Observation

Nobody here swears. I do not understand how it is possible to be around so many people performing so many frustrating tasks and never hear an explitive. It took me a while to notice this, but it became shockingly clear after a recent incident.

The soda machine (which I will no longer be using. Instead I will paronise the cafeteria, walking the half mile to brave the possibility of another DJ incident) first lied to me by telling me my selection was available when it was in fact sold out, then stole my money when I inserted more to upgrade my selection to a 20 oz. bottle.

As I was vigorously shaking the machine and peppering it's steel body with rapid kicks, an involuntary string of foul language was pouring from my mouth. When a stranger entered the room behind me, offering a nickel (which was the exact amount I was short. He had obviously decifered that from my filthy rantings), I felt oddly shamed.

Normally, nothing about my display of displeasure would have caused any feelings of remorse or humility. That's when it dawned on me. Nobody here swears. I felt like a pariah, some intellectually inferior slob whose simple-mindedness could only handle difficulties and frustration with savage, red-eyed fury.

Just another thing enforcing the feeling that I don't belong here.

the winds

Oh, you ripe, rotten bastard! From the far side of this cubicle you blanket the entire area in your foul fog, nonchalantly slurping soup. You silence conversations from across the room as the wind from your bowel causes people to lose concentration and frown, wrinkling their noses. Your furtive glances about do not go unnoticed, now that your flatulent nature has assaulted my nose several days running. I see your shameful smirk, that small facial tell betraying your odious stealth.

Oh! You henious criminal! You noxious mongrel! Oh! Oh! Again? Why?! How?!

Even wildlife would cower and slink from your putrid air. What nuclear fuel do you pump into that gut which causes such horrifying results? Canaries would keel over your vicinity, crows even. The man on my other side is covering the lower half of his face, leaving only his watering eyes visible. His productivity is reduced to nil as he focuses on breathing as shallowly as possible.

I hope this is just a passing gastrointestinal phenomena, some distress that will heal itself, and soon. Please, oh please...

Germ warfare

I sit here this morning with a sore throat, runny nose and dry cough, and I can't help but consider all the possible avenues through which germs may have come to me. Being a diligent hand-washer doesn't seem to suffice in these modern days of high contact.

Last week I passed the supply room where a woman pushing a cart loaded with letters and papers heaved a lung-full of air and sneezed a mighty cloud of fine mist all over them. She wiped some clinging spittle from her mouth and proceeded to sort the mail into all the employee folder-boxes.

I, thankfully, do not receive any paper mail. All transmissions to me are digitally scrubbed by a virus filter and deposited on a server, recovered without having to lay a finger on a single filthy surface save my own keyboard. I imagined what my reaction would have been like if it were necessary for me to riffle through those disease ridden documents. There is a box of nitrile gloves and face-masks near the press. Maybe the kitchen would have a set of tongs laying around.

Then, of course, last Thursday was Bunko at the Knights of Columbus, where 30-odd people sit around tables rolling dice, trading partners and conversations, all while sampling the variety of finger foods contributed to the pot-luck style snack table. Fingers are licked, dice blown upon, and microorganisms promenade from host to host.

However they came to me, courtesy dictates that I try my best to keep my germs to myself. I will duck under my desk to sneeze and slap away any hands that trespass upon my keyboard. Just like Needles the Inoculation Robot says, "Only you can prevent the next global pandemic."

Cafeteria

So, today requires a second post.

I dragged myself to the cafeteria, searching for something sticky and carbohydrate-laden that could possibly rejuvenate me. I made-do with an english muffin and a yogurt cup, which is a surprising value here in the complex. Being that the room was entirely empty, I had my choice of tables and picked one near the windows where I sat to enjoy my brunch and listen to the late eighties rock piping through the intercom.

I noticed something strange. A voice accompanied the tunes, singing along softly to "You Shook Me All Night Long" and making quiet murmurs. I assumed it was some fluke, a phone left off the hook back in the kitchen picking up the sounds of the dishwasher.

Then, the voice began to harass me.

"Hey, what you got there? Some toast?" I frowned and stopped chewing. "What kind of yogurt is that? Raspberry? Any good?" I cast a quick glance around to confirm my solitude, only to notice a large Samoan manning a turntable with a stack of records. That's right. There was a DJ in the lunchroom. And I was his audience. And he liked to chat it up.

Normally I might be in a more affable mood, more accepting of a boorish intrusion into my brief period of relaxation, but given my current state, it was difficult for me to remain composed. I wanted to hurl my Dannon Light at him, but instead I just stared intensely at my spoon. I was on the verge of snapping as he continued to pepper me with inane banter when an unwitting fellow employee came to my rescue. He rounded the corner holding a tray with a soda and some noodle salad. "Alright," he blurted, glancing at me. "I love this guy!" He set down his tray and proceeded to execute the silliest, most horrendous dance I have ever born witness to, thrusting his hips and pumping one fist in the air.

"Thank you, kind sir," I whispered under my breath, "for restoring my peace in your own strange manner. May your pocket protector never leak and your sticky notes adhere for eternity." I was able to finish my snack without any more commentary.

Morning

I am ill today, but since I am at work in a giant corporation I will describe the feeling as "sub-optimal" instead of "sick" or "hung-over." It may be a struggle to perform at "value-added" level today.

When I arrived, a man with an electric screwdriver was disassembling the cubicle next-door. He also had a loud rubber mallet. My appearance startled him. Whether it was my early arrival or my visually sorry state that caused his jump I do not know. After a moment or two, however, he warmed to me. He began speaking in a foreign language, something guttural and phlegmy, and looked at me expectantly. He punctuated sentences by jabbing the air with a yellow box-cutter. I nodded, looked at my watch, and made an escape.

I decided to walk the perimeter of the HP pond. As I approached a group of ducks crowded around me, jostling each other and tilting their heads sideways to peer at me in an anticipatory manner not unlike the office handyman. They were obviously highly domesticated. They were unfazed as I wildly clapped my hands in childish delight. They stared, bored, at the leaf-blower that the groundskeeper used to shatter any possible peace I might have found. I enjoyed the ducks' company for a few minutes before returning to the cube.

Today, I lost my pen

There is a meeting going on across the cubicle wall in which a group of grown men in suits are seated around a tray of assorted miniature pastries and talking about flow. The conversation could be happening in a doctor's office, centered on prostate enlargement, but this flow refers to something more abstract than urine. A small table topper near the donuts reads "synergistic strategies for productive flow".

The hallway out to the press is 200 yards of shiny tile and high, florescent lit ceilings. Since they do not make the shoes with little wheels built into the heel in my size, I am forced to find other ways to make this trek more interesting. My current game of tossing my pen high into the air and trying to catch it without looking up was brought to an abrupt end today.

The weight and shape of my pen (a Zebra GR8 gel- blue) spins exceptionally well, like a juggler's pin. I was thoroughly enjoying the zip with which it left my fingers, and the snap against my palm on it's return. But then it didn't, return that is. I looked up.

Above me hung a convex mirror suspended on a chain, the kind designed to alert you to the forklift approaching the intersection, operated by an inebriated high school dropout who will undoubtedly strike and crush you to death.

There was a hole in the side of the mirror.

After my initial alarm, I realized that had my pen caused this hole, not only would there have been some sort of breaky-noise but debris would have definitely fallen around me. So either my pen had gone into the hole or landed on top of the mirror. I proceeded to the press, hurrying past the security cameras which constantly pan over this entire complex.

"Noah," the press tech said. "Come over here and take notes."

"Um, do you have a pen I can borrow?"

Welcome to the weird

Long strings of white and red spool past on a black screen. The man squints intently, his face close to the monitor and his finger-spiked-fist poised for a quick strike hovering above the keyboard. He is a predator; a mongoose fastidiously examining the twists of a snake as it writhes, patiently timing the attack. I pass before the offensive commences.

These people observe my migration many times daily on various time-consuming tasks: the bathroom, the prototype press, the infrared water/ice dispensing robot. They appear secure, totally cemented in purpose. I am but the breeze, a variable that is inevitable and expected, calculated as an algorithm into their sphere of existence.

I pass a man painting the wall with a roller on a twelve foot handle. His role is unambiguous. Just a glance will tell you he is working, the quality of his craftsmanship, the speed at which he progresses. I scurry through during an upswing, past the handle intermittently barricading the hall.

I carry a clipboard, to assuage the doubts of superiors. My pen has been destroyed by the physical manifestations of energy without direction. I look at my watch.

Continued... surely.

New job...

Its hard to say what causes the general feeling of angst that settles over me within the first two hours of being here. It is definetly quiet around my cubicle, the only real obtrusion into the otherwise silent space is keyboard clicks and sighing. Maybe I just get nervous around so many people wearing glasses.

I still have no computer, no voicemail and no real sense of what my main objective is. The assistant to the manager's assistant feels very badly about the hardware situation. I first met her on my second day. After twiddling my thumbs for several hours, I was finally able to corner my boss between his meetings. He stood in the hallway eating a rough looking salad from a plastic container, looking puzzled when I asked, "So, Loay is busy and I don't really know what I should be doing right now."

