“Oh snap, Nick. How come you don’t post as much?”

I’ve had a few people message me or comment on my blogs and tell me I’m not writing enough. In a way they’re right. With all the newfound free time I’ve somehow accumulated (which I’ll explain very soon), I could easily punch out a plethora of material in a week. I don’t. Still, my traffic is steady. Here’s why I prefer the steady traffic to the influx of people because I wrote something the interwebs thought was cool beans: nobody really cares how often you update your web site. People care about QUALITY, not quantity of articles. Nobody cares that you posted 100 shitty posts on your blog. Nobody will remember the hundreds of shitty posts, but they will remember that one great article that made them laugh or think. All it takes is one quality story to spark someone’s imagination, and to get them to say “hey, his shit’s pretty good. You know what? I think I’ll tell my friends to check this guy out”. Boom, word of mouth promotion! It’s the best kind of promotion for someone like me who doesn’t advertisement outside of a few social networking mediums and related friendships.

I may only post one or two LifeAsNick.com entries a month because I actually give a fuck about who reads my stories/articles/poems/rants. I keep my drunken brain farts for other social networking mediums where my consumers appreciate my thought process regardless of the actual content. People who post every little quip or notion that pops into their head are assholes, because they’re basically saying “fuck you” to the reader. They’re saying “your time isn’t as valuable as mine, so rather than me spending my time to edit down my content, I’ll let you read it all and sift through good content for me.” It’s lazy. I edit myself into oblivion. The last LifeAsNick.com story took me 20 minutes to write and three hours TO GET IT RIGHT. Even looking back at that one story, I can make another twenty edits for continuity and sentence structure as I’m writing this post. Even deeper then that, imagine all the stories I posted back in 2007 or 2008 that I didn’t put much effort in because I was drunk, or I was talking to some cock muffin slut on Facebook at the time? How many of those could I re-work? All of them. I’m my own harshest critic.

In theory, some readers may think I’m suffering from a lack of material to publish. I assure you that’s not the case. It’s simply that I appeal to certain demographics on certain levels. Most of my insanely personal stuff goes to my Myspace blog. It’s not private, so you may read it anytime you want to get to know me on a more introspective level. However, a lot of the charm of my web site, LifeAsNick.com, is my ability to poke fun at not only myself, but social and political norms, as well as the idiotic pitfalls that I’ve used to define my personality. If my next five web site posts were all talking about my self-struggling or delving into my private life, I’d be impeding on the purpose of having a well-rounded web site that encompasses all aspects of my life, hence the moniker ‘Life As Nick‘.

Yeah, I got one of these, too. Generally, I use Facebook for zany one liners and my cranky-pants commentary.  Most of my Facebookies are people I know through school or work-related endeavors. They don’t give a lemur shit about my private life except on a very limited basis. More or less, my quips and drunken comments serve as a form of entertainment for them. Facebook might be important for others, because that’s all they might have to connect to the world, but I have this web site for a reason. I might as well use LAN as a primary source of communicating my life to the world, because hell, my editor actually pays for me to have this shit.  [ Thanks Kyle! ]

I also have a Twitter, which I use very infrequently compared to most web authors. As you can tell by this post, I can be quite wordy at times. Keeping my brain limited to 140 characters (or less) is like trying to kick water uphill. Not gonna happen. To be honest, I use Twitter because my favorite musicians allow me to steal their new music. Seriously. Other then that, I might tweet four or five nonsensical sentences a week. Nobody cares if I’m bathing my cat (and I don’t even have a cat anymore), or that I’m walking to the liquor store to get another Steel Reserve. I’m not important enough for you people to care about the inner-most workings of my day-to-day life. Yes, it is Life As Nick, but I’ll wage that a very high percentage of you, probably 100%, doesn’t want to know when and where I’m shooting liquid fecal matter out of my scrawny butt cheeks.

Some things are better left unsaid. It took me until now to realize that.

My writing gives you the bigger picture of whom I am as a person, follies and all. This web site makes fun of me more than it makes fun of anyone else. If I can’t joke and laugh at myself, then how fun of a person am I? A good majority of non third-world human beings take themselves way too fucking seriously. My web site is a temporary escape. Some of you might find me intriguing, while others might think I’m a degenerate douche-hamster. You know what? Perception is based on your model of the world, so I’m not going to tell you if you’re right or wrong. I simply provide a small slice of my brand of the world in words so you can understand the multifaceted design of my psyche and in the process, escape yours.

A temporary escape from real life… isn’t that what writing is about?

Loniel Robinson, Associated Press — Written 1 hour, 7 minutes ago

ESCONDIDO, CA — Suspected alcoholic militant, Nick Sterling, was shot and killed in an early morning raid in a sparsely populated Mexican neighborhood in north Escondido, California about 9:32am, PST.

