

Merciful

Flush

ALSO BY LANCE MANION

Results May Vary

The Ball Washer

Homo sayswhaticus

The Trembling Fist

The Song Between Her Legs

What You Don't Understand

Merciful Flush

Lance Manion

www.lancemanion.com

Copyright 2012 by Lance Manion Enterprises

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information

storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

copyright owner.

Edited by Andira Dodge wordrummager@gmail.com  
Cover art by Christine Cox chris@eripa.com

ISBN 978-1-61863-200-5

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

I guess an apology is in order. I do not have the attention span to tell a single story well. Instead, this aspires to be the literary equivalent of a video montage- very short stories presented in a manner to elicit a response. While each individually may be taken as funny or crude, poignant or stupid, the hope is that together they inspire you to come up with a unique ideas of your own.

I think anyone who writes hopes each of their stories will be appreciated individually, but in the case of this collection my goal is to be responsible for a thoughts I had no control of and did not intend. It would provide tremendous satisfaction to know that these dumb stories were the catalyst for an architect to solve a design issue, a plumber to overcome a clogged pipe, an artist to transform a lump of clay, or a soulless lawyer to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

I've listened to particular songs or watched a certain part of a movie for the sole reason of trying to jog something loose in my own head. I didn't even have to like what I was listening to or watching as long as it took me where I needed to go. Those chemical reactions in my brain happened instantly (when they did happen) and it was usually triggered by the mood created by the song or movie.

Why write a long story when what I'm going for will or won't happen in a few paragraphs?

Happy to Help

It was one of those heartbreaking sights you see every now and again. While driving, I saw a young couple by the side of the road leaning over a dog that had been hit by a car. They were in obvious grief so it was easy to see the dog belonged to them. Because I'm so good in these situations, I felt obliged to pull over and do what I could to help them through this difficult time.

They were a married couple and Toby, the deceased dog, was like a child to them. They explained that they weren't ready to have kids and that they had poured all of their affection into Toby. I pointed out that it was lucky they had gone the dog route otherwise we might be looking down at the corpse of their five-year-old son Toby instead. I think they took what I said wrongly so I tried to explain; I only meant that if this was how well they took care of their dog, maybe they weren't ready for a kid. That didn't seem to help either. In fact, their reaction to my emotional counseling was getting downright snippy. I realized they were grieving so I tried my best not to get insulted.

"At least his head isn't all smashed in," I offered, trying to ease their suffering. Nothing I said was helping; they were both inconsolable. What was needed was a clear head and a can-do attitude. I suggested we load Toby into the back of their car so they could take him home and bury him. What I haven't pointed out yet to you, the reader, was that Toby was a good-sized dog. To the person who hit Toby it must have seemed as though they ran into the star of the Patterson-Gimlin film rather than a dog. In retrospect it might have been easier if Toby had been cut in half because getting him in the car proved to be a real trick. The wife didn't like it when I lifted Toby by the ears and then she made this little whimper when I tried to swing him back and forth with the goal of launching Toby into the trunk, "together on three." Taking a short break in the Toby-loading activities, I thought a story might be in order to soothe those two poor souls.

"You have to let go of the disappointment of losing your dog," I explained. Then I shared an intensely personal story of my own. When I was younger I carried around a lot of anger towards my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. It had been explained to me that their dietary decisions had been responsible for my teeth not being serrated. This in turn made it a lot harder to chew certain foods as well as made my bite a lot less fearsome. This caused me a lot of distress for a long time and it took me quite awhile to get past it. My eyes brimming with tears, I then turned and looked at the couple to see if they understood, certain beyond all doubt that they would.

They didn't. My story was apparently lost on them in this, their hour of despair. It had gone completely over their heads. Looking for something to say to end the awkward silence, I pointed to the spot some 40 feet away where I reckoned Toby had been hit and then walked them through his power-slide to his final resting place. It had to have been a truck, I postulated, because a car couldn't have caused him to be so violently hurled through space and across such a large patch of pavement as the clumps of dog hair and bloody gravel along his route attested. "I can't believe he didn't see a big truck like that coming. Maybe he just froze in terror." My words drifted off into the late afternoon breeze as the couple stared at me, their eyes covered in a donut glaze.

Better change the topic, I thought to myself, always sensitive to the feelings of others. Some gentle probing let me know they had neither plans to stuff him nor any desire to eat his remains despite my recommendation of a good Korean restaurant not four miles down the road. I sensed it was time to get them on their way as I could no longer handle the wracking sobs my every word of sympathy seemed to elicit.

Well, to make a long story not quite as long, we finally were able to get ol' Toby into the trunk and I was able to send this heartsick couple on their way. Before they left I was able to convince them to give me their number in case I was able to find Toby's collar (or left eyeball for that matter) in the trees I planned to canvass after their departure. I'm big on closure, just ask my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents.

mall ghosts

So I met him at the mall. At the food court. You always feel weird when someone asks if you mind if they sit at your table when there are empty tables nearby. A quick look at his tray revealed bourbon chicken, rice and corn, with a bottled lemonade. How bad could he be, right?

He doesn't even lift his spork before he says "What if _we_ are the ghosts?"

Do I pretend to not hear him? He continued. "Just think about it."

"No thanks," I politely answer.

"Who amongst us hasn't rattled some chains?"

"Or somehow slipped off his," I thought to myself. I began to open a CD I had just purchased in an attempt to extract the lyrics sheet and, hopefully, let him know I was too busy to chat.

"If you don't know about doors we are all walking through walls you know."

Damn these CDs. I can never get that stupid tape off the top and bottom without a ridiculous amount of effort.

He began to eat and I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the danger of a conversation had passed.

"Well _I_ feel haunted enough to cause other people goose bumps sometimes," he said through a mouthful of bourbon chicken.

I gave up on opening the CD and looked at him for the first time. I guess disheveled would be the best word to describe him. Not quite homeless-looking, but he didn't seem to care much about his appearance. He was one of those guys that could have been anywhere from an unhealthy 40 to a fit 80. What I like about words is that you already have him pictured in your head. That's all I need to type about him and there he is in your head. You pictured razor stubble didn't you? Perhaps graying a little? You may have already met him once.

"Aren't you going to ask my about my pin?" he asked through significantly less bourbon chicken.

"Should I?" I inquired.

"I wish you would," he said and he looked down slowly at the pin clinging to his jacket which you may already be picturing in your head. The pin, which hopefully you _haven't_ completely imagined and will let me describe (I mean, I hope you will allow me at least that, otherwise why don't you just stop reading and finish this little tale yourself), was grey and pink with a dash of every other color in the spectrum and looked like it was something that a cat had coughed up.

"What does the pin stand for?"

"It's to celebrate 'adopt a greyhound with breast cancer' awareness."

"Let me guess. You don't like people who wear pins for causes."

"Bingo." He smiled for the first time and turned his full attention to his corn.

My meal was almost finished and I found myself actually dragging my feet about the last swallow of soda. I wanted more of this guy. And then he delivered.

"Do you think that in the future when they learn to mix DNA from animals into our own that the Olympics will allow a swimmer with a beaver tail?"

Now it was my turn to smile. If this guy wanted an odd-off then game on.

"Actually I think human evolution will incorporate technology rather than animal mutations. I find it far more likely that after the swimmer dives in, a small outboard motor will pop out of his ass."

He didn't hesitate. "My money would still be on the guy with a beaver tail. Ever see those little guys swim?"

He fixed his eyes on me.

"Do you think that things other than your voice can echo?"

I had no reply. I wanted one badly but nothing came to me. I had this flashback of the three characters in _Garden State_ yelling into the "infinite abyss." What else could echo?

"Do you want some advice?" he asked me.

"You know, you should never offer something that is rarely taken," I said and felt like I had really returned serve there but I hadn't. The glibness must have drained from my face as I realized it.

"Do you?"

"Sure."

He leaned in a little. Almost imperceptibly. Maybe not all.

"If you want to be happy, find a girl that is a balloon shaped like a kite."

He stood up and went to leave, his meal half eaten. I wasn't ready to be alone again and quickly threw my CD into its bag and tried to hurriedly collect my napkins and such on my tray but when I looked up again he was gone.

Like gone-gone

I had goose bumps.

Maybe we _are_ the ghosts.

Venus de Gilligan

In a world that has satellites hovering over, shooting information about every inch of land, GPS, and various other tracking stuff, it was hard for Steve to believe that people could end up on deserted islands.

Then again it almost seemed a certainty given his middle name was Gilligan. Family name or not, what parent gives their son a middle name like that unless they want him shipwrecked at some point in his life?

It was his fault for renting that boat.

However likely or unlikely the simple fact remained that he had ended up on a little island almost a year ago and on this little island he had stayed. No amount of signal fires or "SOS" written in enormous letters in the sand had changed that.

There hadn't been a Skipper or Professor and there certainly hadn't been a Ginger or Mary Ann to keep him company. He would have been very happy with Mrs. Howell. In fact, many a moonlit night he sat on the beach and had the most horribly erotic daydreams about her.

And the Leggs N Eggs.

It was a strip club right by the train station that he frequented. The train station that is, not the strip club.

As much as he had wanted to.

The name of the club hadn't been the Leggs N Eggs but that was the promotion it ran in the newspapers. Girls were there stripping as early as six in the morning so the early commuters could come in and grab breakfast and see half-naked women before work.

Every morning he wanted to pay the $5 cover and go in and every morning he chickened out. He sat staring at the club across the street, trying to imagine the girls gyrating and sprawling around, his stomach prepared to endure the low quality food they dished out but his heart was unwilling to face actually going in.

He wanted to dream about Mary Ann but somehow his mind always settled for Mrs. Howell. She would coo "Darling" in his ear and then lay wordlessly under him as he completed his business.

One day a large crate washed ashore.

He saw it from quite a distance and the entire time he was running towards it his head was already imagining all the wonderful things it could contain. Then another part of him was imagining his disappointment at other things the crate could contain. What if it contained pirate costumes?

Would that be wonderful or dreadful?

These thoughts made a long run longer.

It was a crate filled with a stone carving tools. Chisels and hammers, rasps and rifflers. Steve sat on the beach with the crate between his legs and let out a long and sorrowful cry. All the birds on the island took flight at hearing his grief and respectfully flew around for a long while before settling back in the trees as there was really nowhere else for them to fly.

Why couldn't it have been filled with ham radios or flares? Or inflatable women? Or Hustler magazines?

There had always been one girl he watched enter the club most frequently. She seemed to arrive at the same time as he did. She would get out of her little hatchback and make the short walk into the club and he would settle further down onto the bench and watch her like he imagined the creepy guys outside a club would do. For $5 he could have seen her breasts. $5! Almost every night he would walk in the sand and curse his cowardice and curse her hatchback and wonder what her name was.

Because his middle name was Gilligan he assumed that a few days later another crate would wash up containing an instruction manual on stone carving. He was actually surprised when a crate failed to materialize. He waited another few days, certain that it was just an error and any wave could be bringing him the directions on how to use these various tools.  
Plenty of waves. A shocking lack of manuals of any sort.

Finally, in an act of desperation, he named her. He knew she probably had a stage name like Candy or Bubbles but he chose a real name. Her real name. A name befitting her.

He found a huge rock jutting out of the sand, just past the reach of the water. Pale and hard and more jagged than you'd imagine, given it was on a wind-swept beach but maybe that just went to show how hard it was.

He dragged the crate to it and went to work. At first with the pitching tool, knocking off large chunks of unwanted rock. He found he enjoyed the labor. His muscles ached and he would have to stop for hours at a time but soon the rock lost the shape of a hunk of nothing and started to look like something not entirely unlike something.

Days passed and his concentration grew more intense. He would occasionally glance longingly out to sea for his absent instruction manual but more often he would glance longingly at the rock under his hands.

He gave her the name Brianna.

She started to take shape. The problem was his hands felt clumsy as he started to wield the tracing tools and the rasps. Knowing he was a beginner, he wisely anticipated mistakes and gave her three arms to start with but even then he underestimated the difficulty in shaping stone and accidently knocked off two of them. Hair that was to tumble past her waist suddenly stopped at her shoulders. The "Start With One More Than You Need" plan was also used for her breasts and, tragically, encountered almost identical circumstances that transpired with her arms and left Brianna with only one boob.

But that boob was magnificent! For only $5 he would have known what her nipple actually looked like but as he finished it he really felt that they both would have been happy with his interpretation.

He had much more success with her legs. So much so that she ended up with all three. If he was to ever write a beginner's manual on stone carving he would certainly include a chapter on the dangers of trying to anticipate mistakes. On the positive side, the three legs gave her an ass that even M.C. Escher would admire! (If you find yourself wondering if he is a rap singer then I invite you to do us all a favor and go drown yourself. Heavy object, rope, your ankle, you get the idea.)

But he saved his best for her face. His hands danced nimbly and the tools felt like they had been in his hands for years. He was back on his bench. She was making her daily walk to the front door. He felt the pressure in his chest and for those few seconds all of his sexual inadequacies and longings fell away and then he grabbed that picture in his head and threw it down on this little chunk of rock God knows where in the Pacific.

When he was done he threw the tools back in the crate and started his life anew with Brianna. Her one tit and tri-cheeked ass and all. She managed to overlook his past and they lived happily ever after on that deserted island.

And neither Mrs. Howell nor M.C. Escher was ever the wiser.

the amazing spider man

So earlier tonight I was hurrying around doing all the things that needed to get done before a big storm, the last of which is to run the recyclables out to the garbage can. It had to get done because dark clouds sat on the horizon like a fat girl coming out of a donut shop (what?) and all the local weather stations had pretty much put the chance of precipitation at 108%. As I hurled my empties into the can my eye couldn't help but be drawn to a spider. Not just any spider but a great whopping argiope aurantia better known as the Golden Garden Spider and one of three local species of argiope orb weavers.

As I watched I realized he was just starting the tedious task of building his web for the night. The ol' spinneret was cranking out proteinaceous silk like nobody's business and those eight arms were feverishly at work putting up the insect-catching structure. Problem was, the spider was building the web in between two garbage cans out in the open and it was about to rain. The spider was not only wasting time and energy but possibly endangering itself in the process. I did what any normal person would do when faced with this situation. I drew my face in close to the busy little araneidae and screamed "it's gonna rain, dumbshit!"

The little fucktard kept working. Now normally I am quick to anger at the smallest of nature's creatures but for some reason a cooler head prevailed and I began to try to reason with it.

"Listen, you may think you're the shit with your silk being stronger than steel of the same thickness and all but you don't know dick about the weather."

The spider was immune to the effect of my logic. What was worse was that it had not started to rain yet so in some strange way I felt like the spider was winning the argument.

"We have technology, spider! I _know_ it's going to rain. Eight legs or not, you're going down!"

I was forced to slump down and await the rains that would bring my inevitable victory. I started to get a little antsy. This spider was hauling ass and would soon be done. The seconds turned to minutes and then the minutes turned to tens of minutes and still no rain. If anything the winds that were making the web-building process so difficult for our spider were letting up.

"Fucking weathermen."

Apparently the flies and beetles in my area had also missed the forecast for the evening because soon the air was buzzing with activity. No sooner was I waving my hands in front of my face to keep from inhaling one of the various flying pests then I glanced to find my spider nemesis was sitting in the middle of his finished web. I looked at my watch. Had I really been crouched down between my garbage cans for 45 minutes?! Suddenly I had the feeling I was being watched. Sure enough, after inspecting his cephalothorax, I found myself staring right into the eight cold eyes of my yellow and black archenemy. "Why do you even _need_ eight eyes? People have two and we're doing just fine, don't you think?"

He continued to mock me. Sitting there in his web. "So this is what we're doing tonight is it, you and me?" I sat down and got comfortable. "You know this is only for the night right? In the morning I'm spraying this whole fucking driveway with Raid. Every inch."

In slow motion I saw the moth fly by my face in a wild zigzag and then head straight into the web. "Nooooooo..."

"What the fuck kind of flying is that? Do you even know where you want to go or do you just fucking careen around aimlessly until you end up eaten?"

The moth fluttered briefly in the web, but he was caught. The spider, seemingly without a care in the world, slowly made his way down the web to his captured prey.

"Not tonight Sunshine!" Quickly I reached into the web and plucked the moth out of it. "That's right Mr. Eight-Eyed Weather Diviner, no dinner for you."

I tried to release it but the moth was stuck to my fingers. It still had webbing all over it and try as I might I couldn't get the shit off. No use saving it only to leave it unable to fly and an easy snack for the ants. "Fuck!" Off came a wing in my hand. "Shit. This is no way to build an insect."

Again I felt the eight eyes upon me.

"You win, you win! Ok?" I tried to flick the formerly-saved but now not-so-successfully- rescued moth back into the web but I couldn't get his sticky ass off my finger. White powdery shit started to get all over my hands. Finally I was able to brush him off into the web. He didn't struggle. He just lay there suspended between the garbage cans. The spider didn't move. Is it possible to motionlessly express disdain?

"Go eat him bitch!"

But the spider contemptuously just sat there.

The white dot in the web twinkled like an out-of-place star against the black driveway. As it was the only one out I almost made a wish on the squished lepidoptera but instead I turned and, after telling the spider that I hoped he was happy, I went to go back inside.

That's when the skies opened up.

fables of the deconstruction

I would start this by saying "there once was a girl" but the truth is although there once was, in the sense that she did previously exist, she also exists now so it would be more accurate to say that "there is this girl."

Though that doesn't sound much like the beginning of any fable I ever heard. Sounds like something you'd casually say to a friend when describing some completely mundane girl followed by a crushingly normal story.

Whatever.

There once was and continues to be this girl. You could never tell by looking at her but she not only has a fear of fire (arsonphobia) but also has a touch of pyromania, not so much the setting of fires but she is fixated on finding and extinguishing them. She also has a fear of pyromaniacs. And a deep distrust of firemen in general.

I hope I didn't forget anything there. If you are unsure exactly where this mix of fears and fixations leaves our girl then I guess I did a good job of telling you about them.

I should warn you that this fable, if you want to call it that, doesn't have any car chases or profound lessons to be learned. Just an attempt at describing a girl I find interesting. I hope you do want to call it a fable as I've gone ahead and used the word in the title and it makes it sound much better than a simple story. Why I chose to make it plural in the title is in the off chance you like the REM album "Fables of the Reconstruction" and would somehow connect the two subconsciously when you chose to read it in the first place. Hopefully this is the "Driver 8" of fables... a song written about author Brivs Mekis who wrote a book titled _Life: How to Live_ , had it printed, then kept all existing copies of it stacked in his closet.

Anyway, this girl ended up moving to Yellowstone to become a fire watcher. For those of you unfamiliar with what a firewatcher does, I'll explain it briefly. She sits for weeks at a time in the middle of the forest, up high in a watchtower, watching for fires.

Looking back on that last sentence, it appears that an explanation of a fire watcher is was completely unnecessary.

Moving on.

If you try and define what exactly fire is you're in for a wide range of answers. Scientifically speaking it is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion. Firemen consider it a living thing and poets give it credit for everything from simple desires to the complete destruction of everything and anything worth destroying. The girl who sat in the tower watching for smoke among the trees learned everything there was to know about the technical aspects and believed most of what the poets said on the topic as well.

She seemed drawn like a moth to the flame in the sense that a moth really isn't drawn to the flame but instead gets disoriented and is actually trying to steer away from it. Moths aren't used to bright man-made lights that are close by and instead think that they are bright natural lights like the sun or moon. In trying to avoid the light, which they think is very far away, they ironically enough end up spiraling closer and closer.

If you can understand that then you might want to explain it to me... and her. In fact, chances are if you can then you're reading this in some tower in the woods somewhere. If you're as lost as I am maybe you can cling to the theory she has that if she was feeling alone she might as well be alone by herself. Further from the bright man-made lights and closer to the sun and moon.

There was this campfire once, left by some careless camper. It might have gotten completely out of hand had she not been vigilantly watching her few hundred acres of trees and arrived promptly with a bucket of water. The thing is there was no one there to watch over her so she sat a few feet away terrified and transfixed by the flames. Hands trembling she watched gravity affect the chemical reaction, the lighter gases dancing up towards the lower pressure. Color variations caused by the uneven temperature telling her in a hissing whisper that the uneven temperature explanation is just a cover story. The feeling of heat transforming itself within her into passion. Flickering and threatening like the tongue of every Freudian snake ever whipped out of an Into to Psychology textbook.

Alone in the forest, she stood consumed by a fiery beast no more than two feet across. Shadows playing across her face as she gripped the bucket in perhaps the most overstated dousing ever to have taken place in Camp Site #45.

She hurled the water and turned away. She ran back to her tower not looking back.

So she sat there and wondered if it was completely out. Nighttime seems to be when that question is particularly poignant. Her dreams echoed her concern with their typical chaotic and unedited imagery.

And yet it was almost three weeks until she could bring herself to return to the scene, take a stick and thrust it into the ashes. Stirring them fearfully.

Her worst suspicions were then realized, a few glowing embers remained. She stood waterless and thought of the many tales of women burned at the stake in medieval Europe for sexual indiscretions that she invented in her head. The cinders shimmered like the eyes of a dragon that promises to chase her back up into the tower and burn down the whole forest that she has sworn to protect and her along with it.

So she stood there frozen.

You have to wonder at this point how you want this fable to end. Not so much how it will end but how you want it to end. In the end isn't that the point of fables? No doubt she is thinking the same thing as she stands there running through every likely scenario in her head. Perhaps she wishes that she was you, safely waiting to see how it will all turn out.

Perhaps you don't know either and lack the time or interest to figure it out for yourself. If that's the case then I must admit that this is a poor fable and I have failed in my efforts to spin an affecting yarn.

On the other hand maybe you're like me and the way you think it will end differs so much from how you want it to end that you wish you'd never read it in the first place.

Of course most of you are probably just disappointed that I didn't work in Smokey the Bear or at least a regular bear somewhere in the story.

Nah. There are too many bears in fables to begin with... although reminding you that only you can prevent forest fires does seem appropriate.

a nice hot shower

You know, when the stresses of the day start piling up one on top of the other, I find that nothing relaxes like a nice hot shower. So it was when I stepped into my shower this afternoon. Personally I prefer my showers _very_ hot. I will only shower if I know that nobody has taken a shower before me for at least eight hours. I hate to get all soaped up only to feel the hot water fading like a fat horse in the straightaway.

So I adjusted my bathing suit (yes I wear one) and cranked up the heat (Because, that's why). Making sure I had my trusty towel within reach (I realize that most people shower naked but there was an incident), a byproduct of my love of Douglas Adams books, I prepared to step in (What do you want to hear? There was an incident at summer camp involving the shower and my nakedness! Happy now?).

Ahhhhhhhh. The hot water hit my skin and suddenly all was right with the world. Feeling like I needed that something extra today, I turned up the hot water just a touch. Soon my muscles began to relax under the searing torrent and I was once again faced with the usual dilemma- do I go Axe Phoenix or Axe Kilo as my body wash? Perhaps the hassle of this decision caused me to need a little more heat but I found the handle wouldn't turn any further as it was up all the way. Looking down at my body I realized my skin was bright red and a fog hung heavily in the enclosed space. I didn't care though. It just wasn't hot enough so I forced the handle a little and found I could push it down just a tiny bit further. That was slightly better but I noticed as I was grabbing the knob that my hands appeared swollen. Small blisters were appearing on my chest as well. I reached the decision that any reasonable person would have reached- the water wasn't hot enough. With both red puffy hands I grabbed the handle and put all my strength into turning it. With that the nozzle began to produce a mixture of water and hissing steam. Soon I could see hunks of my epidermis begin to slide off my arms and chest as I stared down at a handful of hair, with shampoo still clinging to it, that had come off of my head as I had attempted to rinse. I gazed at my arms and saw subcutaneous tissue peeking out beneath the melting layers of dermis. I was too far gone to turn back now. I gave the handle one last twist and it came off in what was left of my hands.

It began to be difficult to stay upright. The tiles on sides of the shower had begun to start popping off (damn that inferior grout!) and even if one of my eyes hadn't been blinded by the scalding steam now erupting from the showerhead, I was unable to see more than a few inches due to the thick clouds of vapor. Luckily most of the collagens in my skin had been burned away and thus I avoided the Maillard Reaction- _nothing_ is as embarrassing as crispy skin, am I right? Clumsily I attempted to put the handle back on and turn off what had started off as water. Fingernails, toenails and an ear clogged the drain as the boiling scarlet water churned around my feet. In a remarkably lucky occurrence I was actually able to stick the handle back on and somehow bring the scorching spray to an end.

The surrounding glass doors had long since fallen off their melted tracks and shattered against the toilet. The broken glass cut into the crimson tattered rags that were once my feet as I lurched out of the shower in search of my towel. Looking through the one eye that _wasn't_ sitting melted in an open socket I was able to stumble to the sink and spit out the few remaining teeth that still clung to the gaping maw that was my ruined mouth.

I tell you there is NOTHING like a nice hot shower. A couple of blasts of Axe Touch, which stung like fuck let me tell you, and I'm ready to face the evening.

for the birds

I have a story to tell.

Well. More of a confession.

I am the Peace Valley Cardinal.

It started out as a goof.

Some years back, the details (as they often are) a little blurred by the time and distance I've traveled as a human being, I had the fortune of "acquiring" a quite nice mascot uniform from a rival high school, The Lincolnshire Cardinals. It was just before our team played them in an important game and I came to the conclusion that they'd have little use for their mascot that day so I "acquired" it the night before.

No one could ever know I was the culprit so it was boxed up and exiled to my attic. After a few moves I no longer even remembered I had it. It became just one more box filled with artifacts of my youth.

Then one day I found it.

It was packed in the same box as some of my old records.

In particular _Heroes_ by David Bowie. The album I had used to make my "going to England as an exchange student" tape. Suddenly for a few minutes I was back on the beach at Brighton watching the waves roll up towards my feet and listening to it in my headphones. Feeling the distance between us. Every inch of ocean.

I, I wish you could swim  
Like the dolphins  
Like dolphins can swim  
Though nothing  
Will keep us together  
We can beat them  
For ever and ever  
Oh we can be Heroes  
Just for one day

Missing her.

Holding up the vinyl I couldn't help wondering where she was now.

But I digress.

Because under this LP was the mascot uniform.

I had a great idea. I would make a YouTube video! All of a sudden it came together in my head. I would remake the Patterson-Gimlin film except wearing a giant bird suit. It would be funny right?

Things started well enough and it turned out there was a state park close by that happened to offer terrain almost identical to the setting of the Bigfoot footage. Problem was that I didn't have a partner in my crime so I couldn't get the jerky motion required to accurately duplicate the footage. How do you approach one of your friends and ask that they film you in a bird mascot outfit?

I couldn't do it.

So I was packing up to leave when I noticed a group of bird watchers on a nearby bridge that spans the large tributary that runs into the lake which the entire park surrounds.

It had to be fast.

I couldn't make it something where they could all train their binoculars and easily make out that it was a moron in a mascot uniform. These birders are serious about what they do so I had to be subtle and quick about it.

I picked two points. One where I could approach unseen and begin my dash across their line of sight and another where I could finish and make my way back to my car without being seen.

With that I made my dash and hoped a few of them might happen to glance over in my direction.

I wasn't sure how a 6' 5" bird would run so I did this little hop every few steps and tried to keep the wild flapping of my wings to a minimum.

Next thing I knew my head was off and I was seated in my car and driving away from the park.

It had begun.

The Peace Valley Cardinal had come into existence.

Or _Cardinalis Enormous_ as the ornithologists came to call me/it.

As soon as I arrived home I realized some light tailoring was in order if I was to take this little "lark" further. (Get it? Lark? Larks are birds too.) I couldn't have any zippers or seams showing. Soon my costume was complete and ready for "the show."

On the other side of the lake, by the Nature Center, there is a small bird blind that I have been known to frequent. It's very relaxing and just as the sun sets you'll get a nice collection of not only cardinals, doves and the odd oriole but a nice assortment of hummingbirds and the occasional owl.

I made my first appearance about four months ago.

Again, very subtle. I was deep in the woods and only spent a very short time in view of anyone. I crept up. Appeared to forage around for a few moments and then beat a quick retreat when I heard a commotion in the blind. After stashing the outfit in my trunk, I innocently walked over to see what all the ruckus was about and learned all about the Cardinal Rex that had just been spotted again.

It was really quite a rush.

I happened to stop by the following evening and let me tell you a seat inside that blind was harder to get than front row tickets to Pearl Jam.

I waited two weeks to make a return appearance.

This time I just ran at the blind as though enraged and beat my wings against the side of the wood structure as I listened to the terrified inhabitants shriek and cry inside. I'm not sure what my little whistles sounded like as they were muffled inside my head but they must have lent a very eerie soundtrack to the already unsettling scene.

And just as quickly I disappeared into the forest.

That was the first time I made the local papers.

The following weekend I even joined a group of birders in searching the woods for proof of this strange visitor. Obviously there were people who thought the whole thing a hoax, along the lines of a Bigfoot or Loch Ness thing, but there were some among the group who were convinced that this big red bird was the missing link between our 2008 avians and the dinosaurs.

Who was I to argue?

Then the Fish & Game folks showed up. Somehow, somebody from the State had gotten wind of my shenanigans and decided to investigate. Are you aware that pretending to be a 6' 5" cardinal in a State Park is illegal? Neither was I.

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

I jumped out from behind a tree and scared a group of school kids on a field trip half to death (intentional) and sent an elderly couple to the emergency room to be "evaluated" after running headlong into the glass door of the gift shop (unintentional). After those two incidents I laid low for a few weeks but soon got the itch again.

Sometimes it was just standing a few feet inside the tree line by the side of the road just to watch the occasional car swerve or break suddenly as they caught a glimpse.

Sometimes I'd just stand in the creek splashing water under each wing until I realized I was being watched and then I'd take off in a wild panic. My beak swiveling this way and that, starting off in one direction and then just as quickly breaking back the other way.

One time, when spotted by a couple of male teenagers, I simply stared back at them until finally lifting my wing and pointing at them.

Then I slowly motioned them over.

They broke and ran.

I guess any forest creature can be intimidating if they're 500 times their normal size.

I started a scrapbook of my exploits.

Sometimes I appeared in the news, just as often in the police blotter.

How did it end?

Funny story, that.

Turns out that there was someone out there who recognized the mascot outfit. I should have pieced it together when I saw an alumni update e-mail from my old high school that included an article on how our school mascot costume had recently been stolen.

I should have seen it coming.

You see my school mascot is the Blue Jay.

I was just coming into view of the bird blind when I saw it. The unmistakable sight of that large blue bird head. It was headed right for me.

I can only imagine the reaction of the people inside the blind as they saw the 6' 5" cardinal get tackled by the slightly smaller but just-as-disproportionately-large blue jay.

I had not expected the frontal assault and went down hard, twisting my wing badly. This blue jay meant business. It was on me like white on rice and I could only distantly hear the chaos that had erupted in the bird blind.

Suddenly I remembered the article online on how our school mascot had been stolen. It made no sense though, why would this feathered vigilante come after me? Nobody even knew about me "acquiring" the cardinal costume.

Well, almost nobody.

I swept the legs out from under my avian adversary and quickly assumed the mounted position. Ready to rain down blows should my hypothesis be wrong.

I pulled off the blue jay head and saw I had been correct.

It was my high school girlfriend.

"I always pictured you more as a swallow."

I had done it. I had come up with the perfect thing to say in the strangest situation imaginable. I was indeed a man with wit to spare!

She smiled broadly and I started to climb off her when I heard approaching footsteps.

Park Rangers!

Two of them. Big too and unless I missed my guess one of them was holding a Taser or tranquilizer gun. What is cardinal for "don't taze me, bro?"

We started to make a dash for it but in our cumbersome outfits we were too clumsy to get away.

I knew what I had to do.

"Get away! Save yourself, Crazyass!" I waved at her, shouting through my papier-mâché head for her to get out of there. Not to look back.

Then I turned back toward the Rangers. I ran at them.

I could hear the song in my head again.

I, I can remember  
Standing  
By the wall  
And the guns  
Shot above our heads

I heard the warning but kept on running at them. Wings apart. Making whatever noise I thought a giant attacking cardinal would make. I wanted to give those inside the blind their money's worth.

I was unaware that a tranq dart will go right through a mascot uniform.

It does. I felt the pain explode in my leg.

I fell into the mud.

And we kissed  
As though nothing could fall

Things got blurry around the edges. Very dizzy. Things going black. I could still see her smiling face though. I could still hear the song. I could still hear the waves.

Oh we can beat them  
For ever and ever  
Then we can be Heroes  
Just for one day

Hicksville, NY

So I'm on the toilet reading _The Bathroom LOL Book_. Yes, it's a real book. Published by Red-Letter Press. In New Jersey. You think I'd make something like that up?

You think I want to lead off a story with that literary reference? Hell no. I'd rather act all pretentious and have you believe I read Walt Whitman in the can but I don't. Hell, chances are that half the people that started this have already stopped reading after seeing _The Bathroom LOL Book_... or New Jersey.