"Um," he looked around as if he wasn't sure who I was or why I was asking him for direction. "Go upstairs and find Jen. Ask her where the pens are, or something."

"Who's Jen?" I asked.

He replied over his shoulder as he ducked into the meeting room. "My assistant's assistant," he said with a mouthful of lettuce.

Jen showed me to the office supply cabinet. It brimmed with batteries and ink-jet cartridges, but the only notepads were graphing paper and the choice of pens limited to 2 varieties, both cheap. Apparently people use laptops around here for everything, but they don't have a spare for me.

After another day of putzing, I asked Jen for a computer mouse and was given a dozen to choose from. An hour later I requested a calculator. She rummaged through drawers bursting with candy and cookies and assorted sweets before locating a bruised pocket Casio similar to what banks give out to 10-year-olds who open a checking account. Then I asked for a ruler, which was even more difficult to procure. "Do you happen to have an abacus?" She actually started to look around before I stopped her.

So now at my desk I have a file cabinet, a wire shelving system, three clear plastic cubes containing paper clips, binder clips and thumbtacks, a staple remover but no stapler, two kinds of tape, a ruler, a calculator and a keyboard, mouse and gigantic twin monitors, but no computer.

I walk around quite a bit, because the fear of being cornered by a superior and interrogated about my productivity is far easier to take than the weird emptiness around my office space. The break room near my desk has a high-tech water and ice dispenser that uses radio frequencies to detect when you are holding a cup under it, but there is no silverware or plates. I asked Loay where I could find a spoon and was directed to the official cafeteria nearly a half-mile away across the sprawling multi-acre compound.

Several e-mails have now informed me that my computer has been ordered, and most are followed by messages that the orders have been canceled for one reason or another. Today is Thursday, August 13th. My original order was placed Tuesday, July 13th.

This is my first time working for a major corporation, and I don't understand how anybody could ever feel comfortable in a place like this.

Jack

Jack drove truck.

More specifically, he drove a semi trailer filled with trash (other people's trash, mostly) up and down the grey veins snaking spider-webbed across northern California. Over the mounting years (growing ever past his own expectations when he had initially, with reluctance, taken the job), the tires of his Freightliner had greased a triangle plotted between the floating trash barge dock, the cadmium & heavy metals reclamation compound and, biweekly, the durable electronic recycling center (which gave the warm fuzzies to a growing lazily-conscientious population, allowing them to believe they were still doing their small part by considerately disposing of their aged computer monitor when in fact they were dropping a mercury grenade off at a depot to be shipped to China and burned in a putrid battleground stretching farther than the eye could see by a sinewy man with no fingertips or sense of smell wearing a tank-top) run by people who held their bottom lines above tired ideals.

This was not being put past Jack. He had recognized his instrumentally insignificant role in this grand irony of the garbage wheel. His personal feelings seemed in constant bloom as if agitated by the vibrations knobby tires sent shuddering through his cab. Guilt followed resignation followed resolve. Occasionally his stomach would churn on the greasy reminders of his place in the big trash dance. Other times he would shrug and think about the line of people who would take his place without remorse.

No matter his feelings, no matter the particular day or specific circumstance which brokered their encounter, the people who shared his highways had to make peace with their past as it thundered towering and overflowing overtaking them in the fast lane. Children would gape at the peaks of disposable diapers capping refuse mountains like snow. Adults would ignore the jetsam which wiggled free from the mound and skidded into the ditch, ignored. He captained a ghost ship filled with the bygone, from tiny insignificant moments to entirely encompassing histories, coffee filters to last testaments, jettisoned once and now filling the rear-view like filthy memories.

Once, on a particularly introspective and dejected evening, fueled and demoralized by spirits of liquid and haunt, he was labeled in permanent inks across his right foot "Filthy Pilot." He pictured his toes as the anchor sinking all those yesterdays, miring things best forgotten, himself being absorbed with them tangled in wedding tapes and tampon strings. They gently pressed 16,000 pounds of history into the earth.

During the first few weeks he found it fascinating what people would discard. The parking spot reserved for him in the covered carport adjacent to his apartment complex was barricaded with good intentions pulled from his early loads: furniture that appeared to be antique only in need of refinishing and upholstery, electronic gadgets that might be tinkered or easily repaired, wrecked bicycles and lawnmowers whose gears would surely be salvageable. But those were the early days, before he became jaded and complacent. He had no use for other people's trash anymore.

That is, until he found the envelope of money.

8 cups of coffee, 4 sentences

So, being that my wife was out this morning on an errand, that being picking up her mother from the airport in Portland—slightly over 100 miles away—and being that the single and solitary driving force behind my leaving the warm folds of my blankets in the morning is the cheerful percolation of rapidly heated water through grounds of coffee within our electric chrome carafe, and being that I was alone (as my wife was out as I have previously mentioned) and my faberware plug-in coffee brewer makes 8 cups of coffee (although the nature of their measurement is dubious at best, seeing as no mug is that small) so being all these things, a very large amount of coffee was ingested by myself this morning, alone and in rapid succession downed diluted with vanilla soy creamer as I attempted to comply with my spouse's wish that I clean the sinks and counter tops and vacuum during her absence in an attempt to make our humble home slightly less unsightly to her mother whom she was off in Portland retrieving from the airport causing the lonely caffeine bender during which I was now in the midst of and having trouble focusing on the task at hand.

So, after writing part of an e-mail and replacing the toilet-paper roll and filling the dish washing tub and watching the dog urinate, I answered the phone to a robotic voice reminding me to pick up a reserved book and return an over-due DVD which I hadn't yet watched, causing me to panic and abandon my growing number of half-completed tasks and rush off down the sidewalk in one sock and my PJ top which happens to be a sweatshirt with Homer Simpson reading "Springfield Unathletic Department", slopping now cooling coffee out of a Scooby Doo mug as I huffed past the St. Mary's Catholic church and the rather large lurking man who muttered something very strange as I passed.

"I am a very dangerous man," he said with a low and menacing tone which would normally compel me to quicken my pace and makes it even more bizarre that after 8 cups of coffee my reaction would be to slow and stop and turn to say, "We are all dangerous, given the right circumstances or tools," as I glanced around to point out a man who scurried along across the street carrying a sign of indecipherable deduction and said, "That man's sign might be a dangerous statement, sending some deranged psychopath into a spiral of degraded behavior like the Beatles did to Charlie Manson," even though I had no idea how the sign read, although I believed that I had seen the word 'Corinthians' along the bottom.

So the menacer loomed and the sign-holder caught interest and approached and I came up with numerous other examples of how everyone is dangerous, such as drunk drivers and people digging holes without calling the natural gas company, and as the sign came closer it became clear that it was nothing but jumbles of letters and gibberish scrawled in big messy capital letters on the flattened inside of a produce box, and the strikingly twisted facial features of the sign-wielder became more pronounced and vivid and I pointed at him and shouted at the menacer, "THAT is a dangerous man, sir!" unable to control my own vim, but the menacer only shrugged, and the sign-holder continued right past us as if we were invisible, and I swapped items at the library to hurry home and use the bathroom, being that I had many cups of coffee this morning.

Lips!!!!

I mis-posted earlier. The lyrics to the song were "Shut your lips. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips." It has been corrected. Thank you, sugar plum wife-o-mine.

Horsehead

We really weren't sure what to make of him, the chubby, late 40's, mustachioed man seated in a chair by the jukebox bobbing his head vigorously to the driving dance beats. Between games of pinball, Tegan ad I would take turns eyeballing him, as well as the rest of the room. At first we thought he was probably with a group playing pool nearby, but when they left and he remained, we had to reassess.

Maybe he was a new bouncer, his seeming ridiculousness merely a facade covering great experience. This theory was overturned by two points. First, as trouble simmering at another pool table began to become more heated, he paid very little attention, almost averting his eyes from the situation.

Secondly and possibly more importantly, he was regularly pumping several dollar bills into the jukebox to select music whereas employees wield a remote control. A group of very young girls were now shooting 9-ball, and his bobbing throbbing presence was causing an obvious anxiety.

I was almost certain that the songs were repeating, but their similarity made it difficult to be positive. Then over the thumping refrain, "Shut your lips. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips." my suspicions were confirmed. As I pondered the reference to Helen Keller (I guess the more accurate "Do the Helen Keller and redefine how society teaches individuals with aural/ocular impairments" wasn't very euphonious) a heavily tattooed man across the room thrust his finger towards the jukebox bopper and yelled, "Dammit, I can only handle hearing this fucking song 5 times in a night. Quit playing the same fucking songs!"

Mr. Mustache continued to nod his head nearly in rhythm to the beat, eyes half closed, as if simultaneously agreeing with and ignoring his assailant.

Some strange spell had been broken, and others began to adventure into the strange man's sphere and select music to play. The early Pink Floyd "Bike" began and the head bobbing became more erratic. The beat shifts and modulations broke down his disjointed self-confidence and he soon departed, leaving a group of early-20 hippies playing Grateful Dead. Their tastes were more varied than Mustache, however, because they also played "Don't you remember you told me you loved me, Baby!" and an early rap song with lyrics politely benign.

