Auggie Smith

12:19

Okay, a lot to get caught up on. First of all, this Thursday, April 21, 2005, I will be on the Bob and Tom Show again.

Hunter S. Thompson was a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, he was a great writer; to some, a counter-culture icon; to others, Johnny Depp and to others Bill Murray. To me, Hunter S. Thompson has always been the perfect example of the American anti-hero. A man who embraced life moment by moment, fueling himself with the instant gratification of intoxicants and various mood-altering drugs, as opposed to the long-term gratification that responsibility brings. Well, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself last month at his home in Colorado. Some will tell you, this is proof that living life under a mind-addling alcoholic soaked haze is not as fulfilling as we thought; and some will tell you that this is just one more piece in the every growing case that hard work and achievement and a loving family are the cornerstones of a meaningful life. Well, I say that’s just crazy talk. I say, this is the time for the debaucherers of the world to re-focus our efforts on a life committed to defiling ourselves. Whether it be the euphoric rush brought on by a pill given to you in the bathroom stall of the dance club, or the sweet subtle numbness you feel after smoking pot out of a converted Dr. Pepper can. Remember, too much is never enough. I know the other side tries to make their case with a few anecdotal cases of artists overdoing it. They might try to bring up Ernest Hemmingway, Kurt Cobain, Chris Farley, John Belushi, Jimmi Hendrix, River Phoenix, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Keith Whitley, Janis Joplin, Bon Scott, Jim Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolf, Fredrick Exley, John Kennedy O’Toole, Freddie Prinze, Jack Kerouac or Lenny Bruce. But they always seem to leave out the chemical induced success stories like Keith Richards, and’ well, I can’t think of anymore right now, but that’s just because my short-term memory is shot. So lets remember, to paraphrase the sergeant in Hill Street Blues…’let’s not be careful out there.’

14:27
I’m always amazed at where you can find great art. Yesterday, at a rest area, outside of Manden, North Dakota I entered a stall and was greeted by the phrase “all fags will diet” scratched on the inside of the door. After further investigation, I concluded that this work, most likely had two separate authors working completely independent of one another. The first had penned “all fags will die” as an obvious commentary on man’s inevitable mortality, and the second had added the “t” most likely as a commentary on the pressure society puts on homosexuals to look good. Although I enjoyed the profundity of both statements, I’m not sure how I feel about the second artist changing the first’s work. Not unlike Ted Turner colorizing Frank Capra’s movies.

Graffiti in bathrooms has always fascinated me. When I was a teenager, I cleaned my catholic high school in the summer to pay my tuition. When I got to the girl’s bathroom, I was always struck by the complete dearth of graffiti on the walls. I mean really women, what the hell are you doing in there? This time should be spent expressing your creative soul. The walls of the men’s room are filled with the heart and souls of it’s past inhabitants. One of the most popular submissions, on the bathroom canvass is “I will suck your dick” followed by a phone number or sometimes the more adventurous just put a date and time suggesting that they are willing to fellatiate right there on the linoleum. This particular type of graffiti used to make me feel uncomfortable. Now I look at it as the personal adds for the most lonely, sexually deviant people in the universe. Another good one is when the outhouse vandal uses prose. They take time to rhyme their message. It often includes the phrase “brokenhearted” and is the poetry of the common man. They tell the tale of a Tom Joed type character who metaphorically “came to shit but only farted.” I mean, really, how many of us can same the same thing about our lives. All of us…that’s who. I have occasionally come across more obvious political statements. Recently at a Flying J, someone wrote Kerry 04. I don’t know what affect that will have on swing voters, but preach on brother. Another common thing is a testing your love or distaste for a particular artist, i,e, “Metalica Rocks” or “Kenny G is a feltching shit-eater.” Which leads me to my call to action. I have come up with a way you can all spread the word of Aug in the most grassroots of ways. It involves only a pen and a willingness to vandalize public bathrooms. Write “auggiesmith.com” everywhere you relieve yourselves. That’s right, I want to see my name shoe-horned in between the phone number of some slutty girl and a Nazi symbol. This will be especially effective if you women take up the cause, as you are working with a completely blank canvas. Together we will prove that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

14:41
This story was on the front page of the Birmingham News on Monday:

Truck drivers looking for trouble, reporting it
Monday, July 12, 2004
GINNY MacDONALD
News staff writer

“Michael Dykes of Magnolia Springs drives a semi for AAA Cooper Transportation. He is also a spy for the federal Transportation Security Administration.

Dykes is among 200 drivers and members of the Alabama Trucking Association trained by state troopers to spot terrorist activity.

Dykes’ training, funded by Homeland Security, has already paid off.

