What are your thoughts about the Taco Bell Baja Blast Gelato and do you want some? What are your first impressions?

I’m not allowed to have it, it has soda in it. I don’t drink soda. My first impressions of this, it looks like a waste of product firstly, this is going to sit in a landfill for a million years. It’s $4 and it’s too small for me. It looks like there’s no thought put into this, it looks like a Halloween gag or something. It smells like a cleaning supply or something. Something I would get the grime of my mirrors from a “Saw” house, from the movie “Saw.” Let me check out the sugar content real quick…fourteen grams, that’s kinda low because what’s cool about Mountain Dew is it has a shit load of sugar. You know I love soda. Are you trying to tempt me? Twenty six years clean. 

You said you haven’t drunk soda in 26 years. Why is that?

When I was younger – when I was 18, early 20s – when I went to the grocery store I noticed that everyone had soda in their cart. If an item is not a necessity, why does so many people have this product in their cart? Obviously we need soap or paper towels, but we don’t need soda. My goal in life is to be myself, my goal in life is to not be like anyone else or everyone else. If I saw a large part of the population drinking soda, then I didn’t want to be like them. 

[Pete continues to talk about soda.] 

Have you ever heard of Faygo? It’s made in Michigan and it was really sweet, sweeter than regular soda. I think it was the last soda I drank. 

What is your favorite outfit you wear? 

Favorite outfit I guess, I like the fact I’m the only person besides the president or vice president that wears a shirt and tie. I always liked the idea of dressing up with a tie no matter what job I had. It’s funny because in the summertime people would ask if I was hot or uncomfortable. It kinda isn’t hot or uncomfortable for me. I spent most of my fashion money on work clothes, so I’m almost designated to wear this. I don’t know if I have a favorite outfit. I just want to try and use more colors, different designs, and different textures. 

[Pete talks about his fashion from a kid to what he looks for now]

Since I was 15 or 16 I have always liked dressing like old people. People would always ask “Why are you dressed like a grandfather?” One of the big things I’ve been looking for now, is I like finding older dress pants that are bigger in the waist and short in the legs. I like the fashion designs with that, so that’s my biggest thing, the love for old guys pants. I love wearing pins and stuff like this, the different things. 

Do you like standing out or being different?

I don’t try to be different, I just try to be Jason. I like being me, all the flaws I have whatever good things I have, I love that. I’m so excited there’s not another Jason in the world, but I hate the fact that majority of the people try to be like everyone else or afraid to be themselves. Those people are just kinda boring to me, I feel sorry for them. Like I said I have my quirks: I’m ugly, I’m goofy, but I’m me. So if I died today I’d be happy that I’ve always been the person I was born to be. I’ve always been that way since I was a kid. It just takes too much energy to not be yourself. 

Describe who Jason Pete is in 1 sentence.

I could tell you “I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned,” that might work. The first thing I thought of when you said it was “I’m an idiot”. I know idiot has a negative connotation but at the same time, I think it also has a positive connotation to it. Don’t ask me how or to explain that, but it just does. It’s different to be an idiot than a moron. An idiot involves some sort of creativity. I prefer I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned” but “I’m an idiot” works just as fine. [“Negative Creep”] is a Nirvana song, it’s one of my favorite songs. [The lyrics in “Negative Creep” also include the phrase “I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned”.]

What is your favorite record/album you own or have ever listened to?

There’s so many I can say, I would say the first one that comes to my mind is um… November 1979 I believe Public Image Ltd released an album called “Metal Box” ; it was their second album. When it was released in the UK it was called “Metal Box” but they re-released it for the United States release and it was called “Second Edition”. When they put the album out they put it in a metal canister that looks like a film canister, and they only made 50,000 of them. What happened when they shipped them a lot of them got broken. Because there is really no padding inside, there’s only a paper insert because there’s three records and that’s unheard of to put an album out that had three records. 

[Pete starts talking about Public Image Ltd as a band.]

One of the things that Public Image Ltd is famous for is they had a fantastic bass player named Jah Wobble. What they did was they turned up the bass really loud, so what was happening when they released the album was people were getting their stereo systems damaged, because the bass was too loud and it would blow the speakers. The bass was so intense that the needle would jump on the record and break the needle…When I bought the album it made me see music as something more powerful then what I heard on the radio and for some reason I identified with it. While some people are agitated by the album, I find peace in it, it calms me down. So “Metal Box”, Public Image Ltd, November 1979, favorite album, always gonna be. 

What are your favorite hobbies? 

Is petting cats a hobby? I guess my favorite hobby would be – and has always been for the longest time – is collecting comic books. I like the fact you can find them anywhere. If you don’t have a lot of money and you go to the right comic-book store, if you have $23 you can leave the store with at least 15 comics if you go through the cheapies. You can find somewhat-valuable stuff in dollar bins, 50 cent bins. Comic books would be my favorite cause I love art, I love literature. So obviously comic books combine the two together. People that have a lot of hobbies have something that does something for us, it fills in some gap that we didn’t have. I think what happens is that when you collect comic books there’s that process of buying, holding with care, protecting it with cardboard and plastic sleeves. It’s like you preserve it. I think baseball cards and more so comic books taught me how to be a good father. When you have a child it should come natural but when you take that much time handling comic books it’s gonna translate. I know it kinda doesn’t make sense but when you hold a comic book worth $300-400 you want to care for it, same with a child. It kinda goes hand and hand. So comic books are probably my favorite hobby. 

I know you have strong opinions on empty words. Do you want to elaborate more on some of these words?

“Seems” has a negative connotation behind it. “She seems to be pregnant” …she’s just pregnant she doesn’t “seem” to be, she just is. You could say she looks pregnant but not seems. “She ‘seems’ dead.” So yes “seems” is an empty word. When I went to graduate school I had this professor, Dr. Chavery, she was from India and she was really mean but really sweet. I used “seems” in a paper once and she just tore me to shreds like 12 minutes of class. I always pick on the idea of “really” and “honestly.” “Honesty” just has a bad connotation behind it. But yeah “seems, really, honestly, obviously, and truly” are the some I really pick on.

Tell us about your Temu experience.

I usually buy my daughter a lot of stuff. They have a lot of pop-culture reference things like pens and T-shirts because they’ve been selling like concert T-shirts now. I bought this concert T-shirt and I was dying to get it and I got it and everything was like bled together. You couldn’t see the words on it. I’ve gotten a couple, there’s some that are really nice. My daughter liked her concert shirts a lot. So mostly good experiences for the most part. 

Do you wanna tell us about the SCribblers Club you sponsor?

The goal of Scribblers is what the president and the members want to do. I’m hoping this semester we can do something with the stories: We can workshop them and make something bigger out of them. If you like poems or stories, plays or if you’re just interested in reading them, hopefully you will join the group. If you have certain scholarships that you need to be in a group, it would be perfect. Like I said, the skies are the limits, the group decides what to do. Like I said it can be fun, with more members the funner it will be.