The Horsehead always has fun people-watching.

Too soon

I've been on a bit of a break from posting, enjoying the early summer with my newly liberated wife. Free from the shackles of higher education's encompassing schedule we have kept relatively busy. I barely find the time for simple tasks and they are starting to build up. For instance, I finally got around to cleaning out my wallet last night. Among the dust bunnies and moth carcasses was a receipt reading 'Thank you for shopping at Cash Depot: ATM. Green Bay, Wisconsin.' Shopping?

Speaking of shopping, the radio man says that Billy Mays, pitchman extraordiniare, has passed away this morning. Although it hasn't been announced, I suspect fowl play, possibly found asphyxiated with a Shamwow lodged in his throat. Oh Oh, wouldn't it be terrible if he was done in by his own products, like choking on several Big City Slider mini-burgers? Or maybe he collapsed under his own genius and swallowed a lethal dose of Oxy-clean.

I suppose it's too soon for this humor.

More stories soon.

Susan

Susan Hischman was a dour woman, with a sour pout perpetually residing below the long nose that some might call regal, while others would simply label "big". Her salt-and-pepper hair was cropped above her shoulders in a bob, shoulders draped in one of her closet's many plaid shirts. It wasn't with some mannish intent that her jeans rode so high upon her wide hips, but simply a side effect of pants with such an oil-lamp curvature.

The canine usually wheezing at her side was some mish-mash of dog DNA. Large lumps of benign growth gave his torso a mutant appearance but did little to distract from the unsettling fact that the dog's expression mirrored his owner. Children did not ask to pet Petey on the street. His frown seemed unnatural and disturbing, as if the muscles permitting such a human emotion had been surgically implanted.

And that is why, had the brown bulgy envelope been a living creature with eyes and awareness—some papery slug crossing the sidewalk, two frowns would have loomed down at it. Petey's nose left little wet spots on it before Susan stiffly stooped and snatched it away. Had it lain a foot away and not in her direct path, Susan would have passed it by. Like many grudging altruists, she would retrieve litter only when it presented itself so ineluctably. She crinkled up her long nose and gambled a quick peek inside, expecting some disintegrating mush of formerly edible substance.

Standing just feet from the dumpster her quick peek was masochistic curiosity, like opening the yogurt container plumbed from the depths of a refrigerator cleaning. What repelling repugnance might it hold?

As Petey spattered the blue steel of the trash bin with yellow, Susan's frown grew roots and bent to acrobatic depths on her chin. From the envelope bloomed the crinkled corners of currency. Hundreds of 20 and 50 dollar bills formed a thick wad between her finger-bones. She blinked, twice.

This new, deep frown remained rooted the whole walk home, holding the envelope at arms length like a particularly ripe doo-bag. She dropped it on her end-table, which was empty, clean, barren as a windswept desert. It's brown existence was like some animal dropping in the room's aesthetic. Petey was oblivious to the envelope's obtrusiveness as he slopped water ravenously from his chrome dish.

Susan abruptly decided it was time for bed, snapping away from the table and marching towards her toothbrush. Perhaps the morning's light would dissipate this illusion and return that sense of routine that fed her frowns. Those frowns that permeated even her dreams.

Happenings and Goings On

Updates:

Tegan finished her first year of nursing school and is plotting a barbecue bash tomorrow. Incidentally, that is the one day on the computer's weather forecast with a thunderbolt icon.

We opened a bottle of my father's 2004 plum wine and enjoyed it with out friends Sarah and Greg. It was quite tasty. We also have a 2005 plum wine still in our rack, as well as every other bottle of wine we have ever been given.

My free YMCA membership is about to run out, but over the last 3 months I've shed 12 pounds. Down to a sleek 177. Punched a few new holes in the belt. Still debating wether to pay for a membership.

Lots of new stories in the works, but nothing ready to publish.

I can't even get rejection letters from the places I apply to, except from Lane county, which seems to have consolidated all my rejections for the numerous positions I've jumped at into one flimsy postcard. I tacked it up on my wall, a symbol of the rewards reaped through perseverance.

Short

If he hadn't been there, the stiffness of his brown suit might still have held it upright, standing behind the yellow tape line like a mannequin behind a mime's window. His expression was rigid, so much that it might have been simply an extension of his starched shirt. Yet for all his stillness, a fire danced in his eyes.

Milo's mouth was too dry to speak, much less swallow. He felt his eyeballs being pulled, sucked from their sockets by the gravity of electric gaze pinning him. Breath he didn't realize occupied his lungs was now wheezing out in a disgorged, ugly laugh. "hhhhhhaaaaaaaaa..." His knees angled inwards causing his torso to swivel like a slinky on rubber hips. Milo saw an ocean, a blue billowing sheet of silk, as his head bounced on the linoleum.

The figure in the brown suit did not move. He waited for the next attendant to come along and contemplated what he would try next. His toes nearly touched the line, but remained separated. After all, Milo had told him to stay behind the yellow tape line. And a devil can only do what man allows him.

Roll them bones

On the first Wednesday of every month, the short asian bartender of the Knights of Columbus club knocks on our living room window to remind us that Thursday is Bunko night.

Bunko is a simple dice game, it's fast-clip driven by enthusiastic octogenarians whose competitive side flares every time the bell is rung. You rotate tables and partners, keeping the conversations fresh. "Working yet?" they will ask me, and I will smile and shake my head. "Get that unemployment," they will say. For a roomful of McCain/Palin votes, they don't seem too upset at my stint on welfare.

Some of the regulars get snippy if you are on a hot streak. "That'll do," they will say in their grandmotherly fashion, reaching for the dice prematurely. You have to watch when they keep score. There isn't any malevolence, just poor arithmetic, but sometimes their numbers don't add up.

The median age of participants is 74, and everyone is a member of the catholic church. The drinks are cheap and the potluck snacks abundant, so it really is a great deal for a $5 buy-in.

Most of the time the prize money is split 3-ways with the average prize being at least $30, but last night they attempted a new system. When the breakdown was complete (which took awhile, remember the poor math) some people got $2.50, some got $7. I think I was the only person who didn't win any money.

Regardless of how they will split the money or how mercilessly they rib me about my seemingly endless unemployment, I look forward to the first Thursday of the month and our next match-up in the windowless cinder-block building across the alley.

stress relief

Were it possible, I would kick both of my dogs square in the nuts. They deserve it for all the worry and strife they cause. Of course Mudd's testicles were removed seven years ago and Crumb never actually had them (although she does have a strange pseudo-penis that Tegan refuses to acknowledge. In my opinion, she is a canine hermaphrodite.)

Um... that is all I really had to say. Internal mono-blog: Is it a good idea to blog about non-existent dog nuts? Probably not.

Tim: A True Story

Tim just walked past my window. His story will make a good post—a memory from our first days in Eugene that refreshes itself periodically.

We had lived in our apartment in the big yellow house for 3 weeks or so. My eyes were grainy with sleep as I opened the door at 8 AM. The knocker was a bald man, early thirties, with two huge satchels and an oil drum. The barrel had been modified with creativity, an oxyacetylene torch and no small amount of patience into a gigantic candle holder, the likes of which you can find, in miniature, at any number of hippie-trinket stores nation wide.

He stood there smiling, but nonplussed. "Is Steve here?" "No," I replied. "There is no Steve here."

"I just got in from Indiana, and my friend used to live here..." He seemed genuine, so I frowned and nodded sympathetically. "Could I leave my bags on your porch? Just for today. I will be back to get them tonight or tomorrow." Our porch was expansive and, at that point in time, fairly free of clutter, leaving plenty of room for his parcels. I looked past him at the driveway.

It might be noted here that a man lived in our driveway, his bunk set up in the back of a toyota pickup. It has little bearing on the story, as he rose early to procure McDonald's breakfast and dine on the riverbank and so had not been roused by the commotion, but it sets the ambiance for our situation.

Next to the Toyota was a Vespa scooter, red and dented with a front Indiana inspection sticker. There was a motor oil box bungeed to the tail. It was only then that I noticed the Indiana license plate affixed to one of the stranger's bags. He noticed my puzzlement. "It does really well on the flat, but going over the mountains... Man, sometimes I couldn't get over 25 or 30 miles per hour." I looked at the two huge duffles and oil drum again.
"OK," I said. "You can leave that box, too, if you want." "Oh no," he laughed. "It takes about a quart of oil every day." He pulled out in a big blue cloud of smoke and ruckus.

Three weeks later we sat pondering those bags. "Fuck it," our neighbor finally caved. "He's not coming back. I like the giant candle holder/lantern barrel, but what is in those bags?" He opened one and and shocked us all.

"Garbage." Nelson (our neighbor) emptied wrappers, cans, crumpled paper and finally a medium-sized oak branch from the duffle. "It's a bunch of fucking garbage."

