Man, I was so thrilled to spot an oasis of radness in the morass of workaday drones during yesterday's rush hour.

• Derek Erdman
• Nuke 'Em All

If you're unfamiliar, Agent Orange is Sodom's 1989 thrash classic, heavily influenced by band leader Tom Angelripper's fascination with the Vietnam War. Have a listen to the whole thing right here:

• "Jesus told the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves and the fish. They all ate and were satisfied. The number of those who ate was four thousand. After Jesus had sent the crowd away, he got into the boat and went to the vicinity of Magadan."

We were in line so long, a woman gave birth. The child grew before us, suckling. It grew into a fully formed adult named Byron. Byron was extremely pissed that the only life he ever knew was a post office line life. Byron grew elderly and feeble, and sadly began to fade. Meanwhile, Utilikilt Man just kept pulling out packages from his hippie cart. From nowhere. It was like the Miracle of the Seven Loaves and Fishes from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, where Jesus fed five thousand people with just seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. I played “Eye of the Tiger” 112 times. Finally a guy behind me said, “This is ridiculous. Dude, what are you doing? You need your own post office. You can't mail that many packages.” But Utilikilt Man did not respond. He existed only in his communist, molasses, lemur realm of Utililikitia. In that realm, nothing happens, except the protracted mailing of packages. Junk there, begets breezes.

Dear United States Post Office, when it’s the busiest time of day, why do you only staff one person to work the godamn counter? You know when the busy times of the day are. Please plan your staffing better, so that the children birthed in your lines can know a life outside your confines.

This guy blows and blows his leaf blower. He blows places he’s been blowing for forty five minutes, where there is not leaf within a quarter mile radius. He likes revving his leaf blower engine. I understand, I enjoy revving the occasional power tool as well. But this guy egregiously blows. He blows so much that when he stops, I still hear him blowing. If his blowing were a continent, he’d be Pangea. Then all the sudden, he blew himself. I aimed speakers at him, and cranked Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind.” Although, his fucking leaf blower was going, so he couldn't hear. I’ve been into the Christopher Cross lately.

• T. Moorman
• "I'm on the run, no time for sleep, I've got to ride, ride like the wind, to be free again."

• T. Moorman
• "And I've got, such a long way to go, to make it to the border of Mexico."

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• T. Moorman

A man got out of his truck, walked off, didn’t pay for parking, and was ticketed within three minutes. The parking cop pounced on the illegally parked vehicle like a starving nymphomaniac pouncing on a ham-penis. I’ve been watching this parking cop speed-ticket people for a while. I call him The Butcher, and I had the Darth Vader Theme cued up to play. This guy enjoys ticketing people, seriously. There’s a gleam in his eye. I aimed the speakers at him, stepped on the porch, and read from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII as loudly and gravely as I could. I’ve been waiting for The Butcher to ticket someone within range:

"Tis a cruelty, to load a falling man. You are too thin and bare to hide offences. Read the perfect ways of honour. Nor shall this peace sleep with her; the bird of wonder dies a maiden phoenix." (Then I saw my neighbor Frank was on his porch too, and I said, “Hi Frank.” In a not as ominous voice.)

Parking Cop (looking up): “Is all this for me?”

Me: “Please do not ticket that truck. Please put your ticket thing back in your fanny pack, get back in your segway-car, and give yourself the rest of the year off.” (Vader theme was perfect.)

Parking cop: “Sorry, just doing my job.”

Me: “The guy parked like 30 seconds ago. What if he forgot his medication, and was going to die if he didn’t take it immediately? Are you made of complete evil?”

Parking Cop (in the process of writing the ticket): “Just doing my job. There’s a place on the citation where they can contest it. I’m not evil at all.”

Me: “Yeah, and it takes a full day to contest and go downtown and deal with the hassle. Come on, give the guy a break. I know you’re doing your job, but isn’t there another job you can do? Like harvest ice?”