So I'm on the toilet reading _The Bathroom LOL Book_ and there's a mention of a Hicksville, NY man who was charged with petty larceny after a pet store checkout girl heard chirping coming from his pants and realized that he was trying to steal two lovebirds. The book thinks this is funny and ends by saying the man was put behind bars for this botched robbery attempt.

And suddenly I'm miles away. Maybe hovering over a pet store in Hicksfuckingville, NY. I'm not sure. All I'm certain of is that these two birds were put back behind bars. The story doesn't say what happened to these lovebirds. You're left to assume that after what can only be imagined as a terrifying yet exhilarating experience for them they were returned again to the small cage that they called home. Did they wonder as it was happening if the person stuffing them down the front of their pants was some sort of hero there to rescue them? If so, did they also wonder why the escape plan had to involve being pressed against (and I'm guessing a bit here based on how I react under pressure) sweaty genitalia? Whatever discomfort these two had to endure I'm sure they were still dizzy with the anticipation of finally leaving the store and setting off on some brand new adventure.

Maybe that's what the chirping was about. Or it could have been when one of them got a beakful of hairy ballsack... but I prefer the idea that they could no longer contain their joy and had to burst forth in song.

Which landed them right back in the small wire cage where they began. I can only hope they both chirped and it wasn't just one of them because then there would always be that tension between them. The one lovebird glaring silently at the other one glaringly.

The irony of the story had me sitting on the toilet long after my business was done. You know when you've been there too long because your ass starts to ache a bit. The toilet was not made for long-term reading comfort. Gravity is doing its best to cram your body down the hole in the seat. It might not feel like it but don't kid yourself, that's what its goal is. If it had its way you'd suddenly splash down in the water without realizing what happened.

But I couldn't get up. I had suddenly remembered part of a poem from the aforementioned Walt Whitman... "To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports." Do these lovebirds (did it have to be lovebirds?) look out through the bars and understand these words better than the man who shoved them down his pants and is now enjoying the same view? Or you and me?

I close my eyes and pretend the toilet is a big rig and I'm plunging through the inky blackness somewhere in Illinois. Of COURSE I could have said driving at night but given the choice wouldn't you rather plunge through inky blackness than drive at night? And while you're complaining why not ask me why Illinois rather than Nebraska if what I'm going for is long stretches of flat without any lights that would break the illusion of sea travel?

Or the Atlantic Ocean for that matter. Clearly the quote is referencing the ocean travel. Sailor? Hello? Well, truth is I get seasick pretty easily so the best I can do is sit on the toilet and pretend I'm a long-haul trucker and truck stops are my ports. As far as why Illinois... that would be none of your business.

Either way, when I open my eyes again I'm sitting on a toilet in my house. Given the lifespan of lovebirds I'm guessing that both of the birds from the story are long dead and the would-be birdnapper is probably out of jail and thinking of his next big heist.

Sometimes I wish I didn't get seasick. "O, to sail to sea in a ship! To leave this steady, unendurable land! To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses; To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, To sail, and sail, and sail!" But I do and even repeating the word sail so many times in my heads gets me a bit queasy.

I steady myself as I stand and start the business of wiping.

joy ride

It's funny what triggers a memory. Something as simple as a song and suddenly you're having a vivid recollection of something that happened over 30 years ago. In my case it's something I would have preferred to have kept buried deep in my head but there you go; your head doesn't seem to much care what it drags out into the daylight at any particular time. What's worse is that I'm not even sure I believe it except it happened to me so I'm inclined to. I'm not sure you'll believe it but as I've started telling it already I might as well finish up and let you make of it what you will.

I was nine at the time.

My parents had just purchased a reconditioned Chrysler. I could try and tell you which model and act like some sort of grease monkey but the truth is I just remember it was a Chrysler and that's about it. A four-door station wagon with a tailgate that dropped down and a hatch that went up. It was a pale bad yellow in color.

Obviously there are a lot of other details I could give you about my life at age nine but the story really revolves around the car so I'll skip a lot of the unnecessary junk. Just assume my life was a typical suburban upbringing with the usual daily dramas and triumphs. Well, maybe short a few triumphs compared to the other kids in the neighborhood but not completely devoid of them either.

One night I overheard my Dad tell my Mom that the previous owner of the car had gone headlong through the windshield... except without his head which was still sitting in the front seat wrapped up in his seatbelt. I figure it is easier to say it that way than tell you he went headlesslong through it. Anyway, from the time I heard the story the car creeped me out.

It didn't help that my bedroom looked out over the driveway while my parents' room, down the hall three or four football fields away it seemed, overlooked the back yard. They would never believe me when I told them that the car would sometimes wake me up at night. This was before camcorders and cell phones could have easily proven my case. Every time I would go wake them we would run back and all would be quite on the driveway and I would get yet another lecture about my overactive imagination.

It was always that stupid fucking song _Cars_ by Gary Numan. Playing softly over and over again until I came to the window. I would look down on the car and every now and then it would flash one headlight like some sort of malevolent wink. Doesn't sound very scary but when you're nine years old and you hear a weird synthesizer in the darkness it freaks you out a little. Then there was the time I looked down and there was a headless corpse lying on the hood and the windshield was all smashed up and there was blood everywhere. I screamed so loud that three other houses in the neighborhood had their lights pop on and people in bathrobes came pouring into the streets to see what had happened.

Needless to say there wasn't any corpse on the hood of our car and my parents made the usual apologies to my worried neighbors. They almost made me see a shrink but I convinced them it was all a nightmare.

In a way it was.

So from then on I didn't try and tell my parents anything about their car or the damn Gary Numan song. Even the time I watched the driver's side door slowly open. No song that time. Don't even remember why I was looking at it. Maybe it was just part of my nightly routine by then.

Looking back I can't believe that even this became normal to me but when you're nine I guess you can stomach a lot of weird shit.

I guess your first reaction upon hearing this whopper is to ask did I ever ride it to which the answer is "of course." Almost every day. Somehow in the daylight it was almost ok and it never seemed to misbehave when my parents were around. I do remember hearing _Cars_ on the radio almost every drive but it was 1979 and I guess the song was a big hit so who's to say that was unusual.

One day I was sitting in the backseat ready to go when my Mom said that she forgot something in the house and that she would be right back. I remember immediately starting to cry and begged her not to leave me in the car but she was already out the door and half way up the front steps. As soon as the door shut behind her, the engine turned over and the doors locked. Funny, in telling you this story I suddenly remember the feeling of the air conditioning coming on full blast. I had goose bumps anyway but the feeling of the cold air on my face as I felt the car start to roll backwards makes the hair stand up on my arms even as I type this.

My eyes were shut tight at first but I remember the feeling of backing over the mailbox, the little rumble it made underneath where I was sitting terrified. The car braked hard and I sunk into the seat a little before the sound of squealing tires hurt my ears and made my eyes pop open as if to see the last things I would ever see.

The volume was cranked up and Gary was singing with what seemed a chorus of demons.

_Here in my car_  
_I feel safest of all_  
_I can lock all my doors_  
_It's the only way to live_  
_In cars_

I try but I can't remember many details of the ride. I just remember driving faster than I'd ever seen my parents drive or anyone else for that matter. There are little snippets of concerned faces and hairpin turns but in no particular order. I remember the feel of the warmth running down my legs as I wet myself.

_Here in my car_  
_I know I've started to think_  
_About leaving tonight_  
_Although nothing seems right_  
_In cars_

Eventually the drive had a conclusion. (I will spare you the clumsy metaphors about life being a journey.) I ended up in a ditch surrounded by at least half of the local law enforcement in addition to a few Illinois state troopers.

Now you might think that this led to me being grounded for the better part of my childhood but the entire incident was forgotten very quickly actually as the next night my parents were killed in that same car. Apparently they tried to beat a train through a crossing. I later found out they hit it head on and for many years wondered if it was the shame of having a crazy kid that made them want to do it.

Like everything, all the pain and fear eventually disappears into the past, only to surface when something makes you think about it. Usually these triggers are unwelcome and you do your best to avoid wallowing in them.

Maybe that was why I ended up not only buying a Chrysler recently but not even thinking about the connection it had to my past. Now some might argue that your subconscious leads you to make a lot of odd decisions without ever knowing that you're the one making them but I think I'm being totally honest when I say that I never even thought about it. I just liked the look of the new Town & Country.

So what are the odds that the last three days when I turned on the car that the same song would be playing? What are the odds that it would be _Cars_? I reckon the odds are pretty slim which is why I'm sitting here behind the wheel typing this and posting it before I turn the key again this morning.

Heart racing and every hair on my neck standing straight up.

Anything but Gary Numan.

Please.

auld lang syne jelly-shooting Jesus

So I read an article in the paper today about how the police have recovered a number of baby Jesus statues that were stolen over the holidays. Apparently manger theft is a bigger problem than I'd thought. Turns out that less than half of them are ever claimed. That got me to wondering... what happens to the ones that are not identified and returned to their owners?

A few phone calls later and the mystery deepened a little.

According to a spokesman for the state police, there is usually a reason that these plastic lawn ornaments are not picked up. He used an interesting term. He called them "misfits." He explained that the other decorations have some sort of sentimental value to their owners and they are usually claimed quickly after the owners pick their Jesus out from a Jesus line-up.

Not the "misfits."

"Nobody wants a savior that shoots jelly" the officer said.

So where do all these extra Jesus figurines end up?

The storeroom of misfit Jesuses.

I had to go take a look for myself and wouldn't you know... there really was a Jesus that shot jelly. There was a Christ-in-the-box as well. Nobody wanted him back either.

Rummaging through the shelves I also found a polka dotted Jehovah, a Savior that was part bird and part fish, and a Messiah riding an ostrich.

Captain Moonracer, the fellow in charge of the storeroom, told me that many of these statues have been locked up in here for over 20 years. All of them waiting for someone to come claim them.

Then I remembered a verse contained in Matthew 24: "And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. Even the misfits will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory, and he will load them into his mighty sleigh. He will whistle and shout and call his angels by name. On Michael, on Gabriel, on Raphael! Dash away, dash away, dash away all! And then the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken."

Standing in the cramped room I felt a shiver run down my spine.

It was obvious that Captain Moonracer had become quite attached to his group of misfit Jesuses. "Much like the smashing of mailboxes, some people think this is funny and it's not."

His hand wandered to the cross hanging from a chain around his neck.

"It's just the wrong thing to do... stealing a baby Jesus. Even if it does shoot jelly."

I told him not to worry and that I had a feeling that one day someone would be coming to pick up these figurines... probably like a thief in the night.

I think that made him feel better because I heard him exclaim ere I drove out of sight;

" _Should auld acquaintance be forgot,  
And never brought to mind?   
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,   
And auld lang syne!_

For auld lang syne, my dear,   
For auld lang syne.   
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,   
For auld lang syne."

Rivers

I don't understand something, but it's going to be hard to explain. Rivers. I don't understand rivers. Let's take the Mississippi for instance. It "starts" at Lake Itasca in the Minnesota North Woods and flows 2,350 miles down through the mid continental United States to the Gulf of Mexico. It starts 20 feet wide and three feet deep and reaches as wide as four miles wide at Lake Onalaska (due to damming) in Wisconsin and 200 feet deep at Algier's Point in New Orleans. Purely as a point of interest, a raindrop landing in Lake Itasca will arrive in the Gulf of Mexico in roughly 90 days.

What don't I understand? Well, where the fuck does all this water come from?? Don't get me wrong, I understand all about rain and gradients. I can talk until everyone is asleep in the room about elevations (it starts at 1,475 feet above sea level and ends at zero in New Orleans; more than half of that drop happens in Minnesota), watersheds and floodplains. My problem is that I watch the rain on my driveway and about two minutes after it stops all the rain has trickled down to the street and my driveway is dry. The rainwater in the streets makes its way down to the local stream in about five minutes tops. I'm on board so far, all the little streams make a bigger stream until you have one big one feeding into whatever river is nearby. Fine. All clear on that. BUT if it doesn't rain for two weeks, where the fuck is all the water coming from then? Ever seen the Mississippi? It's the same friggin' size whether it's rained or not! It should be gigantic the day after a rain and just a trickle after a two week drought. Nope. I lived in Iowa, sure it dropped a foot or flooded a bit but day after day it was the same big-ass river of water. You're gonna tell me that all of the feeder tributaries just happen to provide the same amount of water whether it has rained or not?! I'm not buying it. Sure at Lake Itasca the average flow rate is only six cubic feet per second, which doesn't sound like very much, but if you consider that a cubic foot of water is 7.489 gallons, you have to start doing the math in your head when you hear that the flow rate has increased to 12,000 cubic feet per second by the time the mighty Mississippi has reached Upper St. Anthony's Falls in nearby Minneapolis. That's almost 90,000 gallons of water PER SECOND. You're going to try to sit there with a straight face and tell me that if it hasn't rained in two weeks in Minnesota that there should be 90,000 gallons of mystery liquid shooting over the falls in downtown Minneapolis?! It should be bone-fucking-dry with fish gasping and flopping along the banks like something out of _National Geographic_! Is it just me? I'm trying to figure this out. I won't even begin to tackle the 600,000 cubic feet per second of water that flows along in New Orleans. That's four and half MILLION gallons EVERY SECOND!!! Fuck that.

Water falls from the sky. What isn't absorbed by the soil or sucked up by thirsty plants and animals then trickles down to streams and such and carried to the river. Once there it moves at a rate of somewhere between 1.2 and three miles per hour downstream. Given that the river basin extends from the Allegheny Mountains in the eastern United States to the Rocky Mountains, including all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces, that would mean that the river basin measures approximately 1,837,000 square miles. Hmmm. Now what? I guess I could look up the precipitation data for the Mississippi River Basin but given the diverse hydro-climatological applications I would need to develop a rainfall estimation based on a Z-R conversion algorithm that involved an optimization technique to determine the parameters for the transformation of radar-reflectivity to rainfall. But wait, knowing I would want to track not only precipitation but where and when this precipitation occurred to build my case that all rivers are breaking the most basic rules of physics I would have to integrate to an hourly four × 4 km2 resolution and then visually inspect the final numbers for each region. I think it would be much easier to build a scale model of the Mississippi River Basin in my backyard. Give me a moment for this one. I WILL prove once and for all that two days after it stops raining, rivers should run dry.

uncontructionalism

I think you'd be hard pressed to find an industry with a worse reputation than the home improvement crowd. These independent contractors make used-car salesmen look reputable in comparison.  
And who can blame them?  
Is there anything funnier than the idea of working on someone's home and doing a poor job? If I could do anything in the world I think I'd be a bad handyman. I am a true follower, nay _devotee_ , of unconstructionalism.  
I'd definitely be a doors and windows guy.  
There is just something so awesome about agreeing to repair someone's front door and then only completing half the work. Spend the morning taking down the door and then the frame, going off to the Home Depot to pick up the new door and then never returning. Just leaving the house with no door. A big hole in the front so the wind and small animals can just walk the fuck in. The homeowner assuming that I've gone for lunch and then sitting there all mad and impotent as the afternoon wears on and there is no sign of me. Nobody would think that I wasn't _coming back_. It would be beyond their ability to process; they would just pace back and forth and then as the sun sets they would be calling the porn line I gave them as my phone number. Trying desperately to explain how I removed their door and didn't return at the same time telling the girl who sounds like she just arrived in the country via a freight container from Eastern Europe that they are not interested in what she is wearing.  
I would just go home and sit there doubling over in a fit of glee imagining this poor fuck trying to come up with some way to barricade the gaping opening in his once-secure home before a horde of mosquitoes and stinging insects starts to march in and have at his family.  
The look on his face the next morning as he keeps looking out where his front door use to be waiting to see me pull up and apologize and put in a door. But I never show. Ever. It would be completely beyond him to think that I would take down his front door and _not_ come back. He'd be frozen in disbelief. He might go six months before he finally accepts I'm not coming back and he's going to need to hire somebody to fix it. I would be like some ex-lover in his subconscious. I bet by the end he blamed himself for me not returning.  
If I really worked hard I bet I could remove both the front door and the sliding glass doors in the back at the same time. Same disappearing act but now I could imagine the wind whistling through the house in addition to all the other unpleasantries I would be heaping on these stupid bastards.  
I swear, if I left and an hour later a terrible storm came through, with driving rain and lashing winds, I think I might die of joy. Just imagining the family scampering around trying to block the doors and mop up the rain and wondering where people get all those sandbags when there are floods- it might just be too much for my weak heart!  
If I somehow came into a boatload of money, I think I would hire a _team_ of workers. That way I could find a nice elderly couple and stake them out. Waiting for the day before the first big snowstorm of the season. Then I could go in and remove all the doors _and_ windows. Enjoying their tea and biscuits they would no doubt offer, knowing that I was hours away from high-tailing it out of there with all their doors and windows in my possession. Back to my secret lair like some sort of hardware Grinch. Reading about them the next day. The two frozen corpses found the next morning, sitting in their living room waist deep in a snow drift. Pictures of their grandchildren buried on the coffee table where only hours before I had enjoyed a few gingersnaps and tales of their exploits in WW II.  
That may be the funniest thing I can physically imagine. The police wondering who the fuck would steal an old couple's doors and windows. Old people are just gullible enough to let someone do that. Stupid, stupid, stupid old people. They almost deserve to freeze to death in their own living rooms.  
I guess there is something so inherently vulnerable about doors and windows. The whole "house is his castle" thing. Take away the door and it's like his fly is down in public. Touch his windows and that simple act of fenestration undermines his mental substrate and threatens to make him lose his tempered.  
Anyway. I wonder how many people you need to do this to before you end up with your face all over the TV?  
I think it's time I found out.

Rich hates Cubism

Rich moved ever so slightly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other almost imperceptibly. Like he had done the countless other times before as he stood transfixed in front of the painting. Gazing upon it as though lost in another time. It was the only reason he ever wandered into the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection section of the Art Institute of Chicago.  
Ironically he couldn't stand Cubism and yet here he stood transfixed in front of a piece from none other than Pablo Picasso.  
It was a common misconception that the mysterious figure seemingly painted underneath _The Old Guitarist_ is a representation of the guitarist as a younger man. For years Rich labored under that delusion and, although it brought a boatload of its own poignancy, it paled to the meaning it gave him when he learned the ghostly figure in the painting was actually a female.

Outside, spring was in full bloom and the wind off Lake Michigan was sweeping the old scents of the city away and replacing them with a fresher version of buildings and cars and trees.  
Inside, the struggle went on inside his head.  
He used to be a musician. He would cradle the guitar like a lover and make it bring forth things that his voice could not. Things he often didn't even know were there to be brought out.  
Now his fingers felt thick and clumsy when he picked one up. Whatever spark there once was had fled. He tried to understand. The violent ups and downs of youth, the drama and passions, the turmoil and pain had long ago been replaced with calm and comfort.  
The lines in the corners of his eyes, that would once scamper away with the light like so many roaches, now brazenly hung around for anyone who bothered to look close.  
Rebellious laughter and heartbroken tears had given way to smiles and frowns and the first brave grey pube had come uninvited to join the company of unwanted hair sprouting from his ears and nose.  
His guitar, his greatest ally in the past, was now nothing more than some vague former cohort that he would pass on the street with barely a backwards glance. Rich no longer dreamt of playing the minstrel to crowds clamoring for his song. Such daydreams were like the dead brown leaves that even now were being drawn out from their winter hiding places and blown into nothingness by the eager breezes of a new season.  
Nobody wanted to hear from a dead, brown leaf.  
Picasso had painted _The Old Guitarist_ during his Blue Period after the suicide death of a close friend. Try as he might to come up with some poetic explanation for the ghostly presence of the female in the background, Rich couldn't help but believe that it was just a mistake that Picasso had tried to cover up. This was also the way he felt about the females that he still carried around with him.  
For the longest time he thought the transformative power of the painting would bring him a girl named Rose to help him move to his new "period" but she failed to materialize.  
The thin figure in the painting was supposed to be blind. Rich didn't see it for the longest time. He was never much for delving into the forms or themes of artwork; the monochromatic palette was lost on him. He realized that maybe this was true for more than art.  
He sighed.  
He shifted his weight again.  
Was she or wasn't she a mistake?  
If not a mistake, then what?  
He unfolded the paper containing the poem he had copied from some book long ago and, like he had done so many times before standing in this exact spot, read it to himself. _The Man With the Blue Guitar_ by Wallace Stevens.

The man bent over his guitar,  
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,  
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are  
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,  
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar  
Of things exactly as they are."

Was she or wasn't she?  
He sighed and returned his attention back to the painting.

the ugly effect

I was jogging the other day when I pass a baseball dugout and something caught my eye. In one corner there was this huge butterfly caught in a spider's web. The thing was the size of a friggin' bird. The most notable thing about it though was how amazingly colorful it was. Oranges and yellows and black and green. Of course I raced over to save it but it was long dead.

I was suddenly filled with this huge sadness; this beautiful insect had met its end without anyone even knowing or being there to help.

That got me to thinking about ugly people's weddings.

I'm not talking about normal people. I'm strictly thinking about the truly ugly among us. It's almost assumed that they're poor. The point being is that they spend their whole lives watching amazing weddings on TV and in movies. Spectacular affairs where great halls are rented, ice sculptures litter the grounds and the bride's dress causes gasping and gaping from even the jaded wedding planners who are swarming around her like so many flies.

Then there are the couples that get married at the Days Inn banquet room.

Ugly people having their ugly weddings.

Bad food, hideous surroundings, and unattractive guests. The good looking guests sit there on the stained folding chairs with a look that says to everyone they'd rather be at a bowling alley eating nachos and they hate both bowling _and_ nachos.

The absolute worst is the bride. Her $300 dress that hangs awkwardly on her, a stemless cherry placed indifferently on a pile of dog shit. What must be going through her head as she tries to con herself? That _this_ is what she wanted, that _this_ is what every girl dreams about? What does the groom think as this veiled nightmare lumbers down the aisle toward him? Do they know that they're ugly?

Is there even a flicker of the romance that's splashed on the silver screen as beautiful men and women fall in love?

Do they have any clue why people see right-side up when the images on our retina are upside down?

After all, the spider has to eat right? Do you think it cares about what color the prey that stumbles into its web is? Nope. In go the fangs either way.

So I sit there staring at this butterfly and picture a moth in its place. A big ol' dumbfuck moth. It could be the size of Frisbee and nobody, least of all me, would give a flying shit. (The Frisbee made me think of flying otherwise it would have just been a normal shit)

What is it about beauty that has me mourning the _glaucopsyche lygdamus_? Or even looking up its scientific name. There are so many moths and so few butterflies.

So back at the Days Inn they're throwing their handfuls of rice and watching the groom attempt to load his blushing bride in the back of their rented 1997 Town Car. In the background a TV is showing another vapid beauty leaving her half million dollar reception on the way to her three week honeymoon in Tahiti.

I continue jogging.

And the spider waits for the next insect, be it moth or butterfly, for his next meal.

man vs. cock

I was thinking about the outcry created by the YouTube footage of New York Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez attending a cockfight in the Dominican Republic a few years back and I thought it was time I came clean about my own dirty secret.

I was a journalism student on vacation in Haiti during the mid-90s. I needed to get away from the pressures of my life and I thought a few weeks in Port-au-Prince would be just the thing to clear my head. It was indeed. The "cockers" must have seen me coming a mile away, young and white and very broke. I stepped off the bus on the western end of Hispaniola and found roosters all over the walls of the labyrinth of alleys that made up Bel Air- a dusty, smoky, and exhaust-clogged slum perched on a hill in downtown Port-au-Prince. While back in the country I was born, cockfighting was seen as a backwards and primitive, I had stepped headlong into a world where it was _the_ number one sport. It was almost as if cockfighting was in the air but _not_ so much that you could taste cock in the air. Please, focus here people.

"In the cockfight, man and beast, good and evil, ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive power of loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty, violence, and death," the anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote of the cockfights he observed. It wasn't long before I was intrigued enough to start asking around about a good place to watch my first cockfight. I had made a few friends during my short time there and I told them I was anxious to see what all the fuss was about. They informed me that the entrance fee to the local arena was one hundred pesos, more than a day's pay for most of the locals. More than I had on me. They told me not to worry and gave the address of a man who could get me in. Not only in but "in" I was told. I would be a _cocolo_! At the time I assumed that was some sort of visiting dignitary but that proved not to be the case. I really should have brushed up on my Haitian Kreyol before stepping on the plane.

I arrived at the arena as instructed. The crowd was only just beginning to filter through the gate, where a large sign was posted; PROHIBIDO ENTRAR CON BEVIDAS. Toward the entrance to the ring itself, a dirty cafeteria on the left sold fried plantains and hot dogs. Past the cafeteria, the roosters that had been readied to fight pecked impatiently at Plexiglas windows clouded by age and grime.

Waitresses circulated around the edge of the arena, where they sold drinks out of aqua plastic trays and collected money in Styrofoam cups. I vividly remember the arena being choked with a powerful array of smells: body odor, cheap cologne, rum hot on the breath of the sweaty men crammed together and dangling their arms into the ring.

I was led through the crowd to a rickety, wooden three-legged stool where men I had never met began to tape tortoiseshell spurs onto my ankles. Something didn't feel right.

Suddenly the men stood up, waving their arms, flashing fingers up and down shouting: " _Blanco! Doy! ... Azul! Ochenta a cien!_ "

Two of my more burly "handlers" pushed me through the crowd and deposited me into the green-carpeted _gagaire_ , which had a diameter of about 15 feet and was ringed by a low concrete wall, as my scraggly opponent was lowered in. It looked like a normal chicken to me until it ran over and starting pecking the fuck out of my legs. The crowd erupted in cheers as I danced around trying to avoid its sharp talons. That was all fun and games until the little prick really stuck me (it drew blood and everything!) and I got pissed and punted the little fuck into the wall. This time a different group of men cheered wildly and I suddenly became very aware of which men there had bet money on me and which had bet against _Blanco_. That group started clapping again as their bird regained his feet and charged me.

I guess life is funny sometimes. I really never thought I'd be in a Haitian slum engaged in a real live cockfight but there I was. Not only that but I felt good. I felt alive. For those few moments the cockfight focused on aspects of life and aggression that I had never experienced, and projected them into a theater where they could be more clearly expressed and understood. I was young and I was punching a bird! Emotions were displayed in a cathartic microcosm of human/rooster interaction, violence released through the flailing spurs, feet, beaks, hands, and feathers in a blood-soaked ring.

"This is for you _Colonel_ Sanders!" I screamed as I cannonballed on my twitching opponent and sent him to KFC hell.

There you have it. My terrible secret. I was young and in a foreign land. Happy now? But before you judge me I ask that you climb into that ring yourself and pit your wits and courage against the best that roosterdom has to offer. Then come talk to me and Pedro about fighting cocks.

stay tuned

So I had this dream last night. I'm walking through this big city, although I don't recognize any landmarks that would let me know which one. There is nobody around, the streets are completely empty. There is no wind; once I become fully aware of that I suddenly realize there is no sound at all except for my footsteps on the sidewalk.

There is no smell.

Looking closer there is no trash in the street. Everything is clean and tidy and entirely un-city-like. It looks more like a movie set except that it is enormous and looks to be completely to scale in every way.

It appears to be a little past dawn and there is a hazy yellowish light hanging over everything but none of the street lights or building lights are on.

I'm continuing to walk down the sidewalk, only half aware of my destination, when suddenly a bank of TVs suddenly turns on in a huge storefront window.

The screens are blank but I can tell that they are on. A low hum seems to be coming from behind the window.

I stand before the window looking up expectantly at the TVs.

After a pause, long enough to make me wonder if anything would actually be on the TVs, a series of words pop up on the screens one at a time. Filling them in bold white letters against a black background.

YOU.

ARE.

NOT.

IN.

HEAVEN.

OR.

HELL.

Then they turn off again.

Like a switch was flipped somewhere I see doors start to open and people begin to filter out onto the street. They are of every race, creed and color and most of them seem hurried and distracted.

As they pass me I search their faces, looking for something that will tell me who they are or where I am. There is something familiar about all of them and yet I don't recognize anyone.

A single TV in the bottom corner of the window display flashes to life again.

THINK.

HARDER.

It is only when I am become irritated by my inability to figure out who these strangers are does it come to me.

This is everyone I have ever flipped off, cursed at or wished cancer upon while I was driving. Normally I have a terrible memory but suddenly I am certain that I am sitting in a city whose population seems to be made up entirely of people who I have had conflicts with on the road throughout my life.

I get it.

This is an opportunity to see the error of my ways. To live amongst the very people who I have cursed and see that they are just normal folks like myself and that my temper and my arrogance caused a terrible lack of judgment.

Judgment, the word echoes ever so briefly in my head.

So in my dream I live in this city for a year. 365 days. I find a place to live. A place to work. And every day I must interact with the very same individuals that I had called names and wished horrible things upon.

At the end of that year I find myself standing back in front of that bank of TVs behind the big plate glass window and I realize something.

Every single one of those people _was_ a complete asshole.

Total jerk-offs, every last one.

I was right the first time.

Suddenly the TVs spring to ON again.

Again the hum that I can feel more than hear.

Then the white words upon the black abyss.

SORRY.

MY.

BAD.

listen up

I'm not sure what jolted me awake in the depths of night but there I sat. It was quiet. Amazingly quiet. There were none of the lawn mowers or chirping birds that usually hurl their unwanted sound waves into my ears. Not even a stray car engine. Or even the wind. Nothing.

It was perfectly quiet.

Suddenly off in the distance I could hear the lonely whistle of a passing train. Could that be right? The nearest train tracks were nearly a hundred miles away. I listened as the Doppler Effect slowly lowered the pitch until it faded completely and it was once again silent.

What was that line from Ernie Souchak in _Continental Divide_? It was so quiet you could hear a mouse get a hard-on. I listened a little harder but either all the mice were asleep or there was nothing going on that they found particularly arousing.

Knowing as I do that the human ear can distinguish air particles being disturbed one billionth of a centimeter I realized how rare an evening like this was. This thought being interrupted by someone setting off fireworks... in Europe. Probably Spain if I had to guess. Crazy Spaniards.

Except for the brief rumbling call of a Blue Whale a few minutes later I spent some quality quiet time thinking. The very definition of undisturbed.

I was thinking about my friend the giant bee. I have this bee, if that's what it really is, that lives somewhere in my backyard. He flies around my deck all day chasing any other insect away for reasons I'm not completely clear on. Whatever the reason, if any winged creature dares to invade the air-space around my patio furniture or grill he hauls ass and promptly scares them away.

He tried it with me the first time we met but I made it abundantly clear through an impromptu waggle dance I created on the spot that I was much larger and would crush him if he continued with his assault. After that we got along famously. He would literally fly right in front of my face for seconds at a time, hovering inches away from my nose as I got to examine him in detail. The only reason I'm not 100% certain he is a bee is because of his size. He's huge. He looks like a bee but has the girth of a flying yellow and black cocktail weenie.

So I sit outside with him and watch as he patrols my deck. He's not gifted when it comes to coordination and his attempts at landing are rough at best. He will try to clamor onto a tree branch or the deck railing from time to time but usually will slip off and have to make that little bee "I meant to do that" gesture before buzzing around nonchalantly for awhile and then trying again to land. I've never seen him try to gather pollen from a flower or any other such bee-related activities. He seems content to be the Manfred von Richthofen of my backyard.

Which is why I feel a little bad about what I did. Perhaps that's what caused me to sit there wide awake on my pillow when I should have been sound asleep. What I did was this: I saw a few of those really long matches I use to light the grill laying spent underneath the deck. I took one and lay it across the top of the railing at a spot that I know my comrade likes to land. I painstakingly laid it where it was precariously balanced. It thrust itself out invitingly but the slightest contact would cause it to fall. So not two minutes later the bee came cruising by and spotted it and immediately attempted a landing.

The slightest contact did indeed cause it to fall and clinging to the falling spent match turned prop is my pal the bee. Match and bee hit the deck. I was giddy! I had pranked my _Apis Mellifera_ buddy with complete success. He, of course, was humiliated. He gathered himself up in the way that bees do when they're embarrassed but don't want to let on and, after stumbling around a bit, took to the air and disappeared around the corner of the house.

Then I felt bad so I went inside and left the deck to him so he didn't have to face me after looking so dumb.