Literally, as if scripted and on cue, the beaten Vespa pulled into our driveway trailing it's blue streamer. Tim dismounted and came up the steps. "Hey," he said. Nelson had successfully stuffed some of the trash back into the bag and was now holding it with a guilty look on his face. Tim took the duffle and opened it. He removed the oak branch.

"Oh, yeah. That's right, I was invisible..." He was congenial, smiling as he stuffed one garbage sack into the barrel and slung the other on his back. We watched as he roped the smaller sack atop the oil box and wedged the drum (second sack within) between his legs, turned a tiny key and vanished in a stinking blue cloud. Did I mention he had a sparkly red helmet? Well, he did.

So, as I said in the beginning of this story, I still see him regularly. He does not recognize me, thankfully, even though twice I have called him by name and followed with an explanation of how I know it. I have run into him everywhere, from our friend's rock and mineral shop, to catching him chucking trash into the street outside the dog-wash in the middle of the night. A few weeks ago he popped up at the tavern we frequent with an upside-down pentagram tattooed on his forehead and concentric circles above his eyebrows. I know now that they must have been either Henna or ball-point pen, because they are no longer visible.

He is not the craziest person we've met (I'll save "Medley" for another time) but he holds a special place in our memories.

Hook

"I'm going to start a pineapple farm."

Like a giant, rabid moth beating it's powdered wings frantically against his apple-shiny cheeks, the makeup girl made no discernible acknowledgment of his comment. He was but simulacrum seated before her, one of many light-bulbs against which she could bash her talcum talents into exhaustion. Certainly her metal had been honed by richer, more idolized figures. Her disinterest interested him. He swallowed a lump in his throat that was his pride.

He had the intense urge to say something outrageous just to get a reaction — like, "Your mother mentioned something in bed last night..." Her stoic gaze and carefully metered patting was almost animatronic. She didn't even apologize after slapping her dust-bunny into his open eye when he had flinched at a sweat bee sting. After all, he was the one who jerked. He was the jerk.

A man in tight shimmering pants strode past carrying a xylophone mounted to a harness. A very disenchanted llama followed behind him, which of course evoked the question: Who was that harness was for? Did the llama play xylophone? Did it dance as the man in shiny pants played? What was the hook?

Sitting in the make-up chair, his hook was obvious, as it was a foot long 7/8th inch tapered piece of curled chromoly jutting from his right wrist. The hook itself was not the hook, however. That proxy had held his hand's place for nearly 22 years. The reason CBS executives thought people would want to see him on television was entirely unrelated.

The audience wouldn't want to hear about when he was twelve and the boat carrying 40 cuban refugees, himself among them, had broken apart 25 miles off the Florida coast. His mother had drown along with 28 others.

The crowd didn't care about his daughter's courageous fight against Melanoma, surviving numerous rounds of chemotherapy and skin grafts, never allowing her fear to surmount her will. She was at home in bed, dreaming.

All those people watching had no interest in his struggles, inspirations, affirmations, insights — in him as a human. He was a grinder monkey, a nameless automaton with a flawed nasal canal that allowed him to whistle through his ears. He would close his eyes and blow, people would clap, and he would slink back off into obscurity.

Suddenly overwhelmed, a tear ran down his cheek. Which, consequently, finally got the make-up girl to acknowledge him, and in her startling husky voice, she said, "Shit."

Unfinished yarns

Earlier tonight, as the recliner I perched upon pitched north (quite expectantly... since reclining is what recliners do), I watched a shabbily encased cord unwind from its chrome enclosure as the lamp I was attempting to repair (while plugged in) was further traumatized. After stabilization, the frayed weaving and electrical components protruding from the lamp's base illustrated a greater deficiency.

This particular fixture exudes robust durability. It's trifecta of positional lamps appear bomb-proof. When one of the illuminating colanders popped from it's pivot last week, both my spouse and myself were baffled. Since the hour was late, my response was to deal with it later.

It is later. So now, attempting to calm my racing heart after nearly electrocuting myself and/or pitching strait off the chair and out the window, I discount the allegorical substance in those frail and frazzled wires jutting like guts from a steel pole. This experience was about the moment...

I remember thinking, as the chair shifted beneath my stupidity, "Don't do anything stupid, like kill yourself." This was not a magnanimous revelation. No, I was thinking of myself and all the stories I have started and not finished. I've got too many ridiculous tales that are already, in one way or the other, preserved as lasting legacy yet need major overhaul. To surrender those yarns like tadpoles into the trout stream, immature and incomplete, would be my warped vision of a true tragedy.

A story about a bridge

Standing alone in the dark, brittle and bleached, the old structure still allowed safe passage over Willup Creek. It's reliable fingers plunged down, perpetually testing the tepidness of the waters. Headlights would crawl across it's splintering beams less and less frequently as the night spooled past. Cars that carried strangers, lovers, dreaming children, quarreling parents; It's shivering timbers supported them all alike.

The sweethearts who stole kisses below it's weathered canopy would etch their epithets into it's beams. And each scribe would step back with their pocket-knives, absorbing all those letters and hearts, the cluster of identities, and feel a ring of guilt. Smooching here, below their vandalism, would no longer feel so secret or spontaneous. One small act of graffiti had amputated that small piece of youth, whittled it off with a dull drug-store edge.

Occasionally the vibrations of tires would shimmy a knot from it's hole, releasing it to plink into the ripples like some old fashion bobber. Damsel flies would use it as an island, a ship, as it bumped it's way along the water path, eyed by fish and craw-dads, eventually to sink or rot or be swept beyond what could be imagined. Tiny bits of a bridge whose sole purpose was to be solid and stationary, immobile, would drift off on epic adventures.

And the night that it collapsed, sending all those planks and lumbers to join their departed parts, all those carved proclamations of love and fidelity to rush into the blue, it was vacant. The next morning people of the community gathered to view what wasn't there. They looked at the hole in the road leaving air over the maw of the river. They looked at the air and thought private thoughts. And while it was agreed that the bridge had obviously been an antiquated bit of unsafe infrastructure, it was missed.

An industrial grey overpass replaced it, sturdy and uninspiring. The only bits of itself to break loose were pebbles that would plummet into the sediment to be buried and forgotten. The only graffiti it would accept came from an aerosol spray-can, the passionless mischief of hooligans. Most folks found themselves taking the long loop to town. When they looked at the new concrete fixture, all they saw was a hole. All the imagination and fallibility had washed away.

Underpants Update

Several months have passed since an absence of regular tagless Hanes medium size boxers forced my purchase of the premium variety. It's stingy 2-pack left a wanting of value, therefore I expected the quality to be tops. Would I be disappointed after the proper breaking-in period? Here is an update.

Lets begin with the positive points. Comfort: The soft cotton cloth and comfy waistband proves luxurious. Despite having a tag sewn into the back, it is unnoticeable. Fashion: The bright striped pattern provides the piece of mind that should there be some nightmarish episode involving the loss of trousers, I can blush confidently.

But now the negatives. First of all, they seem to shrink after washing. Granted, they return readily to their stretched state soon after their rare laundering. So it's a minor flaw which is easily sidestepped by not washing them.

My main problem is with the button on the fly. Underwear, in my opinion, should be free of hardware. A simple ungapped over-flap is sufficient for its basic function. To stand in front of a urinal, fumbling through the fly-hole of one's blue-jeans in an attempt to re-fix a fastener not only looks foolish but seems redundant.

So there you have it, interested parties. Weigh the evidence for yourself before dropping $20 on two pairs of boxers. For my part, I will stick to the $15 three pack of regular tagless.

Exactly true

The diner served dry hamburgers. The false fifties memorabilia (Route 66 signs, wide Chevy grilles, a cornerless jukebox) weren't distraction enough for the two men crammed into the red and white pleather booth, so the dry hamburgers certainly weren't helping. Thomas set his seeded bun down next to his cold crinkle-cut fries.

"I killed a man once."

This wasn't exactly true. To say he killed a man, actively ending his existence on this earth, removing him from the 6 cubic feet (or so) of specific space he occupied in time, was inaccurate.

Thomas referred to a night two years earlier. Walking to a free concert, he passed a man sprawled on the concrete in front of a 7-11. The unnatural angles of his limbs paused Thomas' gait. He cleared his throat, unnecessarily. He said, "Hello." There was no motion from the figure splayed on the stoop. Thomas poked him gently with the toe of his shoe. Nothing.

And so Thomas stooped, noticing on his decent the scuffed paper cup perched on the curb, it's insides stained with the coffee or tea that it had once held, now encompassing several coins. He placed his fingers on the transient's jugular. Nothing.

The flesh wasn't cold, however. Thomas had thought about CPR, about the cup, about those chapped lips and his own. He abruptly stood, and after depositing 17 cents into the cup, briskly walked away. It was only several hours later, after the concert, after seeing the coroner at the 7-11, after thoughts of phone calls and emergency medical personnel and their wages and society's burdens; only after all the whores in his mind had peddled their wares did Thomas realize he might have held a role in this timely passing.

