream with you fine. no don't keep walking, i'm gonna think of something to say to you in juuuuust alright no i'm not. fuck i hope smiling at you didn't creep you out, i have all these tattoos and a mohawk. well i hope you know that you're fine. and i hope you know how to enjoy your life cuz we're all gonna die oh shit we're all gonna die."

hahahaha that shit is kinda funny. hey existence! you're fuckin hilarious!! seriously tho, where do you get zoloft?

conversations with gawd

(upon seeing the public enemies trailer for the 486th time)

me: I'm not gay or anything, but I would have sex with johnny depp

kenny: would u bottom for him?

me: no

kenny: so, you'd just go down on him?

me: ......uuhhhh

kenny: you have to think about these things before u talk

me: I'm texting this conversation to myself, so i can post it on the innernets. On my blog.

sloth...

....love chunk. i am a lazy, lazy blogger. i know there's an entire nation of my fans out there that's disappointed in me, and while i would like to promise to do better, i'd more than likely be lying to the thousands upon thousands of my faithful followers as well as myself if i said i was gonna blog more often. but i can promise you this: i will finish this here blog post right now.

yesterday was a really weird day. here's a quick recap:

1) dreamed about winning a pokemon battle with bay
2) woke up and found out Farrah Fawcett passed away
3) contemplated the mortality and inevitable demise of pop icons from my youth
4) watched my sister on the tom green innernet show
5) found out michael jackson passed away
7) said "yeah right" a lot
6) got hella depressed when i found out it was true
7) picked up zach (the biggest michael jackson fan i know) and drove around like sad bastards listening to mj tunes
8) watched raiders of the lost ark on the big screen
9) had 1.5 pomegranate ciders (crazy delicious) and two vegan slices from lanesplitter
10) played Kingdom Of Loathing. i...can't stop.

so, i had almost forgotten, and while i'm not totally 100% certain, harrison ford might....be the coolest (white) motherfucker in the history of ever. i mean, fuckin come on, he was han solo and indiana jones. INDIANA JONES. the guy was like a uber-nerdie scoundrellie underdog adventurer guy who made a career out of pwning the ss. i don't really care what happened after the glory years, i'm just gonna go ahead and go on pretending that Indy 4 never happened.

anyway, my new goal is to be the indiana jones of playing the drums. i don't know how that's gonna work semantically, but i figure i'll start by getting a whip and a fedora. the only song i can think of that has a whip in it is the theme from raw hide, but shit, the blues brothers killed it on that one, so why the hell not.

the beauty of human existence

so, earlier today i was at work in the box office, and i see a dude wearing the MOST AWESOME FUCKING SHIRT I'VE EVER SEEN. it was a disembodied cat head floating in space shooting lasers out of its eyes. yeah. so i had to take a picture:



clearly this is a man who can hardly contain the insane mixture of emotions that wells up whilst wearing such a badical shirt. i kept showing the picture around to my friends at work, and to my surprise nobody crapped their pants like i did. oh wait except #3. i got the entire spectrum of possible responses:

"oh, neat"

"that's awesome, is that a severed head or a disembodied head?"
"disembodied head."
"sweet."

"OH MY SHIT!!!"

that last one was right into the microphone in the lobby, which caused some commotion. anyhow, when i got home i went straight to the googles and entered "t-shirt cat laser space" in the search bar on my computer box machine, and what did i find?!??!! what did i find, you ask?!!!?!?!! do you ask what i found?!?!?!?!!!/ i found out that everybody already knows about laser-eyes cat t-shirts. motherfucker. my excitement-o-meter busted right there, my shoulders went up and my head turned slowly down and away from my machine screen.

but wait....i can't not like something ridiculously awesome just because everybody else knows about it. that's just 100% grade A haterism on my part. and if there's one thing i can't stand it's 100% grade A haterism. plus did you see that fucking shirt? it's VAINGLORIOUS!!!

also andy samberg + bill hader + laser cats = awesome.