So then I was laying there in complete silence feeling bad again thinking about it. Finally the stillness was broken by what I thought at first was a dog coughing somewhere but then realized it was just a few pieces of ice and rock in the outer ring of Saturn brushing against each other. I thought it might be rocks in the rings of Jupiter but it didn't sound that close.

eternal sunshine of the spotless rectum

I guess the best way to put it is "results will vary." In my case it was quite extraordinary. If you have a few hours to kill you can do much worse than spend some time on Google looking up the acceptance speeches from recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

_"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."_

William Faulkner 1949

_"For more than twenty years of an insane history, hopelessly lost like all the men of my generation in the convulsions of time, I have been supported by one thing: by the hidden feeling that to write today was an honour because this activity was a commitment - and a commitment not only to write. Specifically, in view of my powers and my state of being, it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared."_

Albert Camus 1957

_"Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages. Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat - for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation."_

John Steinbeck 1962

_"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."_

Ernest Hemingway 1954

_"To enjoy poetry belonging to another language is to enjoy an understanding of the people to whom that language belongs, an understanding we can get in no other way."_

T.S. Elliot 1948

I remember walking from the library after filling my head with these words and feeling a warmth in my stomach. Much to my surprise that very evening whatever girl I was banging at the time gave a little cry, one of her hands on my ass cheek, and I saw a shaft of light dancing on the wall and its source appeared to be my anus. I shifted my hips and illumination fell upon anything I pointed my butt at. Her hand slipped from my ass and my cheek snapped shut and quickly plunged the room back into darkness. Almost hesitantly I spread my ass cheeks and once again a bright light shone from the depths of me. The girl was convinced that I had tucked a small flashlight inside myself but after a quick peek she realized that was impossible. Of course I only saw her one more time after that and I told her that I had contracted some phosphorescent fungal infection and she was too dimwitted to question me.

The truth turned out to be much more interesting. After using up a favor with a friend in the Science Club- I had gotten him laid, no small feat believe me- I was able to use a spectrophotometer to analyze the electromagnetic spectra coming from my ass and found the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) of my ass-light was 6000 kelvins and had the identical emission spectrum as our sun. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate at times but I _swear_ I'm telling you the truth this time. I had 100% sunshine coming out of my ass. Now I could tell you that future sexual partners were often caught like a "deer in headlights" by my gift but that would be cheapening my story.

The rest is up to you. Now that there is Google you don't have to spend hours in a dusty library looking up each author. Just try it. Start the New Year by being inspired by the language and then pull down your pants and see if you don't experience the same reaction I had. Really.

_"The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."_

Ol' Bill Faulkner again.

a dandelion mows the lawn

It's only when the crisp fall air hits my lungs and the sound of chirping birds fills my ears that I'm reminded of how much I hate to mow my lawn. It's not so much the mindless pushing that bothers me as the mindless thinking that goes on in my head. I was going to say that various ideas float through my head but flutter is a better description. They move more like a butterfly flies than a leaf floats down a stream. Jerking seemingly unpredictably and without destination.

Whatever topics first cross my mind, eventually they all flutter to sex. I was thinking how nice it would be to have a separate room to masturbate in. A room dedicated to the pursuit of self gratification. The basement would be perfect. I could set it up for the sole purpose of maximizing my enjoyment. Do they have feng shui for jerking off? Nine principles for blowing your load perhaps? A place that is all about me and my needs.

I heard that when they made _Jurassic Park_ and needed to create the sound of a roaring T-Rex they used a mixture of many different animals- an elephant, a tiger and an alligator if memory serves. If you needed to create the sound of lust I wonder how many voices you'd need to distill. There would of course be guttural moans and teasing giggles but the list is far from short. At least in my head.

This line of thought brought me back to the realization about how nice it would be to have a secret room off the basement for the really weird sexual stuff that goes through my head every now and then. Not technically illegal but definitely squarely in the unethical grey area. A sliding panel in the wall or a trap door maybe. Something that when I use it I know that things are going to get pretty wild. You can throw feng shui right the fuck out for this room. I would want the walls decorated with deviant bric-a-brac and kick-knacks and other hyphenated words like some perverted Applebee's. In the middle of the room, surrounded by computers hooked up to giant high definition TV screens, would be the leather captain's chair. When I come into this room IT IS ON.

Sometimes walking on grass it's hard to remember that it is a living thing under your feet. Each blade part of a larger group like street vendors or traffic cops on the crowded streets of Calcutta. And I'm pushing a mower cutting off their tops. The whole idea of a lawn is odd. When did we decide that the indigenous plant life didn't look good enough for us? Not only did we get rid of the wild flowering plants but we went 100% homogenous. One type of plant to replace all that diversity. And then we have to keep that plant at a certain length. It all seems a little repressed somehow.

The idea of society repressing me brought me back to sex. Sitting almost unnoticed in the secret room off the basement would be an elevator door.

Unnoticed and very rarely used.

Very, very rarely used. But not entirely unused.

It takes a perfect storm of depraved events for me to hit the button on this elevator. For I know where it takes me... ten stories below the earth to my last masturbation option. ten stories down because somehow I want to be closer to hell when I'm using this room.

The darkest hole you can imagine, where all vestiges of decency and civilized behavior slink off embarrassed to the shadows to be replaced by the most vile manifestations of the human condition that have ever allowed themselves to be ripped from the dark recesses of a thinking, feeling entity. All that is wholesome and beautiful about sex twisted and contorted into a hideous mocking feral face that laughs at any boundaries that would dare interrupt my freight train to a despicable and wonderful climax. "Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!"

I want you to look around this room. See it in your mind's eye because your room and my room would be so different that it would be pointless to try and describe mine. You know what your room would look like don't you?

By now of course I am actually running behind the mower shaking my head from side to side like a dog with an inner-ear condition. To point out that I am trying to keep the outside wheel of the mower on the light indentation in the grass from my last pass so I don't stray from the path is a metaphor that is completely gratuitous at this point. Most disturbingly did I really, when describing the area where I live out my darkest sexual fantasies, insert a quote from _Lord of the Rings_?! I know, I know... I should have used the Balrog as the allegory given the depth of my underground lair.

Yesterday I was driving and was cut off in traffic. Not by another car but by a sense of not belonging to the greater population of cars. I felt like a dandelion.

precipitation is expected

Although Jimmy was late he couldn't help but slow down a bit and look upwards. He had been fidgeting with the radio in his Lexus SC09 in a futile effort to find a song worth listening to but seeing the weather he was driving into, it was time to put the top up.  
He owned a couple of stores that made trophies and he was running a bit behind in getting to one of them and opening it up for business.  
And business was good.  
It seemed the harder times got the more people wants a dollar's worth of plastic to remind them that their son finished 5th in the spelling bee. In fact, business was booming. There didn't seem to be anything going on that didn't somehow involve somebody, or almost everybody, or everybody, getting a trophy. Jimmy laughed to himself and felt a momentary flash of embarrassment on behalf of the whole human race.  
The clouds ahead of him looked foreboding.  
An enormous shadow stretched from east to west. As he got closer he could see the dark ripples and the cloud alternated between blue and a purple that was half velvet and half bruise.  
Trophies started out reflecting victories in war. The word came from the Greek _tropaion_ which itself is derived from the verb _troupe_ , meaning "to rout." You had to know these things if you were going to be a hit at the yearly trophy manufacturers convention. Inscribed with the details of the battle these magnificent trophies would be dedicated to the victors and their gods. Often constructed with columns and arches atop a foundation it was considered sacrilege to destroy one.  
With the car top now up Jimmy was free to examine the cloud even further. He drove until he was directly under it and for a second it looked as though the world was upside down and the ocean hung over him. He felt himself get lightheaded as the first few drops of rain hit his windshield. The first few drops that had escaped this gravitational cock-up and made their way up to his car.  
He could see the waves moving above him. He could almost hear their crashing and as if on cue a small group of seagulls flew under him and he strained to see if they were upside down or right side up.  
As early as the late 1600s people began to give trophies to the winners of sporting events. A short 300 years later, with the advent of plastics, Jimmy was hard-pressed to think of any occasion that didn't end with the distribution of metallic colored figurines to everybody involved. He knew all there was to know about how the hot-stamp metallic foils are pressed into the columnar shafts to give these figures their color but he was always at a loss as to why they were handed out in the first place.  
His specialties were gypsum, marble, and wood. He would leave the other stuff to the sociologists and the shrinks.  
The light washing over his car and creeping under the ocean was yellow and green and the rain continued to be light as if teasing everybody underneath the mighty cloud a little while longer. The rain came straight down and there wasn't even a hint of a breeze. It was though the whole world and the laws of physics all held their breath until Jimmy could figure it out.  
So stone trophies have been replaced with imitation marble and holographs, why should he care? If Jimmy was the recipient of some cosmic stroke of luck that would have his 4.3-Liter V-8 paid for by a culture's slipping self-esteem then it was ok by him.  
He glanced quickly ahead to make sure that he wasn't going to drive into the wrong lane or some Boy Scout helping some old lady across the street but he was still clearly between the dotted lines and the streets were completely uncluttered by both Boy Scouts and old ladies. In fact, they were deserted.  
Forgetting the sky a moment his attention returned to the radio.  
A song he hadn't heard in years by Tom Waits that didn't quite come in enough to put up with the static. Something about "and the northern portions of my ability to deal rationally with my disconcerted precarious emotional situation." Too bad he wasn't in range of the station.  
REO Speedwagon whining about "My lady's beside me. She's there to guide me. She says that alone we've finally found our home." Jimmy had heard that they were out on tour again after about 50 years. He snorted and quickly gave the tuner a violent twist to the right.  
Creedence was in mid-sentence "I know, been that way for all my time. 'Til forever, on it goes through the circle, fast and slow, I know; it can't stop," when Jimmy's tuning hand barreled right past them.  
He could feel the rain up ahead now. It was like a not-so-distant fog whose tendrils he knew were only moments away from embracing him and he accelerated towards it.  
Suddenly he heard Billy's guitar screaming out. He turned it up louder and the drums sounded like thunder. Finally Ian's voice rang out. He gunned the engine.  
"I've been waiting... for her... for so long..."  
He knew that if he had his way every man, woman and child would be waist deep in plastic trophies by the time they turned 40. Medals and placards telling them how wonderful they were and what amazing feats they had accomplished. Celebrations of mediocrity and the mundane.  
One last look upwards to the purple ocean hanging above him before he lost himself in The Cult as he'd done so many times since college.  
Then the sky opened up. It was as if gravity had finally caught on and had pulled the clouds down in one violent motion. As if it was embarrassed for not having caught it earlier. Even Noah would have been like "Holy shit, that's a lot of water!"  
Typically Jimmy liked to turn off the wipers early and leave the last few drops to dry on his windshield like so many tears. He didn't think he'd get the chance this time. It was like driving through a car wash.  
As he clutched the wheel tightly Jimmy somehow knew that it was going to be a pointless exercise to look back when it was finally over and hope to see a rainbow.  
He did anyway.  
There wasn't.

Giddy Up!

When I was a young boy living in Iowa I would occasionally go horseback riding. Let's face it, there's not much else to do when you live in Iowa outside of playing hide-n-go seek-n go-wait for police helicopters to spot you in the 300 acre cornfield 18 hours later. I have a lot of fond memories attached to Iowa and riding horses so yesterday when I was driving along, without much to do, I noticed a small sign outside a farm offering horseback riding so I slammed on the brakes and decided to take a holistic view of the rest of the afternoon and check things out. Winding down the small road I noticed the requisite amount of dirt flying up and just enough of a large-animals-taking-a-crap odor in the air to certify that I was in fact heading towards a horse farm. None other than the lovely couple from the _American Gothic_ painting came out to greet me and before I knew it I was being led to the stables. There was a quick discussion of finances and as the number given seemed reasonable for an hour-long ride I was soon presented with a long hallway with horse heads sticking out on each side. Apparently I was to choose my trusty steed at this point. First let me point out that when I woke up this morning riding a horse was _not_ on the menu. When I set off in my car on errands I had not dressed with the idea that I would soon be throwing one leg over an enormous animal where I would spend the next hour riding said animal. I thought about explaining this to Nan Wood and her dentist father (inside _American Gothic_ comment you're not cultured enough to get it, don't worry about it) but even if I wasn't planning on going horseback riding I still couldn't explain why I had chosen to wear corduroy pants in the first place. Corduroy IS coming back, snicker if you must, and when it does it will probably return in beige. Anyway, I went into the stalls a little apprehensive that perhaps I should have chosen another day for horseback riding.

It was too late for that now. Money had changed hands and a saddle was being readied for my adventure! Now it was up to me to decide which horse to go out on. I was asked about my experience with horses and I gave a small laugh, a casual wave of the hand and I let it be known, in a way that only a dumb male can do, that I had spent _plenty_ of time on a horse. Of course, that was when I was 11 but I figured that was a detail that was completely irrelevant. I was quickly led past the stalls of _Slacker_ and _Mr. Happy_ and within a few seconds I was looking up at a magnificent animal named _Thunder_. This wasn't a normal horse. This was a cross between a Clydesdale and a something out of _Jurassic Park_. _Thunder_ obviously was working with at least 2.5 horsepower. Now any sane man would explain that it had been quite a while since his last ride and opted for a more reasonable mount but in a demonstration of typical male behavior I took this as a challenge to my manhood and immediately agreed that this was the horse I wanted. The earth literally shook as he was led out of his stable and outside to be saddled up. His shadow cast across me, down the driveway and over the nearby two-story house. This was a fucking huge horse. Now another thing that you as the reader of this should know is I am entirely unjockeylike in build. Whereas they are compact, I am gangly. It is fair to say that once I was atop the horseasaurus my head was in geosynchronous orbit over my ass. My center of gravity was about three feet higher than it should have been.

"He knows the trail," I was assured as they pointed towards the end of the driveway. It became clear that it was now show time, no one would be accompanying _Thunder_ and I on our little jaunt. Once the two Grant Wood figures (again with the _American Gothic_ references!) started back to the barn the real panic set in. It had been awhile since I felt real, honest to goodness panic but it all came rushing back as _Thunder_ left the driveway and started down the trail. "He knows the trail" but it quickly became apparent that he had little interest in following it on this afternoon. There were some other sights that _Thunder_ wanted to see and he was going to see them despite any pulling on reins or kicking of flanks by me. Whereas in my fond memories of riding as a child the slightest tug on the reins would have my steed obediently going in that direction, _Thunder_ wasn't even aware of my tugs considering his neck was about three feet of solid muscle. Finally after walking off through a field for ten minutes _Thunder_ decided on a quick snack and stopped in someone's backyard to start in on their shrubbery.

I was in full-on pleading mode when I first saw it. At first I thought it was a hummingbird but then I saw it was a fly. A HUGE fly. My enormous powers of reason kicked in and told me that this must be one of those legendary insects called a horsefly. I was unaware, enormous powers of reasons aside, that horseflies actually ate horses. This fucking thing landed and the next thing I know Thunder lets out a whinny and this big fly has taken a chunk out of my horse! Thunder takes this rather poorly and starts galloping off across this stranger's lawn. I later learn that a swarm of horseflies can pick a horse clean in under five minutes. The piranha of the farm they are called! Well, it takes three houses and two ex-picket fences before _Thunder_ regains his composure. He's obviously a little uncomfortable with the fact I saw what a wimp he was and he keeps looking back at me as if to ask if intend to keep this incident to myself. Finally I have some leverage on this giant fuckwad! I give the reigns a little tug and _Thunder_ sheepishly obeys. Now we're talking! As if to say that I am in fact a fair master I lead ol' Thunder ( _ol'_ showing how close _Thunder_ and I have gotten) to an above-ground pool to get a quick drink. I look back and greet the face peering at me through the kitchen window with a quick smile. I imagine myself looking pretty damn much like some macho cowboy (do people say macho anymore?) and the woman, and proud owner of said above-ground pool, can only watch slack-jawed as I let my new friend drink his fill. Suddenly my eyes catch a little movement behind me and what do I see? The same fucking horsefly landing on the ass of my horse.

In retrospect this is where I probably made the key mistake of the afternoon. Thinking that _Thunder_ would really appreciate it if I killed this horsefly for him so he wouldn't get bitten again I presumed that he would understand if this involved a little slap on the ass. The problem was that I was a little too jacked up in my swing and, more importantly, I cupped my hand in a weird fashion that ended up making my slap on his hindquarters sound remarkably like a gunshot.

"This guy just shot me in the fucking ass!" ol' _Thunder_ must have thought to himself. Instead of simply rearing up and throwing me comically intro the pool or some such lighthearted nonsense, the horse freaks out and runs _through_ the above ground pool! Who the fuck runs through a pool?! The thing rips and a torrent of water goes rushing towards the house and the slack-jawed resident inside. I know that a moron sitting helplessly on a galloping horse is all very whimsical in the movies but let me assure you in real life it sucks ass. I would have shit my pants had I not have been preoccupied with slamming myself up and down on my own testicles again and again as he tore ass through a suburban development and back into the pseudo-wilderness. After about 100 yards I remembered to stand up in the stirrups to avoid getting racked by the saddle but by that time my penis, balls and sack were all one enormous swollen throbbing purple paste. Why couldn't I have been simply thrown off like Christopher Reeve? The ride back to the farm from there was a blur. The next thing I knew _Thunder_ (note the lack of _ol'_ preceding his name) has made it back home and was headed to his stable. Well, _a_ stable. In retrospect this is where I probably made the bigger of the two key mistakes of the afternoon. Being in the agony I was in I wasn't paying much attention to his destination and before I knew it he was in the stall of another horse... with that horse presently occupying it. I'm sure there was a sweet and tender background story between these two horses involving flirting and sharing of oats and stuff but I soon found out that when a male horse feels that a relationship has reached a certain point with a female horse he will help himself. Next thing I know I'm mounted on a horse that has mounted another horse. I can't even begin to soak in the feelings of being in an equine ménage a trois because when ol' _Thunder_ (the _ol'_ being purely sarcastic at this point) reared up to mount his four-legged friend he once again drove the saddle cleanly into what remained of my junk.

I'll try to wrap this up because I'm certain some of you are starting not to believe this. I understand completely, especially when I tell you that in retrospect _this_ is where I probably made the monster mistake of the afternoon. Attracted by the ruckus, and don't fool yourself, this was a full blown ruckus, the two elderly caretakers hurried back into the barn, their faces the picture of concern. What greeted them was your storyteller sitting atop a horse fucking another horse while clutching himself and screaming "ooooh my balls!"

It took the arresting officers some time to figure out exactly they were charging me with but I thought I'd explain my side of this story before it undoubtedly hit the papers. Doctors were able to save one of my testicles but it will be forever carried, due to the heavy scarring, in a sack that appears to be made of corduroy. How macho is _that_? El corduroy sacko es muey machol!

Hardcore Wonder Years

When reading this you have to keep in mind the time in which it took place. While some may consider the topic too vulgar you really have to look past the immediate subject matter and embrace the over-riding themes of innocence and naiveté. This was a time before the internet made _everything_ ok. What I'm truly going for is a _Wonder Years_ type feel, for those that remember that show.

I was in college at the time and it would be hard to describe my sexual background as anything less than jaded, for that time anyway. Making up for lost time due to my years as a mega-nerd in high school, I was drinking deeply from the wellspring of drunk girls, desperately horny girls and girls with low self-esteem. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't consider myself anything less than Mr. Experienced.

(Cue melancholy acoustic guitar with a voiceover from a man who sounds like he's sitting enjoying some nut-flavored coffee while he peers out a window, a slow smile spreading across his face as he gazes absent-mindedly ahead seemingly lost in a treasured memory.)

(Maybe a little much? Yeah, I thought so too.)

So I was at a bar with friends, just hanging out and complaining about the songs the DJ was playing when another guy we knew walked up and started talking to us. We decided to play some pool and walked over to the tables. When we got there he gave a little nod in the direction of this girl playing pool at the table next to us and then nonchalantly leaned in to me and whispered "she likes it in the ass."

My mental train of thought derailed. I actually winced as the screeching of tortured metal wheels coming off the track and thousands of tons of hurling boxcars going flying in every direction filled my head.

"She what?" I inquired.

He explained to me in a casual tone that he knew someone that use to date her and she "liked it in the ass."

I actually said this: "Likes _what_ in the ass?"ン

He didn't answer; he just stared at me until it sunk in.

It.ン

I spent the next few hours watching her every move. She couldn't have been a more alien creature to me if I had first seen her emerging from some ruined spacecraft smoldering out in front of the bar. And honestly, I couldn't have picked a better time to fixate on the news that she "liked it in the ass" than watching her play pool what with the constant bending over. One time when she had a very difficult shot that required a prolonged stretch to reach the cue ball it was all I could do not to hyperventilate! I almost bit through my own lip imagining her "liking it in the ass."

There had been one time during my freshman year where I had picked up a girl at a party and she had misheard or misinterpreted my desire to come from behind and, after saying she had never tried it, arched her back and seemingly offered up her butt to me. PLEASE remember this was before the internet before you judge me! I remember giving everything the ol' once-over, poking the area with the tip of my equipment and finding it as impregnable as the Fortifications of Gibraltar so I moved on with all haste. Without a second though actually. I was just happy to be interacting with a working vagina so the incident was over before it began.

So for almost two hours I watched this girl play pool. Now some of you might wonder if I felt any desire to meet her or even try and pick her up. Those are the people who just don't understand my emotions at that moment. I would have sooner challenged Chuck Norris to kickboxing or Lance Armstrong to a bike race. I was content just to watch this young lady who "liked it in the ass" exist in her natural environment. She was pretty, a little older than me, and as my eyes kept returning to her ass I kept wondering if she ever had trouble shitting herself because her sphincter was worn out from all the butt-sex.

Really.

I had no idea of the mechanics of it. Did she have to wear a plug now that the seal of her ass had been compromised? If she took a bath does she fill with water?

I wondered what she sounded like when she was being violated in that manner.

Did she fart more now?  
I imagined the men who were brave enough to plumb those fleshy depths. Bikers and sailors all I assumed.

See? I knew this story would end up getting all nasty and lose the childlike wonder I was aspiring to capture.

(Cue the return of the sappy guitar, indicating that the story is moving to some poignant conclusion. Hear it before you continue reading to get the full effect.)

These were the days before Google could instantly hurl you into graphic pictorials or video clips of any sexual fetish your mind could conceive. There was no sexting. There wasn't even texting.

There were just guys in a bar. Girls playing pool.

And one in particular who "liked it in the ass."

1 day

As I've never lived north of 42.19 degrees north latitude, I must admit that some of this is speculation but it stands to reason that in arctic areas that spend weeks at a time in total darkness that there must be at least two mornings a year where sunrise and sunset are almost simultaneous. Approaching the day where the sun doesn't rise at all there must have been the day _before_ that the sun only peeked over the horizon for a few moments. Maybe even just an orange or purple glow. I don't know, but that seems to make sense. I can't help but picture a single shaft of light breaking over the horizon and then retreating just as quickly.

That must be an amazing moment. So much of our lives are tied up in sunrises and sunsets to see both at the same time would be a powerful metaphor for something that I can't quite put my finger on. You would think I would have figured it out before I started typing but what can you do? Maybe you have to figure some things out on your own.

Next time you're not sure what to do with your day consider the Mayfly. For the Ephemeridae a single day is its entire lifespan. It hatches. It lives one day. It dies. Now imagine yourself as that Mayfly. You have to hatch, get acquainted with your environment, breed, and reach some sort of insect self-actualization all in one afternoon. Keep in mind it also has a host of predators trying to shorten its existence even more. It doesn't have the option to stay hidden in its larval state because gases build up between the Nymphal Shuck (outer shell) and its body and this buoyancy forces the Mayfly to the surface, out into the world, whether it likes it or not. (Note: this would be another golden opportunity to insert a metaphor of your own choosing to make this blog that much more moving.) The process of aquatic insects rising towards the surface is called _Emergence._ (That _has_ to help you with your metaphor. Come on, I can't do all the work.)

It's a shame that this Emergence takes place during the spring and summer months as I can't imagine a more poignant scene then an Alaskan Mayfly watching one of these sunrisesets.

hung up on the takedown

Ever get so bored that you just jump in the car and go out for a drive? I do it more than I'd like to admit. Just got back from one of those drives where I just let fate decide what I'll be up to for awhile. Today I was not disappointed.

Usually it takes a lot of driving and numerous holistic turns to bring me to my destination but I was only a few neighborhoods over when I spotted my opportunity to kill a little time.

I pulled up to a stop sign and saw this somewhat chunky woman walking across the intersection with a sign that she obviously intended to post on a nearby telephone pole. Actually, in all fairness, she was a bit more than chunky. I know if I say she was fat then you'll think I'm some mean judgmental person but the truth is she was fat. It's not my fault that she was fat or that society frowns upon being fat but I'm certainly not going to have you imagining her in your head in some way that isn't completely accurate. I'm not carrying _that_ on my conscience the rest of today. Ok, so this fucking cow waddles her ass over to... wait, wait, wait. Now that _was_ mean and judgmental.

Starting over. I'm sitting at the stop sign and I see this overweight woman leave her car and go put up a sign for a garage sale she was having (I assume it was her garage sale and she didn't earn a living by posting flyers for other peoples garage sales up due to her aforementioned fatness). She then lumbers... nope, I meant to say walked, back to her car. She drove past me and I couldn't help but notice all the signs sitting shotgun next to her.

I suddenly realized what I'd be doing the rest of the morning.

I quickly got out, ran over to the telephone pole and ripped down the sign. I tucked it under my arm and sprinted back to my car. She had only put one staple in it so I was already feeling distain for her lack of commitment to the posting-signs-to-survive-high-winds endeavor she had obviously undertaken. I hopped into my car and turned it around in all haste and gave chase in her last-known direction.

It wasn't too long before I came upon her walking back to her car again, a freshly posted sign proof that she had been up to her old tricks again. I waited until she had driven off then I jumped out and tore that one down as well.

Well, this little production was repeated about a dozen times. It was quite a rush, I have to admit. Creeping around, tailing this poor woman like some demented FBI agent. Signs for her upcoming garage sale starting to clutter my backseat. With everything on the news these days about abductions and such I was a little shocked that this woman didn't notice my following her. I guess when you're fat you don't worry about that stuff as much.

Turns out she wasn't the only one who was behaving a little bit obliviously. I should have been aware that we were turning back to where this little performance started but I was having too much fun to pay attention to where we were.

Sure enough she pulls up to the original stop sign before I even realize that she had doubled back. I slow down and discreetly slide into a nearby driveway to see what was going to happen.

I see her big fat sweaty head swivel back and forth a few times. I'm too far away to make out much that's going on in the car but the back of her fat head is clearly experiencing some agitation. And yes, calling her head fat twice in a row was clearly unnecessary. Obviously I don't care _that_ much about the image of her you have in your head because I never bothered to tell you anything about her ethnicity or dress so all of my holier-than-thou posturing about my "conscience" is bunk. If you find the story more amusing picturing her as a fat black woman in a short skirt, an enormous albino with a beehive hairdo and a prosthetic arm, or a mammoth Japanese house frau wearing a torn leotard and a Minnesota Vikings hat then far be it from me to interfere! You know what makes you laugh so just try to include the fact she was fat in there somewhere and we're good to go.

So anyway, after a few moments she lurches out of her car (possibly knocking off her Minnesota Vikings hat... your call) and makes her way to the telephone pole. As if somehow a closer inspection will reveal where her beloved sign went to. What exactly was she going to see up close that she couldn't discern from her car? I didn't see her holding some CSI kit that she could break open or anything. She felt content at that point to start loudly saying something I couldn't make out and looking around as her fat arms made these pumping movements up and down. I could barely make out the fact that she was sporting shower shoes but I could see the arm fat swinging back and forth as if it was squished against my windshield.

She just kept looking back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

I'm crouched down behind my steering wheel, mind you, so I couldn't see everything but it did get a little old. At what point is she going to figure out this little mystery and begin a new course of action?

At this point it's becoming very clear that whatever intentions I might have had for this story to be an amusing little tale of taking down some stranger's garage sale signs has turned into nothing more than a cheap opportunity to have you picture an enormous woman getting pissed. Do I even need to describe the fits she had as she revisited each empty telephone pole?

No. I didn't think so.

Maybe I should give the address of the garage sale to make it up to her. Nah, just going to change the date of the garage sale and put the signs back up.

roasting on an open fire

I don't know what the weather is where you live but where I'm at we're in the middle of an ice storm. In a few hours I'm guessing that even the malls will be closed as the roads become too dangerous to venture out on. A perfect day to build a nice toasty fire.

When I was younger, my Dad would always take a lot of pride in how he built the family fire and I guess it's been passed down. I remember watching him carefully start with newspaper and kindling before adding the logs. "Always remember to let the fire breathe," he would tell me as he put two logs north/south and then another two on top of them east/west. Keep in mind this was before they had invented fire starters... for a fire to really catch back then you had to build a fundamentally sound foundation. These days all you need is the fire starter and a match and any fool can start a fire. That is, of course, no reason not to do things right.

My fireplace is relatively large and I can usually fit between 20-23 logs in it if I pack it right. I don't usually like to have logs too far up the chimney so it takes awhile to fit them all in. This year it's been particularly challenging because I changed where I bought my firewood to save a few dollars and was rewarded by getting the shittiest wood I've ever seen. Instead of being cut in a roughly 6" x 18" normal fashion I ended up with a driveway full of misfit wood. L shapes and Y shapes and even a few T shaped pieces. It's sort of like playing Tetris with splinters.

Anyway... after I'd crumpled up and placed the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday papers and a few handfuls of kindling, I began packing the fireplace. I found that if I removed the metal thing that is supposed to hold the wood I can jam in another log. After finding the perfect spots for four fire starters it was time to light up!

I love the "whoosh" of the fire when I first light it. The way all of the oxygen in the room is immediately used up and I have to gasp for air briefly followed by thick white smoke filling the entire house. The smell of burnt hair (mine and the dog's) and the cool relief a wet towel provides when applied to my face and arms. The cold icy tentacles of Jack Frost lurking outside be damned I say!

It doesn't take long for the flames to start licking outside of the tight confines of the fireplace. All cherry red and lemony yellow... with deep greens and purples adding to the fun as large embers fall onto the carpeting and quickly ignite. Soon a lively spray of sparks has the curtains alight and I'm once again searching for the extinguisher. Where _did_ I put my little friend? It just doesn't seem like a cozy winter day without the scent of carbon tetrachloride hanging in the air does it?

I've been at a friend's house when he has mentioned his "roaring" fire and I can only snicker to myself. Well I can tell by the commotion outside I'd better get some coffee on for the brave men of our local fire brigade. Seems my nosy neighbors have once again pushed the panic button a _little_ early and sent the firefighters on _another_ wasted trip to my house. Oh well... I always enjoy the company despite their petty comments regarding my fire-building skills. Until the next time... I'm off to draw on some new eyebrows and open the front door before they knock it down again.

12 inches that changed my life

Here's an interesting fact; I was a picky eater. Always had been. Since I was a little kid. Pizza? Plain. Sandwich bread? Wonder Bread. Condiments? Mayonnaise... but not _too_ much. Mustard? Are you kidding me? You might as well have spread the paste of 100 habanero peppers on my sandwich. I was that kid... picking shit out of his hamburger in public, not eating the dinner served at a friend's house... you get the picture. Fussy would not be overstating it.

Then one night while driving through New Jersey I went crazy. It had been a long day and an even longer night and I wasn't thinking right. I was starving and I stopped at a 7-11 to buy my usual Bear Claw and Strawberry Crush soda when without thinking I grabbed an Italian sub out of the refrigerated section. I didn't even hesitate, just scooped it up and walked to the checkout. To this day I have no idea whatever possessed me to do it. This thing had the works. It would take me 20 minutes just to fish all the extra stuff out of it. I couldn't even be sure when this sub was made... it had already started to get that slimy coating on it.

Then what do I do? I start the car... I pull away and casually unwrap my hoagie. Then what do I do? I stick the fucking thing in my mouth and bite down! Looking back even I find it hard to believe. Immediately the taste of onions and sweet peppers take turns holding down and raping my taste buds. Really. As my Ford Taurus roared through the inky blackness of the Jersey night I grew lightheaded as wave after wave of gustatory sensations broke like waves on my palate. Then Mr. Pickle showed up at the party. This was the first time my virgin mouth had ever had a pickle in it. My mushroom-shaped fungiform papillae threatened to have me gagging but surprisingly pickle joined the chemosensor fracas without incident. After the appropriate mastication it was the big moment. Would I swallow?

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes! When I tell you that I ate the fuck out of this sub I ate the fuck out of it. At one point I had almost the whole thing in my mouth... and this was a 12" hoagie mind you. Being a strictly "ham & cheese" guy up to that point I had meats in my mouth I'd never dreamed of. They assailed my tongue like army ants on a caterpillar. It was one of the greatest culinary nights of my life. I was forever changed. Reborn. A phoenix rising from the ashes of the former sulcus terminalis of my tongue.

Needless to say, I now have sausage on my pizza and it's not uncommon to see me holding a sandwich with multi-grain bread. Bon appetite and carpe diem I say! What a truly inspiring story if I say so myself... although I still find mustard is not to be trusted.

winter sucks

The teen male who stood before James Kenneth Smith was there to pick up his daughter for a date. Since his daughter turned 16, Mr. Smith was not a fan of teen males in general... but he was particularly not a fan of this one. His name was Syd if Mr. Smith understood correctly. Although free of the usual piercings and bad tattoos that so many of the males his age sported, Syd dressed in the same thoughtful way a teen would if awaken in the depths of night and told there was a fire and he must leave immediately. The backwards cap especially annoyed Mr. Smith.