Last November, while driving on Interstate 10 in South Alabama, he noticed a man’s head bobbing up and down in the back seat of a car.

“The car was in the fast lane and I was watching this guy in my mirror,” Dykes said. “There was a guy driving, but he had kind of a dazed look on his face.”

When the car got beside his truck, Dykes saw a man lying on the back seat, tied up and bleeding.

“I said, `This ain’t’ right,’” and he called the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Department on his cell phone.

Deputies stopped the car near the Florida line. The car belonged to the man who was tied up in the back seat and had been stolen.

The two other men in the car had carjacked the vehicle in Mississippi. They told authorities they had planned to dump the car owner after they crossed the Florida line.

But the truck driver stopped them.

“I can see a lot more from my truck than other drivers,” Dykes said.

Dykes joined the Highway Watch program last year.

The truck drivers report suspicious activity such as people hanging around bridges who don’t look homeless; people with suspicious-looking baggage and strange vehicles on the road.

The drivers have a contact number to call if they spot something suspicious. They give the contact person their identification number and make their report.

“We just keep an eye out, and I am nosy, so that helps,” said Dykes, who has driven an 18-wheeler for 21 years. “You see so much on the road, and some of it is not pretty.”

If other AAA Cooper drivers see suspicious activity, they report it to Dykes. That will change soon when more drivers are trained.

The American Trucking Association is negotiating a $19.2 million contract with the Transportation Security Administration to train more truck drivers across the nation. But first the association must get all state trucking associations to sign on to the program. Alabama is among 35 state trucking associations that have the program.

Under the contract, 7,300 more drivers in Alabama will be trained using $220,000 from the security administration.

But not all of those will be big rig drivers, said Gene Vondereau, director of safety for the Alabama Trucking Association.

“We will also be looking at school bus drivers. Anybody who travels the highways a lot will be a candidate for training,” Vondereau said.

The transportation “army” also receives calls for diligence when the national terrorist alert is raised. Such was the case when former President Reagan lay in state in Washington, D.C.

On that day, members of the Highway Watch program received the following alert from the Transportation Security Administration:

All Highway Watch drivers - please be aware that the Department of Justice, the FBI and other government agencies issued a new terrorist warning today. The United States has credible intelligence from multiple sources that several members of al-Qaida are determined to launch an attack in the United States in the next few months. Highway Watch participants are asked to be on the lookout for seven suspected al-Qaida operatives who are believed to be operating in the United States. Thank your for your continued commitment in keeping America safe and secure.

When an alert is issued, Highway Watch members are given updated information on what to look for.

“Our drivers see a lot through their windshields, and now, if something looks out of line, they can quickly get the information to the right people for appropriate action,” said Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Association.

For more about the Highway Watch program, call Gene Vondereau at the Alabama Trucking Association, (334) 834-3983.”

Well we can all relax. The war on terrorism is all but won. America has unleashed a secret weapon…an army of truckers and school bus drivers. This should come in handy if Al Qaeda’s next evil plan is to cover the glory hole between the men’s bathroom stalls at the Husky Station outside of Missoula, or highjack all of the nation’s issues of barely legal magazines.

What I like most about this story is that if the guy had not been trained by homeland security, he wouldn’t have been able to deduce that when a men is tied up and bleeding in the back of a car, “this ain’t right.” Look, I’m not saying truckers can’t fight crime. Of course they can! Anyone who has seen BJ and the Bear knows that much.

I’m just saying that when you have been driving 22 hours straight, staying awake with the help of cross tops and amylnitrate, you are going to see A LOT of things that look suspicious! In fact, I see something that looks suspicious in this article. We are spending $220,000 to train 7300 truckers to look out for terrorists in Alabama. That’s $30.00 a trucker (or I should say, Urban Crime fighter). Now I’m sure that $30.00 bucks gets you some pretty intense training but I’d like to save my government some money and do all of the training right here! ATTENTION TRUCKERS: IF YOU SEE ANYBODY IN A TURBAN IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA CALL TOM RIDGE AND JOHN ASHCROFT. HE HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN SENT BY OSAMA TO ASSISINATE FORREST GUMP AND CRIPPLE OUR DEMOCRACY!

16:47
Have they buried Ronald Reagan yet? I ask because for a while, it looked like Fox News Channel was trying to turn his funeral into a summer replacement series. Good God! Put the man in the ground already. The whole thing was starting to stink of Weekend at Bernie’s. Dragging a man’s rotting carcass around the country is not a memorial,it’s what inbred racists do when a black man whistles at a white woman. I never thought it would take longer to get buried than it did to die of Alzheimer’s.