Russell looked at Thomas across the faded red diner table. He found himself trapped in a small corner booth with a person who might be capable of terrible things. "What was it like?"

"I get a boner thinking about it." Thomas tried to act nonchalant, picking up a soggy potato wedge and wondering why he had divulged that truly intimate bit of information. He felt some strange camaraderie for this person he had met online several weeks ago. It was true; his arousal at the memory of that night and it's obvious violence. Even though his participation was limited to the possibilities of his inaction (his neglect, indirectly causing death which might have been delayed), he felt very pivotal.

Russell nervously pushed catsup around on his plate with a fry. "I've, uh... I've never killed thing."

Which also was not exactly true. From a lawyer's standpoint maybe, it was asphyxiation and traumatic spinal injuries and internal ruptures that had caused the deaths of 12 men he had met at various diners over the past six months. Russell watched the waitress lean on her hip after forcefully smacking the chrome ringer. She chewed gum, so Russell watched her chew it. He did not become aroused thinking of his violent trysts. He became aroused during them.

And so the strangers exchanged inexact truths for 45 minutes before mounting the nerve to retire to a hotel room with their perversions. Later that night, one would leave.

Personal Anxiety Exposition

There is a bubble inside of me. A marble. A swollen, pregnant orb that dives and floats. It bumps against organs. It's filling of cold gas causes twitches and flutters of the guts and heart and epiglottis as it ascends toward the brain, only to end up slithering southward again; redundant in reverse.

Some suggest a chemical cure. Pills, well... we all have our irrational phobias. No pharmaceuticals shall quell my jitters due to a very complex jigsaw puzzle of personal predisposition. Tablets and capsules and caplets shall remain piled in their powdery bins, across town, across the street, elsewhere. I choose my frets and fusses over them.

It's like looking at a picture of a stranger standing with hands on hips. You look at his yellow jacket with it's strange fringe and the angles of his geometry. His eyes are downcast, yet he is you, in a jacket you do not recognize on a street you cannot place. The more you stare at this figure, this self-effigy, the more uncertainties you fight.

So the clothing is not familiar, the street nameless... Things are lost occasionally. But then, who took the picture: A forgotten lover? A passer-by? Why the look of resignation, the feeling of defeat? Why is this image in your hands, anyway?

Searching for answers, for certainty, only mounts questions upon questions. Your back itches in a place you cannot reach, so you ignore it as best you can.

There you have it: what my anxiety is like.

Why do I delve into these ridiculous tirades about personal psyche instead of just posting the actual tribulations of my day-to-day existence? Well, I need to write this down. Why publish it in digital public instead of just journalling privately? Well... I need an excuse to make it worth reading.

Nothing

It was beautiful.
That dangling bead of drink, suspended by a microscopic friction between liquid and follicle.
It lingered for eternity, elbowing the beard hairs on either side, trembling on it's prickly precipice. Sour and acidic, the droplet resembled the obvious tear.
It was something.
Nothing. Nothing. Leonard rustled his paper purposefully. It was 4 in the afternoon and he was working though his second gin, scanning the print which blackened his fingers, waiting for the phone to ring, for a knock at the door that would rouse the dogs.
For something. He wiped the drop from his beard.
He focused on his own quiet breathing, listening to it's rhythm as his eyes languished on the page, on the sentence "... dragging the river..." "Notify next of kin..."
A fly buzzed and flitted and landed on the thin edge of the paper. Leonard watched it rub it's front legs together, like a greedy cartoon character anticipating some ill-gotten plunder. He stopped breathing. It was something, that insect perched there, praying or plotting or preening.
Leonard sucked in wind forcefully, causing the bug to jump and the dogs to prick up their ears. He exhaled and waited for something.
For the next something.

Those teeth

Thom Skree's teeth conjured both predator and prey. They blinked briefly from beneath his mustache; the thin, long dentition of a carnivore that evoked bones blanched in the sun. He tapped his finger on the desk, or rather on the manuscript laying before him, breaking Harold's transfixion.

"Mr. Bansay. Harold, may I call you Harold? Good. Now..." Skree went on speaking as Harold slipped away again, staring at the movements of the face across the mahogany table. He was not alone, neither on his side of the desk or in his staring, as his mother beside him was equally preoccupied.

'Those teeth,' Harold's mother thought.

'That mustache,' Harold thought.

"Harold," Mr. Skree's voice cut into Harold's reverie. "Please understand, your piece is... unique. Provoking, but..." Skree's fingers emulated his teeth in length and impeccability. Their cuticles brushed invisible lint from his lapels. His tongue ran over his incisors, bulging out his mustache like a mouse under straw. "Given your recent... difficulties, our publishing house has policies regarding business with anyone involved as a defendant in pending felony charges."

Those "difficulties" played through Harold Bansay's daydream as he gazed at Mr. Skree's upper lip. The first, several weeks ago, involved the server at a creperie. According to the police report, the dust-up originated over a dispute of billing, but Harold knew better.

The second, only yesterday, was, in Harold's view, more of a misunderstanding. A miscommunication, really, a folly that under other circumstances would have been a forgettable nonevent easily laughed off, had the other party not been a member of the greater metro police force.

"And," Skree continued. "To be perfectly honest, this isn't really marketable. It's not really Sci-Fi, not suspense, well... We just don't know how to sell this."

Sweat beaded on the bridge of Harold's nose and nostrils. His mother shifted in her seat uncomfortably.

Skree cleared his throat. "Inventive as it is, a story about people who's mustaches control what they say is... AHHHHHHH!" Skree's calm demeanor was shattered as Harold suddenly vaulted across the desk, a glimmering strait razor glinting in his fingers.

Harold's poor mother was aggressively shoved aside as two burley men appeared from nowhere to subdue the ranting author. "I can cut it off, Mr. Skree! You don't know what you're saying! Let me cut it off, Mr. Skree! It's making you say these things!"

After the disarming and forcible removal of Harold from the office, Skree and Mrs. Bansay sat silently contemplating one another. "Mrs. Bansay... Um, I believe your son will be at the police station on 3rd and Morris." He offered a pained smile of consolation. "May I validate your parking?"

'Those teeth,' thought Harold's mother.

Figments

Outside, winds lift skirts and debris. Men with hard livers wipe their faces as they exit dim rooms of pungent air. Branches lash at their supporting trunks, agitated by ghosts and figments and dreams.

Inside, isobars coast in smooth tandem over the pull of a vibrant map. Their brilliant shift and sweep chart dark disturbance, predicting the hereafter. Specters in this box of lights and the shade in my thoughts leer.

The rock-stars of my youth have been sucked into the maw of their muses. Left to rattle my windows, the wraiths of their hot deaths howl like wolves in the wind. The world through the window tilts with the gusts, yet it feels like I'm the one leaning; being bent akimbo by haunts.

Dogs bark in my dreams.

Zippers & Nuts & 8 & 0

Tegan and I went to a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert last night. We (Tegan, actually) was able to procure the signature of both singers and founding members, Jim Mathas and Katharine Whalen.

We approached Jim as he mingled between opening acts, haranguing women with his disarming southern charm. He turned to us with the reek of malt. Obviously plastered, he scrawled "Tegan, *scribble* 2009" across the front of our cd liner. We recoiled to a safe distance.

Katharine was sitting alone after the show. She was gracious and genuinely nice as she put her name on her picture in the booklet. Looking back, we regretted not asking her to accompany us for a drink.

It was 80 degrees here yesterday. Tegan got a sunburn. I wonder if there is still snow on the ground in Wisconsin. Probably not much.

Hazel

What is the essence of a comfortable chair?

Is it the consistency of it's stuffing, the supportive lift of it's foam flesh? The specific way it buttresses our posteriors?

Perhaps its the upholstery. Leather (or faux) is durable and stylish, yet sticky on the backs of legs and occasionally inhumane. Plushy fuzz is delightfully soft on a bare bottom (tee hee) yet acts like a sponge for filth, which is, of course, the reason one should avoid seating the bare bottom upon them. Suede scuffs like an infant's skin, and is best avoided where boisterousness may ensue.

Maybe comfort is in the color. Do we revel in seats shrouded with scintillating stain? Or possibly we picture ourselves as others see us, seated on our fashionable accessory. Fashion screams wealth, which is why so many good folks want $300 for a used La-Z-Boy on Craigslist.

My chair is comfy, and I know why. From it's vantage, I am assured my favorite view: my wife's eyes. Whether they grace me with the steeple brow of tired patronization or squint with frustrated confusion, I will see them from my chair. Rest assured, in a troubled world. And that is comforting.

insomnia, anxiety, insomnia, repeat

3AM. My eyes pop open, wide and unwilling to close. With all possible stealth, I twist my head to glance at the clock. Over the next 3 hours I will twist in the sheets without relief.

Like a children's round-song in the key of shit, insomnia and anxiety perpetually chase each other. I fall asleep just fine when I first retire, but over the last several nights I've been awakened sick with dread. I breathe and tell myself to calm down, that stress only shortens the life-span, which is no comfort. Adding to the discomfort are the nightmares that always follow this nightly waking ritual.