He considered briefly violently slamming the door in the face of this would-be-daughter-raper but, knowing his daughters temperament, thought better of it. He motioned Syd inside and invited him to join him in the living room. Syd seemed comfortable enough and met his stony gaze with little hesitation. They sat and the sound of Mrs. Smith alerting her daughter to the arrival of her date played in the distance.

"Unless you're a catcher can you please turn your hat around?" he asked Syd.

"Why?"

"So people who see you out with my daughter don't think that she is out on a date with a retarded boy." He calmly answered. A slow smile crept across the face of the non-catcher.

"It's part of the social contract Mr. Smith."

"How so?" The teen had Mr. Smith's full attention now.

"This is my rebellion... my way of arguing against your expectations."

"Is that so?" A slow smile crept across the face of Mr. Smith.

"And might I add, respectfully sir that the lack of plastic covers on your furniture shows me that you are not holding up your end of that contract."

Mr. Smith shifted in his seat and for a moment there was no sound in the room except the bubbling of the Zen Rock Garden Table Fountain that Mrs. Smith insisted on buying recently (the polished river rocks were included at no charge). "So he wants to play does he," Mr. Smith thought to himself.

"Son, do you enjoy pornography?" he asked his daughters young suitor.

"As often as I can sir," came the reply. Neither was smiling.

"And do you plan on having sex with my daughter this evening?"

"I will make every attempt to do just that Mr. Smith."

Was it his imagination or did the variable speed Zen Rock Garden Table Fountain that Mrs. Smith insisted on buying recently (the polished river rocks were included at no charge) just change speeds? He could swear it was suddenly pumping out more water. There were little bubbles frothing up where before there were none. At least none that he had noticed.

"Syd. Before I hurl you broken out into the night let me tell you a little story." Both visibly relaxed and sank back into their seats. It was understood that a short story was now going to commence and that it was important for Syd to take the forthcoming information to heart.

"Sex has seasons Syd. Did you know that? You are in the spring. A young bud pushing through the virgin earth. A growing seed yearning and thrusting upwards for the warm sunlight it's never felt before. The reason you might not be aware of that is because the internet shows nothing but summer and fall. You, your generation, has been cheated Syd. I feel for you. I really do."

James Smith paused and watched the face of his young audience member. He wanted to believe that what he was saying was being understood but Syd's face remained a mask.

"What I'm trying to say is this. If you want to kiss my daughter I find that perfectly reasonable... having been on your side of these very conversations many years ago. If you wish to awkwardly grope at my daughters young breasts during the movie then, while the thought disgusts me, I cannot deny you that aspiration."

Mr. Smith leaned in forward and his voice became a whisper. Syd, appreciating the gravity of what was about to be said leaned in, afraid he might miss some subtle nuance or vocal inflection.

"If, on the other hand, your goal is to have my daughter act like the women that you jerk off to on a daily basis then the next time we meet will not be so cordial. By that I mean, if you attempt to coerce her into anything that is best expressed in summer or fall I will rip off your dick and cock-whip you with it."

Syd swallowed and, fumbling for something for his hands to do, slowly turned his hat around.

"I don't mean figuratively. I want to make that clear right now. I will literally grab your flaccid dick and rip it off your body. I will then strike you about the face and neck with your own bloody member."

Mr. Smith leaned back again.

"I think we have an understanding Mr. Smith. I appreciate you having this talk with me."

"Do you really?" Mr. Smith inquired.

The sound of his daughter approaching had both of them slowly standing.

"I do. You're right about the seasons sir. I want a spring and I hope it's with your daughter. I like her and I'm glad that I have an excuse not to want summer."

A broad smile broke across the face of Mr. Smith.

"And Syd..." he leaned in for one last word as his daughter grabbed her date and began to drag him to the door.

"I'll get right on those plastic slip covers."

von trouble

I was thinking about the guy who perpetrated the shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum back in 2009, the white supremacist killer James von Brunn, and isn't it about time we all face up to some simple facts and take action? As unpleasant as it might be we can no longer afford to dance around the topic.

Anyone with the name von in their name needs to be immediately imprisoned.

There. I said it.

Manfred von Richthofen (Der rote Kampfflieger... i.e. the infamous Red Baron) was von. War criminals Joachim von Ribbentrop, Werner von Braun, Konstantin von Papen, Franz von Schirach,and Ludwig von Falkenhausen made war tribunal's jobs very easy. They would just hear the name and if there was a von lurking in the middle they would bang their gavels and yell "Guilty!" The castle owned by the von Frankenstein's is synonymous with evil and is there anyone who doubts the wickedness of one Victor von Doom (aka Doctor Doom) after all of his run-ins with the Fantastic Four?

If you need any further proof I give you the inventor of the amplifier thermionic valve... one Robert von Lieben.

I'll leave it to men smarter than I to figure out the details of rounding them all up but I don't think can be any argument that they need be in some sort of penal colony or something.

The biggest problem, once the public has been made aware of the breadth and scope of the menace they represent, will be the sort of vigilantism that seems to be ingrained in our culture. The people at biggest risk?

Vans.

Those men and women with van in the middle of their names. I could easily see them being lumped in with the Vons (that's what I call those with von in their name) and therefore persecuted when in fact it seems that Vans are the complete opposite of Vons.

Vincent van Gogh, Martin van Buren, John H. Van Vleck... the list goes on and on. Artists, President and physicists... hardly the crowd that would be caught dead with a Von. In fact, if you think about it Vans might be the anti-Vons. Were you aware that the Hindenburg was named after Paul von Hindenburg? Perhaps if it had been named after Paul van Hindenburg all those people would still be alive.

Makes you think huh?

Turns out there really is an Eddie Von Halen... and I have it on good authority that he is a shitty guitar player. I know right. Creepy.

Ironically Jean-Claude Von Damme is a really good actor but a horrible person who is very inflexible. The most damning bit of evidence I have is a quote from Max Von Sydow: "Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds." Sound like someone with something to hide to you?

So there it is. Irrefutable proof, delivered with an air-tight logic that both persuades and inspires, that all people who have a von in their name are up to no good and need to be incarcerated.

You're welcome.

Your Parents' Airlines

One of the more annoying aspects of traveling a lot is that eventually you end up having flights canceled or changed at the last minute and thus end up flying with carriers you've never heard of. This is particularly true in the Midwest where there seems to be an endless supply of obscure airlines ready to swoop in and deliver you from one destination to the next. So it was with me recently. I was forced to leave the familiarity of a large carrier and instead had to book a flight on Your Parents' Airlines.

Their gate seemed harmless enough and eventually I heard the pre-boarding announcement. "Good afternoon passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight 17 to St. Louis. We are now inviting those passengers with small children, and any passengers requiring special assistance, to begin boarding at this time. No running and keep your hands to yourself. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Regular boarding will begin in approximately ten minutes time. Thank you."

Sure enough they were as good as their word and we were all on board in no time. All except Fred Stamper.

"This is the final boarding call for passenger Fred Stamper booked on flight 17 to St. Louis to honor us with your presence. Please proceed to gate three immediately. The final checks are being completed and the captain will order for the doors of the aircraft to close in approximately five minutes time. I repeat. This is the final boarding call for Fred Stamper. We have better things to do than wait around for you all day. Thank you."

The plane smelled funny. Not bad, just funny. There wasn't a bit of wood in sight and yet I swear I could make out the scent of lemon Pledge.

At this point you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about and I have to agree that perhaps calling small airlines annoying because they all have their little idiosyncrasies makes me appear a bit petty.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard Flight 17 with service from Dallas to St. Louis. We are currently third in line for take-off and are expected to be in the air in approximately seven minutes time. We ask that you please fasten your seatbelts at this time and secure all baggage underneath your seat or in the overhead compartments. We also ask that your seats and table trays are in the upright position for take-off. I'm not going to tell you again to stop touching your sister. Please turn off all personal electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones. We remind you that this is a non-smoking flight **.** Tampering with, disabling, or destroying the smoke detectors located in the lavatories is prohibited by law. You shouldn't be smoking anyway. Wipe that look off your face Mister or I'll wipe it off for you. Thank you for choosing Your Parents' Airlines. Enjoy your flight."

Perhaps annoying isn't the right word but it saves you from having to read a long effort on my part to come up with the right term. I guess there is a sort of cold comfort in the homogenous travel experience provided by the major airlines that I've grown use to.

A small round stewardess appeared in front of us with a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the crew I ask that you please direct your attention to the monitors above as we review the emergency procedures. There are four emergency exits on this aircraft. Take a minute to locate the exit closest to you. Why? Because I said so. Note that the nearest exit may be behind you. Count the number of rows to this exit. Should the cabin experience sudden pressure loss, stay calm and listen for instructions from the cabin crew. Oxygen masks will drop down from above your seat. Place the mask over your mouth and nose, like this. Pull the strap to tighten it. If you are traveling with children, make sure that your own mask is on first before helping your children. I'm not going to tell you again. In the event of an emergency, please assume the bracing position. Lean forward with your hands on top of your head and your elbows against your thighs. Ensure your feet are flat on the floor. I would hate to see you get hurt. Life rafts are located below your seats and emergency lighting will lead you to your closest exit and slide. A life vest is located in a pouch under your seat or between the armrests. When instructed to do so, open the plastic pouch and remove the vest. Slip it over your head. Pass the straps around your waist and adjust at the front. To inflate the vest, pull firmly on the red cord, only when leaving the aircraft. If you need to refill the vest, blow into the mouthpieces. Use the whistle and light to attract attention. Also, your seat bottom cushion can be used as a flotation device. Pull the cushion from the seat, slip your arms into the straps, and hug the cushion to your chest. Remember that you can drown in an inch of water. We ask that you make sure that all carry-on luggage is stowed away safely during the flight. While we wait for takeoff, would it kill you to review the safety data card in the seat pocket in front of you?"

Surely the longest safety speech ever. Five minutes on a water landing on a flight from Dallas to St. Louis?

I guess any journey is annoying to some degree. It's just that on Delta or US Air I'm comfortable with little things. For example, I know I will get a movie as opposed to reruns of _Newhart_ and _The Carol Burnett Show_. I will also get a choice of two meals instead of just meatloaf and a small lecture about how there are starving people in Africa that would love the opportunity to enjoy a hot meal and would certainly finish their vegetables before inquiring about dessert.

"Good afternoon passengers. This is your captain speaking. First I'd like to welcome everyone on Your Parents Airline Flight 17. We are currently cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet at an airspeed of 400 miles per hour. The time is 4:15 pm. The weather looks good and with the tailwind on our side we are expecting to land in St. Louis approximately five minutes ahead of schedule. The weather in St. Louis is clear and sunny, with a high of 25 degrees for this afternoon. If the weather cooperates we should get a great view of the city as we descend. I've had it up to here with your roughhousing and horsing around and if it continues I will turn this plane right around. I'll talk to you again before we reach our destination. Until then, sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the flight."

Looking around the quiet plane I wasn't so much annoyed, if that's the word, by the accusation of roughhousing and horsing around as the captain's need to use both words. Don't they basically mean the same thing? Suddenly I started to realize that perhaps I _was_ annoyed but not because this trip was unfamiliar but because it was all too familiar. I struggled to try and find that old saying about not being able to go home again.

The stewardess asked that if I must chew gum, a filthy habit, to relieve the pressure in my ears could I please do it with my mouth closed. I think I was napping when the captain came on to talk about turbulence.

Destination is a funny word when you think about it. St. Louis was where the plane was landing but it certainly wasn't my destination. Eventually the captain came back on.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to St. Louis. Local time is 7:00 and the temperature is 23 degrees. For your safety and comfort, we ask that you please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until I turn off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. This will indicate that we have parked at the gate and that it is safe for you to move about. Please check around your seat for any personal belongings you may have brought onboard with you and please use caution when opening the overhead bins, as heavy articles may have shifted around during the flight. If you require deplaning assistance, please remain in your seat until all other passengers have deplaned. One of our crew members will then be pleased to assist you. We remind you to please wait until inside the terminal to use any electronic devices **.** Didn't I tell you we'd make it through the rough times? On behalf of Your Parents Airlines and the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the near future and ask that you remember the words of Henry David Thoreau... We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character."

For a few moments, I'm not exactly sure why, I didn't want to get off the plane. Being annoyed is complicated stuff.

Scared Smart

Steve Shapiro has been running the _Scared Smart_ program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University for the past five years. Recently it has come under criticism for its harsh techniques but he insists the program gets results.

"The biggest obstacle that many of our brightest kids face is their own arrogance. After spending years being smarter than their peers and teachers they develop a sense of infallibility when it comes to their own theories and self-worth. Socially they become intolerable, in some cases their own parents can't wait to get them out of the house. At _Scared Smart_ we try to give them a more balanced perspective of their own intelligence."

Critics of the program say the methods employed are "not only ineffective but potentially harmful" to the kids involved.

Tom Stimpley is a 17 year-old who recently achieved a perfect score on his SAT, is valedictorian at his high school and has accepted a full ride at Stanford University. He is currently working on new ways to make synthetic collagen for regenerating tissue. At the moment he is standing in front of two older men at the Institute for Advanced Study and shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

"I read your work. I wouldn't wipe my ass with it! Are you fucking retarded?! Your peptides are too long!" bellows Jeffrey Hartgerink, associate professor of chemistry and of bioengineering at Rice University's BioScience Research Collaborative. His spit covering Tom's face.

"You're an embarrassment Stimpley! You just want to ignore the complexity collagen exhibits at different scales?" screams another balding bespectacled professor in a corduroy jacket with elbow pads. "That kind of sloppy view of multi-hierarchical self-assembly of a collagen mimetic peptide from triple helix to nanofibre and hydrogel is going to get you fucked in the ass, pretty boy!"

Further down the same hallway that the likes of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Panofsky and Flexner once strode Cindy Chen and her work on dot symmetry (a building block for quantum computers) is receiving similar treatment.

"After reviewing your data I would suggest you become a prostitute," an animated physicist Marc-André Dupertuis suggests to her. "You obviously have the brains of a filthy whore."

After the small group of young achievers has finished their day at Princeton and returned, teary eyed and silent, to their parents Dr. Shapiro explains the long-term benefits of _Scared Smart_.

"You have to understand what these at-risk teens are at-risk _for_. They are at-risk of growing up to be total asshole know-it-alls. We try and prevent that. The fields that they are entering are filled with brilliant minds and if we let them come crashing in with these inflated views of their own intellect, the entire community suffers."

Detractors of the program point out that there have been no studies indicating that these "traumatizing" experiences have any long-term effect on the participants other than a lot of questions about human sexuality.

Steve is quick to answer these allegations. "We simply don't have the time or interest to find out whether or not a cocky eight- year-old prodigy understands what giving a blumpkin is and how it relates to his work on iodine-doped, double-walled carbon nanotube cables but I do know it shuts him the fuck up for awhile. Ask his parents... that in itself is a good thing."

vibrators make bad paintbrushes

I have a few tips for the man who wishes to become a painter. Put down your brush and watch awhile. To really watch people is to find poignancy in the mundane. The body language of two mothers, both talking to one another and neither listening. The way an old man's hand moves across the back of his equal ancient wife in a display of tenderness that only they can appreciate. The exuberance of life squeezed into a small child and dripping out in fidgeting.

Capture even a drop of it with your art and you are sure to go somewhere.

The best paintings of crowd scenes are always blurry. The details don't seem important to the viewer, just show the number of heads. What might be going on inside any of them is irrelevant. Perhaps some hint as to why they are all there but even that isn't that important. People gather like cattle for the strangest of reasons. To exalt, to mourn, to do nothing at all together.

My apologies to cattle for the unkind comparison.

A science fiction flick once had a character saying "a person is smart, people are stupid." Remember that if you ever desire to tell the truth with your paints and oils.

You will die penniless if you do. Lie your ass off with every stroke if you want to see a dime. Mirror costs less than canvas for a reason.

The last thing you should strive to be is a _fellow_ artist. You must feel like an imposter at all times or every handshake and back slap will be an unwanted reminder that you are one of _them_. There are community colleges all over who are choked with "artists" waiting to assail innocent bystanders with poetry and works of clay.

You can actually make the case that the "true" artist is the one that resists the urge to capture these images and instead keeps them tucked away and perfect in their own head. If these thoughts will simply not leave you alone until you expunge them from your brain than at least aim for hope.

Paint your hope.

In the end there are no good paintings or bad paintings... it's all just colors drying on a piece of paper. Really they are all bad. Some don't suck as much as others I will grant you but in the end they are _all_ just whatever we project into them.

Lastly. If you are a man I would forget the brush and just paint with your penis.

It's fun.

If you are a woman then I don't know what to tell you. If you really need to create something then go create me a sandwich.

Of course you should have expected me to end this with a dumb sexist comment otherwise the point would be in danger of collapsing under the weight of the same pretention that I've been preaching against.

dos penis

I'm just sitting there watching a show on snakes where out of nowhere the host drops a bombshell on me. Male snakes have two penises. To prove it he grabbed some unfortunate soon-to-be touched-inappropriately snake and popped 'em both out for everyone to see.

Now most people on learning this nugget of information would sensibly ask if penises is the correct plural of the word penis. Interestingly enough it is... although those who handle them professionally use the Latin-style penes. I'm referring, of course, to urologists and not prostitutes. Hookers no doubt have a breathtaking vocabulary when it comes to penises and no doubt charge extra for handling plurals.

So the host is standing there holding the snake and pressing out his penises with a look on his face that made it clear he was not enthused about his current career choice when my first question arose. Note that when I started in on the plural of penises conversation I said "most people" would ask... not me. It never occurred to me actually. My first question was whether or not a snake has a "go-to" penis. Sort of one day-to-day penis and one that he pulls out only on special occasions like the china on Thanksgiving.

Sort of an odd thing to compare a penis to china and a sex act to Thanksgiving. They were the first things to come to me so I went with them but the subconscious mind was really at work on that one.

I digress as usual.

Take away the digressions and most blogs would be unreadable. That's my philosophy anyway. What is there really to say about the fact that a snake has two penises that I didn't cover in the first sentence? Would the average reader prefer to hear about how in Latin penis is a third declension noun so the second declension spelling of the plural as peni would be incorrect or would they prefer a series of analogies about the similarities between intercourse and a holiday meal celebrating our fucking over of the indigenous people of North America?

When I mentioned the host being unenthused about violating the snake on television I didn't exactly mention the mortified look on the snake's face. It usually takes a trained eye to spot the emotion subtleties of reptiles but in the case the snake was so obviously humiliated that the cameraman had to keep zooming in on the penises to avoid showing the audience the embarrassed snake.

A few too many close-ups for my liking. I'm sure a female snake would have loved this show but for the rest of us it was a bit hard to watch. It looked like two little pink echinodermata (niphates callista to be more exact) you'd see sitting off a coral reef filtering their meals in their gross little way. Let's just say that it makes the human penis look downright noble.

So getting back to my original question... they looked the same size so if the snake did favor one over the other it would have to be left/right thing or maybe one had a lucky birthmark on it. Maybe it would be just that one penis seemed to perform better so he'd save that one for the special snakes in his life. I wonder if he can use both at the same time.

You'd never know what a snake is packing because they suck up into their bodies when not in use. Perhaps a female snake can see a bulge when a snake has a larger than normal set of penises. He might leave a trail behind him advertising his dual hogs and females just go wriggling after him as fast as they can crawl.

I think that would make a great follow up special for any serious nature program. I don't think it's fair just to casually mention that snakes have two penises then go wandering off onto some other topic with so many unanswered questions still left in the viewers mind. To me, that was the most amazing thing I'd ever learned from a snake documentary.

I guess I got you all excited about hearing about penis analogies and then just let it drop. I'll make it up to you with a joke.

Did you hear the one about the snake who had _five_ penises?

His pants fit like a glove.

Know Thy Bliss

When I was a young lad I distinctly remember an issue of _The Incredible Hulk_ comic book where the Hulk smashes a Greek statue and the head of Socrates ends up in his hands looking directly at him at which point the Hulk reads the inscription on the base of the statue. "Know Thyself." This, predictably, begins his transformation from the raging destructive green beast back into Bruce Banner the mild-mannered scientist.

And, somewhat less predictably, began my metamorphosis from mild-mannered nerd comic book reader into an outraged and significantly less-green and less-destructive and yet none-the-less annoyed beast.

Why you may ask? Because when Plato had Socrates and Charmides use the maxim to move his various dialogues along not once did the intended meaning have anything to do with the subconscious fiddle-faddle that would lend itself to explaining why an enormous green monster created by a mistake involving gamma rays would search himself and return to his pre-accident condition. "Know Thyself" indeed. Plato meant know your place, know your role in society and, perhaps if you stretch it a bit, know who you are in regards to your own views of good and evil. Maybe if the Hulk had smashed a statue of a more recent pioneer in psychology it might have made more sense but the truth is that the writer used a cheap vehicle to create some sort of pseudo-intellectual moment that did nothing but cheapen both his original premise and Greek philosophy as a whole.

Which brings to mind another proverb... "Ignorance is bliss."

For the longest time I thought that was also of Greek origin but it turns out it was from a Thomas Gray poem.

To each his sufferings: all are men,

Condemn'd alike to groan—

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would destroy their Paradise.

No more;—where ignorance is bliss,

'Tis folly to be wise.

The entire poem _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_ is much too long to include all of it here (given your painfully short attention span) but I highly suggest you give it a read some day. The point being that had I not known the original meaning of "Know Thyself" I would have enjoyed the issue of _The Hulk_ much more than I did. And the point of the point I just pointed out is that the episode with the comic book was just a precursor to much more painful examples of how ignorance truly is bliss. Now I'm much too considerate to start heaping upon you takes from my own life so I will expand the topic a bit and make it more interesting and less about the hardships suffered by one particular nerd.

The things that we are ignorant of are broad and breathtaking in the territory they cover. The exact time and date of our deaths for example. That has been a question posed by everyone at one time or another... would you want to know when you're going to die? Just imagine how it would change your life. Then there are various degrees to which you could ask such questions. Will I get paralyzed? Will I lose my sight? When is the next time I twist my ankle? Now I don't expect you to sit there and start to wrestle with all these grand concepts... simply let them run off you like duck off of water and move on. It isn't my intention to slow you down too much and even a simpleton could spend 20 minutes thinking over such heady matters.
Most people would want to know if their spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on them but how many would want to know if they simply had lust in their hearts for another? That ignorance keeps us sane. What do our friends really think of us? Does the mechanic at the Jiffy Lube think I'm an asshole?

It goes on and on... we swim in a sea of ignorance and the only thing that keeps us afloat is the illusion of knowledge we try and maintain. Even the ocean metaphor is fucked because only by drowning can we accept our condition fully and truly live to see another day.

Yeah, I know. That makes fuck all sense.

We're ignorant of love for all the right reasons. These truths and inventions that seem to transcend biology haunt us all the more for their vague importance. Our ignorance of the soul is the only thing that keeps our culture moving forward it seems. Even my definition of forward is steeped in an ignorance that could win an election but set off a lie detector.

Fuck... this whole topic has me frozen about where to go with it. Like sitting in a plane and trying to peek through the little window and describe the sky. Peering through and scribbling away until I catch a reflection of myself in the glass.

And suddenly I'm the Hulk holding the head of Socrates and Thomas Gray is yelling in my ear to ignore what I think I know about "Know Thyself" and just go with it.

And I'm looking into the cold stone eyes in the window. Inventing the phrase and turning it into an accusation. Turning it into a key that unlocks a door and behind that door is cleaning supplies, a bucket, paper towels and a few old nudie magazines.

Really, it's not a metaphor. It's just a closet filled with shit the janitor needs.

Disappointed?

Imagine how I feel.

the Beefeater blog

It all started out, as many of the greatest tales so often do, innocently enough. I was sitting in my backyard watching the wind move around the tops of the tall trees. Does it get more wholesome? As I lay staring at the great outdoors my ears were filled with the sounds of the various woodland inhabitants. In particular the birds... and among the birds one bird in particular. It was loud and it made the same call again and again. Not only was it annoying in its repetitiveness but because I swear the noise it made sounded exactly like "beefeater." I'm not joking... "beefeater, beefeater, beefeater" again and again. Endlessly. It got me to thinking. Am I hearing this right or is my subconscious trying to tell me that I'm either obsessed with Yeomen Warders or I might be gay?

Well I don't need to go to the Tower of London to know that I'm not gay. But wait... why was a tower the first thing that came to mind?! OK, now I'm getting a little creeped out. So what do I do when I get creeped out? I turn to Google.

The logical first step was to Google Beefeaters. Are you sitting down? _The Beefeaters_ was the original name of the rock group _The Byrds_! You see what happening here don't you? The final piece of the puzzle fell firmly in place when I found out that there use to be a British superhero called The Beefeater. Reading about this guy didn't help. The leggings and porn mustache aside I found out that to defeat evil he uses his Rod of Power. He is called The Beefeater and he wields his Rod to fight crime. Is it just me? (A quick note. To be accurate he really should have wielded a partisan instead of a rod but usually comic books shy away from the hero using anything pointy.) So I start to panic... all signs are starting to point in one direction but then I do some more research and find out that this somewhat hapless superhero ended up destroying the Eiffel Tower (did it have to be another tower?) with the aforementioned Rod and never made it into another comic. There was my answer! It's common knowledge that I dislike the French so all of this was simply nature's way of reminding me of that fact. I should have picked it up sooner after remembering (after the fact of course) that the word "Beefeater" comes from the French word buffetier. What superhero would want to be called The Buffetier?

I guess the whole concept of a French superhero is sort of an oxymoron anyway. What would his powers be? Surrendering? "We're being attacked! Someone call The Buffetier... to surrender for us." I guess buffetier would also be quite a mouthful for a bird. Speaking of mouthfuls... there are now female Beefeaters guarding the Tower of London. Why mouthful you ask? Come on! I have to do _all_ the work here?  
Female Beefeaters... it's a blog that writes itself!

the book report

My book report is on a book by Meemi Salfanie called _Autobiography of Nobody You've Ever Heard Of_. It is the story of an old guy who has come to the end of his life and wants to share some of his experiences. I liked it because he is really honest and doesn't try to make himself look like a hero or anything.

One of my favorite parts is when he tells the reader that the worst advice he ever got was to always be honest with himself. He says that looking back too much honesty just causes paralysis. He never mentions having trouble walking again so I assume this was a temporary condition that he overcame. He doesn't say how but that goes back to him not trying to make himself out to be better than he really is I guess.

He never got married and only mentions a few relationships he had with girls when he was younger. When he looked back on them he compared them to the white streaks left behind by airplanes against a perfect blue sky. I liked that analogy because when I think about it he could mean that they ruined his unblemished sky and left ugly marks on it or he could mean that they were pretty and the closer you looked at them the more interesting they got, what with the swirling exhaust slowly melting away into the sky and the plane moves further away and all. I haven't had many relationships yet but in my case I think he could mean both.

He mentioned one girl more than any other. Her name was Beth and he said that she treated her subconscious like an ex-boyfriend. I'm not sure what he meant by that but later in the book he admits that he doesn't either.

He was always middle class until very late in his life when he was able to amass a small fortune. He doesn't go into too much detail about how, he almost seems embarrassed by it but it does allow him to try and build this big garden that takes up much of the book. I would say two thirds of the book deals with him building and then stopping, then building and then stopping construction of this enormous garden. To be honest I didn't understand some of what he said but given that he says honesty causes paralysis, I will take his advice and try not to get stuck in telling you about it.

Basically he wanted to leave behind one thing of beauty before he died. A huge garden. So he bought this big tract of land in Alabama and spent years personally planting all these trees and flowers and buying all these Greek sculptures. It became his obsession and soon he had this beautiful park that he took care of personally even though he had tons of cash and could have paid someone else to do it. He knew every shrub by name. Then one day it occurred to him that eventually after he died- might be 10 years or 200 but eventually, someone would come along and buy the land or rezone it and turn it into a strip mall or a bowling alley and that thought drove him crazy so he bulldozed the whole thing in his grief.

He spent a lot of time after that thinking about life and beauty after that until finally one day he realized that the inevitability of the destruction of his garden made the whole thing even more poignant so he rebuilt the whole thing even bigger.

When he was getting up there in years he rarely interacted with anyone young. I think he went a bit crazy because he was convinced that time moved a lot faster for old people than young people and he always felt guilty about spending any length of time with a child because he felt that he was hurrying them into their future. He said he felt that way because when he was younger a summer day seemed to last forever but when he was old the days flew by. If he made a kid lose a day by hanging out with him he would feel terrible. That's why he never went into a nursing home. He said the entrance to a nursing home was like an event horizon. I don't know what that means but he said when he visited a friend at one he met the security guard and spoke with him a little while and really liked him. He described him as a nice guy, a little hunched over, slow moving and thinning white hair. On the next page he learned that the guard had only worked there three weeks and was 28 years old. He fled the building and vowed never to be that close to a collection of old people again.

The last part of his book is about how he watched a wasp on his window. It was late October and he was surprised when it landed on the window in the first place. It was cold out and he thought all the bugs would be dead or asleep or whatever they do when it gets too cold to fly. The wasp landed there and then just sat there. He came back later in the day and it was still there. Sitting there motionless. Finally he went back the next day and the wasp isn't there and he felt relieved until he looked down and saw it dead on the window sill. He had spent a lot of time looking at the details of the wasp on that final day, how pretty it was and how he'd never noticed how cool wasps were until this guy came along. Maybe he was thinking about how pretty the vapor trails in the sky are as well. He says that he went to his garden and worked even harder than usual that day.

I was so interested in this book that I looked up the author afterwards even though it wasn't part of the assignment. Turns out he died a few years back. When I found out I sort of knew how he felt when he saw the wasp on the little ledge. I couldn't find anything out about his garden; I hope someone is taking care of it.

Turns out that reading his book was like a temporary cloud created on my sky. RIP Mr. Salfanie.

getting the Led out

Bill Besterdon looked into his almost empty glass, gave the contents therein a final swirl around and then threw it back. The liquid still felt foreign to his tongue but he enjoyed the feeling it gave him when it finally reached his brain.  
Everyone he had ever known had been dead for close to 40,000 years.  
The greenish blue liquid helped take the edge off.  
He missed the kick of whiskey or rum but he had long ago given up his attempts at finding a beverage that mimicked their post-swallow effects. Everything in these parts was always the perfect temperature, always smelled inviting and always went down smooth. The only thing you had to decide was what effect you wanted it to have after the seamless delivery.  
By "these parts" I'm referring to anywhere outside of the Milky Way. Bill use to laugh at how insulted Iowa and Nebraska use to get over being called "fly-over country"... well, the Milky Way is often known as "a fly-through galaxy." Earth was just a big ol' Kansas floating in space. When there _was_ an Earth.  
There was an incident.  
The truth was that everyone he had ever known was dead to him the minute he stepped foot into the cockpit of _Venture 7_. It had been conceived as a one-way trip from the beginning. He had, of course, volunteered for the mission. After he and Lindsey had broken up and then the death of his parents there was nothing to keep him there. His friends had called it a "high-tech suicide."  
Truth was there was a big part of him that agreed.  
So he was launched and it was estimated that he would arrive at his destination, a planet that seemed so much like Earth that he was told he could step right off the ship and catch some rays, in a short 22 years. He had even packed a cooler and suntan lotion.  
In an example of how funny speed, time and distance can be in space, he was intercepted after only five years of travel by a spaceship launched from earth 5,000 years after he had taken off.  
If you want to do the math on that, feel free. Bill certainly never did.  
Alien life and civilizations were surprisingly like he had been told they would be (by the science fiction writers of his day). Mostly carbon-based and a lot of them odd-looking as fuck. Violence and conflict was nearly unheard of as technology had removed most of the causes of friction.  
So Bill floated (sometimes literally) through the cosmos from that point on, bouncing from the Silverado to the Omega Centauri, through the Norma Cluster and finally here to a little planet circling a large star in the Cigar Galaxy. Each jump through space putting another few hundred years between himself and the death of everybody he had ever known.  
He sat in a perfectly comfortable chair and listened to the shit that passed itself off as music. He wasn't even sure that it was supposed to be considered music as he knew it. It was supposed to act as some sort soundtrack to some sort of communal event, a way for sentient beings from countless planets across the universe to gather, drink and communicate. The walls were covered with inter-planetary bric-a-brac that gave it the appearance of an _Applebee's_ on acid. His fellow patrons gave the crowd from the bar scene in _Star Wars_ a run for their money but nobody gave him a second look.  
Bill heard about the final fate of Earth a few years back. Apparently a virus caused the dead to reanimate and suddenly the planet was crawling with the undead. The twist was that unlike how they had been imagined in literature for thousands of years, the zombies were completely docile and spent their time just wandering aimlessly around. This caused a widespread WDWDAG (What Do We Do About Grandpa?) Syndrome which in turn created a very profitable Afterlife-Care industry. This in turn came to a sudden end when people found that cutting off the head of ol' Grandpa saved them a lot of cash. Typical of humans, this started to bleed into the not-quite-dead crowd and soon every nursing home was under assault. Just as it was getting a bit out of hand an enormous meteor slammed into Neptune, changing the planets orbit. This caused Earth to be violently wrenched from its own orbit and hurled unceremoniously into the depths of space.  
A very limited number of ships made it off the planet by the time all life was extinguished.  
He could have, at any time, spent time in a virtual representational of his old life. Pulled from his conscious and unconscious mind it would have been exactly as he remembered it. It could have even been better if he had wished.  
He could spend an afternoon at the ballpark eating hot dogs, swishing down cold beers and watching his team win a close one any time he wanted.  
He could even be the one hitting the game-winning home run.  
He never bothered.  
He had left that behind when he climbed into the capsule.  
He had even made the decision not to procreate.  
With only a few hundred _homo sapiens_ scattered across the universe his DNA was in high demand. "Why bother?" He thought to himself. He had at least a few hundred good years left in his body.  
Then he heard it.  
_Ramble On_ by Led Zeppelin. Over the speaker system.  
He had always hated Zeppelin but suddenly the sound washed over him like a cool breeze. It was actually a coincidence of epic proportions, the odds that a human would actually be in the bar when a song from an extinct planet millions of light years away finally made its way into the Party Shuffle of over 19 trillion musical selections.  
(For the record there are only two Earth songs that made it into the galactic jukebox. The other was _Achy Breaky Heart_ by Billy Ray Cyrus. Go figure.)  
Bill smiled and sang along the best he could, mangling the lyrics as he went. He considered looking around the crowded bar to see the reaction of "his" song but figured it was pearls before swine. Why ruin the moment?  
He thought briefly about crying and giving in to the grief that had to be there somewhere inside him.  
He thought about getting sentimental and missing something about Earth or his former life.  
"I'm a human damn it! I'm made of better stuff."  
Eventually the song faded and was replaced by the sound of a wind instrument that, unbeknownst to Bill, used the wind produced by the escaping methane of its player.  
Procreation suddenly didn't sound so bad.

