A while back, I asked the Blue Blood boards Have you ever been fired from a job? It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that most of our members are extremely talented and conscientious and hardworking, yet have personality, err, quirks which make it hard to always fit in at a job.

I know my personal experience of working in other people’s offices was that everyone always adored me for the first two weeks. I did a lot of contract design work where I would get called in when everyone was crashing on deadline, and horribly behind, and I think I got love for saving the day with my efficient work processes. Unfortunately, after about six weeks in any of these offices, I would start contemplating the fact that I wouldn’t have to go to work if I drove off the road on the way. I also had the tendency to have trouble with some of the social portions of work.

Running my own media empire, I have become more reserved over time, but I did not used to really have any comprehension of corporate culture. I mean, I could wear a suit and twist the colored parts of my hair under and pin them down, but I was still me. I would cheerfully explain to my coworkers that I thought health insurance was the big lie the overculture used to force us to live small lives. I would explain how I lived in a punk rock group house with a dozen other people, so my occasional corporate paychecks went really far, and I could afford to spend a lot of my time having adventures. I would bring in copies of first my antisocial punk rock humor zine BLT aka Black Leather Times and then later early issues of Blue Blood in print. Occasionally, I would work for a client like MTV who would specifically request back the girl with the “wild zines”, but, as most of my work was Federal contracts, government presentations, management consultant graphics, and such . . . well, I think the experience can be summed up by saying that, when I worked for EDS for a full three months, they really wanted me to work there permanently, but they also totally freaked out when I wore red stockings with a Brooks Brothers suit one day. And I’d thought I looked both especially conservative and especially attractive that day and usually I felt like I only hit one metric or the other.

I could never quite seem to match up my abilities and education with a job which really fit and challenged me and gave me room to grow. I know this is a very familiar frustration for most folks here. Sometimes the jobs which were obviously intended for trained monkeys were the most comfortable to do, more pleasant than the ones which were a whole step up from trained monkey where they expected me to be grateful for the low-end nonsense I could do in fifteen minutes and had to pretend took all day.

Forrest Black, in his quest for the perfect cheeseburger, came across the Serious Eats site. Serious Eats featured a funny article about a hot tattooed punk guy who got fired from Burger King for bathing in the kitchen sink . . . and posting it on MySpace and YouTube. The hilarious video posted above lead various Serious Eats readers to opine that he was trying to get fired.

They just don’t understand. I suspect he did not particularly care if he got fired. I suspect he has a skill set which should allow him to do something a heck of a lot higher end than work at Burger King, but somehow he never quite plugged into the right position. I think probably half the people I know, probably including myself, never quite slotted into something challenging and inspiring and really the right fit for their personality and capabilities. Sure, some people are lazy. But it takes a certain amount of effort to do your hair, take a bubble bath in the workplace, have someone videotape it, and post it all over the interwebs. So that is not laziness. It is not trying to get fired either. It’s just not having, fitting into the corporate culture, high on the to-do list, at a low-end job. Doing something amusing was higher priority. If you have ever been there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, maybe it is still a head-scratcher.

According to 2News WTDN, the Xenia, Ohio NBC affiliate, Mr. Unstable’s BK bubble bath kind of sucked for the shift manager Karen Cragg, who apparently has only held fast food jobs and was fired, along with the bather and pals. She feels that Burger King corporate mistreated her by firing her when she didn’t even know about the incident until the sink was already punk rocker soup. She might be able to cope with some of that frustrated rage by doing something appalling for fun at her next job.

Last week, the Dead Kennedys announced an indefinite hiatus from touring, due to health issues suffered by bassist Klaus Flouride and drummer D.H. Peligro. Although I was fangirl-thrilled to meet East Bay Ray at a coffee shop a couple years back, I personally find it depressing when bands tour without key original members. A Jello Biafra-less DK would just bum me out.

Sometimes a group of people come together to make a great creative team, but only small portions of the group are really driving forces. The DK thing is not really one of those disputes. Drummers sometimes spontaneously combust and that never makes it seems like a band should hang it up. I think the thing which bothers me the most about Jello Biafra not exactly being in the Dead Kennedys any more is that you know there was a hot moment in time when they must have felt like a galvanized special unit in the war against conformity and oppression. There must have been a time when the Dead Kennedys felt like they could take on the world . . . together.

For anyone who is unaware of the legal squabble, the Dead Kennedys had a falling-out partly over whether or not their songs should be licensed to sell various things. Most notably Levi’s wanted to use “Holiday in Cambodia” in a Dockers commercial and Jello Biafra rejected their advances without consulting the rest of the band. Lawsuitarity ensued. Levi’s did not get the song, but Alternative Tentacles is no longer allowed to sell full length DK products. I am torn on how I feel about that. I have lived in not one, but two, punk rock group houses named after the “Holiday in Cambodia” song. Not like thirteen punks living in a townhouse had to get a license to call the place Cambodia, so maybe we only helped by buying cassette tapes and T-shirts, but we would not have considered Levi’s to be, ya know, punk.

On the one hand, I feel like there should be more benefit to artists who create important seminal works. On the other hand, I am uncomfortable with certain types of mainstream corporate interests co-opting and diluting counterculture. It seems like there have to be ways to monetize art without giving it to a company who would demean its original purpose. The Dead Kennedys MySpace page announced this spring that Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death had managed to go gold in both the USA and the UK, without major label support. Keeping in mind that Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death came out in 1987, I’m guessing it hasn’t been buying mansions in the meantime.

