Bad idea...

Before I drank the beer and soju, I ate two hot dogs (I found them at the GS Mart and I've never been so excited to see hot dogs).

I ended up passing out on my couch sometime in the afternoon and when I woke up I went and grabbed some McDonalds. I then checked out some of the stores on Rodeo Street and they were fucking awesome.

Two Nike stores, Adidas store, Converse store, two Levi's stores, Bean Pole, Arnold Palmer, multiple shoe stores, uncountable street merchants (selling everything and anything you can think of), and just about anything else you can think of.

And supposedly its one of the cheapest places to shop in Seoul, which works for me because I don't like to waste money unless I'm gettin' a deal.

But back to the story.

So I got home from checking out the shop and a friend calls me up and I head to Gangnom for a few drinks. Get drunk again and I managed to get the last train home.

I'm starving by the time I walk in the door so I cook two more hot dogs.

Bad idea.

But I my hunger isn't fulfilled so I eat some Pringles and cheese flavored crackers.

Bad idea.

Then I eat a cup of Jello.

Bad idea.

I then brush my teeth and go to bed. I'm awakened by one of the most unpleasant things a person can experience; a mouthful of vomit.

My first instinct was to swallow it so that's what I did. The shit was up my nose and it was so fuckin' gross.

I think I made the right decision because there was no way I'd make it down from my loft to the bathroom, and the garbage can I have by my bed is quite small and was just about full so it would have overflowed. And to be honest, I'd rather swallow that shit than have to clean it up off the floor.

The funny thing is that it was only yesterday that I removed the plastic covering off of my matress (I bought a second set of sheets and changed them and removed the plastic wrap in the process). Just imagine if I actually threw up on the bed the day after I took off the plastic. Thankfully I wasn't that unlucky...

Because I hate throwing up so much, I didn't do the sensible thing and just go to the toilet and get it over with. Instead I ate a shitload of Tums and acid reflux pills and Pepto Bismol tablets. This did little to ease my stomach and my nose was still burning like crazy.

I went back to bed and suffered for an hour or so and finally got to sleep. When I woke up I had one of the worst cases of heart burn I've ever experienced in my life.

I can't even make a joke at the end of this post because there's no need.

Ugh...

Alcoholiday...

I just got home from work and I have the next six days off. I decided I'm gonna drink a lot, even if I'm by myself.

I would consider myself a social drinker and I seldom have a beer by myself. I can count the number of times I got drunk alone on one hand, and the circumstances usually involved me trying to catch up to my friends who are already drunk.

Well, today I'm going to get drunk by myself before I go out anywhere. I have no plans for tonight but I bet if I get drunk, I'll find something to do. I have to meet some friends tomorrow but tonight is not tomorrow. I just started vacation god damn it and I deserve this, I s'pose. I sent out an e-mail to see if anyone I know is doing anything tonight, but right now the schedules empty.

Here's what I'm gonna drink.

I put the pack of cigarettes to the left as a reference. The green bottle is soju, Korea's famous alcoholic beverage. The stuff is 20-25 percent alcohol and a flask (about 375 mL's I suppose) is about a buck-twenty Canadian.

The beer is called Cass and it tastes like water. Alcohol percentage is 4.5 percent.

These three products cost less than ten bucks Canadian, which is fucking great!

Maybe I'll just start drinking everyday because I can easily afford it. I'll use the Chuseok holiday to as my measuring stick and see if I've got what it takes.

Payback time...

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Nigga Please - 1999

Looks like I'm gonna have to buy a CD in November. I haven't bought an album since the RZA's "Birth of a Prince." I felt kinda guilty because I downloaded about 100 Wu-Tang related albums in a month so I figured I should buy at least one album. So I did.

When it comes to rock and metal, I spent enough money on CD's in high school to justify never buying another album from those genres. I didn't even buy the new Slayer album that was released a couple weeks ago. It is the first Slayer album I haven't purchased.

But next month the new Ol' Dirty Bastard album is finally gonna be released. He died almost two years ago and the album he was working on is just getting released now. I've already heard most of the songs and they're nothing special, but I have to buy this album based on principal alone.

Its ODB that made me take hip hop serious, as absurd as that may sound. In high school I listened to a little Easy-E and Onyx but only because it was funny and entertaining. Driving around listening to "Bust Day Ass" by Onyx brings back many hazy memories of the Ozmobile and the mean streets of Deer Lake.

But anyway, I was living in Halifax in 2001 (I think) when my cousin Diggz left a copy of "Nigga Please" at my apartment. On my way to work one day I popped it into my discman and my life was forever changed.

I didn't know hip hop could be raunchy, raw, humorous, serious, and scary all at the same time. ODB was like the Kurt Cobain of hip hop or something. He may be imitated but it will be impossible to match his quality. I feel this way about Nirvana's Nevermind as well.

"Nigga Please" was also the soundtrack during some of the best nights of my life. Sitting around in the woods wasted out of our minds listening to this album with my hometown posse was definitely enhanced by the unstableness and unpredictability of ODB.

Nigga Please is one of the craziest records ever released in my opinion. The vocal work rivals something like early Bad Brains because ODB just lets loose with throat splitting screams and yelps, all while keeping it so fucking real. The chorus of "You Don't Want to Fuck With Me" is one of the worst sang phrases of any artist ever, but it works so well. Nigga Please is a very frantic piece of work and some of his rhymes are so fuckin' ridiculous that they are extremely clever.

On the track "I Can't Wait" he gives a shout out to the Eskimos and the submarines. On "You Don't Want to Fuck With Me" he speaks some great crack head truths such as "Fuck God, God don't forgive" and "You really wanna cum the cocaine make your pussy numb." At the end of a great freak on the track "Rollin' Wit You" he asks "Yo, did you understand that?"

Then there's one of the best chorus's to ever grace any song "Big baby Jesus I can't wait, Nigger fuck that I can't wait." The insanity of the way he sings this will probably never be topped.

I want to quote the full album but I'll refrain but here are a few more than memorable quotes that pop into my head

"I'm the paranoid nigger at your party."

"You can call me dirty, and then lift up your skirt, and you want some of this dirty? God made dirt and dirt bust ya ass."

"If I got a problem, a problems got a problem 'til its gone."

"When I throw at football pass at a bitch she miss."

"Cancer, herpes, mumps, seizures, diabetes, TB if your against me, (cops) you die easier"

"Yeah my momma can not protect y'all"

A lot of the credit on this album has to be given to the men who cut and edited ODB's rants and put them together as objects that resemble songs. A lot of the verses are obviously rearranged, clipped, overlapped, underlapped, and whatever else you can think of. ODB was likely just in a coke craze for much of the recording of this album and it shows, but thankfully the producers were able to arrange ODB's outbursts into a very memorable album.

The beats are also great and consistent. I don't think there's one bad beat on this album, and that can't be said for many rap albums, even Wu-Tang releases.

Fuck, this is just a great record and there will never be anything else quite like it and without my cousin Diggz leaving this at my apartment, I don't know how my life would be today. I would have probably never searched deeper into hip hop and I'd be missing out on Kool Keith, Gangstarr, Lootpack, Biggie, Madlib, Nas, Talib Kweli, and the list goes on and on and on.

In the end, hip hop is simply the black man's version of punk rock.