15 miles

I've always wanted to write an epic story about a young man or woman who decides to leave a small town in the Midwest and set out on their own. It would go into great detail about how they didn't fit in and how their dreams for something more eventually win out over any fear or hesitancy they feel. The story would tug all the heart-strings and touch on all of the universally inspiring themes that make up the human experience. The best part of the story, the thing that makes it worth writing, is that they pick up and move only 15 miles away to another small town almost identical to the one they left.

I think that would create more questions in the readers head than the original premise and their own answers and best-guesses would make a far better story than the words printed on the page.

I get this desire every time it rains and I happen to pass a swollen river or stream soon afterwards. The urgency which the water hurries along, like the wild heartbeat of someone who should know better, seems to resonate inside me for some reason. I can't help but wonder why the next day there are any fish left in the river. Why aren't they all far downstream? Pushed by the strong current. They must expend a lot of energy just to stay in the same spot and ride out the flood. The question is obviously why? Do they enjoy their little area of water that they know so well or is it that they are scared of what might find if they allowed themselves to be swept along?

I think it's a different question than the migratory fish like the salmon that obviously have no choice but to make their way back up the various waterways to arrive at the spot that they were born only to spawn and die. You wonder if there is a market for a children's book that tells the story of a salmon that refused to brave the dangers of the return visit and inevitable death entitled "Fuck That." I'm not implying that fish somehow make a conscious decision on where they would prefer to live but the truth is that they appear to make a conscious decision as to where they would prefer to live.

A few years back I made a journey similar to our friend the salmon in the sense that I flew back to where I grew up and spent four days driving around places I'd lived, only I didn't spawn and I didn't die. What I did realize is that the salmon probably are on auto-pilot and don't actually recognize the spot that they were born due to the overwhelming number of new strip malls and housing projects. It had become so unrecognizable that I couldn't even claim that it had changed. It had simply ceased to exist.

So eventually the sequel you write in your head about the guy/gal who settled down 15 miles away from where they started will be about their quest for the Fountain of Youth and, if it is a guy, about how they determine that this famous fountain lays between the legs of some girl they once knew. Flowing out over trembling thighs and remembered the way a seed recalls the first time it felt rain. Which is stupid.

Not the premise or bad metaphors but the fountain itself. Ignorance is the Fountain of Youth. The problem, with the guy/gal who left on their short journey and everyone who finishes the story in their head and me for first wanting to write it, is that we can never unlearn something we've ended up learning so it turns out that we move away from ignorance at about the same rate that we age so we never notice that the two things aren't necessarily the same. Sometimes when our learning outpaces the years, we end up sitting drooling in some nursing home waiting for our bodies to catch up so we can end up spent in the shallows like some unhappy salmon and finally expire. The theory makes sense as salmon look pretty darn healthy as they start their trip back up the river but then look like shit when they realize/learn what an amazingly dumb idea the trip was.

a cavity to remember

I am nothing if not a street-wise traveler. I know if I am visiting one of the many islands that begin with St. that the people there, despite their warm greetings and friendly smiles, hate me. Even as they sell me trinkets and rent me scuba gear I know that they are really thinking about how good I'd look with one of my arms macheted off and laying on the floor next to me with blood squirting out of my shoulder.

It is armed with this knowledge that I am extra careful with my toothbrush. It is common knowledge that the maids in these island hotels enjoy nothing more than finding one of their guest's toothbrushes lying in the open. I hope it surprises no one that the first thing they do, after making sure that no one is looking, is ram it right up their anus. That's right... they stick it up their ass and the replace it right where they found it in the hopes that the unwary guest will spend the rest of the trip brushing with it, blissfully unaware that their toothbrush had made a quick trip up the maids backside. And then you wonder why they always smile at you as they pass you in the hallways?!

Well, as it happened I had forgotten to hide my toothbrush one day and upon returning to my room had noticed it lying on the counter next to the sink where I had left it. Well, almost where I had left it. Somehow it looked askew. Lifting one eyebrow ever so slightly I approached my toothbrush and braced myself for the worst. I lifted the utensil to my nose and gave it a quick sniff. Sure enough, the musky odor of ass met my nose with the force of an open-handed slap. I had fallen victim to the ol' toothbrush trick. The irony that toothbrushes exist to fight cavities did not hit me until the flight home.

So there I was, clutching a good toothbrush that I had paid good money for. I felt like if I just threw it away that somehow my maid would have "won." So I did the unexpected. I boiled some water and gave the toothbrush a thorough cleaning. Not one molecule of ass would be left on it. Each bristle was lovingly cleansed until no vestige of ass remained. Then I proudly applied some toothpaste and gave my teeth a good brushing! I had reclaimed my toothbrush. I had won.

Then to make my victory complete I sat in my room the next morning until I heard a soft voice at the door announce to me that she needed to clean my room. I welcomed her in and then went promptly to the sink and once again loaded up my toothbrush with Crest. The entire time I stared at her and she at me. Her lips curling slightly into a smile... my lips mirroring hers. Then I slipped the brush into my mouth and began to brush, my eyes never leaving hers. I thought I saw a small shiver run down her body as the brush thrust in and out of my foaming mouth, over my teeth and gums. For a moment I was lost in the concept of this brush having occupied her cavity only 24 hours before and yet here it was back on duty fighting the forces of plague and gingivitis. The maid stood transfixed as my brushing continued minute after minute. If she had only known what a hollow victory it was she was experiencing!

After 3 ½ minutes of fevered brushing, the entire time my eyes locked with hers, I saw her falter. She was unable to even change a pillowcase. She suddenly knew I knew. She started to back towards the door. Caught up in the moment my brushing intensified, toothpaste began to drip down my chin and a fine mist of spit floated out of my gaping maw. A sort of terror gripped her as she reached behind her wildly trying to find the doorknob but unable to look away from the brushing spectacle slowly walking towards her. I looked like a minty-fresh mad dog as a low laugh escaped my throat.

She made the sign of the cross as her hand finally found the door and she was able to retreat into the hallway and flee down the spacious corridor choked with fine art on the walls and beautiful native plants in every corner.

As I spit out a mix of Crest, blood and victory into the sink I wondered if anything could ever make me feel as alive as this again.

I never used that brush again but I still have it.

Oh yes, I still have it.

the dinner party

Everyone call her Bets. It's not short for Betsy, it's because she enjoys gambling. Only those close to her know it's been a problem. Her boyfriend is Slim Jim. He got the nickname because at one time he was overweight and then he lost over a hundred pounds. He loved the moniker after that. Then he gained it all back but nobody has the heart to stop calling him it. Now people who meet him assume he loves beef jerky or his friends are cruel.

The best nickname is easily Groin. If we didn't already have a Groin in the group I'd want that nickname. The only thing I can add about him is that the only time anyone has ever seen him cry was at his Grandfather's funeral. Not because he liked his Grandfather, in fact he hated the prick, but because it upset him to see his father grieving.

There's the obligatory Tits. She loves being called Tits since she had the implants but what she doesn't know is that when she's not around she is better known as Dog Shit due to her annoying habit of carrying her little Papillon everywhere she goes like some bad pop singer. What's worse is that she has these plastic saran wrap-like gloves she uses to grab the dog's crap as if that makes it ok that the dog took a shit on someone's carpet in the first place. The novelty of her having three glasses of wine and asking if anyone wants to see her giant new breasts has started to run out but until that well goes completely dry I guess Tits/Dog Shit will still be with us.

You would think that if there was a nickname that came about due to being caught by someone jerking off it would be Groin but that's not the case. Lefty gets that honor. And if you "get caught" more than three times is it really getting caught anymore? The unusual thing is that Lefty is right handed. He's an artist so for some reason everyone is ok with his habit of getting worked up and then finding particularly unsafe spots to relieve himself.

Radar is a girl although the nickname comes from the character on _MASH_. Somehow in college she would always show up just when someone needed sex. Not wanted sex but really needed it due to some peculiar emotional or physical circumstance. She got married soon after college but apparently in the last few years she has returned to her Radar days and has quickly surpassed Tits on the "must invite" scale.

The Voice started his own internet radio show which he is not bashful about discussing at length to any poor bastard unfortunate enough to ask. He refuses to grow a ponytail, wear band t-shirts or put a device on his website that would allow him to know how many listeners he has at any given moment though so he's a bit of a disappointment among his other internet radio friends. His favorite movie? _Man On Fire._ The reason that he would use take the nickname of such a despicable character... he is not bashful about discussing it at length to any poor bastard unfortunate enough to ask.

Although his actual name is Rich people call him that because he is wealthy. Had he been Ted he would still be Rich. His father owns quite a few factories that produce novelty items. None of them in the US anymore. Rich is peculiar because he refuses to pee when he is sitting down. He will always do #1 and #2 separately. Sitting then standing I believe. He also believes that when he finishes peeing and gives it a little shake the lights will always flicker. Once a few years back he burst out of the toilet eager to announce that the little man-trail from his chest to his private parts was finally completed and showed off the lone black hair as if it were the last spike in the First Transcontinental Railroad. I believe both Tits and Radar helped him celebrate.

And me. The writer. Using words as conspirators, terrified that one day they might be understood. Muddying any water I approach in fear that I might otherwise catch my own reflection even for a moment. Desperately required at any gathering where others might want to take refuge in the murkiness kicked up by my abuse of the English language. We will talk about train tracks disappearing over the horizon or around a bend... and how even though we can't see where they go we know they go somewhere.

Rocky Steps

It's either TNT or TBS... one of those TV stations tends to run movies into the ground a little. They did that recently with Rocky. It was on like 20 times in four days... at some point they actually started a new Rocky before the last Rocky was even finished. Problem is I love that movie and have a hard time not watching it when it's on. It's not as big an issue as The Shawshank Redemption which I am unable to physically move away from the screen or change the channel if I happen to stumble upon it during my channel surfing. Don't ask me why. So I've seen it quite a bit lately. It then occurred to me that one of the most powerful scenes in the movie is one I could duplicate: his ascent of the front stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I live just outside Philly so I got very excited about the possibility of retracing the steps of a cultural icon. Doing some homework on it though made the task seem a little more daunting. Construction of the stairs started in 1919 and didn't finish up until 1928. Damn that must be a lot of stairs! Turns out, and it says this right on the webpage, you can actually see the Washington Monument from the top of the stairs. What have I gotten myself into here?

Obviously I wanted to duplicate the Rocky run as close as possible so I wanted to climb the stairs without the aid of oxygen and unencumbered by the people and equipment of a large-scale expedition. Setting off the next morning bright and early I carried with me only a tent, some basic climbing equipment and food. Obviously I had no idea of what the next four days would hold.

Day 1: Arriving early at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art I craned my neck upwards to glimpse the top. My plan was to spend the day hiking to base camp, roughly 30 meters from where I now stood shivering in the early morning cold. I couldn't help but get a feeling of grief as I passed the spot where a Sherpa was killed only two weeks ago by a runaway hot dog cart and it was with some relief that I started my journey up. I noticed quite quickly the disrepair that some of the stairs had fallen into, deep cracks that made the footing dangerous and slow. Discarded gum and newspapers also add to the treacherous conditions. I am quickly exhausted and it's not until 14:00 hours that I reach base camp, much later than expected. Although I am still committed to reaching the top today's unexpected slowness, dangerous conditions and my exhaustion have shaken my confidence. Rude children touching my tent are not helping either.

Day 2: After spending a restless night explaining myself to various representatives of Philadelphia's law enforcement community I start the day poorly by badly twisting my ankle by slipping on an empty box of Good 'N' Plenty and decide to spend the day resting in my tent. As I gaze out of my tent upon the sight of the Philadelphia Museum of Art I can't help but think about the quote from T.S. Elliot "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Day 3: Time to get cracking! I get an early start and temperatures feel like minus 20 centigrade... or maybe Fahrenheit... whichever, it was quite nippy. You could say it was downright brisk. There is a heavy fog and visibility is so poor that I feel that if I was not clipped securely to fixed ropes I would have surely become disoriented and lost. Soon after I was walking in the blazing morning sun and so I stripped off to my "It's always funny until someone loses a weenie" t-shirt. The good weather has made my spirits soar! I make great time and I'm well past 130 meters when I decide to set up my tent and rest before the final push. It's 21:00 hours when I lay down to rest and rehydrate.

Day 4: I wake at 02:30 hours. I aim to reach the top by 10:00 hours. Bring it on, I'm ready! I am above 200 meters now and I am beginning to wish I had brought oxygen. Looking out I still cannot see the Washington Monument... I can barely see City Hall from here. The next nine hours prove to be the most difficult in my entire life. I am suffering from headaches and stomach aches and my appetite is almost completely gone... which is lucky as my supply of Hot Pockets is running perilously low. I also believe that I have only a limited sense of smell left but as I haven't showered in some time it's probably for the best. It's almost noon when I finally place my foot on the top step of the stairs in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. So many feelings. I want to raise my arms above me head and dance around like Rocky but I am just too tired. I settle for a long gaze out over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Eakins Oval. Suddenly, nearly 250 meters from where I set off only four days ago I realize that I forgot my camera but luck is firmly with me as two older ladies agree to take my picture and promise to e-mail me a copy when they get home. Some people might ask me why I did it. How do I explain the feeling of accomplishment? Life is too short to live with boundaries.

I mull over the decision to start back down but decide instead to walk around to the back of the museum and catch a cab ride home. I hope you find this inspiring. By the way, the two older ladies explained that the Washington Monument that the website mentioned is actually a sculpture in Eakins Oval and not the one in Washington DC. A little disappointing but in retrospect it does make more sense. That would make the stairs up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art as tall as Everest or something...

a death sentence

If you're reading this in 2012, it might be a bit hard to believe but it's true. True for 2021 anyway. The largest corporation in the world is run by Trevor Johnson, a man with over 40 arrests and who was found guilty by a jury of his peers of the brutal murders of four rival drug dealers and a police officer in 2014.

In 2021 he was released from prison on the day he was sentenced to die by lethal injection and instead assumed control of a business entity whose net worth rivals most developing nations and employs over 300,000 people in 30 countries across the globe. Trevor did not finish high school, lacks any social graces, has an estimated IQ of 93 and is currently associated with most of the organizations being monitored by the FBI.

The obvious question is how did this happen? That's the funny part.

In 2013 opponents of the death penalty joined forces with groups supporting suicide rights to create a convoluted piece of legislation that had everyone from the media to the Fortune 500 water coolers laughing at the sheer lunacy of it.

By 2015 they had stopped laughing as it slowly made its way through the courts.

What it said was this: if as a nation we concede that the ultimate price must be paid for certain abominable crimes, that a life must be taken to ensure that justice is served, and it also has been established that a person has the right to decide if they want to depart this world on their own terms, doesn't it reasonably follow that someone who is sentenced to die yet does not wish to can trade places with someone who has made the conscious decision to end their own life? Victims of crime can take comfort that a life has been taken to avenge their loss while the perpetrator of the deed can step into the life of the suicidal individual so society is not down a player.

Obviously this idea was ridiculous but the problem was that legally speaking it made a convincing argument and as it made its way up the jurisdictional ladder it gained some unfortunate momentum. Despite the best efforts of both political parties, community and religious leaders as well as endless lampooning by late-night talk show hosts, it became a law in 2019.

At first the effects on society as a whole were rather minor as executions were rare and at first the condemned men stepped into the lives of the terminally ill or elderly. Then the unintended consequences started to rear their ugly head. It became clear that many suicides are a result of stress and after awhile convicts were being released into a slew of powerful positions in Washington DC, Hollywood and Wall Street. One particularly bad day on the stock exchange had three bloodthirsty killers stepping into the roles of CFO at two leading brokerage houses and partner at a top NYC law firm.

2020 was spent trying to get the law overturned as the economic impact began to hit home. While Cristal stock rose sharply and the demand for chrome rims and "bitches" was never higher, other areas suffered greatly and the public outcry became deafening as leading companies collapsed and unemployment skyrocketed.

The problem remained that while the law didn't make any sense it also made complete sense in a "big picture, everyone is created equal" legal way. When it finally reached the Supreme Court, for the third time in as many years, almost every judge issued a press release condemning it and yet it was upheld 7-2.

So I'm sending this back in time in the hopes of someone reading this and taking it upon themselves to kill Darryl Green of Dallas, Texas. He was the one who first came up with the idea so it follows if someone can just take him out then it will have never happened. Sort of like those Terminator movies. Darryl has got to go.

Dive Master General

Just to be clear on the topic, I am a very popular guy. A day does not go by that my mailbox isn't clogged with invites to various social functions. Starting about three in the afternoon on Thursdays my phone begins ringing and does not stop until the wee hours on Sunday morning... each caller with a better offer than the previous one. If there is ever a party Hall of Fame, I will certainly be its first inductee. I usually have a jet fueling in an underground location near my home to take me at a moment's notice to any hot-spot on the globe that requires a visit from Captain Party. The latest victim of my unquenchable thirst for wild times? My neighbors pool party yesterday.

Let's also be clear on another topic. I hate pool parties. I am skinny and look horrible in any swimming attire. Even though all of the other males at the party looked equally horrible, each gut hanging further over then the next pair of trunks (does that make any sense?), I am uncomfortable because I am so tall and so thin and extremely pale. Cave-dwelling fish give me shit about how white I am. So the pool party is not my first pick of places to hang out but I was invited so what could I do. Aside from the whole being a physical wreck the real reason I hate pool parties is that I'm not "strong" in the water. Let's just say that having to hold my nose when I submerge is not my biggest problem when it comes to aquatic endeavors and leave it at that. I swim with the same finesse that most people drown. I am constantly being "saved" when in fact I'm just minding my own business swimming laps. The biggest reason I loathe pools is my issue with water-entry. Let me explain.

I am not only a toe-in-the-pool kind of guy... I am a take-20-minutes-to-get-my-whole-foot-in kind of guy. I don't want to be that guy but I am. I can't help it. I watch with utter awe as other manly-men cavalierly launch themselves into the water not knowing if their landing will put them in boiling water or sub-arctic temperatures and not seeming to care. Children clap and women sigh as they surface, their faces always the same... smiling broadly and making it known to all that they are truly oozing with actualization. On the other hand I am the guy who meets this performance with a childlike squeal if they happen to splash me with their cannonball. It usually pushes back the entry of my knee and upper thigh into the water by at least ten minutes. I won't even try to describe the hopping and bouncing that go on prior to the submersion of my testicles. Imagine how a lobster would enter the pot of if he was given the thumbs/claws up on decision-making.

I don't want to be "that guy." Really. I want to be the guy who just runs in with reckless abandon. But I can't... however much I want to be. It must be in my DNA. Someone in my family tree must have died from sudden-testicle-immersion-in-freezing-cold-water syndrome (STIIFCWS... won't you give generously) and now it's been hammered into my genetic coding that I can't dive in any water however much I want to impress the bikini-clad observers. I must be that douche bag that takes 20 minutes to get into the water regardless of how many people/children are laughing at me. If they happen to splash me to try to coax me in I wish that I could laugh an easy laugh, see the futility in my actions and join them in the deep end. Instead I shriek and clamp my hands instinctively over my breasts as if all of my body-heat is going to come rushing out of my nipples!

This might help you understand why I am like I am. Ever been with somebody that is driving 60 in a 55, sees a cop on the side of the road and slams on the brakes with a fervor that cause the car to start a power-slide resulting in a thick fog of smoke, long black tire marks behind said vehicle and a very real threat the car will start rolling end over end in NASCAR crash fashion down the Interstate? Yeah, that's me. Again, I can't help it. I don't want to be that guy but I am. It's not even just cop cars that elicit this response. Anything with lights on them; ambulances, fire marshals, construction vehicles. If it has lights on its top I will immediately lock up the brakes. Even if I see that it's an ambulance I will still feel deep down that they will suddenly forget all about Mr. Wilson's hemorrhaging in back and suddenly turn around and chase me, lights flashing, to ask to see if my seatbelt is adequately in place. "Yeah, this is Fire Marshal Dave... I'm going to be late to the 3-Alarm warehouse fire. I just passed a green Taurus doing 37 in a 35. I'm going to go ahead and turn around and follow him for awhile... I have a hunch." I'm THAT guy.

You know, I long ago gave up any hope that I would ever have a body that looked good in a swimsuit. I will die skinny and I've come to terms with that. Children will cry and women will wince when I strip off my shirt. But just ONCE I'd like to be able to dive into a pool without a thorough researching of temperature, depth, clarity and chlorine content. That is something you think I could control. I have spent countless (and tortured) minutes at the side of countless (but not tortured) pools from childhood until yesterday hoping to summon the courage to just run and jump. No toes. No handfuls of water on my legs to "get them ready." Instead I took 15 minutes to ease into the water and spent the rest of the party telling myself that not everyone was uncomfortable making eye contact with me for fear that being a douche bag near H2O was contagious. One day I just want to dive in. Even if there turns out not to be any water at all it would be worth it.

And yes, this story is a metaphor.

LED projecting

Hotel rooms are inherently creepy but because this hotel was on a beautiful Caribbean island I was a lot more relaxed and less apprehensive than usual. Having said that I found myself jolted awake on the wrong side of 1 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep. When your enormous windows face east with nothing between you and the rising sun except the ocean you make sure that the heavy blinds are drawn tight so, to complete your mental picture, the room was dark. So dark that it took me a few seconds to realize that there wasn't much difference between when my eyes were open and when they were shut. A little of the latter and heaping helping of the former. Even still it took me a little while to see the flashes.

Tiny irregular flickers of light on the far wall over the door. At first I thought they were just night lights to tell me the smoke detector was working or guide me out of the room in case of fire but they kept flashing in little uneven almost random pulses. After staring at them for awhile I ruled out anything made by man and jumped to the only other conclusion. They must be fireflies.

Now I'm not sure if fireflies even live in the tropics or how they would get into my room but there they were. Two of them clinging to my wall and flashing away. I presumed they were doing some sort of courtship ritual, perhaps the male signaling that he was in the mood and asking if the female could be persuaded into a little Coleoptera copulation.

Laying there thinking about attraction got me to wondering if that's why they make all false teeth perfect. When my teeth finally fall out or I'm forced to have them extracted due to rampant gum disease I think I'd like a variety of denture options based on how I feel in the morning. Who among us feels like they'll never wake up in a mood that can only be captured with crooked teeth? I know I'll want to reach for the stained choppers now and again let alone the set with a tooth or two missing for a quick trip to the bikers bar.

And yes I know I'm supposed to say I was lying there as opposed to laying there but the truth is at that moment I _was_ laying there.

My eyesight isn't the best so I couldn't quite make out how my firefly pal was doing. It wasn't for quite some time that I saw the third light flickering. Another male perhaps? Or a female stepping in to let the male know that she was game for a little Lampyridae on Lampyridae action. Either way this newcomer was causing some friction because the use of bioluminescence was getting more and more conspicuous.

You want conspicuous? How about a little gold once in awhile to spice up the grill? I'm not talking about my every-day, walk-around-with, visit-the-grandkids teeth but for special events I'd like to know I have 'em waiting in a glass of water by the bed at home.

It was late and my eyes were getting a bit weary but I could swear I saw I saw two of the three lightning bugs pair up and start doing whatever it is they do when the moment is right. Their flashes seemed to be coming from right on top of each other. I wondered what the third wheel in this luciferase acting on the luciferin, in the presence of magnesium ions, Adenosine-5'-triphosphate and oxygen to produce light love story would do when he or she realized he or she was being written out.

And what about a set with giant buck teeth?! Tell me that a 90 year old guy with giant buck teeth isn't the guy getting all the ass in the nursing home! You're damned right he is.

This is the interesting part. The third party did nothing. He or she just stood there flashing every now and again as if nothing was going on. I figured he'd or she'd fly off in search of another partner but instead he or she stayed right there and watched the whole nasty thing. What could have been going through his or her Pyractomena voyeur head? I sat in the darkness and listen intently for the sound of a breaking insect heart but none was forthcoming. So many lessons to be learned from fireflies.

The weird thing was that in the morning I looked above the door and saw two tiny lights that were there to guide me out in case of a fire or other emergency.

Weird.

how to ruin a video

It's funny how sometimes by focusing on the wrong thing you can actually find something worth paying attention to. Take for instance this music video I saw today. OK song, decent video but as the female singer was wailing away as she walked through a desert, I couldn't help but notice this old ship that was sitting there. Suddenly it was all I could see.

It looked a little like The Minnow from _Gilligan's Island_. Actually, thinking back now it looked an awful like it. It was sitting there for no good reason in the middle of an arid wasteland. I admit that I don't know how it got there but given that it was a ship and was currently sitting perched in sand than I have to assume there was no good reason.

You have to wonder if it misses the feel of water underneath it. Before you accuse me of giving inanimate object human emotions contemplate this... why do we give boats names when we don't offer such monikers to other forms of transportation like planes or buses?

That's alright, take a minute.

Does this land-locked vessel miss the way the salt water would spray across its bow as it plowed through the waves, rising and falling and rising and falling as it chugged along? Does it resent the unrelenting heat as it bleaches the paint away and dries out its hull? Does it sit there anguishing over the fact that it is no longer sure it could even float if given the opportunity?

The singer's voice suddenly sounded exactly like John Denver and the words to the song became _Calypso_ , the drums became the cries of seagulls and in the background of the video I saw enormous dark clouds blowing in. The woman could only look on helplessly as torrential showers suddenly poured down upon her and the hapless film crew as they all looked upwards in disbelief.

It might have been my imagination (yeah, the rest of this actually was happening) but I could have sworn I heard ringing of a long-dormant bell as the ship summoned the soaked group inside her as the sand quickly was being replaced by water.

"I am NO prop" the ship seemed to be saying. "No metaphor to be used as subtext in some larger message!"

The sound of creaking wood filled my screen as the craft slowly was lifted up off the land, silently exclaiming its buoyancy to all. The drenched and bedraggled singer's eyes protesting that this was her vehicle, her voice... only to be drowned out and swallowed up by a much more poignant allegory. Her vision extinguished, learning too late that there is no petty message that can survive the powerful symbolism of a ship stuck in the desert.

All the occupants clung to the vessel for dear life until the wild raging storm finally, as the song drew to a close, became a crystal clear ocean.

Of course when it was over the first thing I did was click the replay button but now the video was set on a mountain and there wasn't a ship in sight. I could swear the singer gave me a quick wink as she started to sing.

Then my eye was drawn to the sun rising over this jagged peak in the background...

a slap in the face

Sometimes people can be so thoughtless. I was sitting recently with some of my friends when one of them mentions that it's been proven that if your hand is bigger than your face then you have an increased risk for certain types of cancer. I am a very health-conscious guy so I found this information interesting and, like most people, before debating the science behind this assumption I would quickly see if my hand was in fact bigger than my face. I had no sooner lifted my hand over my face to see when one of my asshole friends slams it into my face. Here I am trying to see if I am at risk for the world's leading killer and this is what he comes up with?! To make matters worse, all of the other people sitting us roared with laughter! I swear it felt like I broke (or at least sprained) my nose.

Looking for ice I quickly retreated into the kitchen where I found the wives of these jackals huddled around a table discussed the gossip of the day. When they saw me coming in with my throbbing nose they quickly came to my rescue and asked if I needed something cold applied. I told them what I needed was friends with a better sense of humor and related to them what had just occurred. It was then that one of them asked if my hand was in fact bigger and I was forced to admit that I had been assaulted before I could find out. Taking my cue I then lifted my hand in front of my face to finally see if I had anything to worry about... and this bitch slams my hand into my face again. What the fuck?! I thought some of these she-witches were going to laugh up a lung.

When did cancer prevention suddenly get so funny? People suck ass.

skin & bones & cavities

Sometimes at night I lay there and imagine my face with no skin on it. A skull sitting on the pillow, my brain sitting there encased in hard bone. My eyeballs floating there in their sockets like two wet marbles. The veins running up my neck sitting there exposed and glistening.

Pretty creepy but I do it.

Other times I sit fuming that the middle toe on my right foot will not wiggle on my command. It simply won't do as it is told. Are toes so different from fingers that they can feel they can get away with such arrogant behavior? It sits there with two toes on each side of it defiantly, seemingly above the law.

Sometimes I close my eyes, which in the middle of the night is redundant as it is already dark, and feel my heart squeezing the blood around my body. Trying to follow a single blood cell as it makes its way around my body. Obviously it's speculative at best but I like to think I'm getting pretty good at it.

Takes work.

Occasionally I'll put my hand on the wall and if it's late enough and the moon is just right I swear I can feel the vacant spaces behind it. If the air conditioning ducts are considered the circulatory system of a house then the gaps between walls must be the empty cavities that get filled with blood when we're in a terrible car accident. In my mind I can see all the dusty hollowness that would allow a rodent to scamper from one end of the house to the other without detection.

Sometimes I try and will my fingernails to grow. I know that technically they are growing but I'm talking about werewolf-type growth where they come sliding out all long and sharp. Obviously in the cold light of day you know it's impossible but that type of reasoning abandons you after midnight. I don't want to brag but occasionally I get a good tingling sensation going and I feel like a nail-growing breakthrough is right around the corner. If playing the piano or typing can increase the rate at which nails grow just imagine what a few nights of willing them to grow faster can achieve.

Actually, don't imagine this if you are reading this before midnight. It might seem stupid.

Frequently I will just lay there staring up at the ceiling trying to float off the bed. For anyone that has never sincerely tried to fly, I highly recommend it. Nighttime flight in the privacy of your own bedroom is much less embarrassing than trying it on your driveway after you've taken the garbage out and think nobody is looking.

Or so I've heard.

Have you even tried to just keep inhaling? You know, pretending that some shut-off switch is broken inside your lungs and you're just going to keep sucking in air until you explode?

Hurts.

If I'm ever successful you'll probably hear about it on the news because that would be something to see. You'll be like "wow, I read that guy's blog awhile ago... I thought he was kidding."

Mostly I just lay there and try to picture myself without skin. Whenever I see a skeleton is some museum I imagine that guy sitting there centuries ago living his life. Never thinking that all he will end up as is a bunch of bones on display. Worried about this, worried about that. Never realizing that all these concerns were as meaningless now as someone in the future shuffling by and wondering what he looked like with skin.

The Lawnmower Man

It's the lawn mowing thing all over again. He and his wife had made a deal and then she went back on it. Granted, if he had been able to make one of his first three sons a girl then he wouldn't have been in this situation but apparently there is no holding back his manliness. Now if there are some of you men reading this who have all daughters and no boys, then please don't think I'm saying that he's better than you. I'm just saying you are not as much of a man as he is. When it comes to making male offspring he is Captain Man!