If I am able to reclaim my slumber, horrible visions will shake me from sleep every 45 minutes. Lately, they have been chain-dreams: I awake from a dream about my dog being replaced by a doppleganger. I am having a heart-attack in bed, and Tegan rushes to get her stethoscope and the phone. My chest is burning, then I realize that Tegan is in her full scrubs, at which point I awake again. The room around me is disintegrating. There are holes in the plaster and voices at the door. I awake again.

I attempt to relax by following the blotches in the murk behind my eyelids. Normally, dark and light splotches dance like reverse footage of ink drops in water, sucking into the recesses of my skull in a soothing flow. But lately, their liquid blooms have been replaced by an out of focus bramble-patch. Last night, a banshee appeared in sudden clarity, with one large cycloptic eye and strangely fine teeth that chattered in a comically threatening way. Where have my ink blots gone?

There is one culprit that may be behind this. Tegan complains of anxiety when she drinks diet soda, or at least a jitteriness we attributed to the caffeine. I have been drinking an all natural diet ginger ale that doesn't have caffeine or aspartame, but I plan on cutting it and seeing if it cures this awful ailment.

In Quad We Trust

Fishnets and tattoos. Frilly skirts that are too short and pink underpants that peek out from beneath. Crash helmets and beer.

Tegan and I went to the roller-derby last night. At first, reading the rules in the program, I was baffled. There are more refs than active players on the ring, but after 2 minutes I understood why. Some of them call points, some penalties.

A cluster of nylons and kneepads jostle each other as they coast round and round. The crowd yells and stomps a thunderous rumble on the metal bleachers as one blonde bomber from the "Church of St8in" levels a competitor from the out-of-town "Terrimedix" as she tries to pass, sending her sprawling into the spectators kneeing in the crash-zone. I might add that according to announcements, in order to sit there you must be 18 and cannot be drinking beer. You also may not help any of the girls up.

Enormous entertainment. We know a few of the skaters. One of them, a polish girl who works at the dog wash, always seemed very nonassertive and a little meek, but her skating name is Slavic Slayer and she was throwing some nasty blocks.

Yup. I think we'll be doing that again.

deep thoughts

I've been seriously examining my existence. The shoes of my soul-searching are battered by the constant kicking of my self esteem. I've got questions.

First of all (and of the least importance), should I go back to school? Pursue a more fulfilling career? Do something that gives myself meaning? Join a Guatemalan paramilitary group?

And all this questioning muckrakes other disturbing quandaries. Why do I write? What compels this desire... Why do tiny fragments of prose spring uninvited and unevictable from my brain. Like today, folding laundry: His face betrayed mistrust, like a dog with ears pinned back. Or unwritten stories that could go anywhere: I'm not going to divulge the one that popped into my head earlier, because I don't like to spoil surprises.

Does this all mean something? Am I supposed to pursue this, and if so, how will I eat? Or do most people have this and just not remember it a moment later.

cheat

I'm involved in an affair, neglecting my faithful companion for a sleeker model.

I'm speaking about my bikes, of course.

For several years my personal local transport was attended to by a handsome, chromed commuter cycle. It has a leather seat and matching grips, a 3 speed hub and coaster brake that operates as well in the rains as the sunshine. It's fold out baskets can handle a bag of groceries each, or a case of beer. It's quality steel frame tips the scale at a hefty 45 pounds, and even in the highest gear only lumbers along at a slow jog.

Several months back, I picked up an old road bike from a coworker in exchange for a crumpled $20 bill. First came the uncomfortable adoption, the wobbling uncertainties of this funny new posture. Just when I began to gain some confidence, a skidding spill dampened my relations with this new machine.

I feel a little pang of guilt hopping atop this slick roller as my trusty, chromed warhorse leans neglected. But I can't help myself, and the reason is simple. I like to go fast. I do draw the line at some things: I do not believe that my bodily hair causes any noticeable drag and therefore will be keeping it. Spandex is very unforgiving and is better left to superheros and people I do not have to look at.

Perhaps I will tire of this new fascination and return to the comfortable rumble of my dutch bike. Maybe.

Do not resuscitate

Edward awoke alone. The sticky dark that greased his eyes was troubling. When had this night come?

His fingers glanced something smooth as he rose from the mattress, and for an instant he froze. After a panicked moment a memory fluttered from the muck. The bottle. How had it all come to this?

Ed pressed the squishy orbs of his eyeballs deeper into their sockets and tired to think. Ice rattled in the familiar tumbler as he located the bottle in the black. Waving his hand like a lost relative left at the gas station, his fingers eventually scraped the smooth surface of his remaining friend. His inflammatory companion. His fiery liquid love.

Fumbling with his free hand through the pockets of his discarded jeans, eventually he was able to free the ring of keys. He returned to the door for the hundredth time and began the ritual. One by one he pressed their corrugated faces against the unyielding keyhole. One by one they were rejected. Options exhausted, he slumped at his desk in his underpants. His gaze glossed at the sweating glass. His frowning lips craved. His frowning eyes desired.

*** Don't worry, this is not a continuing story. Just a blip. Believe it or not, this is complete. ***

Fermentation fascination

As my wife returns to nursing school, spending time attending the sterilization of so many microorganisms, I return to solitude. My thoughts turn to tiny colonies of coconspirators, perhaps induced by the Hunter Green scrubs that the love of my life casts to the floor with such nonchalance. So I began a new experiment in fermentation which recently came to an end.

Currently Tegan is brewing a batch of ginger champagne, and at this late hour it is my only companion, slurring burbled excretions... the prayers of yeast colonies conversing with their blogging gods.

I started some radish sprouts today, and attended my shelling pea plants in the garden. I also aborted some sauerkraut that was curing on a shelf in the living room for the last few weeks. Apparently, I am not much good at measuring, and an overabundance of salt rendered the pressed shreds of cabbage inedible. A shame, really. I had grand plans.... a few slices of homemade Russian rye bread, a grilled slab of marinated tempeh, some swiss cheese and 'kraut. I'll just have to stick with the Tempeh Rubin sandwiches from Cornucopia restaurant (or Park Street Cafe, if I can make it there during their insanely limited hours).

***sigh***

the end.

*** the end of a story... scroll down and read the other parts first ***

From the darkness of the doorway jutted shimmering feelers, poking the shadows with their glistening and strangely familiar contours. A quartet of eyes followed their bobbing.

One pair of peepers flickered lids from the floor, peering out of the darkest of corners at the miraculous parade. Fractured beams of moonlight bounced awry into nothingness, and Dirvin's eyes followed.

Roger, on the other hand, thought about the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's ruby slippers. Afraid to settle his gaze upon his gorgeous reclamation shivering in the blackness, he focused on his bestowal. Rolled by his own pearled waves for three weeks before tumbling up the beach sands, the long loafers gained a shine reminiscent of the fabled shoes that delivered a little girl from Kansas home. His extended arms held them as steady as any brave man could.

Dirvin lifted his palms toward the huge fingers that held his treasured shoes. Roger lifted his gaze to the apprehensive face and hesitated. In one fluid motion, he released the flippers and snatched at his back pocket. Pitted rubber soles were snatched in eager grasp as Dirvin pulled his slippers close to his chest. Roger brought down his gripped fists and tried to look away.

On the beach, sticky sea bubbles refused to pop on the pointed rocks.

*****

The little town of Kennebunk hadn't felt the same since the storm had swept away a small part of their soil. Everyone's shoes were heavier, and their coffee was too bitter. Conversation at Estelle's was mostly shoe shuffling and the clinking of flatware on porcelain.

The memorial was placed near the jagged cliff where a shack used to lean. An enormous curled "C" dominated the horizon, followed by "arnation". The recession had left no extraneous funds for attractions unvisited by tourists, and so Nestle donated a left over crate to pay tribute.

Moving at astonishing speed for bureaucracy, the crate was condemned as an eyesore and a hazard to the greater public. Attending it's hasty removal, Clem Silter bounced an abrasive cast iron hook in his thickly calloused hand and studied the timber box for a proper anchor point. The crude, heavy claw made a muffled thud as it hit the sod, slipping from the suddenly frozen fingers that had bounced it.

From a toothy hole, Clem watched one filthy fist protrude followed by another, both preceding a crinkled sack atop two shoulders. A few moments later, Dirvin Morris was completely birthed from the crate of Carnation Instant Breakfast and shuffling shimmering sandals toward his outhouse.

And while there was no formal announcement, no official gathering of charities, a slow event took place. Individuals would stop at Dirvin's dwelling and ply their skill. Spare screws were shaken from their coffee cans. Moist boxes emerged from beneath moldy sinks to empty random adhesives. As the crate was connected to the outhouse and gradually made slightly more habitable, people left smiling. And the smile was infectious. And the town breathed well again.

And each twilight, two beautiful eyes batted their lids lazily, gazing at a very brown view and listening to the seagulls, and the waves.