So maybe nothing pure can last without pain, but here is a video shot at a 1981 Dead Kennedys (with Jello Biafra) performance of “Too Drunk to Fuck” in Finland. And, as you probably got from Blue Blood board members Buster Friendly and Mr. Karl’s posts, if you did not know it already, the Buckcherry “Too Drunk to Fuck” is not a cover of the DK song, any more than the Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl” is a cover of the Jill Sobule tune. The Finnish video may be amateur, but it is complete with punk rock snogging.

Sometimes the internet can be very isolating. We sit at home and, in a way, we feel connected to so many people. But not very connected. It is overwhelming and difficult to deeply connect with anyone. Sometimes this causes us to to put in-person human interaction up on a pedestal and forget what it is really like.

Now, admittedly, I went to school in Belgium for a while and none of my classmates were like the angriest Belgian gamer ever, as depicted in this video. Athene says he is the best paladin in the world. I always thought paladins were supposed to rescue virgins and helpless townspeople and such, always on the side of good, but I’m not a big World of Warcraft gamer. Maybe paladins are different in WOW. Athene appears to be sponsored by WOW gold farmers, so he must be doing something right.

Athene is equal opportunity and spices up this gaming clip with a cute shirtless guy on one side and a girl with lots of very lovely cleavage on the other. He swears really a lot. I mean, I looooooooooooove to cuss and Athene cusses way more than I do. I find the non-stop English swearing with a Belgian accent charming. Your mileage may vary.

Most importantly, Athene and friends let you experience via video what it would be like to have your unsavory pals playing video games in the living room. I still sometimes miss living in a punk rock (or other) group house where there is always a party, but I’m not missing it right now. Because I watched this video.

The first time I ever went to Death Guild was when Forrest Black and I were out in San Francisco for Bat of House of Usher’s Zine Slam. We were there promoting Blue Blood in print and also my antisocial punk rock humor zine BLT or Black Leather Times.

This was like more than a decade ago, so when Vampira Bat and Nixon Sixx suggested dropping promoter Decay a line, I was thinking he might not remember me. Pretty much the first thing he ever said to me in person was to give me grief for not publishing an article he wrote and submitted to my zine BLT. His article was fine and contained some punk education; it just didn’t fit the BLT format. So the first thing he emails back to me yesterday is his cell number and the pledge “I promise not to give you shit about the story I submitted to you guys in 1990.” So we are two veterans who do indeed remember each other.

As most Blue Blood readers probably know, we are celebrating our fifteen year anniversary this year. Death Guild is also celebrating their fifteen year anniversary. Death Guild DJ Margo was even a covergirl for one of the older designs of BlueBlood.net. The moral of the story here is that having perserverence and longevity means that somebody somewhere will always remember it if there was that one night you drank too much, that one person you said that thing to, the time you gave someone a mohawk you were not supposed to, that guy you threatened with a shotgun, or potentially the weird factoid about that person they always confuse you with. If you stick to your guns and succeed, every little thing ever will probably haunt you. Just thought y’all would like to know.

For everyone in San Francisco and the surrounding environs who is searching for what to do this coming Monday night, I am excited to let you all know that Forrest Black and yours truly will be shooting more beautiful pictures and hanging out and generally having a blast at Death Guild at The Glas Kat aka The Trocadero at 520 4th Street and Bryant. We’ll be picking out just a few club-goers who represent the feel of the night and photographing them. With a dose of introspection as we kick it olde skool with some folks who have earned their stripes (or big boots as the case may be.)

I just came across an interesting interview with everybody’s favorite Blue Blood loudmouth hottie Jax on Drowning in Odium. They kick it off saying, “Jax is a beautiful punk rock fetish model. She’s probably most famous for her work with BlueBlood, but she has worked with other people too. She has a very unique look and personality that makes her rather distinct in the fetish scene. I recently got to interview her, and this is what went down:” To read what went down, you’ll need to pop over to the site.

100 AD: Roman Legions. Actually they all had those Eminem haircuts, but the helmets had bolt-on Mohawks. Original wig-hawkers: Romans suck.

1976: Bobby DeNiro as Travis “Taxi Driver” Bickle. Travis’ hawk was a wig (DeNiro had another job lined up and needed to keep his hair), but it got the job done with style. Inspired presidential assassin John Hinckley, who was apparently too busy beating off over Jodie Foster to watch all the way to the end.

1977: Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics. Hatchet-faced punk rock bitch W.O.W. is owed by everyone who gets off on electrical tape pasties, shaving cream shirts, and women rocking chainsaws and shotguns onstage. The Dark Bros. classic New Wave Hookers vidporn series never would have happened without Wendy O. Tell me I’m wrong.

1982: GBH. Seminal UK triple-initial punk rockers. A bunch of jolly Thatcher-era working-class kids, the sort who would more likely use broken pint glasses on your face like cookie-cutters than bore you with student Marxism. The initials stood for Grievous Bodily Harm, but those were some Great Big Haircuts.

1982: Lawrence “Mr. T” Tureaud. Beat the shit out of Sly in Rocky III, shot AKs with eyes closed in The A-Team. Took the long way around rationalizing beard/hawk combo, mostly relied on the “YOU tell him he looks ridiculous” factor. Must shoulder no small blame for the jockhawk.

1984: The Kid in Suburbia. Come on, you choked up when the little bastard hit the windshield.

1986: Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Wig-hawkers extraordinaire. Looked like post-apocalypse Rip Taylors. Supposed to be some sort of post-ironic Max Headroom anti-consumerist performance screed that would make money no matter how much it sucked because we’re all sheep and deserve to be told it. The music sucked plastic dogshit and the whole thing sank without a trace, resurfacing recently as a hideous side-effect of VH1’s “I Love the 80s”.