oh and here's the shirts.

holy shitballs

there's not much better way to start your day than with extreme awesomeness, and as such i just have to thank lisa for forwarding me this EXTREME AWESOMENESS:

http://thru-you.com/

okay, so this guy kutiman took a buttload of youtube clips of people singing and playing instruments and things of that nature, and edited them together to make SUPERSONGS. it's seriously badass, funky & beautiful.

i don't know who the hell kutiman is, but he's basically my new idol, that's my favorite site on all the innernets right now.

priorities

as most of you know, i've only ever been arrested once. yep, i got the ole dui. i'm not ashamed of it, that was a lifetime ago, i was basically a young dumb asshole. not like the refined adult gentleman i am today, oh no. the way i got arrested was actually kinda funny, i accidentally peeled out at an intersection cuz i wasn't used to the clutch on the brand new used '91 hyundai excel i had just gotten with the money i saved up all summer working at the movie theater. and there was a cop across the street. ah, foolish youth.

i vaguely remember that the cops were not amused by my relaxed demeanor and apparent lack of remorse. but hey, i was drunk. i was also a young dumb asshole. at any rate, as per standard procedure, my belongings were confiscated upon checking into the drunk tank. now, a couple days ago i was going through old postcards from iceland, letters from ex-girlfriends, ticket stubs from concerts and monster truck rallies, and various things of that nature, and whaddaya know, i stumbled upon my "property/clothing receipt" from that fateful evening of yore.

*drum roll, please, cue the spotlight*

and now, presented for you, my faithful reading audience, is my personal inventory on the morning of 9/20/98, IN ITS ENTIRETYYYYYYYY!!!

CASH: $ 0
JEWELRY: 2 EARRINGS
OTHER: CONDOM

L, O, L. holy sheeit, past me sure did have his priorities in order.

letter to my drum teacher

27.12.2008

dear max-
i had a dearly needed breakthru today. dearly needed cuz i've hit another plateau, & my breakthru might help me get over it. so, i was sitting at the busstop after leaving the downlow where platurn was djing, fresh off a bout of moderate social anxiety, and i heard some dude funkin his ass off with a band playing steve miller band's fly like an eagle (awesome, btw). i've been peeking in there regularly cuz they often have live music, and the drummer sits right next to the front door, so i can look in for a few seconds while i wait for my bus. so tonite i was standing out front when somebody opened the door to walk in, and i caught a whole fill. then i recorded it in my head and wrote it out in only-i-get-it notation, it looked like this:

K S K K S K K (s)S S, S, S S

K S S K S alternatively

firstly i realized that i need to start writing down fills i like, cuz i'm always hearing or accidentally playing ones that are fresh and then i just lose 'em. secondly, while i was on the bus going home i totally realized i was fuckin READING THAT DUDE'S DRUMS WITH MY EARS. this was a mind bottling epiphany. when did i start understanding drums like that? it's like, the drums were talking, and i was listening. and they were saying some funky shit to me.

on a side note, i've been giving it a lot of thought, and i've decided the reason i get so frustrated with myself not practicing enough is that i have an obligation to get freakin awesome at the drums. i mean, i found my one true love, it's never forgive action if i'm not gonna give that love my utmost effort and attention. right?

i hope your holidays are kickin ass. i wrote you this haiku for christmas:

when is the best time
to funk out with your junk out?
today dude, today

you're my hero.

love,
pete

there is no charge for awesomeness....

...but there should be. my best friend found this guy on youtube who is an awesome musician and does an incredible job of summing up the reason why i started playing drums in the first place: music is fun.

my new hero's name is ronald jenkees, and the message i've gathered from his various videos and interviews is one stressing the universal accessibility of music. i think that shit is rad. before i started playing drums i thought music was something too difficult, abstract, and ethereal for me to ever be able to join in. i studied piano as a youngster and always felt defeated by it, convinced that i would never be able to enjoy playing music in any fashion. and then, just over a year ago, i started playing drums on a whim, and i realized that it's something i wanna do for the rest of my life.

so back to ronald jenkees, the guy obviously enjoys what he does, he's obviously hella talented, and i'm obviously a fan. hats off to him, check out his shit if you get a chance.