Second to last part (pt 5)

•••pt 5 of the ongoing epic, please scroll to the previous sections•••

Splayed out in an ugly arc, stuffing the silent space of the 6AM to 8PM daytime viewing veranda, glassy eyed oglers huffed suffocating air and gazed over the masses and through the glass. Behind the smudged, scratched Pyrex brooded a blotchy captive circling his confines. Rusty red smears of oxidized blood muddied several of the panels forming the southern wall of the estate, along with soap, causing a shuffling discomfort in the populace. Yet despite the visual obfuscation, waves of washing purity emanated from the blotted partition.

Twelve days had passed since the last weekly town meeting. Dubbed by the next generation as "the shillyshally vs. the reactionary," the populace battled between two main factions. Those of the knee-jerk variety were verbose on the pulpit. Their platform stood on the assumption that should their shining idol be discovered, he would be eventually taken away. The meek and meager opposition to their argument was exactly that: meek and meager.

And so it was decided that a glass enclosure would be constructed, housed beneath a wooden shield. The passing of information regarding their new resident between towns would be punished accordingly. The shimmering beaches were quarantined to reduce the influx of tourists. A lone figure was allowed to prowl the surf's break, being still in everyone's best interest.

At some point of the evening, between the repelling remarks, quitely coagulated a collective shame. Eyes were cast to the scuffed floor, yet nobody in the room raised objection.

And now, on the veranda, a dozen days later, the crowd shifted it's weight from foot to foot, reading Dirvin's bizzare narrative scrawled in soap across the inside of the glass.

Reprinted here is his allegory:

Once there was an Irishman whose shit didn't stink. And one evening in a state of injudiciousness he proclaimed this vile aptitude to his audience of drunks. He lowered his trousers and strained a dirt upon the floor. His neighbors and friends came forth, delicately positioning their noses above the turd, withdrawing several moments later to proclaim his truth: there was no stink from his shite.
Then they hoisted him up and cast him out on the gravel.
"But why?" he asked. "There was no odor."
To which they replied, "Shit is shit."

With the cleaning crew assembling around their buckets and restraints, the spectators turned and dispersed. They whistled, for Dirvin's gift had left them lighter. The benefits of their captive canary, his very presence in fact, expunged any guilt they might have otherwise felt.

Except for the one person allowed on the beach whose grief was intact.

Pt. 4

(part 4 of a story. read Part 1, 2, and 3 first. Although, after re-reading them in the order in which I published them, parts 2 and 3 would do better if transposed. So read 1 first, then 3 then 2. Or don't)

On shimmering sands a shuddering man clutched the pulpy shreds sticking to his face, eyes closed and praying a child's prayer: to awake from this terrible nightmare. To open his eyes and see blankness, on his weathered floor, head shrouded beneath his cold brown curtain of crinkly comfort.

Roger's wind rushed into and out of him and soon he was dizzy from the effort. The exertion of dragging the man who refused to swim all the way to shore left his hands throbbing. His oxygen debt was compounded by the several minutes he had spent on the island screaming at the stone-still stranger before picking him up and hurling him, like so many plates before him, into the waves. As the land-mass drifted further to sea it had began to pitch, releasing huge bubbles of rancid fumes, seeming like some bloated stinking dog rolling over in the surf.

Through the fingers that held the remains of his identity tight to his cheeks, Dirvin studied his bluish companion. When Roger noticed the odd eyes peering at him, his exasperation erupted. He lifted his afflictive fingers and tore away the masking hands. With one great movement he slapped away the remnants of fibrous pulp that clung to the flinching face.
Roger stammered, transfixed by the sight, aghast, amazed.

For Dirvin Morris was the most beautiful person in the world. And as Roger opened and closed his jaw, the pain that racked his hands vanished, and the burning of his muscles dissipated, and everything seemed better in the world.

And around them, locals who had come to the beach to skip stones or paint or neck with their lovers all gathered, drawn like filings to a magnet, feeling their ailments and anguishes blowing away in Dirvin's beautiful breeze. They reveled in him, from his glorious copper hair to his now bare feet.

Before the sun could lay it's dry face into the cool relief of the horizon, the locals had whisked him into town where he was made to perch on the bandstand and remove all their sufferings with his orphic exquisiteness.

Pt. 3

***Part 3 of a moral-less allegory. Please read Part 1 and Part 2 first.***

There were stones in Dirvin's passway, and the road laid before him was dark.

The darkness was nothing new, having spent such a time beneath his paper shroud, but the rubble stubbing his toes was a disconcerting augury. And the darkness wasn't velvety depth it should have been...

He had awoken on the floor, which in itself was not out of the ordinary, but he had no recollection of retiring. An unfamiliar draft chilled him. He stretched his legs, plowing dusty detritus into neat little mounds with his velcro strap shoes.

Dirvin drooped his bag-head and pressed his bag-face into his hands. And felt something wet. Bringing his moistened fingers up into his very personal space and tapping them against his tongue, the tang of iron told him it was blood. As his digits revisited the gore they discovered something even more distressing: a hole. Desperately desiring to concentrate on recalling the previous evening, this new aperture was the supreme distraction. It required repair, posthaste.

Following the probing feelers of his long loafers, Dirvin made his way to the tumbling towers of yellow hogging the better portion of the room. Folding himself cross-legged, hunched like a crumpled Buddha among the thousand Carnation cartons, he began the task at hand. One by one, he would locate the blue and white adhesive tag applied by Rose General Market for pricing. Delicately, he would pry up the sticker and purposefully place it, slowly fashioning a bandage for his paper carapace.

And as the puncture began to fill over, Dirvin's mind began to relax.

Breathing deep and steady, he attempted to recount the evening's unfolding. He sighed and shivered and eventually slumbered, sleeping a grimy and grey sleep, splayed across a bright cardboard bed. And awoke in a panic.

His arousal was violent, as if some subconscious malice pressed a hot flint to his earlobe, and his flailing legs sent a plume of mildewed rot blowing away in the wind. As his fingers patterned dust into uniform ridges with their nervous scraping, memory flooded in like a backwash. Memories of a storm. A great storm. Memories of a thundering elemental colossus, the shuddering pitch of the floor, the choking black of his paper bag as he stumbled, and the great groan of the very earth he stood upon.

And it was pondering these newly found memories beneath his newly patched cap that Dirvin stumbled into the outdoors. After several minutes of investigation, it became clear that his outbuilding was no longer connected, it's aluminum and tin umbilical cord shorn jaggedly. After several more minutes he was aware that something much larger was amiss, for the sandy rut that had once led to town now only brought him to a void, an empty space where his slipper-tips dangled over the big blue sea.

Pt.2

***Part 2 of an untitled fairy-tale, please read part 1 first***

Large saucers coasted over the azure horizon, reflecting the jaundiced sunrise of a post-storm morning, their porcelain circumferences levitating for fifty yards before dipping (plummeting, really) into the burbling surf below. Followed by the occasional shoe. And on the shore, Roger Kessel heaved gigantic breaths and flexed his gigantic hands, watching the graceful arcs of his jettisoned flotsam.

Roger had a ritual. This particular rite was generally accepted by local law enforcement as an exercise in personal well-being. The consensus held that whatever reason Roger had for standing on the beach and pitching second-hand dishes into the sea, it was probably in everyone's best interest to let him proceed. And after all, 22 years of plates pulverized and polished by the tide lent the sands an ethereal shimmer that drew tourists from as far away as Brunswick.

As for the shoes, they did not accumulate. The steady pulse of waves ferried them to the beach, where Roger would retrieve and hurl them back in a perpetual, slow motion game of hot potato.

Roger's elongated digits were punctuated by bulbous joints that ached and festered. Several times daily, Roger would stop and glower at his extremities, sucking his teeth and grimacing before stooping for his next discus. And so he was caught glowering, bent and focused with pinched face and centered ire staring at his paws when the giant rock drifted past.

For years, geologists and seismologists would debate the feasibility of Roger's tale, while rational people would argue about the stability of his mental state. No matter what their opinion on the unfolding of events, the outcome and resulting phenomena was concrete. His fantastic narrative went as follows:

As his suffering fingers let fly the day's last projectile, his eyes were arrested by the strangest sight. On the waves about 100 yards offshore sailed a miniature island, a ship made of rock and earth. Perched atop it was a crooked cabin with a twisted tin tube protruding from it's side and over the edge. And teetering on the brink swayed a body, swaddled in disintegrating rags, with extended shoes jutting out into space and a paper bag covering his head, shuddering.

As he stood in shock, jaw unhinged and mouth agape in amazement, one thing became very clear to Roger. The boat was sinking. Each blue undulation of the water lapped slightly higher against the hull of the odd floating boulder. And so he did what he knew had to be done. He plucked off his battered shoes, heaved them into the swaying sea with all his muscle, and plunged himself in after, paddling with enormous, distressed hands, intent on rescuing this mysterious masked stranger from his floundering prison.

A story, or a beginning

A story...