Local authorities surprised Sterling who was sipping a Miller High Life brand alcoholic beverage and attempting to watch a blocked, adult pay-per-view television program. The program was later found to be pornographic in nature.

“He reached for something that might or might not have appeared to be a weapon”, said officer Rodriguez of the Escondido police department. “We had intelligence that said Sterling was black, so we opened fire immediately”.

Sterling was pronounced dead and really, really drunk at the scene.

A search of Sterling’s garage recovered three empty top shelf bottles of alcohol, an unopened 12 pack of Miller High Life containing gopher urine, several nude photographs of an unidentified female only labeled as “Nick’s dream girl”, and a very crusty, bio-stained sock near the photographs. A bio-hazmat team was called in to collect the sock as authorities feared it might contain a new strain of swine flu, SARS, or possibly a highly toxic form of Anthrax. Medical examiners later determined it was semen, and by the amounts of semen deposited in the footwear and potency, Sterling had the possibility to impregnate any female within a five yard radius simply by looking at them.

“We’re glad that we shot first and asked questions later“, said officer Rodelo, a five year veteran.

Sterling, who was the principle leader behind LIFE AS NICK and other writing-related endeavors had been terrorizing females with his intoxicating charm, movie-star good looks, and constant taunting of authorities with his, “U Can’t Touch This” demeanor while doing his ‘Hammer Dance’.  This led local police to believe that Sterling was black. Our local sources contacted after the shooting remarked, “he wasn’t black, except from the waist down. If he wasn’t such a drunk, he could have been a very successful adult entertainer“.

Witness accounts of his rather well-endowed genitalia confirmed initial reports of his heritage. “Nick, was in fact, a whiteboy”, said another source. “His affinity for base-heavy rap music, fried chicken and grape Kool-Aid led many to believe that Sterling was well, you know… an African American male”, commented a really white police officer speaking on condition of anonymity.

The melee proved otherwise. “Sterling is whiter than Casper’s ass”, said his roommate, who wished to remain anonymous for safety concerns. Joslyn later went on to say, “he owed me rent money, too. What a f-ing shame those m***herf*ckers shot his bony ass before I could get his welfare paychecks”.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is said to be,“extremely outraged at the poor and consistent racist actions of police officers nationwide”. He will be staging another Don Imus-style protest somewhere in San Diego about this incident in the near future.

An autopsy and BAC test will be performed Friday morning. However, a paramedic on duty became intoxicated after transporting Nick Sterling to the morgue. “He was definitely drunk. I smelled the noxious odor of rancid cheese and cheap malt liquor and all of a sudden I felt tipsy“,  said San Diego paramedic Kyle Oakland, of Vista Fire, “he was [*expletive deleted*] wasted when we arrived on scene”.

Authorities are expecting Sterling to be well above the legal limit, even 12-16 hours after his death. “This goes to show that Sterling was a major player in the alcohol consumption business. Getting a guy of this magnitude off the streets and bringing him to justice is just… mind-blowing”, said officer Rodriguez. “He might have battled alcoholism, but we won the war against it”.

Sterling is survived by his pet ficus and two Nigerian males who claimed that he was a generous benefactor in their email-related Ponzi schemes.

Back in November I moved to the other side of my city. I’ve always lived on the east side of Escondido my entire life. Crime wise, it’s not a bad place to live. There are the occasional murders, rampant DUI’s, and every now and then the ghetto bird flies over and the Mexicans scatter. Overall, not a bad place to live if you are a teenage mom, sex offender, or suicidal alcoholic like me.

But where I live now, on the west side, is a whole new fucking ball game. My hot female roommate, Joslyn, and I are the only white people in a two mile radius. The dynamics of our ghetto are astounding. For instance, about 5am every morning the crusty homeless bums rummage through our trash for our bottles and cans. I’ve been going through a couple bottles of wine a day, and Joslyn drinks her Keystone Light like it’s going out of style, so we personally finance at least $10 a day in the local meth trade in recyclables alone.

The neighbors across the street are obviously Hispanic and may or may not be users of illicit narcotics. Every time I stroll out to take the trash (while carrying a weapon, of course), they shoot me with dodgy eyes. At first I thought it was because I was white, but the trucks full of palm trees and other flora that show up and suddenly disappear in the dead of night with cardboard boxes seems a little strange. Whatever they are doing, they don’t want anyone to know. That’s why every window has bars on it and their front gate has not one, but two Master-locks. Palm tree’s aren’t that fucking valuable, especially here in San Diego, so something nefarious is going on.