That aside, a few years after number three dropped, his wife started to feel the need for an additional mouth to feed. She swore that it had nothing to do with the complete lack of female offspring but he couldn't help feel that if he had just been able to slip in a girl among the first three attempts he could happily visit his doctor and get the plumbing shut off without his wife objecting too strenuously. So after many months of pouting and crying his wife got her way. It seems that his pouting and crying weren't as effective as he thought they'd be.

Now to jump ahead to what I consider an irrelevant issue but one I'm sure you're curious about... yes, it was a 4th boy. With that information out of the way I can focus on the crux of the story. In order for this 4th child to come into existence there was a promise made by his wife. A promise that many people might consider horrible and a pox upon the very fabric of parenthood but a promise nonetheless. He had a complete understanding of his limitations as a human being and with this knowledge in mind it was agreed upon by his wife that he would have no responsibilities for this new baby for at least the first year of his life. Now please don't get me wrong, he does love his children. He just doesn't consider them his children until they can walk and talk. Until that time they are nothing more than alien blobs whose sole purpose for living is pooping, drooling and keeping him up at night with banshee-like screeching. In a nutshell, he has no patience for babies. He tried valiantly with his first three but after two minutes of crying it was all he could do not to hurl them into the woods (as he'd done with a hamster when he was younger when it wouldn't stop running on his wheel, a story he'd related to his wife and one of the many reasons she wouldn't leave him alone with any of her children until such a time that they could defend themselves against Daddy).

With all of this clearly in mind it was agreed that he would have nothing to do with raising his child until he was at least a year old. This wasn't something casually or discussed with any levity, it was a cornerstone of the child-making decision. Then, after only six months, his wife had the nerve to come up to him and ask that he watch the little one for 45 minutes so she can go jogging with a friend! It wasn't even the question so much as the off-handed way she asked him. As if this promise was never made! He was dumbfounded, he couldn't believe that the very ground didn't split open and swallow both her and the oozing cherub for this gross violation of their agreement. As he sat dazed, not knowing how to answer her properly, he suddenly remembered a very similar deal they had made when they made the leap from renting to owning. He was as content as could be with townhouse living but she was desperate to own a home at the time so of course he gave in and they moved to a house. The only stipulation that he had- and I say only to reinforce how very flexible and good-natured he was being about this major transaction- was that they would get a lawn service to mow the ¼ acre they were buying. That was it, the only string attached to pulling up roots and taking on the responsibilities of home ownership.

Well wouldn't you know, not two summers later she casually suggested that they can't afford the lawn service anymore and wouldn't it be better to just buy a lawn mower and mow it themselves. Themselves meaning, there was no question about this, him. He was at loss for words. Considering that he'd only been out of work a few months, he hadn't seen this coming at all. Here was a clear violation of the only tenet laid down governing this major event in their lives. She clearly knew what she was doing and yet there she stood asking that he spend no less than an hour every single week mowing his own lawn! I don't think things were ever the same.

Now here he sat facing the very same dilemma. Just as she'd done with the lawn, she had him with the baby. He couldn't go back and undo the baby; he'd fallen for her hideous lies once more. Now it looked very much like that he would have to spend 45 minutes (which as we all know means upwards of 50-55 minutes in real-time) with his own six-month-old blob. Many tense moments went by before he put his foot down and reminded her of their deal.

The problems began when he continued his train of thought to the point of accusing her of knowing beforehand that she'd be no more than six months into the process of childrearing before she was running off to jog every week or so. How could she be so unfair to a hapless father like himself? Well, it all ended happily and that's what counts. After yammering away for a while about how he was just too lazy to take an interest in his own son or something to that effect, she was able to convince her mother, who lives only an hour and a half drive away after all, to come watch the baby. This worked out nicely because he could then avoid having to sit and be pleasant with her because, after all, he had a lawn to mow.

be a better pig

I've taken a liking to whistling at ugly girls. Fat girls. Old girls. You can't _believe_ how it makes their day. While attractive girls get all insulted or pretend they don't hear, every time I do it to a plain Jane they quickly look around and when they realize I'm whistling at them, they get the biggest smiles on their face. It's so refreshing to turn this primitive sexist gesture into something positive!

My spirits buoyed by these acts of cultural-norms disobedience, I've also stopped opening doors for beautiful women. I've always been an old fashioned guy but the rush I've been getting from walking through a door and then letting it close behind me as some piece of ass walks behind me is amazing. Sometimes they walk into the glass door like a 105 lb. sparrow... their minds unable to grasp the concept of some nerd not falling all over himself to hold the door ajar for their easy passage. The real homeruns have been when I hold it open for some 350 lb. woman, smiling broadly, and then let it slip from my hands when she's through as if there is no one behind this wildebeest in a dress as the runway model girl behind her fights to internalize what has just happened. It's priceless.

I'm telling you guys, there is nothing like the feeling of watching the elevator doors close on a set of 34Ds in a halter top rushing towards you. It's fantastic. Same thing on a train. When faced with a decision of which girl to sit next to, plop down next to the homely girl across the aisle from the Victoria's Secret wannabe and start chatting as if you're hanging on her every word.

I literally remember the days of slowing down next to a cute blonde in a convertible to "check her out" like some Pavlovian reject. It's been so refreshing to pull up next to this same girl at a light and just gaze absentmindedly ahead knowing every second I avoid eye contact with her is like press-on nails on the chalkboard of her ego. In a perfect world an acne-ridden hunchback would then walk by on the sidewalk so I could whistle and slap the roof of my Ford Taurus. Making someone feel good is such a buzz. Why waste whistles and comments on jaded hotties who've come to expect and even resent them when this same behavior can literally change the way a girl feels about herself?

It makes chauvinism easier to swallow. (Insert joke here)

an onion-flavored halo

I died next Thursday. Killed by a drunk driver on the way back from church. What she was doing drinking at church I have no idea. I never touched the stuff myself... church that is. The best impression of the crash I can give you is all the thoughts in my head, everything that made me who I was, were suddenly like an apple hitting the pavement after being dropped from a ten story building. In slow motion. I was no longer looking out behind two eyes as much as trying to keep all of my consciousness together in one spot.

Funyuns. That was my first thought I think. So much for pearly gates. The way they assaulted your taste buds with salt and a vague oniony taste when you put the first one in your mouth. That trip to Chicago. Finding a small one and working my tongue threw the hole and wondering if that's what the opposite of getting your tongue pierced felt like.

Were Smokey & the Bandit and Top Gun really that similar? Bandit and Maverick... Snowman and Goose. I was making my run to Chicago without a Goose. The rules were simple: 14 hours there, 14 hours back. No stops. I could only eat Funyuns. I could only drink beverages I'd never had before. I could only listen to Imogen Heap CDs... although Frou Frou was also allowed. I strayed from this policy near Cleveland and fate paid me back in spades by playing three songs in a row on the radio that reminded me of three people that I wish I'd never remember.

They are careful to say onion flavored rings. If you check the bag you clearly see that no onions were harmed in the making of Funyuns. Ferrous Sulfate didn't get off as easily.

I guess I was a little disappointed not to have a quick recap of my life before I expired as I always sort of imagined I would. What I got instead was a small overview of what led the woman who hit me to the spot she hit me. From the moment we were both born, all of the million decisions that led the two of us to intersect on this spot years later played themselves out. The joy and pain and a lifetime of Funyun purchases.

In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls. Romeo & Juliet by Dire Straits. Individually I could have handled them but together they had me rubbing my Funyun-covered fingers against my eyes which did not help at all. Maybe it was the Maltodextrin.

I've got a long way to go... and a short time to get there. That reference will mean nothing to most people these days. Now I know how my Granddad felt when he would try to talk to me. Of all the things I'll miss I think it's the things that I never did I'll miss the most. I had a friend who sang "all the lips I'll never kiss."

So what now? I'm supposed to do this without even a Snowman or a bag of Funyuns for the road?

girl on a train

Is there anything more electric than meeting the gaze of a cute stranger on a long train ride? Too bad this has nothing to do with that. Actually I should have called it "Girl Under a Train"... because that's what it is about.

I saw her lying across the tracks a few days ago. What brought my attention to the tracks in the first place was the piercing whistle of the approaching train. I couldn't make out if she was unconscious or was bound and unable to move. At that point it didn't make much difference; the train was almost on top of her. I could barely make out her features but I saw enough to know that I wasn't going to be racing heroically to her aid and subjecting myself to possible injury. She was a little tubby and her face wasn't cute enough to warrant that kind of behavior.

What's that? You're calling me a monster for that kind of thinking? Come on now. It's time to grow up a little. Have you ever seen an ugly girl rescued heroically? Ever?! I'm friendly with both firemen and search & rescue guys and they'd be the first to admit the inverse relationship between how fat the girl is and how much peril they will subject themselves to. You think that offends fat girls to say that? Who knows it better than fat girls?! They live it. They have to be extra careful during floods and earthquakes because they know if they get themselves into a pickle they'll be rescued only after the last supermodel has been found. I have a lot of fat readers and they're laughing the loudest, believe me.

Anyway. As I sat watching the train barrel down on this unknown female I sort of was wishing she was better looking. What guy doesn't want to rescue a beautiful woman from certain death? You can imagine it any way you want... but every guy is just hoping that after the rescue that she'll be so grateful that she'll show him her boobs. That's all. If I ever rescue anyone I think I'll just come right out and ask to see 'em.

But this girl wasn't hot. Thinking back on it I probably could have saved her. As I sat stirring my tea and waiting for it to cool down I was mentally going through the path I would have taken to reach her if she was cuter. The low fence I would have hurdled, the brush I would have had to run through, where I would have dragged her body off to the side moments before her untimely demise... yep, it would have been perfect if she hadn't insisted on being so damn uncooperative regarding her looks.

My train of thought (get it?) was interrupted by the screeching of the trains breaks. Damn that was annoying. This endless high piercing squeal... it certainly got the attention of the young woman on the tracks because she started squirming something fierce! It appears she was bound after all. Who puts a homely girl on the tracks anyway? I understand the effort of tying up a beautiful girl and putting her on the train tracks to die in response to some grievous harm she has inflicted on you but a homely girl? Seems like a lot of effort to me.

So this screeching goes on for what seems like a full minute and it was crazy how close the train actually got to stopping in time. I mean, literally it ended up running over this girl by like ten feet. It was going sooooo slow when it got to her that I have to think it made a bad way to die ever worse. From my vantage point I could only see her feet as it went over her. They were snipped off neatly and both fell almost comically and lay next to the tracks. A pair of feet just sitting there on the ground is not something you see every day. I tried to get a picture with my camera phone but I was too far away to actually make out the feet and I didn't want to get any closer in case some nosy policeman wanted to know what I had seen. By now the conductor (or driver or whatever they call themselves) had started to back that bad boy up. Time for me leave. If I had to see the bloody mess that girl had made I doubt I would have been able to finish my tea... and I'd just paid $2.95 for it at Starbucks after all. Waste not, want not.

Here's the kicker. I'm sitting reading the paper today and it turns out the girl on the tracks was hot after all. Turns out the guy who had put here there had dressed her up in loose fitting clothing and messed up her hair to make sure no one rescued her! Can you imagine how shitty that made me feel?! I had my shot at saving a hottie and I let it slip through my hands! What kind of a sick bastard thinks of actually making the victim look frumpy before they tie her to the tracks?! How could I have known right?

I guess I learned my lesson. Next time I'm just going to go ahead and rescue the girl even if she looks a bit average just in case she later turns out to be hot. Even if she is carrying a few extra pounds maybe she has a sister.

1 step forward... 2 steps back

One step forward.

On the corner of a busy intersection, next to the mall in Montgomeryville, PA, is a Commerce Bank. It wasn't always there. There use to be a graveyard there. I remember it well because it sat across from the Burger King and I'd sit and look at it as I ate my Whoppers. It wasn't very big and most of the graves had been there for a century or more. It always looked out of place amongst the developments and strip malls and eventually someone agreed with me because one day construction vehicles pulled up and announced that the graveyard was being "relocated." As it turned out I was fortunate enough to be free the day of the big move so I sat in Burger King and ate pancakes as the sun came up, then a double cheeseburger and, as the light grew dim, a Whopper.

Funny thing was... I didn't really see anything "moved." It only makes sense. Wooden coffins, especially those made 100 years ago, aren't going to last very long in the ground. So a lot of men dug and dug and shifted earth around and at the end of the day the graveyard had become a large hole in the ground awaiting the construction of a Commerce Bank.

You might think that I'm against this sort of thing. You couldn't be more wrong. Nothing exemplifies the lack of human understanding about our time on this planet better than our burial ritual. It's just so painfully shortsighted. One day the Commerce Banks of the world will dig up every grave. Right now there are 6.6 billion people on the planet and it is estimated that we will pass the 9 billion mark sometime around 2042. What about the year 3042? Or 10,042? Do you really think that everybody will be allocated their 5' x 9' plot?! Do the math. For every weepy ceremony lowering someone into a grave there will be a bulldozer tearing up that same spot 100 years (or less) later reclaiming the spot on behalf of Commerce Bank. People are just so uncomfortable with dealing with that final goodbye... so we pretend that somehow we are putting bodies "at rest." Better get your shuteye quick Grandpa... I hear the sound of a high-torque hydraulic excavator headed this way.

"One day they'll sell old headstones like collectables" I thought to myself as I washed down the last onion ring and walked out to my car amid the noise of the machines.

Two steps back.

So I get in my car last week and turn on the radio and what do I find out? They have replaced my beloved ESPN radio with a Christian station! One day I'm getting the latest news on the NFL and the next all I can get is the "good" news. That was some pretty shitty news from where I sat. I was so pissed off... and, in retrospect, I couldn't have been more wrong. Listening to religious broadcasting is awesome! Yesterday I was lucky enough to stumble upon a guy talking about evolution. It was his opinion that if you were to disprove the Book of Genesis that the entire bible would then be nothing more than a bunch of silly stories. I was with him on that. His anger wasn't with the "antichrist" atheists and pagans. His furor was directed at the 40% of Christians that believe in both the bible AND evolution. This guy was pissed off at the "ignorant and lazy minds" of the believers who fail to see evolution as the pack of lies told by Satan. "Doesn't Genesis clearly state how man came into being?" he raged. He scoffed at the "facts" of science and then made a heartfelt plea on behalf of "faith."

The greatest comic minds of our times couldn't have written better stuff. The best part came as he railed against the notion that science was slowly eating away the pillars of religion... despite the fact that science has "been proved wrong again and again." I couldn't make that shit up. Lol I wanted to call in and tell him that science isn't trying to destroy religion; it's just going about its own business trying to solve the mysteries of the universe. Religion will crumble under the weight of its own ignorance. But apparently they weren't taking calls that day. It was a one-way conversation. A conversation you could own for free if you write in and request it along with a "love offering" of no less than $20.

What keeps me up at night is the fact that there are people walking among us that actually send in $20 to this guy. People who enjoy the technology and medicine that organized religion has fought so hard against for so many centuries and yet turn on their radios to hear men and women like this guy spew the most inane bullshit you can imagine. I can't get enough of it myself!

Then, like seemingly everything in my life, it came full circle with an advertisement for burial plots. I guess we are that uncomfortable with that final goodbye...

ubi dubium ibi libertas

So for those of you who stay current on the "evolution" of our species and the impact nanotechnology and robotics will play in our future biology, you will have no doubt heard all of this before. For the rest of you, and let's be honest by "the rest of you" I mean you, it might come as a bit of a surprise. I mean no offense by that last sentence but chances are that if you're reading this, you're not very bright. I mean, if you were highly intelligent would you really be reading this? No. Blogs are for the dull and dimwitted. Sorry but it's true. Same can be said about those who write blogs so we're in the same boat. I wish we were both more intelligent but what can you do? Not much... it's all genetics.

Well not much now... but soon it will be a different story. But that's not the point of this. The point is to revel in the upcoming confusion and angst that technology will provide us. In the not too distant future nanotechnology will allow us to modify how we look. Really. We will appear physically however we want at any given time.

Let that sink in.

After a popular movie there will be thousands of Matthew McConaugheys walking around. But then comes the panoply of existential risks involved with this technology. I will avoid the real heavy stuff and focus on the superficial. Will anyone just look how they look? If not... will you be looking like you do for yourself or others? Is it farfetched to see a man angry at his girlfriend because she left home in her Bs when she knows he likes her with bigger tits?

Now comes the better part. Not only can you appear how you want... you can, with the help of a little processor behind your eyeballs, make everyone else appear how you want them to. Boyfriend too fat? No problem, just make him look like you want him to. Pow! You're sleeping with Brad Pitt.

So we'll live in a world where anyone can look exactly how they want and make everyone else look how they want. On a date you'll have to ask "Is that really you?"... that is if you even care. Will anyone care if they can make their date look however they want anyway? At some point you'll have to ask "Are you looking at the real me?" How many arguments will be started with "Do you even know what I really look like?! I want you to see me the way I want you to see me and not the way you want to see me! Is that so wrong?"

You won't go to a salon. You'll download the newest hair and facial features. A girl might end up mad at you because she suspects you're not even looking at the her with new eyebrows because she knows you already see her in your usual maid/nurse/cheerleader outfits.

Sex... holy crap. Foot long dongs and virginal vaginas will be the norm. Will anyone long for imperfections and poor performance? Doubtful. Maybe it will all swing full circle and girls who fuck "natural" will be all the rage. Or maybe the guys will just say that and image them perfect anyway to be "hip."

If you walk down the street and see an ugly guy you'll have to wonder if it's just an ugly guy who is self-confident or a good-looking guy who wants to be loved for who he is... or a cheap guy that won't spring for the $25.95 George Clooney package at the local AppearenceMart. Talk about head games!

This will happen. It is coming. Every sensory organ we use to interact with your environment will be totally at your discretion. Someone farts? Mmmmm cinnamon rolls! What you see, what you touch... even what you remember will all be in this biological coalescence of flesh, bone and nanotechnology. You will instantly have access to every known piece of literature, scientific fact and, of course, porn via a wireless connection in your head. Don't know something? Just Google it in your mind. We will be the science fiction we talk about now. We will live out the triumphs and the horror stories. But back to our bodies.

Myself I think I'd stay with the train wreck that is my current body. I'm lazy like that. If she doesn't want to see it, and no one could blame her for that, let her pick what I look like. On the other hand I have to confess I doubt I'd ever bang the same girl twice however many times I banged her.

A society of doppelgangers. Shape shifters created by convenience and trends instead of the demands of natural selection. Personality would then dictate who is hot and who is not and the Paris Hiltons of the world would be exposed for the vapid waste of DNA they are. Nerds like myself would rule! Lol Ok, I'll take it down a notch... but do you really think the boys in the lab, if left to decide what is considered attractive for generations to come in our culture, aren't going to make damn sure that Scientific American becomes the new Playgirl?

If we think tattoos and Mohawks are "rebellious" just imagine what might take their place if we can choose any skin color, texture or shape. Some guy at the supermarket pisses you off, show him your new "Fuck Off Jerry" rash on your forehead. Want to show a girl that you like her dress... have your 19" erection tear through your pants like a pink Incredible Hulk.

Just imagine a physically level playing field in a society that is obsessed with looks. I'm sure it will all be rolled out the day after I die.

dust-up at Subway

So I walk into my local Subway and I see this girl waiting in line in front of me. An average looking woman but she's dressed very business-like and she insists on making eyes at me. Believe me, when you're me you get to know that come-hither look pretty well. So I stand there, doing my best to appear completely oblivious to her flirting. My mind locked and loaded for the task of ordering my sub which lay just ahead.

The girl behind the counter knows her and I can't help but overhear her ask where her "man" was. Instantly I recognize that the Subway girl was making TWO subs for this lady. If that isn't foreshadowing, I don't what is.

So almost on cue this sweaty man comes waltzing in and makes a beeline for her. While she looks like she's ready to present some board of directors with the years' final sales numbers he, on the other hand, looks like he earns his living with a mower or trimmer. He is dressed in a sleeveless shirt, which must be one of the new offerings from the Larry the Cable Guy line at Sears, and cut-off shorts. It's unclear if I actually let out an audible snort at seeing him walk up and kiss the top of her head but I'm sure my face must have said a thousand words... none of which was encouraging to their eventual union.

Anyway... I order and get my sub and I pay. I go to leave. The happy couple is still filling up their beverages at the machine and as I walk by I guess my quick glance at her saying "you poor stupid bitch" must not have been so quick or as subtle as I'd have liked.

Larry, we'll call him Larry, asks me if I have a problem. What I was going for was a look that said "Although you are clearly a white man I am surprised to find, based on your attire, that you speak English so fluently" but what Larry saw was a look that he understood to be "Yes. I have a problem."

Understand, here I was only looking to buy lunch here. I am a victim of circumstance.

The problem with your typical victim is that they are slow to act. I, however, am not your typical victim. I struck out in the hopes of ending this conflict quickly.

Two things here. The first is... you never really know how the financial decisions you make can impact your life in the strangest of ways. Take for instance the sale that Subway is having on their foot long subs. For only a small amount I could have made my 6" sub a full 12 inches. I clearly remember wrestling with this decision in the line but decided to save a few dimes because I was clearly not hungry enough to tackle 12 inches. Also as clear, the memory of almost asking for extra meat because Subway is notorious for only putting on a couple razor thin slices of ham on top of giant amounts of bread and as I watched the Subway chick make my sub I saw that this was in fact what was unfolding! The words to tell her to go ahead and upcharge me for some more meat literally hung on my lips before I finally put them back unspoken.

These two financial decisions made a huge impact on the final outcome of me bringing my sub down in a hard swift motion across the bridge of Larry's nose. 6 inches was clearly not enough in retrospect and I couldn't help but wonder what additional benefit another few slices of ham would have made to the outcome let alone the full fury of another an extra 6 inches. As it was there was a small explosion of ham, Swiss, lettuce and tomato slices and a very startled Larry.

Thinking quickly Larry launched his large soda right into my face.

Well played my yard-working nemesis.

I returned fire but found that I only splashed him with an embarrassing amount of Coke.

Those of you paying attention will note that I earlier mentioned "two things here" and then went on to describe only one. Well the truth is there was only one but it appeared twice... so I'm only half wrong. (do the math)

In an amazing display of irony the reason that I was able to return fire with only an embarrassingly small amount of liquid was that I had a bottle of Coke. I paid a little more for it instead of pouring it myself from the fountain so it would be less likely to spill in my car should I have to come to a quick stop while driving.

Drink that in for a moment.

I saved money which caused my first strike capability to be halved and then I paid a little extra to make sure my tactical liquid response was inadequate.

As I stood drenched I had to take stock of my situation. While I stood against the counter with only two oatmeal raisin cookies left in my bag, Larry still had his girlfriend's soda within easy reach and a full cold-war-era-esque supply of snack foods at his back. I was in a bad spot.

"Were you looking at my girl?!" he thundered, a smudge of mayo on his eyebrow and a few drops of Coke clinging to his arms.

Now truth be told, I wasn't. But the thing was, if I said that it would appear to the crowd of onlookers like I was only saying that to wimp out. Perhaps at a Wendy's or KFC... but not in this sandwich shop Mister!

"I was only looking at her in disbelief. She has the face of a Shetland Pony."

Now I felt bad. I had brought her into it. Insulted her for really no reason. I had meant to lash out at Larry and instead I had made an innocent woman feel bad.

I actually felt I deserved the second large soda thrown on me and it actually doused the flames of remorse that had begun to burn and turn my cheeks red after such a savage horse-related comment.

The Greek chorus had decided. I was to be the villain in this drama. They began their taunts and they turned as one to Larry with their thumbs all metaphorically pointing down.

I thought for a second about calmly turning around and ordering a replacement sub but thought against it. Lowering my eyes I slowly backed up towards the door. Larry, feeling that he had inflicted enough shame on his opponent, turned to console his Shetland-Pony-faced girlfriend. All of a sudden I knew how the losing ram feels after he's been out head-butted and he's forced to slink away down the mountain away from all the sheep.

It was lunchtime and the only thing on the menu was humiliation.

Vowing to never again order 6 inches of anything... well, at least without ordering extra meat... I decided to find another fast food place.

Using the drive-though of course.

get to know Wade

Let me tell you a little bit about Wade.

He likes to write things down in the hope that someone will read what he has written without him knowing it.

He is deathly afraid of droughts. As he has said to many people, every one of the worst droughts in history had an eighth day of no rain. Anything more than that and he starts to stockpile water, puts buckets on his roof, fills his bathtub up just in case and, most disturbingly, begins to drink his own urine. He wonders if his name was Dale would he be afraid of valleys instead.

When he was in college- yes he did attend college- he was one of the few people with a car and he made money driving people around so when he graduated he bought a used Greyhound bus but was disappointed when he couldn't get enough people to pay him to take them to the same place. His friends all warned him before he committed to buying the bus and claimed he lacked common sense but Wade said that that kind of thinking would also tell him to go to the dentist when his teeth hurt. He claims to have uncommon sense and is missing three teeth.

He claims to be nocturnal because daylight makes him sleepy.

He believes that suicide is usually on the menu when you can't live without the person you want to kill. It is a widely held belief that he came to this conclusion when the only girl in the world he thought he could ever love left him in high school. He arrived at the conclusion that she was the one for him because he could always guess what number between one and ten she was thinking of. With other girls he had no idea and they could have been thinking of any number (except nine, no girl thinks of nine) but with her he somehow knew. On a side note, his attempts to have her call him Pickledick as his pet name were as unsuccessful as her attempts to understand why he wanted that moniker. Apparently he lived through the break-up and told a friend it was because he couldn't live without himself. His quest for the next only girl in the world continues.

One time a few years back when he was drunk at a bar his friends heard him stand and announce to no one in particular "Sure I'm on a side road but that's only because I know a shortcut!"

That's pretty much Wade in a nutshell.

taste the rainbow connection

Next time you're having a shitty day I want you to remember this story. I'm driving home today went out of nowhere the clouds open up and start raining their ass off. I throw on the ol' wipers and look around to see where it's coming from because all around me it seems like the skies are blue. Sure enough there is a big black storm cloud sitting on top of me. It snuck up on me and but then moved on as quickly as it came. That's when I saw it... the biggest brightest rainbow I'd ever seen!

It was really pretty. I almost pulled over to get a few pics with my camera phone because it seemed so close and the colors were so intense. As I kept driving I saw that the rainbow seemed like it ended right in my subdivision. I'd never seen one where I could almost see where it touched the ground so I was like a kid with visions of pots overflowing with gold in my head.

I stepped on the gas and tried to follow it but eventually it faded away as I was only minutes from my house. I have to admit to a warm cheery feeling inside as I finally pulled into my development. So you're no doubt asking yourself how this story turns crappy.

Have you ever had to call your insurance company to report rainbow damage?

Yep. The roof had a big hole, about a dozen windows were broken and my mailbox was flattened. And the colors... there were reds and violets everywhere. In a word my yard looked gay as hell.

It didn't help that my neighbors claimed not to have seen a thing. The hippy couple who lives to the left of me blames the whole thing on "global warming" and the "enhanced rainbows" it's creating and the family to my right simply blames "the Irish." When I laughed and asked if they meant leprechauns they spat at me and said that "that's what they _want_ you to believe."

Apparently I'm not covered for rainbows.

Floods? Sure. Wind damage? Heck yes. But optical and meteorological phenomena that cause a continuous spectrum of colors to appear in the sky when the sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the atmosphere? No such luck.

While the agent on the phone was nice enough and patiently worked through the various rainbows it might have been (he ruled out Secondary and Supernumerary ones right off the bat) it ended up that even if it were none other than a Circumhorizontal Arc, known in the insurance game as a "Fire Rainbow", I simply didn't have the coverage.

Ironically his last name was O'Reilly.

plane travel and crashes

It goes without saying that my electronic device was turned off. We had only started our decent and the last thing I wanted was to face the wrath of a cranky stewardess. Looking out the window I could see the shiny blue of the lake beneath us and the city of Chicago beginning to creep up on the horizon.

Being that I am so tall and lanky the last thing I want to do is bring my seat back into the upright position but the pressure in my ears was telling me that it was time and, again, that ferocious stewardess was patrolling up and down the aisle wearing the expression of a hungry jackal. (Paul is right you know, you ain't nothing but a waitress in the sky.)

So my electronic device was off and I was looking out the window as we began to circle Chicago, banking over the Northwest suburbs as we approached O'Hare. My head was pressed against my little window opening and I was absentmindedly tapping the stylus from my electronic device against the window. Looking down. I could begin to make out individual buildings now as we got lower. The stylus moving against the glass of the window without me paying much if any attention.

Then it happened.

It took me a few seconds to put the pieces together. I'm looking down when I see this tiny dot sort of move erratically beneath the plane. Then I realize that it had followed the same movement as the stylus.

Hmmmmm.

By now I could begin to make out cars and trucks on the highway and I wondered if I had just witnessed a crash of some sort. We were still high enough that it was difficult to tell and I could find no trace of whatever it was that had slid across my line of sight. I would say it was done more idly than driven by curiosity but either way my stylus touched upon one of the automobiles on the highway... and I dragged it across both lanes of traffic, through a small field and into a wooded area.

"That's strange" I thought to myself.

Briefly I sat back into my seat and thought through this moral grey area. While it was, of course, clearly reprehensible to cause any kind of traffic accidents it was also clearly impossible for my stylus to have had any part in what I just witnessed. Therefore I once again returned to my little window to explore this phenomenon further.

This time it was a small box truck. My stylus touched upon it and dragged it at least a mile at speeds that must have exceeded 150 mph right into a Chevron station. The ball of fire created was all Christmassy orange and looked no bigger than an inch across from where I sat. The weird part being that from where I sat this explosion was silent. I could only imagine the shrieking of sirens and bystanders, the heat of the flames and the smell of gasoline turning the pleasant early afternoon of whatever intersection I had moved the box truck through into chaos.

The next car my stylus lighted upon had a hell of a ride. I had tried to run it headfirst into another car but missed so I was forced to double back and keep trying to hit the other vehicle as it dodged and swerved to avoid this horrific end. I couldn't help but wonder if my car was keeping its tires on the road or if I was literally lifting it and moving it above the pavement. On some of the turns I was making I was sure it would have shredded the rubber right off the rims if in fact the car was still earthbound.

What was this driver thinking? I had to laugh a little. One second he or she is tooling along... the next their car is flying around, totally out of their control, trying to hit another car. Ah to be a fly on _that_ wall.

Finally I got the car to smash into the other fleeing one. Just to make sure I kept slamming it into the disabled vehicle again and again. Was that smoke I saw?

As the plane got lower it became harder and harder to manipulate the vehicles. By the time the wheels started to be lowered the best I could do is cause cars and trucks to be pulled sluggishly into ditches and medians. Apparently there was some relative stylus-to-object size/influence consideration. By the time we were on the runway the best I could do was to knock the hats off the crew working on the ground. Funny but far less satisfying.

Soon my scowling stewardess had my rapt attention as she implored us to remain seated until the little light went off above us at which point all the inexperienced travelers jump to their feet like some Pavlovian experiment. "Sit the fuck down, they won't open the doors for another five minutes you dickwads!" I said under my breath.

Anyway... I'm sure you must have read about this string of 'accidents' and the accompanying fatalities in Chicago the other day. I trust you'll keep this crudely-written confession to yourself. No one would believe you anyway I'm guessing.

Flying back to Philly soon. I wonder if the stylus will work the same.

Only one way to know for sure...

the ghost at the bank

So it's around midnight last night and driving by the Commerce Bank not too far from my house. I've written about this place before. The bank sits on a hunk of land that use to be a graveyard. I watched them out the window of a Burger King taking out the headstones.

So as I'm driving by I look into the darkened bank like you tend to do when it's late and the roads are empty. I guess I was looking in to see if anyone was robbing the place. I'm not sure if I saw a group of men inside with masks and bags full of money if I would have called 911 or smiled and thought "good for them."

So I'm looking in and I do see someone inside. Just standing there looking out. I was going at pretty good late-night hope-there-are-no-cops clip so I passed by quickly so I wasn't even sure of what it is I saw.

I had to know.

So I make the next left and turn around and go back. I drive by again, slower this time, and sure enough there is somebody standing there. Right in the middle of the lobby. Just standing there. Too weird.

So I go to the next light and pull a U-turn right in the middle of the street and rive back. This time I pull into the parking lot. Slowly. I'm a little freaked out, I'll admit. I think I see the figure again but when I pull into the parking space facing the bank my headlights shine through the whole place and I don't see anyone.

So I turn them off.

He's standing there. Right where he wasn't standing two seconds ago.

So I turn on the lights and squint to see if he's there.

He's sort of there. In the bright lights, reflecting as they are off the glass windows, I see a vague outline of him but I also see right through the guy.

So I sort of shit my pants.

He's looking right at me. I would have immediately backed the car up at 100 miles per hours and driven the fuck out of there except for the look on this guys face. I can't even explain it. He was looking at me with a "what the fuck" look on his face.

So I turned the lights off again to get a better look at him.