"any day you're having fun with music is a good day." i heard that, dude.

deep profundity

i really freaking love Bill Watterson. when i was a kid calvin & hobbes was the greatest thing i had ever read, and only as a grown-up can i fully appreciate just how much of my perspective and philosophy is reflected in those strips. here's an awesome quote i found:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

* Kenyon College Commencement Address (May 20, 1990)

thank you Bill Watterson, for being so rad.

culture schmulture

today my hangover has ended, and as such i am now able to blog about one of iceland's greatest parties...menningarnótt ooowwww!! (culture night whooo)(!!!)

yes, last weekend was culture weekend, and as i found out, to celebrate icelandic culture we icelanders have a long-standing tradition called "getting hammered and barfing on each other". following is my best recollection of what happened from august 23rd to august 24th, 2008.

9:30pm
arrive at svenndawg and stella(r)'s house, ready for culture. stella(r)'s already out partying, we plan to meet her later. svenndawg offers me a drink, but i decide it would be a good idea to hold off on drinking until after dinner.

9:37pm
start drinking bacardi and pineapple with flat soda water. quite possibly the worst cocktail i've ever made. waaaaay too strong.

10:00pm
dinner. lovely. svenndawg has prepared a delightful chicken over sweet potatoes. we joke about our gay man-date.

10:20pm
svenndawg offers me a beer. i ask for a cocktail. svenndawg wants to burn through the last third of his fifth of bombay sapphire. i do not argue. bombay sapphire makes me feel cultured.

10:25pm - 12:00am
me and svenndawg talk about music and watch youtube videos while drinking gin, tonic, and beer on the side. naturally conversation leads to the insane internet popularity of my latest, which in turn leads me to have to clarify that the music was by jermaine stewart, not five star. which finally leads me to clarify that america has never heard of england, and as such i'd never heard of five star.

12:00am - 12:30am
FIREWORKS! FUCK YEAH!!! svenndawg and i stand on the roof with cocktails and a handycam as i talk about my heart-boner and various other awkward analogies for the way i feel about fireworks.

**here's an interesting thing about icelandic culture: fireworks are 100% legal here!! and our fireworks displays tend to uberpoon**

11:59pm
footnote to previous entry: up on the roof i realize that my glasses are downstairs. i climb downstairs and when i run in the front door i hear the beginning of footloose blasting on the stereo; i'm momentarily forced to make an extremely difficult choice between fireworks and footloose. i close my eyes, take a deep breath, restart/pause the song and run back upstairs for

12:00am - 12:30am
FIREWORKS!!!

12:31am
FOOTLOOSE!! i give myself whiplash trying to recreate dance moves from the end of footloose. i will however not realize this until the day after, when i am unable to turn my head in either direction.

12:35am
FOOTLOOSE!!! AGAIN!!

12:39am - 2:15am
drinking. svenndawg and i continue to drunkenly force each other to listen to music from our respective childhoods. we compare notes about icelandic and american culture.

2:15am
leave the house and head downtown. luckily svenndawg and stella(r) live downtown, so we're already downtown. i realize that i am very drunk, and proclaim this loudly. for the rest of the night, i will remind svenndawg of this fact every five minutes.

2:20am
arrive at hressó. svenndawg tells me that i am a reporter from america, so i start speaking english. this method actually gets us past the line. i am stunned.

2:24am
time to slow down on the alcohol and start drinking beer. svenndawg and i talk about fighting, a staple of drunken mantalk. i explain that while i do not know how to fight, i enjoy it and am not afraid to take a punch, therefore giving me the power to almost never have to fight because i'm not scared. while this is true, it's also totally irrelevant and a sad attempt at making sure that svenndawg doesn't think i'm a pussy. i've rehearsed this conversation many times with my best guy friends.