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• T. Moorman

The close parking gets me. This guy parked his car so that it was actually touching the car behind him. He parked like he had just smoked a pound of weed and was driving an amusement park bumper-car. He dinged the maroon car several times, like he was mad at it. I thought for sure the car alarm was going to go off. When he was finished, he got out, looked at what he had done, and then skipped off gleefully, like he was going shopping for bridesmaids dresses.

He walked directly in front of my apartment and I played Kate Nash’s “Dickhead” loudly.

I said to him, “Hey, you know you were dinging the ever-living-shit out of that car behind you when you parked? How high are you? Are you going to leave your information so the owner of that car can get you to pay for a new paint job on the bumper? Cause you murdered it. I’ve got your license plate number.”

The man stopped, turned around, and said nothing. He didn't look up. Then he walked back to his car, started it, and drove off.

Last evening, the sweetest smell of burning plastic wafted into the house. I took a look down 23rd and saw plumes of smoke coming from the Pine Street Substation. I hurried excitedly toward the chem-fog only to find a late model pick-up being extinguished by fire people.

What's the soundtrack for such a situation? "Hot Cars" by the Angry Samoans? "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson? "Streets of Fire" by Bruce Springsteen? What says you, Line Outsters?

• T. Moorman

• T. Moorman

Numerous sirens converged. Two ambulances, and a full on fire truck. Holy fucking shit, was my building on fire? Something is on fire. This is the thing I’ve never trained for. It got so loud, I thought I was on fire. I started tying bed sheets to the balcony. I yelled down to the firemen when they got there, “Should I fucking jump? I’M ENGULFED IN FLAME.” But they said everything was okay, a tow truck driver just hit his head, and he was going to be fine. There were like twenty EMTs and firemen on the scene. “Are you sure nothing’s on fire? All these sirens, and ambulances. I’m pretty sure I’m engulfed in flame.” He laughed politely, and went back to the conversation he was having, while another guy reached into the tow truck, to jostle with the tow truck driver’s head. I angled speakers out the window and thought about cranking “Karma Police.” But instead, opted for “Rock of Ages” off the timeless Pyromania. The fireman acknowledged, and again laughed politely.

• T. Moorman

• T. Moorman

A girl sat on the curb yesterday dangling her legs into the street. It was dangerously close to where a man had earlier gotten out of his Ford Taurus station wagon and urinated. At first, it looked like she was in a stupor, but she was just craning her neck to talk loudly on her cell phone. She flicked her hair boldly, and angled her face into the sun, “Oh, hey Dillon. Ya, I’m just sitting on the corner. I’m so hot I’m dangling mai legs into the middle of the street. I guess I’ll let you take me to Cancun.”

I angled my speakers out the window and cranked ZZ Top’s “Legs.” She didn’t notice. She continued to talk, to Dillon, “Ya, I don’t know if I want a mimosa right now, I’m busy. I’m flicking mai hair, and people are driving bai, and looking at mai legs.”

Then I played the Beatles' “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road." I think she heard. My neighbors heard. Halfway through the song, a Prius drove by taking a right turn and almost ran over her.

• T. Moorman

I bought him a Vita coffee and asked if he regretted his face tattoo. He said he did, but he's found acceptance, and that a face tattoo narrows down where you can get a job, and which girls will talk to you. Laser removal was out of his price range. He was high on crack when he got it. “It’s so cliché,” he said, “smoking crack and getting face tattoos. But I would smoke crack and read Rumi. I don't smoke crack anymore." He said you see everything different once you dedicate to the face tattoo. And that everything sees you different in return. People pre-judge, and he judges back. He said he really only has five or so friends, and they all have face tattoos. They take the 358 up to the Drift On Inn Casino and drink vodka. After five minutes or so, he took out a folded piece of paper, put it in my hand, and recited his favorite Rumi poem from memory. He spoke flawlessly, and unbroken, quietly and coldly poised, curving words with a Minnesota accent I hadn’t noticed before:

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