I became politically aware in the 1980s, so Reagan was an important President to me. I was raised to be a Democrat for two reasons: Number one, I am Irish-Catholic and that’s what the Kennedy’s are, and Number two, I was raised by a single mother who was a social worker so, believe it or not, she was not a huge Reagan fan. In fact, she was downright liberal! So I was too. When I was 13, I put up signs for Mondale-Ferraro, when I was 11, I wore a t-shirt that said “my body my choice.” This, of course, was back before the word “liberal” had taken on the same connotation as communist or known sex-offender. This was back when being liberal or conservative just meant a different way of looking at things and not a reason to be mortal goddamn enemies. Let’s face it, the Democrats and Republicans are no longer political affiliations, they are rival street gangs that feel the annihilation of the other is the best answer for our country. The congressional motto has become “they pull a knife, you pull a gun, they put one of yours in the hospital, you have a federal inquiry on everyone they have ever fucked”, okay, that’s not the official motto but it should be. What is it going to take for these people to realize that there is no them and us, there is only us.

One of my favorite examples of the perceived importance of partisanship is when the news identifies someone’s political party when it has nothing to do with the news story. Last month, where I live in Oregon, it was reported that a man named Neil Goldschmidt (former Governor, Secretary of Transportation, and Mayor of Portland) had been screwing a 14-year-old girl while he was the mayor. The story was shocking enough, but the reports kept listing him with that “D” after his name to identify him as a Democrat. Oh yeah, like him being a Democrat has anything to do with him being a goddamn pedophile. Why don’t they just categorize him as Neil Goldschmidt-Yankee Fan or Neil Goldschmidt- Jew. By the way, slightly off the topic, Goldschmidt was in his mid-thirties when he started schtooping the 14-year-old, and the abuse went on for 3 years. He can’t be arrested on statutory rape charges because the Statute of Limitations has run out, so people are saying that he got away with it but let’s look at the facts people. If you were in your mid-thirties, you can’t just continually have sex, there has to be some talking. And really, isn’t having to have a conversation with a 14-year-old girl punishment enough?

But back to the point, your saying to yourself, sure Aug, we think the whole partisanship thing is a problem too, but what the hell do you want me to do about it? Well I’ll tell you, my mother taught me not to trust Reagan. Not because he was a Republican but instead because he was in power. That’s right America, there are no Democrats or Republicans, only those in power and the rest of us. It is time to find common ground and that ground should be to mistrust and despise all people in power! What I’m telling you is that it is possible to disagree with both Clinton and Bush. What I’m saying, is that it is all American’s right, no, repsonsibility, to bitch and complain no matter who is in power, or what letter comes after his name.

22:30
A FEW PEOPLE ALWAYS MESS IT UP FOR THE REST OF US

Last Saturday I did a personal appearance at Tower Records here in Portland Oregon to promote my DVD. The idea was, at 1:00 o’clock in the afternoon I do a 20-minute set, then sign merchandise for all my adoring fans. To promote this, I was going to go on a local morning radio show on Friday and spend 3 hours being funny and telling my adoring fans to show up at Tower Records. The morning show was hosted by a DJ named Marconi and his sidekick Tiny (an ironic pseudonym). I have heard their show before and always found them to be juvenile, unfunny morons, or in other words, perfect morning DJs. My in to the show was my friend and fellow funny comic, Lonnie Bruhn, who sits in regularly on Fridays on the morning Fart and Jack-off joke fest. The show would have been great because it is my perfect demographic and I have always worked well with Lonnie. The problem came on Wednesday when the moron twins (they aren’t really twins) decided it would be funny to run the audio of Nick Berg being decapitated and give a humorous play-by-play. Strangely enough, the listening audience took umbrage to this. Maybe it was making fun of a man’s murder or maybe these tight–asses don’t like to here the last death wail of a 28-year old before they get their coffee. Either way, Marconi and Tiny lost their gig, and I lost my chance to pimp my DVD and personal appearance. The results are two fold: first of all, only 5 people came to Tower Records, 4 of whom I knew (by the way, thank you 1 guy who I didn’t know who bought the DVD and was a wonderful crowd). But, more importantly, the FCC got more ammunition in their war of attrition to sensor free speech. Look, I don’t like to judge art I haven’t experienced. But in the cases of Dirty Dancing, that Whoopee Goldberg sitcom and doing play-by-play to a man’s death, I don’t need to. They are all evil, senseless wastes of the First Amendment.

The point is, that morning, the radio station was flooded with calls from listeners that were offended by what they heard, and the perpetrators were punished by being fired. That’s right FCC, we didn’t need you telling us what we should and shouldn’t hear. We decided for ourselves.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!