2:45am
svenndawg says the word pizza and i say the word tummyboner and our mission becomes clear as crystal. not meth, just regular crystal. the drunken desire for pizza transcends all cultural boundaries.

2:55am
pizza at (memory fails here). oh sweet delicious pizza. i know i shouldn't be eating you, but my drunken rationale is that dangerous amounts of alcohol and toxic poisoning will counteract the inevitable constipation that follows pizza consumption by forcing my system into a state of emergency detox, aka "diarrhea". this will only sort of work, as i'll find out the next morning when i'm sitting on the toilet, unable to turn my head to search for a roll of toilet paper.

3:15am
we arrive at kaffibarinn to meet stella(r) and company. the american reporter routine does not work here. i actually had to wrestle my way into a club for the first time ever. as in, the "line" out front was more like a "moshpit" or "cagematch", or "drunken system of natural party selection" if you will. all i know is that the security guard who had been pushing me out off the steps for ten minutes somehow ended up getting behind me and pushing me in the front door. score!

3:25am
we find stella(r). drunken revelry ensues. icelandic culture at its best and worst simultaneously.

here's an important thing to remember when partying in iceland: icelanders on the "djamm" or "party scene" have no respect whatsoever for personal space. DO NOT BE OFFENDED when people aggressively bump into you or grab you. 99% of the time it's not a personal attack, they just don't know better. push them back! nobody will fuck with you, it's really weird. if you want to dance at a club use the surrounding crowd as a sort of human moon-room, just manically gyrate and bump into everyone, it's pretty much the norm, and it's wicked fun "accidentally" falling all over people that are totally okay with it.

4:00am
i feel sick. i ask svenndawg to get me out of there. we head to another bar.

4:07am
somebody bumps into me on the street very hard. i forget my rule about personal space. i immediately turn around and swing, only to realize that "immediately" after 6 hours of drinking is more like 3 or 4 seconds, and the guy is nowhere near me. he turns around and apologizes. i explain that i thought he wanted to fight me, hug him, and we part ways amicably. no harm, no foul.

4:15am
vegamót. a lot of the bars and clubs in iceland are restaurants and coffee houses in the daytime. it's very slow there, thank god. svenndawg orders me a beer (did i mention he'd been buying all night? what a effin höfðingji that guy is, i don't deserve him). svenndawg goes to the bathroom, as i sway back and forth by the stairs, trying not to throw up. svenndawg comes out and i explain to him that i'm going to barf if i drink any more beer. he says "bwaaaaaah??!?!! no problem" and agrees to take me home. the man is a saint i tell you. he offers our beers to the two african dudes that are standing next to me. i notice that one of them looks just like my high school friend eric wanene. i tell him this. i ask where he's from. he says ghana. i say "no way, so'smyfriend eric wanene!" (not true, he's kenyan). hugs all around, time to go.

4:35am
arrive at svenndawg's house. get in my pj's. svenndawg wants chocolate and licorice. i tell him that if he makes me go to the store i'm wearing my long johns to punish him. he wonders how this is a punishment. i wonder about the cultural ramifications of me puking on the street.

4:47am
arrive at 10-11. yep, the store's called 10-11. THREE TIMES better than 7-11. we buy chocolate, licorice, and pringles. i rationalize that the salt content of the pringles will help offset my hangover tomorrow because (file footage missing). i will question the validity of this mysterious rationale the next morning when i'm holding back barf on the toilet, where i sit half-constipated and trying to turn my head to find toilet paper.

4:54am
as we leave the store, i pull my pants down. i tell svenndawg this is his punishment for making me go out after i was already ready for bed. for some reason i think this is hilarious. naturally he doesn't get it. i tell him it's culturally relevant in america.