Our neighborhood is classified as a “gang injunction area”. Meaning, the local gangbangers with tear drops and Lady Guadalupe tattoos are not legally allowed to associate with each other. Yet, every Friday and Saturday night the Mexican hat dance music (you know, the music with lots of horns and sounds like two chainsaws in a steel dumpster fighting) starts blaring at volumes that would make a Boeing 747 sound as quiet as a church mouse. Suddenly my alley way becomes a designated playground for gangbangers all wearing flannel shirts and brown Dickies, most of whom I believe have multiple felony warrants. I’ve seen at least two of my neighbors on an episode of COPS. On days where Joslyn and I hard up for beer money, I’ve seriously considered calling Crime Stoppers and telling them that ‘Jose Martinez Rosas in duplex B’ is the guy the sketch artist on the news said was a serial rapist. But for our safety, I keep my mouth shut. However, every Saturday afternoon it smells like tamales, which is a pleasant treat. Normally on any given weekday my alley smells like stale urine and the underside of a Tijuana porta-potty.

The closest liquor store is Georgia’s, which is owned by Iraqi’s (what’s with Middle Eastern people and liquor stores? Oh wait, they know we’re all drunken degenerates with welfare checks), and they have an ample stock of Keystone Light, Schlitz malt liquor, Miller High Life, and every type of tobacco product imaginable. They also cash checks, Western Union, and provide any and all financial services. Who needs a bank account when Kamal can cash your fraudulent unemployment check AND sell you cigarettes at the same time? That’s a win/win.

“Hi, I’m Kamal”

The house Joslyn and I share is separated by a courtyard that overlooks another house. At one time I think both of these properties were one big house-thing, but the owners figured that renting out both would be more economically viable. Anyhoo, between the houses are lime trees. Whenever our Hispanic friends come over (which is pretty much everybody we know), we never need to get limes at the store. We just grab one out of the tree. Typically, we send the bravest one to fetch our Tequila accessories. Every time there is a holiday (which is most Friday nights and Saturdays), the Mexicans fire off their guns. They’re armed and potentially dangerous when drunk, so jacking their limes could potentially end up with someone being in the NC Time’s obituary section.

I constantly get asked, “are you sure it’s safe to park my car here?”. Depending on how much I like the person asking, I say, “absolutely”, knowing deep down inside that one of my ethnic criminal friends will probably jack their whip and buy me a couple Steel Reserve’s so I don’t narc them out.

The fence leading to my “room”, which is really just a garage that I put carpet in, has a shoe print. It looks police issued. Meaning, the cops probably have kicked down that door in the past to catch someone that was featured on America’s Most Wanted. On the bright side, the rickety sound of the door opening indicates that one of my brave friends are risking their life by coming over, OR someone is trying to pull a jack move on us. I keep a butter knife next to my bed in case someone is tweaked and frisky enough to try anything, though.

When I’m fiending for a beer and I don’t want to drive, or when I am on my Peterson’s Donut Corner binge, I walk down the alley ways. The alleys around here are a combination of a third world country’s sewer system, Compton’s worst neighborhood, and those places where tourists are kidnapped and then brutally murdered EVEN IF THE RANSOM IS PAID. Whenever I’m walking down the alley I have my hands in my pockets at all times. I’m not playing pocket pool, I’m holding onto a prison-grade shank of some sorts. Danger is everywhere: if it’s not these mange-ridden alley cats that look like giant rats, it’s ‘Little Pistol Smoke’ who is not a day over 16 but he’s already killed more people then Joseph Stalin. No one knows who I am or what I’m holding in my pocket(s), and I don’t know what they are up to, so it keeps everybody honest.

Oh, and the police. The cops are fucking everywhere. If felony stops were based on commission, the po-po’s would all be millionaires. I don’t really blame them for hanging out in our hood because this is where all the action is. I call it the wild west, which isn’t far from the truth. When the Chargers lost to the Jets during the NFL playoffs the murder-rate spiked 120%. This place turned into Guantanamo Bay. It was fucking wild.

Finally, the more appealing aspect of living in a ghetto, in a garage no less, are the vermin. The alley cats look like starved coyotes (which may or may not be starved coyotes posing as alley cats), and they are mean. Every time I’m taking a piss on the side of the house, one of them will bolt out of the bushes like a Mexican without a green card and either hiss or attack me. You have to be tough to survive in this neighborhood, but these cats are like sewer rats on steroids. Also, the Jerusalem crickets. Fuck those things, man. These not-so-cricket like bugs are prehistoric beetles with an attitude problem! I never heard of them until I moved over here. Personally, I think they were sent here to exterminate humans. They are big, scary, and are a combination between Predator and Rosie O’Donnell. And even worse, THEY FUCKING BLEED! If you step on one if it doesn’t eat your foot, it will bleed like your ex-girlfriends vagina on the first of the month. I’ve had two of these assassins in the garage and I couldn’t sleep without my butter knife for a week.

"I'm going to fuck your day up."

The one redeeming factor about living in the ghetto is the camaraderie. Every time I go to jail I always recognize a few of my neighbors. Or when I’m going to the check cashing place, I tend to see a few people I’ve drank beers with during one of the festive ghetto/alley parties on the weekends. It kinda makes me almost want to like living here.