Then it hits me. I'd completely forgotten that this bank use to be a graveyard. Once again the urge to shit my pants becomes high on the list of possible things to do in this situation. I swear I'd have probably lost bowel control, I'm not much of a brave guy. Except for now as the headlights were off I could see that muddled look on this face. If he was planning on biting through the top of my skull or draining my soul through glowing red eyes, he was keeping his intentions pretty well hidden. Instead he looked like a lost old man waiting for someone to point him in the right direction of his room at the nursing home.

Either he'd missed the latest "Fashion Don'ts" issue of GQ or bought all his clothes from a local Amish outlet store but it didn't appear to me that he was from around here... or more accurately _now_.

The stupid shit I do sometimes.

I got out of the car and stood looking at him. My hand never leaving the door handle. We stood like that for what seemed hours. In reality it was probably just a few minutes but the way my heart was racing it was hard to tell. Even at this late hour I could hear cars driving by. Somebody on their way somewhere... completely oblivious to the little drama going on inside and outside of the Commerce Bank. Behind the bank and up a little hill was the Burger King I'd sat at the day they came to remove all the headstones. It was all bright and lit up like a lighthouse in front of an ocean of closed stores. Ever since they changed the way they made their fries I'd suddenly been forced to order onion rings instead and my intestines have never been the same. I could see a few people milling around inside or sitting at their booths eating.

"I watch them a lot too."

The voice came from in front of me. The stranger in the lobby was now the stranger standing next to me and I'd never seen him move a muscle and I knew for a fact that the big glass doors were not only locked but that they had never been touched.

His voice was melancholy and it may have been the only reason I didn't scream out loud at seeing him suddenly so close to me.

His face still had that indescribable look that "what the fuck?" can only claim to be somewhat close to in describing.

"What are you doing out here?" It was the only question I could think of but I had a stronger-than-suspicious feeling that I knew the answer. No matter though... I also had a pretty-safe-money feeling that he was not pressed for time.

"When they put me here it was such a nice place." His gaze seemed a long way off now. "It was a beautiful ceremony. I guess you don't think about it when you're first deposited somewhere... that it may change."

I thought about the irony in his choice of the word "deposited" given we were standing in the parking lot of a bank but I felt it best to keep it to myself. I guess I still hadn't completely ruled out the head biting or soul sucking at this point.

"But change it did. At first there were a lot of us who decided to stay. We would wait like children for a visitor to come. I remember when my wife would come by...."

What he was thinking behind those pale eyes was impossible to tell but I felt myself feeling great waves of grief that threatened to bring the tears to my eyes that he was no longer capable of crying.

It was quite a long time before he spoke again and for awhile I thought he'd completely forgotten I was there.

"After awhile some of the people began to leave. The hardest time was when your loved ones stopped visiting. I can still remember the last time I saw my wife place her usual bundle of daisies by my grave. She looked so much older."

My hand finally relaxed the grip on the door handle and I leaned against the car.

"They all stopped coming. I was never sure why my wife didn't join me here. The plot next to me stayed vacant for almost a decade after her last visit. I waited. I waited for the hearse to bring her here... but after enough years past I gave up that hope."

Funny thing was he never really moved. He stood stiffly upright, never shifting his weight from foot to foot. I felt bad thinking about such things while he poured out his heart to me but the idea that he had no weight to shift made me think that he could stand all day with no fatigue. Maybe forever. I wanted to ask if he ever lies down or even crouches but it seemed trite.

"Then they built the adult bookstore across the street and that was the final straw for most of the ones here. When I was alive I had a pretty good sense of humor about such things but it only made it harder to sit here as a forgotten shell."

Another long pause.

"That's the thing... when you first get here you forget this is the last stop. I think most of them just got sick of watching. Then they put up the Burger King so while there was more to watch it didn't get any more interesting."

"So you can stay here as long as you want? You can see what happens 1,000 years from now?" I asked and the idea made my head swim a little. Why stop at 1,000 years?

"When you've gone from a scenic little graveyard tucked away from the quiet village to being stuck between a dirty book store and a fast food restaurant you pretty much think that the worst is behind you. Can you imagine what those of us who were still here thought when the trucks rolled up and they started tearing down our headstones?"

He said it in such a way that there was no humor in it. His voice was like sand blowing across pavement. Brittle and cold.

"I'm not a man who uses profanity but I distinctly remember thinking 'What the fuck?'"

I felt a quick sense of pride about recognizing the look from such a distance.

"That's when the last one left. The last one except me."

The idea that he stood there and watched them tear down his 'home' and build a new one around him made my chest ache. I couldn't even begin to put myself in his place.

I had to ask one question.

"Do people walk through you all day? I mean... where are you during the day?"

He looked at me and for the first time our eyes met. I felt a charge run through my body and I could feel every year that he'd been here. I could feel every year that was to come almost like a taste in my mouth.

"I'm here and I'm not here. As if loneliness could be a physical malady to someone without a body. The word ghost seemed to me to have such a romantic connotation before I became one."

I'm such a chicken shit. I tried to hold his gaze but it just scared the fuck out of me. His eyes were grey and empty and I swore that if I didn't look away I'd become as transparent and hopeless as he seemed.

"So why don't you go...?"

Maybe for the first time I saw him flicker in and out, like bad reception on an old TV. My question must have struck a chord.

"Simply put... I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what? You're dead. Isn't that pretty much the worst thing that can happen?"

"My wife wasn't buried with me."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that but I didn't want to start guessing as if the fear that had kept him frozen in place for these long years was a hackneyed thing to be figured out instantly with no effort or discarded as unworthy of my interest.

He wouldn't continue until I once again looked him in the eyes.

'Wherever it is I'm going... what if she isn't there waiting?"

What do you say to that?

If I hadn't of looked over at the bank as I drove by tonight my new friend would have remained here as he's been since decades before I was born. Alone. I guess it makes sense that we who have yet to slip this mortal coil try to measure time in words like years and millennia but I now know it can also be measured in other ways. Eternity is every second you spend in fear.

I always thought that fear was a shadow cast by death into life. Now I know better. It stretches both ways.

I didn't want to ask him his name. It would make him more real and I swear I thought it might make me go over the edge.

But I had an idea.

If I could get his wife's name I could find out what happened to her. I could get him closure... maybe.

He told me the name and the years that he had lived here.

I told him I would be back as soon as I could.

I got back into my car and drove away.

forevergreen

Everything is a metaphor. I guess it just comes down to poignancy and relevance of the message as to the effect it has on us.

Take the people who drive up to the Northeast and spend hours winding up and down wooded back roads to view the changing of the season. I can't help but wonder if they can see the forest for the leaves.

Every time I see the trees in the fall the colors remind me of a bruise. Not your everyday bump into a piece of furniture but the result of some spectacular accident. The kind that carve their initials into us. (Are there any accidents?)

The leaves like turned pages, all their stories blowing together. Romantics like to say that ignorance is bliss. I give you the evergreen.

The changing colors are just the outward manifestation, all the real work is done underground. It's the same with the trees.

It's understood that auxin, the chemical that controls the cells at the base of a leaf, stops being produced in the fall and that is why the abscission layer starts to grow and literally strangles the leaf. Without water and nutrients the chlorophyll (green) starts to disintegrate and lets the other pigments start to shine through... carotene (yellow) and anthocyanin (red) among them. Of course, the tree remains completely unaware of the colors they are producing or even that there is someone looking. Only the arrogance of people stops us from considering that something similar could be going on with us.

They drop each leaf like a memory, knowing they can't hold on to them. They count the seasons in rings. As we only get one winter we keep track by the diminishing number of things that ring true.

I wonder if any of the people sitting huddled in their cars watching the leaves turn colors ever ask themselves if it hurts.

I think it does.

a revolution to die for

Revolution rarely comes without violence. So it was when stewardship of this earth was passed from the living to the dead. In fact, it came with an extraordinary amount of it.

Looking back now it's funny how close many of the apocalyptic stories written about the dead coming back were to what actually transpired. Perhaps it just stands to reason given that everything from space travel to submarines were envisioned in the minds of writers far in advance of when there were actually invented. Were all these horror stories nothing more than our societies way of saying we had already been hard at work inventing our own demise?

The undead genre always held a special place in the psyches of the people of the 21st Century. Maybe the idea of the crude immortality it gave those unlucky enough to fall prey to the cold clutches of the zombies, however they were created, struck a chord in those of us who felt our own limited time on the planet was just that; limited.

In the end, or the beginning if you were one of _them_ , it was a man-made virus that did the trick. Engineered with as little thought to consequence as the writer who taps out an idle thought on a laptop. The virus escaped... unlike the engineers that brought it into the world. Both they and the writers and pretty much everyone else would be dead soon after that.

When I say that the undead genre held a special place in the hearts and minds of the people I knew I'm mostly talking about myself. I had imagined it in my heads so many times. Sometimes I feel guilty, feeling like I wanted it to happen so badly that I actually brought that reality into being.

Stupid I know, but knowing that doesn't bring me much comfort now.

You see, I had even created contingency plans in my head. How I would save my family, where I would get a hold of firearms and where we would hide.

Except when it happened none of it went to plan.

Maybe that's the only reason that I feel so bad. Sometimes I think that. If I could have saved the people I cared about maybe it would have been as heroic and exciting as it had always been when I daydreamed about it.

Instead of what it was.

What it is.

Telling you about how _they_ are reads like I'm regurgitating a tired litany of movie premises. The virus isn't airborne so they only way to get infected is through blood or saliva. The only way to 'kill' them for good is to sever their spinal column above the shoulders... usually with a clean shot to the head. There are some differences than the way I'd always imagined them though. They attack and eat anything that moves, not just humans. They move no faster or slower than they did when they are alive and even show signs of fatigue after an extended chase.

And they laugh.

Usually when they are killing things.

It's about the worst sound you can imagine.

When it began nobody, least of all the guy who had prepared for it and played out the various scenarios, expected it. Nobody had the slightest idea. Once it started it created such a panic that I never had the least opportunity to spring into action and save the day for my loved ones. Instead I was miles away and completely at the mercy of the literal worst of human nature. The savage that had been hiding inside us for all these thousands of years.

The problem was that the virus didn't show itself at first. Nobody knew who carried it and who didn't until it was too late. Then something triggered it and the world exploded into pure carnage. It was like some time-bomb that was set to go off and when it did it was global.

There were moments where the authorities felt they had it contained or figured out but then just as fast it would hop across whatever barriers or quarantines they had set up, mutate, and then continue its march back and forth across the country. Countries.

All of them as far as I can tell.

They don't sleep. They are dumb as a post but the constant movement and foraging must require more energy as they always seem to be hungry. The sleep part I only figured out after a few nights but the hungry part I learned right from the start and numerous times after that. They will eat anything and any _one_ that they come across.

They are on an endless hunt for their next meal. I would have never guessed that humans could be such cold-blooded machines. Well... maybe I did. Hard to remember now.

So now I'm huddled under the stairs of what use to be a comfortable suburban home. Alone.

Without a weapon and without a plan.

Waiting.

Mr. Holback's goodbye

I heard about his suicide the way you hear everything in an apartment building. A mean little whisper that is never directed at you but you hear it none the less. Those who have never lived in an apartment building in a big city often romanticize it, picturing it in their head as some little community where everybody knows everyone and knocks on each other's doors to borrow butter and batteries.  
Not really.  
They imagine it filled with hard people with hearts of gold. They have the first part right anyway.  
People come and people go and you nod at each other and exchange pleasantries in the elevator but you're careful never to be _too_ friendly. They might get the wrong idea... that you actually care about the words that are tumbling out of their face.  
Mr. Holback didn't even go as far as nodding most of the time. He always seemed preoccupied and in a rush. Most of the people in the building assumed he was some sort of intellectual who probably taught at one of the universities. Nobody knew.  
Nobody much cared.  
Least of all me.  
He had lived across the hall from me my entire tenure in the building. I remember as I was moving in he tried to help me with some boxes I was awkwardly unloading from a rental van I had borrowed for the day. I told him I didn't need any help and I don't think we spoke again outside of grunting a hello as we passed in the hallway.  
He rarely left his apartment at night and I would see the light on under his door when I would return after a long night of work or hell-raising.  
There was yellow tape on his door after it happened and I'm not sure why I even did what I did. What made me, after staring at the door for a good three or four minutes, grip the doorknob and give it a turn. I'm not sure why I wasn't surprised it wasn't locked and I'm not sure why I ducked under the tape, walked in and closed the door behind me. Morbid curiosity or was it to pay some sort of misguided respect to my former neighbor?  
Whatever it was it had me standing inside the door and looking around a room I had never been in before. The idea that I was somehow disappointed that it wasn't filled with newspapers dating back to the 60's or a collection of guns, mummified body parts or other oddities that would create a more interesting Mr. Holback flitted through my mind briefly. He wasn't some hermit I could understand by picking and choosing stereotypes that would make him suddenly make more sense.  
He was just a guy.  
Was that why I was in here? To figure out _why_?  
He liked to read apparently. There were two rows of bookcases brimming with books on each side of the narrow room and between them an old desk. To my amazement the police had removed the body but left the rope. Hanging under the beat-up chair that had obviously been used and then kicked away. The desk was empty except for a pad of notebook paper. Looking over the books it seemed obvious that one side of the room held the philosophers and the other side the scientists. There were no books of fiction or horror or romance. Every book he must have purchased in the last 20 years must have been clearly destined for one side or the other.

The notepad contained no suicide note. No last will and testament. I am not by nature a nosy person but I couldn't help looking through the pages and reading some of the notes he'd made. If I was expecting something profound I was to be sorely disappointed. It was nothing more than a bunch of little insights, most meaningless to me. For every scribbled "if a woman owns a snake be sure that she will play with your penis when you are asleep" there was an equally odd comparison between his own DNA and that of a Black Widow.  
Pages and pages of it. Notes to himself?  
Notes to nobody.  
The last thing written was written on the thick cardboard in the back.  
"If you don't want anyone to follow you, leave no clues."  
Fair enough Mr. Holback.  
I stood up and stretched my legs. My leg brushed the chair and it suddenly occurred to me that this is the exact spot where he had died. I couldn't help but imagine the scene in my head and suddenly I had a deep desire to leave the apartment and never look back.  
But I didn't.  
Instead my eyes were drawn to a little indent in the otherwise neat row of books to my left. Was this the result of Mr. Holback's last moments on earth? A foot wildly kicking and striking the works of a group of German idealists? Whatever would Kant, Hagel and Schopenhauer have made of that?  
Kneeling down I could make out other dents and inconsistencies that could logically assumed to be from the spasmodic twitching of a dying man. Up and down the shelves I could see books that had been on the receiving end of a flailing arm or leg. At a time like that you have to wonder if subconsciously he was striking those books that either a great or terrible influence on him. Unlikely was my conclusion.  
On the other side of the chair it seemed the science authors fared no better. For every jostled Aristotle and Saussure there was an equally bumped Cavelos or Hawking.  
Did he really intend to die as some cliché... a man found dead and hanging between the greatest works of philosophy and science?  
Suddenly I found no irony, only sympathy for my old neighbor. He had lived and died alone and, to be honest, it was only after I had left his apartment that it even occurred to me what would have happened if I would have accepted his offer to help me move my stuff in. I guess everybody automatically assumes that their intervention can help out any situation.  
All I did for the next little while was sit in his chair and flip through some of the books. A little Maxwell's equations for light and a dash of phenomenology.  
I wondered who _she_ was.  
The girl that had Mr. Holback feeling like a male Black Widow.  
I wonder if she would ever find out about his suicide and if the image of his dark red face, congested with blood as the noose squeezed tighter, and his bulging eyeballs would ever make their way into one of her dreams.  
I did what anyone would do in this situation. I gave the room a final glance and uttered a soft and sad 'goodbye' as I closed the door behind me. I've gotten to the point now where I'm not even sure if it was a mock sadness or sincere. I think I'll stay the fuck out of both the philosophy and science sections of Borders until I figure it out.  
And don't worry Mr. Holback... I won't be looking for any clues.

doing His work

Agnes Neville had led a godly life. Just ask her. A regular churchgoer, Agnes never missed a service and was on the council at her local congregation. She might have become a nun but she hated the idea of hiding away when there was so much she could offer in terms of good deeds. Every night she would kneel at her bedside and recount her good acts just in case God had missed any. He _did_ get awfully busy sometimes and one might just slip by unnoticed.  
She was the youngest of her family's four daughters. Unfortunately the eldest daughter Hope had died during childbirth. Both of her parents insist that even if they would have allowed the doctors to administer the medical assistance they were so against, they still couldn't have saved her. Agnes still counted her as a sister and was looking forward to meeting her in Heaven.  
Agnes had a favorite sermon. It had forever changed the way that she viewed what had been, up until that moment, one of her most troublesome internal debates. The priest had railed against the giving of money to the homeless because, his words not hers, it interfered with God's plan. God had intended for them to be homeless. He was punishing them or trying to teach them a lesson and every dollar given to them by strangers was hindering His will.  
That made total sense to Agnes and it validated her feelings on the subject. Given this new endorsement she went on to further explore ways to avoid getting in the way of God's plan.  
Her sister Charity worked for the federal government. FEMA to be exact. Although it wasn't a glamorous job, Agnes felt that they were doing the Lord's work alright and she was proud of her. When the awesome power of the United States government met the terrible wrath of the Supreme Being and His desire to punish the sins of New Orleans then you know who was going to win _that_ one.  
When Agnes ran the numbers on how many people were currently on the planet, how many had been before us, how many were to come and the final headcount of how many would be let into heaven, it seemed like a rather exclusive club. She liked that. A lot. It wasn't her responsibility to question the Father on the guest list, just to make sure she was on it. It wasn't a great stretch to see how she had done her part at narrowing down the candidates even at her own church. She wanted, in her own small way, to make God's job that much easier by eliminating the ones that were obviously not cut out for the whole "eternity in His presence" thing. Despite dwindling attendance, she felt pretty strong that her church had at least a half-dozen people that might be making the final cut.  
Her younger sister Chastity had taken a much different path. Starting out as an exotic dancer she had quickly slipped into a life of prostitution and drug use. Agnes had been there at every turn to point out her younger sister's mistakes but she refused to listen. They didn't communicate much after awhile. In her last letter to Agnes she had written that her new pimp was "sweet and sometimes terrible and funny and often cruel. The abusive step-father she never had." God certainly worked in mysterious ways Agnes thought to herself countless times. If only He would allow her to get more involved... but she understood that there are things that even a few foot-washings wouldn't solve.  
As her parents had passed away years before and her sister Charity had already used up her vacation days for the year it was no surprise that Agnes died alone. The priest had stopped by a few times before she departed but she was ok without the fanfare of a big send-off. She had no doubt what awaited her. There would be no sickly-green chipping paint on the walls or worn out crème-colored tiles on the floor.  
She was going to The Show.  
The truth was she got in on a technicality. Saint Paul looked long and hard but couldn't come up with a reason to keep her out. He made her wait a few agonizing seconds and she shuffled nervously from one foot to the other as he looked up and down her chart, pausing a few times with a long "hmmmmmm." Had it been put out to a vote by those inside... the ol' wings probably wouldn't have been handed out. When she was finally granted access Agnes was a little surprised that her youngest sister Hope wasn't at the party. Apparently she hadn't been baptized or something so off to hell she went. Agnes lamented at the tough break but understood that rules were rules.  
It was then that she was assigned her role in heaven. There would be no sitting around for her. Agnes was put to work.  
Although it doesn't go into much detail about it in the Bible, a soul in purgatory is actually given a regular hearing as to when and if they can be allowed into the Pearly Gates. Agnes was given a spot on the board who reviews these cases. It was a time-consuming job and it didn't leave her much time to poke around the grounds much if at all. She sometimes wondered when she'd get to mingle and see who else had made it in. To date nobody had even bothered to explain where the table was that she would be seated at His right side of. The only table she had seen so far was the long number where she sat with paperwork piled up in front of her and a single folding chair in front of it where the candidates would sit.  
Before you lose any sleep about the unfairness of this appointment and the certainty of which she would constantly reject each and every soul who came before her know this; the Cosmic Engineer knew this as well. The other two members of this group were both selected because they were bottomless wells of forgiveness. Possibly to a fault some might add but nevertheless every single soul that came before this panel was given the thumbs up by a vote of two to one.  
At the risk of being blasphemous, it's hard to imagine a greater example of karma in action. Even after being overruled for the thousandth time she felt the same bitter sting, let out the same pained groan and felt the same sinking feeling of unfairness in the pit of where her stomach use to be.  
After awhile it was hard for Agnes to tell the difference between heaven and hell.

bathroom humor

I don't consider myself to be homophobic nor do I have a history of being embarrassed about people seeing my junk. Many people who have attended parties with me can testify to that. Parties or picnics. And the occasional wedding can have me exposing myself. The point being that I'm not sure why I am so creeped out about being in a public bathroom and seeing someone looking around as they pee. I just want them to follow the code and keep their eyes front and center. Don't be looking around like you're at the zoo.  
So it was that I was standing next to one of these twisted potty voyeurs and every time his eyes would come hurtling towards me I would shuffle up a bit and sink in a little deeper into my bowl. It wasn't until I felt the cold porcelain on the tip of my dick and realized my balls were straddling the urinal cake that I realized how far in I was leaning. It was all I could do not to pull out, turn, and then begin urinating on him as I screamed "enjoying the show?!" I would have but I was way too far along into my own urination and I didn't think I had it in me to reach him with my stream of urine. I was basically finished except for a few last spurts and I think it would be humiliating to try to pee on him and then not be able to deliver the goods.  
After he leaves I give myself a quick once-over and see that I've got a ring of piss around my jeans and underwear from leaning into the urinal so far. After picking off a few curly hairs that were clearly not my own I went to the sink to freshen up.  
That's when it dawned on me that I had been using the same urinal all weekend. For reasons best left unsaid, I was trapped at a convention that weekend and had visited the same public washroom at least half a dozen times over the last two days. Each time I had selected the same urinal. There were five and I chose the second to last one. Interesting. I wonder what a shrink would say about that. Of course, I didn't think to wonder what a shrink would say about me standing there under the air dryer trying to get rid of a ring of piss but I guess nobody would want to hear that analysis. Obviously you don't want to stand at the first urinal. That goes without saying. That urinal is clearly for the guy who barely made it to the bathroom and needs to piss badly. The middle one is also not an option... it seems to be inviting conversation. The "social" urinal, if you will. The last one would be way too confining if trouble broke out. I'd hate to get trapped against the wall if there was some sort of bathroom brawl. So that leaves the second urinal or the second to last urinal. I went second to last each time. I'm not sure why, but to me that is by far the coolest urinal. I'm sure you agree and while you don't fully understand the reasoning behind it you probably find me a little bit more hip for knowing my urinal selection.  
So all that time at the dryers gave me some time to observe an odd phenomenon. After watching about ten guys emerge from the toilets I noted that nine out of the ten of them washed their hands. Perfectly understandable after a closed-door session. What I noticed that was odd though was that most of them gave their hands a quick blast of water and then dried them quickly and without any real effort. It was almost more ritualistic that anything. As if they were afraid someone would see them not wash them and avoid shaking their hands later.  
Then came the other group of hand washers.  
The ones who came over with purpose. They seemed to wash a particular area of their hands. Dare I even say they scrubbed a little too hard.  
They were the guys that actually got shit on their hands.  
One guy in particular started soaping up the bottom of his thumb and then worked up a lather all the way down to the fingernail. How fucking hard does this guy wipe? At what point does he realize that he has his thumb actually in his ass?  
Suddenly I was the guy looking around the bathroom. Capt. Brownthumb looks over and I'm staring right at him and, for neither love nor money, I couldn't look away. I was just staring slack jawed at his wiping hand. Don't get me wrong, I've had the occasional slip up while I'm wiping that has my hand unexpectedly plunging into the DMZ so I wasn't being judgmental. I was just fascinated.  
Then I realized he was looking at me with my legs open and the hot air nozzle pointed right down into my pants and he was fascinated.  
You want to talk awkward.  
So what did I learn?  
Well... if someone wants to watch me pee I'm going to just have to learn to be ok with that unless I want to walk around the rest of the day with a ring of dried urine around my pants. And second, if I get some shit on my hand I need to just wash my hands like normal after I'm done and hope I get it all off ok so I don't draw attention to myself and then have everybody know I got shit on my hand.  
Oh... and the second to last urinal is the cool one... but I already knew that. Even if there are seven. If there are three then I would suggest risking the bathroom brawl and going to the last one in the corner over the "social" middle urinal.

dickwad appreciation day

There is perhaps one type of person I loathe above all. Maybe you've run into them. The douche bag that tells everybody what they would buy them if they ever won the lottery. Not the casual comment if the subject happens to arise but the hardcore dickwad who actually believes that they are deserving of some sort of mock appreciation because they have worked it all out in their head all the wonderful things they would do with the money if they won it.

Could there possibly _be_ a more empty gesture??

It's not bad enough that they are angling for appreciation for nothing but it actually makes their life seem that much more pathetic. If they truly desire to obtain these items for their friends and loved ones why not make the necessary changes in their lives to actually go out there and earn the money?

When I am forced to listen to them start in about all the good they would do with _their_ riches, immediately inferring that the current stable of people who actually have riches are not doing their part adequately, it's all I can do not to walk up and slap them hard across their blathering pie-hole. The only other thing that irritates me on the same level, if forced to come up with something, is when I have to take a dump right after I've stepped out of the shower.

Why couldn't my bowels have let me know I had one in the oven _before_ I showered? Personally, I like to keep that area spic and span and the idea of wasting a shower drives me nuts. Now I'm not saying that if you crouched down and looked into my anus after a shower you could actually see yourself reflected clearly but you'd certainly make out someone peering in. Let's just say that if you dropped your donut into my ass the three-second rule would comfortably apply.

Anyway, the first crap undoes all that and as far as my ass is concerned I may as well have not showered at all. I won't even get into what happens if you have to go _right_ after you shower and the area is still all damp and humid.

And _that_ is as annoying as these people with their post-lottery-win squawking.

The problem is you never really know who carries this fuckface gene. I've had to end long friendships out of the blue because of this. They start talking about it and I just freeze, a look of horror creeping across my face. "Not _you_!" I utter to myself as I get up and slowly walk away from the conversation... and the person. Forever.

It's like my internet providers homepage. Every morning I wake to eight headlines on the left and four pictures, in no particular order, that reference those stories on the right. It is a little game I play, trying to put the pictures with the headlines. There will be the easy ones, a charred corpse or smoldering wreckage, a hurricane-ravaged village, you know... the easy ones. The ones I enjoy are the pictures of the middle aged nobody smiling away. Next to him are two possible captions: "Man donates liver to save brother!" and "Pedophile convicted on all 27 counts!"

Ok, now I've got some work to do, don't I? He's slightly balding, wearing a dress shirt, glasses seem a little out of fashion. Hmmmm. He seems pretty happy in the picture.

Then I remember.

They always show the picture of the pedophile.

But usually there is at least one difficult choice to make; fireman hero or rapist, scientist developing a breakthrough in cancer research or suspected terrorist, local philanthropist or KKK leader. You know that the people who come up with these front pages do it on purpose. Maybe they are just trying to help us work on our annoying-people-detection skills. Still, if I had just donated $10 million to my former university do I really want 50% of the people who saw my picture online to think that I am actually drug user who led police on a two-hour chase to avoid arrest on spousal abuse charges?

Oh well... serves them right for giving away their money like that.

Tell you what. If _I_ had $10 million dollars I tell you how _I'd_ spend it. First I'd give $3 million to my Mom, then I'd...

Gillette's red pill

There is the part in _The Truman Show_ where Jim Carrey's character sees a lighting fixture fall from the sky. It makes no sense to him, looking up into the clear sky, where it came from or how it could have fallen from out of nowhere. While it wasn't exactly where he put the pieces together that everything around him was a fraud it did start him thinking.

I have an ongoing similar event going on that I want to share. It's not that I'm under the belief that my life is being broadcast as a TV show... that's crazy talk. It just has me thinking.

See, I have this can of shaving cream I've been using. Gillette Series Ultra Moisturizing Gel. The 7 oz. can. It started off heavy and full as is to be expected. Then as I used it day after day it got lighter and lighter until it got so light that every time I used it I was expecting it to run out. But no, there was always enough left for one more shave.

That was two years ago.

Every morning there is enough for one more shave.

I checked to make sure that my bathroom had no two-way mirrors. I examined the can to see if there was any way to add additional gel. I tried to come up with suspects who would want to play such an elaborate yet trivial prank on me.

Nothing.

Just the morning ritual of me picking up the can, pressing the top and receiving the necessary amount of gel to complete the shaving transaction.

Now some of you might ask why I don't find some heavy object and position the can just so as to allow the heavy object to press down on the little button and see if it is possible to either use up the supply of gel or cover my entire neighborhood to a depth of a foot in it. That's the creepy part.

I don't dare do it.

Somehow I think this shaving gel thing is a glitch somewhere. Of all the things that work ok in my life, both emotional and mechanical, I'd hate to irk whatever or whomever is responsible for this little snafu.

So every morning I stand in the shower and wonder if _this_ is the morning that my gel runs out. It's a mix of dread and excitement. I often don't even pay attention to where I've set the knob that controls the temperature of the water. However the water feels against my skin is really just my body's opinion about hot or cold after all.

About a year ago I bought another can of gel as a contingency plan against the inevitability (?) of running out. I decided to stay Gillette but I must confess I did change to Fusion Hydra Gel. It was well past the time where it could have had any impact on the situation I find myself in now, the original can had definitely already long past the 7 oz. barrier, but I still wonder about the implications.

If you don't mind I'd prefer you keep this little story to yourself. If I were the guy in _The Matrix_ I would have without hesitation taken the blue pill.

a sea star by the seashore

I guess some would say life as an echinoderm isn't much fun but then again I suppose it all depends on your perspective. From the human point of view it might seem like we have a dull existence but that's coming from a species that call us "starfish" when we clearly aren't fish at all so how much stock can you put in their opinion?

The truth is, from my vantage point on the rocks, I've seen my share of humans and let me tell you I'm not impressed. I guess it's their complete obliviousness to their own plight that makes them so annoying. Sunrises and sunsets are the worst. Every now and again you get them wandering down the beach alone, shoes in hand as they let the tide come splashing up over their feet. They always get the same look on their face as they gaze out on the ocean, this far-away lost and humbled look. You can see them digesting the bigger issues of life as if they were the first ones to have ever wrestled with them.

_That's_ the annoying part. Each one of them thinking that _they_ are going to come up with some great insight into life, some epiphany that will change their lives just because they happen to be alone by the ocean for a few minutes.

It's just fucking sad, that's what it is.

If I had the ability to talk I'd scream "You think that this _moment_ you're having is any more profound than the last knucklehead who was here yesterday?!"

But I can't talk so I have to sit and watch these douche bags suddenly feel a "connection to the universe" that they never felt before because they were so wrapped up in getting cable TV or a new toupee or a blowjob from their girlfriend. It just gets so tired. The whole act.

There _was_ this one guy though. A long time ago.

Not sure why but every night he would come and throw a bottle into the ocean with a hand-written message inside it. I never actually knew what these messages were but dutifully every morning he would come and collect the bottle, unseal it and read them. You see the tide never actually took the bottle anywhere. It would just wash ashore an hour or so later a few feet from where he had thrown in it.

Now _that_ was interesting. I realize that I don't have a brain (as a human would know it) but let me tell you this... I was _dying_ to find out what he was writing on those notes!

He did this for over a year but one day he got molested by a bull shark and never came back.

That's right... not attacked. He got _molested_ a few feet from shore. Bet you've never seen _that_ shit on _Shark Week_.

am I nuts?

I remember the day the acorn fell. It was fall. I was at the park sitting in a chair and reading a book and the weather was perfect, the sun shining and it wouldn't have surprised me if the nearby birds had burst into song. It was that kind of day.

The acorn fell and must have hit a pebble or something because it made this quick cracking sounds as it hit the little patch of dirt about ten feet in front of me. I was using the oak tree for shade and I remember hearing a few other things, nuts or leaves or branches, falling off as the afternoon slowly succumbed to evening but none of them made enough of a sound to cause me to look up and investigate.

Sure enough, there the acorn sat. Not as green as I'd always imagined them to be. More of a dark purple. The acorn that sat in my hand had once had a brother (or sister) nut but he or she was nowhere to be found. Just the attached little acorn crown sitting there all empty.

Another reason that I remember this day so clearly was the geese.

This had been earlier and I recall looking up at this terrible ruckus as it flew past me. A gaggle of geese making their way somewhere, trying in vain to form that perfect V that we're all familiar with. It was more like a W and a few of the geese were letting the others know they weren't happy about it. They were flying low and fast and it just seemed very ungoose-like.

If that had been the end of it I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to remember it so clearly... if at all. I'm certainly not the kind of person whose life is so devoid of interesting moments that a bunch of squawking geese would have been forever seared into my memory simply for having squawked.

It's what happened about five minutes later.