5:??
fall "asleep" with chocolate and pringles in my mouth. spend the next few hours in a toxic coma, subconsciously praying that i won't wake up until monday. i wake up to the 8:00am handball game, svenndawg and stella(r) are watching iceland play france in the final at the olympics. as if the anxiety in my chest isn't enough, we lose the game. but who cares, we took silver at the freakin' olympics!! amazing for a culture of circa 300,000 to be able to produce world class athletes.

9:?? - 12:'(
toxic coma continues. when i wake up i hurt so bad that i want to cry like a little girl. i don't even bother to swear that i'll never drink again. go to the toilet and recount the previous night's dietary decisions while the strain of going poo makes me wanna throw up. unfortunately i can't turn my head to find toilet paper, so i end up leaving with a dirty butt.

sunday pm
try not to die.

yay icelandic culture!! apparently there's more to menningarnótt than just me being drunk. if you're interested in it, lookie here, unless you don't speak icelandic, in which case that sucks for you.

acknowledgments: svenndawg and stella(r), i freakin love you guys. icelandic population, your excessive drunken depravity is an inspiration to us all. try not to get pregnant while drinking. and finally, props to tucker max for pioneering drunken truthiness on the innernets.

i am famous

i'm trying to keep innernet celebrity from going to my head. i mean, it's become hard for me to go out in public with all the attention i get from my massively popular youtube videos, but i like to think that i've been able to stay humble. it's hard when you date so many cybermodels and do as much e-blow as i have since this video came out:



to all my friends, i'm sorry i haven't called you back, i promise i will as soon as famous people stop calling my phone all the damn time.

R.I.P. Julius Carry

i'm actually depressed. bernie mac, isaac hayes, and julius carry all in one month. if something happens to morris day or keith david before august ends i'm going on sabbatical, this shit is fucked up.

Julius Carry Dies
20-Aug-2008
Written by: Angela P. Cobb

Industry loses versatile character actor.

Actor Julius Carry – notable for the 1985 film, The Last Dragon, has died, WENN reports.

A Chicago native, Carry enjoyed an extremely versatile career as a character actor in TV and film. His portrayal of Sho Nuff in martial arts cult movie The Last Dragon has gone down as one of the most revered villainous turns of all time. His television work was extremely varied – with appearances on Spin City, JAG, Diagnosis Murder, and Doctor, Doctor. Carry also frequented the sitcom circuit, appearing on Cosby, Caroline in the City, Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, and as Murphy’s love interest on Murphy Brown.

One of his first television appearances was in 1980, as a basketball player on the show, The White Shadow. Years later, he made several appearances on another hit show of the youth, Boy Meets World, as the father of Shawn Hunter’s love interest, Angela.

Carry passed away on Tuesday at the age of 56.

you'll always be the master to me, Mister Carry.

love,
-pete

harmony

i....i.....huh. um, i uhhh. yeah, just watch this.






this woman lives in iceland. i live in iceland. and the world makes sense once again.

philosophical inquiry

sometimes, after i've spent hours looking at videos of guys playing drums on youtube, i find myself asking, what the fuck did i get myself into? i've been playing drums for almost a year, shouldn't i be a lot better by now? and where did this enormous fascination come from? i mean, suddenly i find myself idolizing a collection of dudes i'd never even heard of last year. i didn't even know who steve gadd was until a couple days ago, and now he's my hero. and my friend on myspace. well, i'm friends with whoever maintains his myspace page, but whatever.

in case it's not apparent already this is the 2am ramble post. i'm tired. i'm tired of thinking. more specifically, i'm tired of thinking about how good at the drums i'm not. grammar schmammar. yes, even career optimists have doubts sometimes, i'm only human. i think it's time to go to bed so i can wake up and hope nobody's home and then unabashedly rock the funk out.

regret's not really my style, but occasionally i kinda wish i started playing drums earlier in life...

iceland rocks

sunset, 00:11 on july 1st, aforementioned corner of reykjavegur & suðurlandsbraut.



early afternoon, circa 13:00 on july 1st, my room.