real life

I am applying for a job as a "writer" for PRICK Magazine in the next week or so. I wrote this today and will submit it with a resume and etc. I haven't edited it yet, that is why i am posting it. so i can read over it over and over again and find the mistakes, etc etc

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On Paying Someone Lots of Money to Draw on My Skin
- or - Validating My Stupid Tattoos
by Zac Hobbs

I suppose there are those decisions in life that we will ultimately regret. Most tattoo collectors keep this thought in the back of their mind every time an idea for a new piece enters their head. As human beings, we are able (at least in some capacity) to mediate our decisions and ultimately hope that when the grim reaper comes to read our name from his tome that the bulk of our major decisions wont be filed under the “regret” category. “Maybe I shouldn’t have dated her,” “Maybe I shouldn’t have quit that job” and “maybe I shouldn’t have gotten that tattoo” are all phrases that no one wants to utter on their deathbed.

When I was 20 years old, I began a 2 and a half year odyssey of having a rendition of Gotham city, complete with Batsignal and Bat Mobile, permanently drawn onto my upper arm and chest. I have spent well over three days worth of hours of my waking life in a tattoo chair in Valdosta, GA (three and a half hours from my home, mind you) while Craig Beesly jammed insane amounts of colors under my skin. I am significantly poorer because of this experience.

I have a green Blue Whale tattooed under a banner that says “Brodependant” on my left arm. When I was in Chicago I had an apprentice tattoo a red one line drawing of a polar bear onto my badly sun burnt arm, which now looks more like a pink Arby’s Hat. I have a koi fish missing half of its body tattooed on my foot and a star on the back of my arm that I can’t really explain.

I may not be the king of stupid tattoo’s, but it is a fair statement that I have quite a few bad ideas permanently drawn on my skin. But the way I see it, tattoo’s are sort of like an old photo album. They are reminders of where we have been, what we have done, what we have loved and what we are dependant on (in my case, Bro’s).

Tattoo’s are not some manifestation of your inner most being, but they are also something a little bit more than some ink jammed into your skin. If it takes you more than 2 minutes to explain your tattoo, then it probably doesn’t really mean anything to you at all. At the same time, you shouldn’t just jump straight into every single bad idea, either. I suppose if nothing else, tattoo’s are just a rather absurd way of visually explaining the kind of person that you are. I have a religiously confused friend who has a tattoo of a devil with a sword kneeling below a bloody cross. I have another friend whose only tattoo is the initials for the group of friends he grew up with. Every tattoo says something about us, even if they are something as stupid as discolored blue whale.

If tomorrow some revolutionary company invents a cream that will lift tattoo’s from right under the flesh, then the day after tomorrow I would still have a bunch of kind-of-sort-of (probably real bad) ideas forever tattooed on my skin.

a pathetic attempt at bringing something back

1. "Another Sappy Song About Hate" - Tiltwheel
2. "Maestro of this Rebellious Symphony" - Fake Problems
3. "On the Picket Fence" - The Good Life
4. "Little Light" - Jets to Brazil
5. "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart" - Against Me!
6. "Woodson" - the Get Up Kids
7. "the Futile" - Say Anything
8. "Real Problems in SRQ" - Fake Problems
9. "Bee Spit" - Lemuria
10. "These Dead Streets" - A Wilhelm Scream
11. "Communique" - Jena Berlin
12. "Fireman" - Jawbreaker
13. "The Horse" - A Wilhelm Scream
14. "Haircuts and T-Shirts" - Lifetime

on Record Reviewers

I absolutely hate record reviewers, or at least the ones in the punk rock community. Aside from a select few on punknews.org, every record “reviewer” on every other website is nothing more than a pretentious idiot who thinks they have a big vocabularly and can cram words like “whimsical” or mouthfuls like “spitting, fury-fest of angst” into a couple paragraphs that somehow quantify the likeability of a record. Who the fuck cares. The Beatles Sgt Pepers and the Lonley Hearts Club is widely regarded as the best record ever. I personally don’t care for it all. People seem to forget that there is no golden rule for taste. People like what they are going to like even if some asshole on punknews.org things the new Say Anything record is 3 and a half stars. The worst part is that some people actually give a shit what these jerk-offs have to say.

I need to start writing more stuff. But, I just don’t really give two shits right now.

its finally raining.

I haven't written in a while. It's not for a lack of things to say but moreso because I am sick of saying the same thing about the same thing, etc etc. Nothing is new and what is the point of writing if you are saying the same thing over and over again. Especially if no one is listening.

Benard leaves on tour the day after I graduate (which is a month away) and then fly up to Richmond, VA on January 1st to ride with Worn in Red for a little while.

I discovered this Fake Problems lyric today by accident, but it sums up my outlook right now

Living life in constant motion is the only way that I’ll be content. And I’ll go until this body doesn’t work.

Its the first night it has rained in these parts in a long time. There is some symbolism there.

on Foreseeing My Ideal Death

I suppose this isn't my "ideal" death, per-se. I have two ideas for ideal death, and they are both on opposite ends of the spectrum: Id either like to check out of here quietly while asleep, presumably with someone I love, or to go out with the biggest fucking band possible (car bomb, for example). Although, I hear drowning is suppose to be one of the most zen and peaceful ways to go. So I suppose a shark attack would be a good blend of the two ends of the spectrum. Anyway. Long story short, I think if i died in our van on tour, I'd be ok with that.

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Nathan was driving and Alan was in the front passenger seat. I think they were listening to some fantasy dragon-story book on tape, but, honestly, I don’t really remember. I think James was laying in the first bench seat with Marc in the next, but that just doesn’t seem right. I mean, I vividly remember it this way, but Marc always sits in the first bench seat. I suppose it isn’t really that important, because when Nathan jerked the wheel to miss the deer that darted out into the road, no one ended up where they started off.

We built a loft of sorts in the back of our 1991 Dodge Ram 3500 van where the back two bench seats use to be. Our two guitar heads, my fifteen hundred dollar bass head that I bought when I was 18, our guitars and all of the drum kit, as well as my five foot tall, one hundred and fifteen pound bass cab, all fit under this construction of ply wood and 2x4’s. The One hundred and fifteen pound bass cab was an essential element of the loft’s construction, as it was the center support for the whole structure. The one structural flaw of our ingenious construction was that we never secured the loft to the body of the van. And when our blue four-wheeled highway vessel began to roll and eventually settle on its roof, all of that gear landed right on top of me as I met the roof of our van, which was now sitting crumbled against the pavement of Interstate 85 Southbound.

I felt the rims of my Versace glasses cut into the skin around my eyes as the weight of a whole bands worth of equipment sandwiched me into the ground. They say that life moves in slow motion during a moment of catastrophe, but this is completely untrue. One second I was laying on my back on the loft in our van listening to “In A World of Ghosts” by Lemuria, and the next second I was laying face-first amidst mounds of shattered glass as I gasped for breath through my surely collapsed lungs.

I am quite confident that either a leg or an arm or both were shattered because I remember telling my brain to tell my legs and arms to do something. Anything. I heard Marc say “What the fuck,” and I think James say something along the lines of “Holy shit” or possibly “what did we hit” and heard Alan say my last name. I suppose I should of shouted to someone for a helping hand, but, honestly, the only thought that crossed my mind as every last ounce of blood and oxygen escaped my body was that I wished I had treated my bass head better.

Because it sure was good to me during our short life together.