Now I'm no expert on geese but I would swear about five minutes later the same gaggle of geese appeared overhead, flying the exact opposite direction. In a perfect V. Here's the odd part. They were flying in complete silence. In fact, as far away as I way, it was almost an _icy_ silence. I'm not trying to tell you I have some great empathy or insight into the behavior of migratory birds but I swear it was if someone had been flying the wrong direction and wouldn't admit it. I strained to see if there was one bird that looked particularly sheepish but I couldn't see that far with any clarity. If I was that bird I'm sure I would have fallen in behind the rest so I did feel a momentary pang of sympathy for the stragglers on each side of the V as the gaggle made its way wherever it was going, this time in the right direction.

It was just a strange thing to happen on such a nice day and it made me almost on edge... as if something important was going to happen.

That's why I remember the day so clearly and that's why I noticed the acorn with more than a passing interest.

This little guy was somehow important. If there is ever a book of holistic gardening published I'm sure there will be a chapter in it about falling acorns. As it turned out I had recently had to take down a tree after a violent wind storm and had a perfect spot in my front yard for another tree to be stuck in. Because it was already the fall I had planned on just buying one in the spring. You know, one that was already half grown and possibly flowering or fruiting already.

But then I got a great idea.

I'd plant this acorn!

I stuck him in my shirt pocket and my mind was already planning the trip to the garden store to buy a pot and soil so I could plant him and let him/her enjoy the last warm days of fall before I tucked him safely inside the house to get a jump on growing before the spring came.

I don't want to bore you with the details of the next few years but I did indeed plant that acorn in my front yard and a few years later it was tall enough to throw a Halloween decoration on it for the first time.

It wasn't long before I was raking up its leaves. I didn't mind at all, it had become part of the family and I'd be lying if I said I didn't treat it just a bit better than all of my other trees and shrubs. I would even spend a little time talking to it now and again when life got particularly rough or confusing. I always felt that I had a lot of possessions but this was _my_ tree. There's just something about watching it grow up.

It wasn't 20 years before it began to drop acorns of its own and I felt a little bit like a proud Poppa.

One day I was out on my lawn and I heard the distinctive sound of geese flying overhead which caused me to smile a bit. I might have even smiled more than a little bit. Ironically, I'd still have that smile on my face when they found me an hour later. You see, I had a massive coronary and dropped dead right there under my tree.

In my will I had been very clear as to where I wanted to be buried. Not in some distant cemetery with a bunch of strangers but right on my own property.

Right in my own front lawn.

Right under my tree.

Not only that but I requested that instead of one of those metal super-corpse-strongboxes that would keep my body sealed like a left-over roast in the refrigerator, I asked that I be buried in a simple wooden casket. I had done this for a purpose.

I wanted to feed my tree.

What I didn't anticipate was becoming part of my tree. I guess it's simple science. Actually, now that I think about it, it's actually not science at all. Well, whatever it is, it is. The roots eventually found me.

Yes, I remember the day the acorn fell... I even remember the falling part. I remember picking me up and putting me in my shirt pocket. I remember all the years. I remember coming home.

And wondering if those damn geese ever got where they were going.

4 walks

It was noon and I heard the church bell ring off in the distance. Like any other person my age I immediately began to hum the opening guitar riff of Hells Bells by AC/DC. The problem is that when it came time for the second bell to chime in time with the song the bell did not chime. Instead the guitar note hung in my head for a full two seconds before the second bell tolled. Do not ask for whom the bells tolls for it clearly does not toll for AC/DC.

I was passing people in the street and I have no doubt that my face gave them the impression I was lost in some deep thought or important decision when in fact all I was thinking was how annoying it is that all the bells in the country do not chime in time with Hells Bells. How can that be that there isn't a law governing church bells? Allowed to just toll any old time they want.

I walked on and I'm sure those people passing me assumed I was engaged in some philosophical battle or political debate with far-reaching consequences when in reality I was wondering if I would have to become President to get a law passed making it mandatory that bells chimed in time with Hells Bells or if I could simply become a Senator on some powerful Ways and Means committee to get it done.

It had to be noon as well. I had to endure all 12 bells. Each one completely out of sync with the song. Every time I would somehow get back in the groove I would end up waiting on the bell. I've heard people, when disgusted by something they were witnessing, say something like "there ought to be a law." That's how I felt as I could not get my rock on. Every time my head would start to bob and my hands assume the sign of the "devil is hunting" horns there would invariably come the pause that would ruin everything. 12 times.

I've always been a sci-fi horror genre geek. My favorite subject matter has always been zombies. Zombieland should have won 10 Oscars in my opinion. Maybe the best movie ever made in 2009. The clear-cut good vs. evil decision-making that zombies allow is refreshing in these confusing grey times.

I wonder if the people passing me in the street see the impotent rage behind my eyes. I wonder if they even suspect. I read about animals that gang-rape little girls and I get dizzy. They are as different from me as the zombies are. They are no more human than a corpse that hauls itself out of the grave and shambles down the street. They are, in fact, far more deserving of a clean shot to the head with a powerful handgun than any undead could ever be.

But we don't shoot them. We allow them to live among us even though we know who they are. What they are.

I'm not sure when the infestation started but it is creeping through our culture now and we sit idly by. They rape and murder and steal and yet nobody picks up a rifle and dispatches this filth like we would if only they were rotting and had the decency to just be dead already. They are no different than the mindless zombies; we just have to pretend that these demons are somehow entitled to the rights and freedoms that we hide behind. We are cowards. We know they are coming. We lock the doors at night and hope that we don't see their shadows fall across our windows. We hope they leave us alone. We read about a young woman being violated for two hours on a park bench by a pack of soulless ghouls with two dozen witnesses and we shudder and turn the page. If we can't get angry then at least muster some tears before we become as heartless and dead as they are. It's the least a human can do.

So I walk down the street and my eyes dart back and forth looking for one of these "zombies." It's time to stop being afraid of the dark and what lurks within it. If one of these monsters makes eye contact me I'll know. And they will know I know.

It's time to take out the trash.

There are moments that stick with you. Moments that you feel were made for you. You just happened to be in the right spot at the right time and you bask in it.

Manhattan is one of the most densely populated cities in the world with a population of over 1.6 million people. All wedged in less than 23 square miles. And here I was walking through the middle of it all alone. It was approaching 5 am and all I could think was "are you telling me nobody is up right now?" There was a low hum about the streets that probably came from the streetlights but seemed more to come from everything else. Like how you can tell if wire is live or not. A buzzing. A ringing in my ears. "Nobody is one the streets right now?" The sky was hinting at a sunrise but as I made my way down the empty streets it seemed content to stay black just a little longer for me. It was like the whole thing was for me. The buildings seemed so much clearer than they do in the day.

Eventually I neared the Holland Tunnel and started to see cars lined up. Suddenly I felt so superior. These people were getting an early start on their day while I was still enjoying my night. As I walked by, only a few feet from the bumper-to-bumper cars, I felt like I was five time zones away from these wretched men and women who were already ass-deep in my tomorrow.

Those moments alone in a city that never sleeps made me feel like that, for that small sliver of time, the city didn't sleep because I didn't sleep. Everyone else had left it to me. It was a playground. I was a ghost and it was my canvas.

It had made me a hipster in a way it could never take back.

I need a toothbrush. I'm actually pretty happy about it because I never liked my last one. I can't wait to throw it away. I should have chucked it right away but I hate to waste money so I endured it not making my teeth feel especially clean after brushing but now I can, with a clear financial conscience, go out and buy a new one.

I know the kind I like and I'll never be seduced away from it again by the sleek look of a new brush or the hollow claims of the company that produces it.

The pharmacy is only a block away.

I think I'll get a red one this time. I've never owned a red toothbrush.

where the wilder things are

I guess it's pretty easy to believe that there are no such things as monsters sitting in a brightly lit room in the middle of a safe home. It's perfectly understandable actually. The problem is that monsters don't go anywhere near brightly lit rooms or, for that matter, safe homes (yet?).

I know where they _do_ live. And let's be clear, I'm not talking about metaphorical monsters. I mean the ones with teeth and claws, the ones that bite and slurp up innocent and not-so-innocent people whether they believe in them or not.

There are cab drivers in New York City that have been driving her streets for decades, that know how to take passengers to any location that they can think of, anywhere in the five boroughs. They know every address but they don't know where the monsters live. You see off of the main streets are small avenues and off of those are side streets and off of those are little alleys and off of those are nooks and alcoves. You get the general idea. These places don't have names or numbers and sometimes as you walk down them you're not sure if you're even still outside. The walkways are narrow and there are pipes running above you that look centuries old. Steam seeps up from somewhere and drifts off to somewhere else. Things drip. Trash accumulates. You immediately feel like you don't belong, that much is certain.

Like a basement is the bowels of a building, these places are the very depths of the city.

Sitting in your brightly lit room is doesn't feel possible, that these places could actually exist. Maybe you feel that even if you were there your rational mind would stop you from getting scared but if you only believe one thing I tell you then believe that that fear is there for a reason. It's millions of years of experience programmed into you. Telling you to run when your mind tries to tell you that there is nothing to be frightened of. There _is_ something to be frightened of.

Monsters.

And I know where they live.

The darkness knows what so many horror movie producers don't seem to: don't show the monsters. Ever. They are always much more terrifying when they are in your head. Or in this case, the shadows.

In New York City there are 36,000 homeless that use shelters every night. Advocates say that the total number, including those that don't use the shelter system, could be double that. Most (75%) of them suffer some sort of mental illness. The kind of mental illness that has them looking for a dry spot out of the public eye or a warm grate to sleep on. The kind that would have them venture deeper and deeper into the city in search of a safe place to sleep.

So don't ask how the monsters get fed.

Occasionally the scum that prey upon the homeless follow them into the dark places so occasionally the monsters do a good deed and swallow them up as well. Not that the monsters care either way.

How do I know all this?

Because I've walked down these alleyways. The places that you look up but can't see the night sky, never sure when or if you started walking downwards. It's only when you hear the subway passing next to you or is it over your head that you even notice. There are bad smells in the train stations to be sure but here the stench is fouler. A scent that makes urine seem like a refreshing potpourri. It is the smell of real decay. The smell of death.

Can I claim that I saw a monster? Actually saw it?

No.

But if I can ask you to believe a second thing about my story then believe that I felt them rustling and stirring as I passed. It wasn't my imagination. I know my imagination well and although it is prone to flights of fancy this was not one of those occasions. Understand that without fear there can be no comfort, so without these places there can be no safe homes.

And we've already established that you're reading this in a safe home right?

So I knew they were there. All around me. But I backpedalled without once taking my eyes away from the darkness. My eyes shot to meet every creak or bloody talon scraping on the cement. Retraced every step until I looked up again and saw stars and clouds, until the alley became a lane and that lane became a side road.

Know that I've put away my anger and fury for good as it paled to what I felt there. Somewhere in that city of 8+ million people there beats a sinister heart brimming with wickedness and I can only assume that somewhere else there is a place of pure good that balances this out. I have been to the former and can only hope that the latter exists for if it doesn't then even brightly lit rooms might not be enough to save us.

log

Been one of those weeks. I should have seen it coming but there was no way you can see something like this coming.

I like a good fire in the winter and yesterday it was as cold as a hooker's heart and twice as dead outside so I grabbed some wood and headed in side to get things started.

At this point I guess I should point out that I buy my wood in chords. Big ol' trucks come by and dump a small forest in my driveway and I carry it round back and stack it high. I do this because I like a good aged wood, none of that green stuff will work for me.

This year I was really getting to the bottom of the pile and was thinking I needed to call and order up another fleet of trucks. The wood I grabbed yesterday must have been sitting there for well over two years.

And that, retrospect, wasn't a great thing.

Funny thing was I didn't notice until I got inside and was starting to stack it in the fireplace.

Ants.

Lots of ants.

Big ants... some of them winged.

Turns out this colony of ants had settled down quite comfortably in the logs I had taken and now they were pouring out of their recently relocated digs and into my living room. Literally hundreds of them and they immediately spread out and began exploring. I almost passed out.

Not so much because it was gross to have a sea of ants covering every square inch the idea that they couldn't stay and it was far too cold outside to simply scoop them up and toss them back out into the great outdoors. I was going to have to vacuum them all up.

By the time I got the vacuum they were crawling everywhere so I didn't feel as bad about sucking them up into oblivion. In fact, if I am to be 100% honest, it was actually fun.

But no matter how many I sucked up there were always more. Always that one little guy creeping along by the edge of the carpet or hanging upside down under the lip of the fireplace.

Before I could continue my hunt it was time to get the fire going. Inevitably this meant making the ants home one of the primary players in my fire plot. Once things started to get going I could hear the hiss and pop of every tenant that was unable to vacate the structure in time.

Now my fire was not only providing a cheery glow to the room but drama on a scale I had never anticipated. Every few minutes I would see an ant come crawling out of the log and then start to run back and forth on the top of the log like some dwindling life boat. Their little antenna working overtime to save them from a fiery demise.

Nature really does save the coolest thing for the animals. Antenna rock. Same with blowholes. Tell me having a blowhole wouldn't be cool as shit... right on the top of your head so you can sit under the water then just pop the top of your head up and grab a quick breath.

How weird would that feel? You'd be breathing right through your brain. Literally, your brain would be surrounding the windpipe so that would have to feel pretty funky. Of course we seem to sense the world from behind our eyes so maybe I'm exaggerating the whole "through the brain" effect but I'm sure it would be odd.

If you wanted to spout a blowhole would be awesome as well. Just stand at the bottom of the pool all day with only the top of your head popping up every minute.

"Has she come out of the pool yet?"

"Nope. Been in there all day. Nothing but a little spray from her blowhole."

"Boy, she is in a bad mood."

But I digress.

It was the most horribly wonderful show you could imagine. At one point two of the ants ran into each other, touched antenna in a way that made me fairly certain they said "can you believe this shit?" and then both wandered off to eventually topple into open flames. Out of the metaphorical frying pan and into the very real fire. I was witness to some mini-forest-fire recreation that left me completely sure that  
"What to do in a Fire" is not a class that many ants have taken.

Finally, just when I thought everything was done and I could resume my life again one little dusty heroic ant struggled to the top of the burning log. I could almost hear him coughing and hacking from the smoke. Summoning all his dwindling strength he ran off the edge and bounced off another log and then another and somehow plummeted and disappeared into the soot and glowing embers underneath.

A couple seconds later I see this little disturbance in the ash and who crawls out but this very same ant. Weaving through the chunks of red-hot wood he finally, after stopping and starting numerous times, makes his way out of danger and onto the little ledge in front of the fireplace.

Where I vacuum him up.

Obviously I didn't feel good about this but I couldn't have ants running around my house. The episode was the complete opposite of the "the fire was so delightful" vibe I started out going for.

his wife likes to talk

His wife likes to talk. Actually, that's not quite accurate. She likes to talk in the same way that a drowning man would like a breath of air. Neither the audience nor topics are of particular importance as long as she is the one doing the talking.

Her ears are there only to pick up breaks in the conversation that will allow her to enter the dialogue and, from that point on, dominate it like some verbal bull rider at the rodeo. Listening is done in only a quick superficial way to gauge the subject matter so that she can continue on until everyone around her is convinced of her superiority on the matter at hand. If only she could avoid those annoying moments when her lungs ache for air and she is forced to breathe. It is at the perilous times when someone else might jump in with their opinion or take that opportunity to discreetly take their leave or throw themselves off the nearest balcony. Ironically enough these little burst of oxygen to the brain do little improve the content of her conversation.

While it is true that his wife likes to talk, very few people like to listen to her. It is said that when you have a hammer every problem becomes a nail. It is also true of her when she is holding court. She bludgeons her poor listener with a seemingly endless parade of viewpoints and, much more frequently, judgments. It might also be said of her listeners that if they had a hammer they would probably use it to end their own suffering with a few carefully placed blows to the top of their own head. Oftentimes it is unnecessary as the carbon dioxide spewing from her cakehole allows her listener to slip away blissfully into unconsciousness. She will literally talk the very air from the room.

She can also talk the color out of marble. Really. That fact was proven by her friends one day. Some of them had doubted so they discreetly brought a small but beautifully veined slab of Marquinia and asked her opinion on something- what it was is irrelevant as she has a strong opinion on every topic on earth- and in only 60 minutes they were holding a slab of pearly-white Bianco Carrara. If she had been a preacher, there is little doubt that she could talk a crippled person into ballroom dancing if only to shut her the fuck up.

His wife likes to talk. The cumulative effect on his psyche was that of waves against a cliff wall. Slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly eroding it. Each verbal wave removing another grain of interest or affection or tolerance or hope or contentment or any of the other bits of glue that held him together and stopped him from chain sawing her head off. Deep down he wondered if even that would end her endless prattling. He could imagine the disembodied head looking at him for a second like a fish out of water and then, hideously, starting to talk again. These are the thoughts that lurked behind his painted-on grin as she yammered on and on.

He had prayed for her tonsils to become enflamed to the point where she would have to have them out. He researched rare diseases that left their victims mute. He also researched, although he would never admit it to a soul, poisons that robbed their targets of the ability to speak without actually killing them. He then researched, and on this point he would absolutely not admit to it, poisons that did kill them.

Nice little daydreams.

The worst is when they went camping. When the sun was setting and the forest was quiet. To suddenly have her start talking, as if bitch-slapping Mother Nature herself, was just too much. She would even talk while eating s'mores by the fire. The hooting of the owls and the mournful howl of the coyote was no match for the spirit-crushing assault that poured forth from her mouth. By about 10 pm even the creatures of the night called it a day and stopped trying to compete.

His wife likes to talk. She could talk a man off a ledge. Literally. In fact, she was probably the woman who put him on the ledge to begin with. If she lived in the city in a high-rise apartment you'd no doubt have to run past the building looking up at all times to avoid the bodies that would be plummeting to the pavement every few minutes. Thankfully she lives in the suburbs.

Yes, his wife likes to talk and he hated to listen. But then again... he reckoned it could be worse. So he comes home every night and sits at the table and he does listen sometimes and most other times he pretends to listen and to her it doesn't make much difference anyway. Then they sit on the couch and she talks through his favorite shows and then tells him to stop making so much noise with his bag of chips when a show comes on that she likes. "You chew too loud," she will complain. Then they go to bed and she winds down and finally he hears her breathing slow down and finally she is asleep.

And it is quiet.

And the next 20 minutes are his favorite part of the day. He savors them and then tries to quickly get to sleep himself before she starts talking in her sleep.

His wife talks in her sleep.

the hidden dangers of jazz band

I'm in the mood to tell a true story. Well, as truthful as memory can be. I wish I could sell it as a cautionary tale or even vaguely inspiring but the terrible truth about true stories is that usually they are neither. Just people being people, living out and reinforcing every cliché that has come down the pike. Even I have to admit I don't come off very likeable in it, but there you are.

The guy that the story revolves around was someone I knew vaguely in high school. He ran with a cooler crowd than I did and by that I mean he was in jazz band... which gives you an idea of the crowd I ran with. From where I sat on the social ladder I had to crane my neck up to see the guys who were in jazz band. I never really interacted with him but I knew of him and he always seemed like a relatively down-to-earth kind of guy. I think he was percussion.

Years later, when I was a senior in college, guess who I run into? That's right, the relatively down-to-earth jazz band guy. What's even stranger was that he wasn't going to school at my college and my college was set in a small town with a two-hour drive full of cornfields surrounding it in any direction. You had to set out to arrive there, nobody wandered in.

He immediately knew who I was even though it took me awhile to remember him. The biggest obstacle to remembering him being that when he was in high school he had a freshly-scrubbed all-American appearance. Apple pie had nothing on him.

Somewhere between graduation and his arrival in my Midwest University he must have gotten a hold of some bad jazz or something because he looked like a freaking hippie. And not the nice kind of hippie. The annoying stereotype hippie. Not only wearing the stereotypical sandals and torn jeans ensemble but sporting grooming habits usually reserved for mountain men. And not only that "not only" but there was one more "not only" that easily became the most annoying and recognizable of the "not only's."

Everywhere he went, he carried a rabbit.

I wouldn't dare make this shit up. He walked around 24/7 with this stupid rabbit. A big-ass bunny that shared his lack of concern about outward appearance. Can a bunny look disheveled?

It's hard when someone that was never a friend to begin with suddenly inserts himself into your life when you have no idea what to do with him. He had a habit of always just showing up. I can never actually remember him walking through a door. You would just look up and he and his rabbit would just be there sitting there on your couch. From what I recollect of him in high school he was considered funny and outgoing and he had a lot of friends. How did I get the mumbling cross between Grizzly Adams and Slingblade slumped on my couch? I didn't even know him in high school, why did I suddenly feel like I owed it to him to amuse him when he didn't even actually go to my school?!

Around campus he was known as one of two things: "the guy with the rabbit" and "that guy with the fucking rabbit." Soon I was known as "the guy who hangs around that guy with the fucking rabbit." Not a good guy to be. Social death.

I never really knew how he ended up coming to my college. Maybe he knew someone else from our high school and they were smart enough to transfer to another school and change their name before he found out where they lived. Whatever the case, out of nowhere I had a new pal... which didn't sit too well with my existing pals. Which is how the story ends.

I could bore you with a lot of tales about the weeks he was on campus, seemingly everywhere at once, but to save time I'll just say that by the time two weeks had passed since the first sighting of "that guy with the fucking rabbit," he had managed to creep out almost every student and teacher... no small feat given the number of students and faculty was well over 24,000.

He just didn't fit. And this was in an environment that everyone was supposed to fit somewhere. He didn't. Just not in my somewhere anyway.

One day my roommate was talking rather negatively about him and instead of defending him or at least keeping quiet I did the easy thing and started ripping on him as well. Turns out both he and his rabbit were sitting on the nearby stairs out of our line of sight but well within earshot. I turned the corner to start down the stairs and there he was. Every bit of blood must have drained from my face. I felt like such a douche. He seemed to be taking it ok but the look of shock and betrayal on his rabbits face was chilling. There was no use trying to say something to patch things up, there was nothing I could say. He got up and walked away and I literally never saw him again.

My roommate was philosophical about it, saying "fuck that guy." I think what he meant was that there are people that just don't fit into your life and no amount of being tactful will ever fix it. The only possible way it can end is badly. Maybe that was the least ugly way it was going to resolve itself.

I think some people make you angry because they make you feel bad about yourself. I wondered why I couldn't be more tolerant of a guy who carries around a scruffy rabbit, talks about loving one another incessantly and has a big unkempt beard. They annoy the fuck out of you because you just want to be happy with who you are and they go and fuck it up by being someone who is so harmless that you just want to see them run over by a bus.

Anyway, I got to go back to my normal life and never had to think about him again until today when I saw a big-ass rabbit at the mall pet store and had to wonder where he and his pet rabbit ended up and if he was ever able to find his place. Far removed from all the people like me.

Dropoutland.

the resentful road

Sometimes I feel like part of a road. Not in the sense of being free and able to travel anywhere I want but literally like a one-foot-by-one-foot square piece of cement, stuck forever in the same spot. That's the irony of feeling like that, you can romanticize the road all you want but in reality the actual road isn't going anywhere. It's made up of millions of chunks of asphalt stuck in the same spot. In the big picture, the road stretches off into the distance, a distance that could hold adventure and drama, heartache or triumph, but the reality of the whole thing is that each piece of that road is right where it will always be.

Sometimes it's even worse and I feel like a one-foot-by-one-foot chunk of pavement on a road that was never finished. An off-ramp to somewhere that was never completed so the road sits there unused. Even the term unused becomes ironic because when you're being used to help people get from one spot to another you end up feeling used, but the only thing worse than being used is not being used.

Does the asphalt on the abandoned off-ramp to nowhere sit and feel envy at the resentment of the heavily traveled road next to it? Not enjoying the sun when it shines but instead waiting for the first blade of grass to heroically make its way through the cracks and add the final indignation to the once-hopeful piece of highway material?

Every time I back out of my driveway, I really do take a minute and in my mind's eye picture the street I'm on leading away from where I'm at now and taking me to Las Vegas or New York or Los Angeles or Idaho. The oddest thing is that it really does. I _could_ pull out and get wherever I wanted to go. Then I usually feel the same crushing blow to my psyche when I accept the fact that instead I'm going to Home Depot or McDonalds. That's where I _want_ to go... and yet if I were to really think about it, it would be the last place I wanted to go. Arriving home no better than when I left.

So I'm always moving on that road under me but I'm never going anywhere either. I wonder if the road looks up and says "Really? That's where you're headed today? This is what's so important you get in your car and drive? If I were you I'd really go somewhere." Maybe that's why it feels such resentment. Not that it is being used by people but that it's being used so pointlessly. I'm sure it would feel better if it knew it was helping someone achieve something worthwhile but instead it just bears the weight of endless pointless movement.

The way a fin would feel on a fish that spends its life treading water.  
Maybe that explains why I backed up the car onto an unused piece of highway the other day. I drove up and down the ramp to nowhere and gave the pavement a chance to feel the healthy resentment of a truly pointless act. From the air it probably looked like the act of a crazy person but somehow it was the most constructive driving I've done in a long time. Then I got out of the car and lay down in the middle of the road. It was perfectly safe but it still gave me a rush to lay down where I was always told never to lay down. It felt so dangerous and unnatural but after awhile it was nice. Eventually I even felt a bit poured. Laying next to my cement brothers, frozen together in the same spot.

Nowhere to go.

Then I heard a whisper from the blacktop reminding me that each part of the universe tells us about the entire universe.

Then another that suggested perhaps sometimes it's best not to finish every thought you have...

feeling pretty upside down

It wasn't so much vertigo as the sensation that I was the upside-down one. My folding chair sitting on the grass comfortably in no danger of going anywhere and yet at the same time clinging to the ground. What put me in this completely unperilous position was seeing the trees off in the distance. It is early spring and none of them have leaves yet so up against the sky they seemed inverted, nothing but roots sticking up.

Which got me to thinking... which to date is the leading cause of my unperilous (and perilous) feelings? If I'm a worm and I live in the earth then I'm constantly moving around roots, which if I'm a worm I would consider trees. When I occasionally journey to the "surface" it must feel like the end of the world... and if I glance up/down I would see all these "roots" sticking down/up into some airy abyss. I'm sure I would look forward to burrowing back into the ground where I can get my bearings again.

If you think about the roots of trees, they are really doing nothing more than the part sticking up out of the soil... getting nutrients. Now I'm not trying to convince you that trees are somehow upside down or that they are hanging off of where the real action is. Far be it from me to provide such a worm-centric take on vegetation. I am only pointing out that as I sat looking at the tree line ahead of me I suddenly felt as though if a worm poked his head up and saw me that I would feel pretty upside-down. This, despite a rich understanding of gravity and the fact that worms don't actually have eyes. Just the same I clutched the arms of my folding chair just that much harder and felt if only for a second that the trees and I were just dangling out on a big ball.

Please understand that I don't care if these thoughts make any sense, I can only relate what I experience and like yourself I wish that these experiences were more profound. But nope, I sat in a chair yesterday and when my IPod ran out of batteries I was forced to spend time alone with my thoughts.

pulling out my Longfellow

Sometimes when you start off a thought or conversation with the words "it's funny," you don't mean it at all but you don't know how else to introduce the topic. You don't want to say _bittersweet_ or _heartbreaking_ because who the hell would listen to anything said after those words and if you start with _terrified_ you look like a coward.

"Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age."

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If I look back Clint Eastwood has always made me feel like a bit of a coward. I loved his movies and I loved his characters but there was always a sense that I could never show the kind of toughness or bravery of a Dirty Harry or, ironically enough when I'm trying to reference his name, the Man With No Name. Although I connected with the plots I found that it left me wondering about my own masculinity. He occupied the role of hero, icon and father figure all rolled into one.

Now he is old as fuck.

Which is problematic for me because... it's funny, I'm not sure how to say this.

I try and watch _Gran Torino_ but I end up watching an old man pretend to be a different old man. This is not to say it's not a great movie and all that but all I can see is how old Clint Eastwood is. I spend the whole movie looking at his withered arms and wrinkled face and I can imagine the nursing home smell he no doubt has now.

_"It is autumn; not without  
But within me is the cold.  
Youth and spring are all about;  
It is I that have grown old."_  
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, " _Autumn Within_ "

Surrounded by youth in the movie just makes it harder to pay attention to what is supposed to be going on in the film. It's funny, all I can see is Clint as an old man. I know the characters are talking but in my head I'm hearing _A Fist Full Of Dollars_ or _Escape From Alcatraz_. It's not even that he is trying to recapture some swagger of youth onscreen, at times he seems to be accepting being old and is trying to make the audience comfortable with it as well. I don't want to be comfortable with Clint Eastwood looking old. Not that old anyway.

In _Unforgiven_ he was older but not old. I could accept seeing him older. Moving a bit slower but still able to kick any ass that needed kicking. It's funny, now when I'm saying "it's funny" I'm trying not to mean it as _tragic_ but when I'm watching that fucking _Gran Torino_ movie, watching him shuffle around like he just escaped from some retirement community, I feel this deep ache inside. He is gunned down heroically at the end but everyone knows that isn't how he is really going to go. The director will yell "cut" and he'll stand up and everyone will tell him what a great take that was and he'll walk off and he'll still be old as fuck.

He looks too damn appropriate in the coffin when they show his eulogy. Seeing him in that box is like a punch in the gut.

Pretty soon that's where he'll be.

_Age is opportunity no less,  
Than youth itself, though in another dress,  
And as the evening twilight fades away,  
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day._  
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, _Morituri Salutamus_

Is Henry trying to tell me to embrace getting older? Is Clint trying to show me it's ok to grow old? Are they both trying to tell me that when I say "it's funny" I should mean that it is funny and nothing more?

I can't. It's not funny and I'm not ok with it and once again Clint is making me feel like a pussy.

"We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has."

~Clint Eastwood

a stand up guy

The comedian strode out to the microphone slow and confidant, like a young Chevy Chase but without the abusive past. That was to say he was somewhat diminished but still comfortable in his surroundings.

The applause was lukewarm at best from the sparse crowd, which was to be expected given that nobody knew who the hell he was. His style of dress gave them no idea what to expect, he didn't wear a Jerry Seinfeld suit or a Larry the Cable Guy torn flannel shirt. In fact, there was nothing about his physical appearance that would indicate that he would spend any amount of time talking about how fat/thin/tall/short/Jewish/Arab/liberal/conservative/fit/lazy he was.

He stared out at them and let them wrestle with their complete lack of preconceptions for awhile.

"You know what expression I hate?" His delivery was straightforward and he held the microphone in both hands. His voice almost hushed.

"I hate when people say 'I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.'" His eyes traveled up and down the first row of people and finally came to rest on a middle-aged brunette woman who was almost as non-descript as he was.

"You fucking LIAR!"

The place exploded in a loud and nervous laughter.

"Of course you would. You sit squirming in bed late at night, under the covers, and wish that shit on people who cut you off in traffic. Your worst _enemy_... are you serious?" His eyes never left the woman and she grinned a guilty grin and it was obvious that she couldn't wait for him to find someone else to look at.

"Where does the urge to lie come from? You want someone to believe that what you went through was so completely horrible that no other human being could live through it?" He continued to stare at her and paused as if waiting for an answer that wasn't going to come.

"You would wish double ball cancer on the guy at work who used up the last of the copy paper in the machine and didn't replace it! You are petty and spite drips out of you like a leaky faucet and yet you smile and say this shit as if it will somehow make you look better in the eyes of the equally horrible person in front of you."

Obviously the more savvy people in attendance would guess he was talking about himself and, like so many comics, was spewing his self-loathing for all to hear so they could bask in the reflected shame and humiliation. These were the people he disliked most.

" _Of course_ I'm talking about myself but I'm also talking about you. Sitting there thinking about the times you've said 'I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy' and then laughing because you had wished far worse.

His eyes remained focused on the non-descript brunette and now she was looking at her lap and fidgeting with her hands and wishing she hadn't decided to sit so close to the stage.

"I don't even want to know your name lady. You're just a nasty little woman and if I were to guess I would guess your name was small as well... like Amy or Tina. Maybe it's Samantha and you shorten it to Sam because you're just so fucking rotten inside that you hope and pray that the new girl at the health club drowns in her own vomit soon because her tits are bigger than yours or maybe your name is Katherine but everyone calls you Kat and you think it's cute but you don't realize that it's because they _know_! They know how coalmine-at-midnight-black your heart is."

Sensing that this woman could take no more he abruptly turned and slowly walked across his little bit of territory not saying a word. The well-worn floorboards where so many of his contemporaries made their living. The single little spotlight following him. He wasn't even aware if people were laughing or not.

There was so much more to say...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lance Manion looks exactly how you want to him to look. Disappointed there isn't a picture of him looking at you smugly, perhaps wearing a heavy cardigan and clutching a pipe? Life is full of disappointment. In your head there is a perfect Lance Manion. Where he lives, what his hobbies are, his political or sexual affiliations. Go with those.

