Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

The past looms on the back of a record sleeve. Labels, such as, Lookout, Epitaph, even Bomp, cryptically allowing for years of wasted moments. The times that your finger tips traced the edge of an LP or slammed your fist against fragile drywall. You marveled at the pictures on the back of each sleeve, somehow they were more real than your own family members. They spoke through each lyric, each guitar line, each drum fill, each chord change -- so goddamn directly to you. A slipped power pop backbone, a hardcore frustration, a mod moment, a Dischord emo relapse. The emotions bubbled over into a potent stew of remembrance and forget, lost in transition as the records and years slipped quietly away. They were replaced by other records, other ideas. But the intent is the same, a slipping away into the night, a creative outlet or an escape from yourself and the world. The past looms on the back of a record sleeve, as surely as the present looms in the smile lines of your face -- a crow's...

Staring at the unrelenting forgiveness of the shower wall, I stumble into the regrets of the past. Each year ticks off the clock and goals fall underneath the wheels of graduate school and time, slowly slipping towards a reaper with few words and little sympathy. The wall is clean, yet the grout is stained. Dark dirt sleeps in the crack of the shower nozzle. It might hold redemption or just another ray of chlorinated water slipping down the drains of the world. The water circles backwards and forwards, unceasing. Its blues and greens match the eyes of the world's watchers. Here I am, I think. Another day or week older, another step closer to some goal, another shadow of my former self. The mirror reflects a cracked visage, one a little rounder, a little more grizzled, perhaps, a little wiser. So much time is spent in the bathroom examining and reexamining, warbling long forgotten pop songs. Thinking, thinking, thinking, and more regret. It is here that honesty exists within each ...

“ Seventh Son” A hazy mist covered the ground in the cemetery. Green saplings bent to the ground. I walked solemnly, looking behind me every couple of minutes. My chest beat and my legs felt tense. I had been meeting my brother in Shadows Grove Cemetery for several years. Well, I guess I couldn’t really call it meeting him. He’s dead. I just walked to the cemetery to talk to him. He was the only person whom I could really trust when he was alive. You see, my dad died before I was born and my mom -- well, she’s crazy. She tells me that I’m crazy for talking to Randall. She says, “He’s dead. When are you gonna realize that? I raised a dip shit kid who talks to fucking angels.” She isn’t all that bad, though. At least, she doesn’t hit me anymore. As I approached his plot, I saw a big and nasty crow. It cawed at me and flew into the grey sky, then alighted near Randall’s gravestone and dashed back into the sky. The sun was beginning to make me tired. I felt it on my skin and s...

Right after school Cecil grabbed his shotgun from his father's rifle cabinet and headed out the door. He took his old BMX out of the garage and slung the gun over his back. He pedaled the bike as fast as he could. Small for his class, he was still waiting for a growth spurt. His grandmother had told him that sometimes it happens later in life. But he wasn't waiting until eighteen or twenty-one. He had outgrown his shit hole town already. He spent most of his time out on state land shooting squirrels or just walking. There was nothing at home that equaled the thrill of just being out in the woods, nothing that equaled the thrill of being among the pines and oaks. He was master of all he surveyed out here. No one came to bother him.             He pedaled his bike down Wilson Road past house after house all of them empty because no one was home from work or school yet. Out here the paint was chipped and the yards were filled wi...

 Years Leave Us  Another rough year has come and reluctantly bitten the dust. We sit complacent, or, perhaps, angered. There is too much tension in our bones -- we sit sprung, ready to snap, compromised. We can barely meet eyes, mostly because I am insufferable. I pay for my mistakes often before I make them. The anger that wells inside needs an outlet. Where will it go? I hope it dissipates soon. Gremlins I lack patience with electronics. I will toss, throw, or break into shards any that come near me. I blame it on the Gremlins, but it is my own uneasy, impatient nature that fills the junkyards with instant rubble. My heart tells me no, but I break things anyway. They say patience is a virtue, but that doesn't help us. We want it now, an instantaneous MTV generation gobbling up internet bandwidth. We can't stop; we eat cellphones for breakfast, overload mp3 players, trip every electronic switch into the red. Why you ask? Because we can. Roughhousing the Environmen...