Dirvin Morris lived in the smallest of saltboxes, a rickety rack of leaning shack precariously pitched west as if plowing headlong into a gale. His commode and wood-stove resided in an out-building connected via patchwork ducts, providing protection from a catastrophe at the hearth, but at the price of a lingering foul odor.

Dirvin hardly noticed. The air filling the paper bag he always wore over his head smelled mostly of his breath, which was itself quite pungent owing to his lack of hygiene. Had his dwelling been outfitted with indoor plumbing, it is doubtful the situation would have been any different, for the water required by most modern bathroom practices would most certainly cause irreparable harm to his brown paper burkha.

Why he remained separated from the word by that scratchy paper veil for so many years was local mystery. A semi-weekly debate was deliberated around the corner table at Estelle's Cafe, down in town, with the frowning and squinting old-timer fixtures taking long sips of their decaf coffee between postulations. One school of thought (and the one that is perhaps the most inviolable) holds that a traumatic brain injury and it's impact might compel Dirvin's awkward position. Other's say perhaps severe tissue trauma left him a horrific monstrosity, or perhaps a physiological aversion to sunlight would cause his face to melt if it was exposed.

Whatever the truth, they all sat silently watching every other Wednesday as he shuffled down the street to the grocer's to place his order, which would be hurriedly left on his stoop several hours later by the bike-bound delivery boy who sweated to sleep every second Tuesday.

And so he shambled between the hovel and the outhouse with eyes perpetually fixed downward at the extra long slippers contrived to forewarn of impending impacts, for his paper lid was penetrated by no perforation. Sustenance was mostly delivered by straw, and Dirvin was the largest consumer of Carnation Instant Breakfasts in the greater Kennebunk area. As a result, he had received several letters of thanks from Nestle honoring his loyal patronage, but long ago he had grown tired of straining himself reading one dreary sentence after another in the space afforded between chin and bag, so they sat unopened. And Mr. Morris sat every evening instead with a very brown view, listening to the seagulls and the waves.

Grind

Going and coming and going and going... like the pulsing tidal push polishes a plethora of pebbles into a podiatrists' pleasurable precipitate, life seems to wear the bearings of simple machines.

It's been a few days since I last dripped digital diatribe. Lately, I've devoted my sorry spare seconds scouring the Saharan state supervening our selectively superior soil. Remorselessly roundly rejected, I retire...

evaluation

Today is the birthday of Theodor Geisel. I just found out.

Several years ago, a dear friend of ours bought me a book for my birthday. (This happened before my current embargo on owning books which was spawned by our close proximity to the library. No need to buy and store when you can borrow.) It was a floppy yet strangely thick paperback entitled Dr. Seuss Goes to War. And in it, I found a new angle on an old favorite, a childish yet mature editorial on the state of affairs.

And so, instead of pondering my passing years by periodically planing the perturbing protuberances from my proboscis and cursing the curly hairs encroaching my chest and shoulders, I think about silliness. Nonsense, and how it changes the world as we know it, requires appreciation of a wider projection.

I appreciate the ridiculous, the zany, the slaphappy... My writing is punctuated by goofy alliteration in homage to my childhood favorites. I dance daily. I revel in the ridiculous rain.

Spoils

I have a grand and desperate desire to shoot off my grandfather's 1924 S&W .38 revolver. Five minutes remain of my 27th birthday, and by the time I actually post this diatribe, it will be over. I clutch this humming confluence of magnets and metals and radio-waves, suppressing the primitive urges of a hunter/gatherer.

It's not like I want to go frivolously blasting fully jacketed projectiles into the atmosphere with reckless wantonness... I want to line up spent Pabst cans filled with water, meticulously positioning their aluminum cylinders along a beautiful tangent, and then pick them off with 30 glorious grams of booming gunpowder.

And so I think about creation verses destruction, and it is my wonderful wife who winches in this whimsical wonderment. She has afforded me the tools of creation: a bread peel, an oil mister, and the perfect brotform. Maybe all these gears of the meek and micro living have influenced me, powered me to seek the feckless abandon in picking off beer cans from my fence-line.

But the bottom line is... my birthday kicked ass. Kicked all sorts of ass...............

Deep Breaths

inoutinoutinoutinoutintoutintout

And so it goes, the shuddering plunge. Despite what my projected persona may dictate, I am a spiritual man. Indescribable, enigmatic... I have wangled to the reach of wangle. I am 27 years old -- no extraordinary fete, I admit. And yet, I have lapped the milk of the damned, and 27 is the accursed fill.

Just a fan of the blues be I. The music and the tales that accompany them are legendary, dissuading aspiring musicians everywhere from delving into the gem of our heritage.

Goodbye Janis Joplin, Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Shannon Hoon... My heart will beat a little faster thanks to Robert Johnson, and a little slower thanks to Skip James. Their visceral impact will resonate for ages.

It has been brought to my attention that not only has Nate changed the name of his blog (although the title along the top of the browser still says All things Nate), but he has also posted a few personal experiences in the past few days. Apologies again... From now on I will double check my peeves before unleashing the venomous vim of my ire.

Keeping up with the Jones' (or Nates)

Once there was Nate, and he had all things. What type of lemming rube do you take me for, Nate? What caressed the inner mush of your cerebral carapace into thinking I'd believe your sinisterly sarcastic ruse?

Rewind the mental strings, rewind and reveal, Noah.
I've been perusing random blogs using the "next blog" button at the top of most blogger pages. Click and be swept off, ricocheting like an abused super-ball to a new blog. Press "next blog" again... find breath anew.

Three blogs have piqued my fancy so much as to follow them with fair regularity. The Book Design Review which guides me to strange text based entirely on looks (judged by the cover), Journal of my Life a fresh blogger living in Kuala Lumpur, and tonight's focus: Nate.

Nate is a designer, and the dynamo behind "All Things Nate." My raw rubbings originate from the very basic fact that Nate has nothing to do with ANYTHING at All Things Nate. To me, it seems a disillusioned couturier surfs the internet in the long solitary hours of his evening and plasters anything he fancies onto his broad, ugly ledger.

Here are my totally uninsprired attempts to replicate his sharpness... People want to be mayor of Detroit! It has just become more difficult to get a pet monkey!

Take that, Nate...
Actually, sorry, Nate. I will continue to follow your frantically frequent blog posts and enjoy your random finds. Apologies for targeting you tonight. It was just the paradox of calling your blog All Things Nate and then posting nothing except things you find on the net.
It is truly commendable and contemptable, that type of creative abandon.

Run-up

February of this year, as it happens occasionally, contains four perfect weeks on our common American Sunday through Saturday calendar. And the final quarter-block of these I have staked claim to as my birth-week. Why confine my celebratory fete to a single day when I can brand a gloriously stout rectangle in bright red sharpie.

It has practical reasons, of course. Lose an argument? Not this week. The resounding endgame to any dispute rolls so easily off the tongue in those three little words: "It's my birthday." Restaurant disagreement? Birthday. Who's turn to cook? Birthday. Who's sock is this in the sink? You bet your ass it ain't mine, not this week.

It was tempting, upon seeing the pristine alignment of chronology February afforded, to picture the glory of boxing in an entire birth-month. But the small victories afforded by that hasty flare of judgement would have had unintended repercussions, for the daily grind of a month-long festivity would have chewed away the anticipation, the run-up, to the big payoff.

So I'll take my week, thank you. And if you don't like it... tough. It's my birthday.

HST

February: the month of my birth, the shortest month of the year and the only that occasionally changes.

Today is the anniversary of the death of an icon. It's paradoxical that I can't summon words right now. Inspiration is cruel...

So long Hunter.

'Twas brillig...

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things; of shoes and ships and sealing wax; of cabbages and kings.

Lewis Carroll is my favorite poet. The Jabberwocky conjours the fantastic imagination in every child. What does mome-rath look like, and how do they outgrabe? I used to be able to rattle of it's entire nonsense from memory, along with several Tolkien rhyme riddles and the better part of Coleridge's Mariner.

Poetry, like all art, is difficult to pin down. Critics and aficionados seek to distance themselves from the pedestrian folk by claiming cerebral superiority... that the subtle enunciations of true art are inaccessible to the uneducated. Yet the same critic cannot discern an unknown Pollock from the flinging spatters of an orangutan better than the flipping of a coin.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Don't rely on Disney. Go read Lewis Carroll today!

The Continuing Crisis

There is a panic rising within me, and the fear chews in my lungs, languishes in the depths of my bowels. At first, I dismissed it as a childish obsession. But now the crisis has worsened, and it is definitely a very real concern.

There are more of me. I ticky-typed about this before, but it was just a link and a baffled exclamation. Now that I have cleared my senses and delved deeper, I have discovered yet another me. I know that this is not the same impostor I uncovered before, for he was in middle school in Lansing Michigan in 2007, and this new pretender seems to be under the age of 7 and lives in the greater Houston area.

I decided to be proactive. I would compose a letter, a dignified and intelligent summary of my logic; namely that there can be only one me, that I was here first, and that he should kindly begin using his middle name as his first.

This has not happened for two reasons.

The first is that, as my spouse carefully explicated, most of my eloquent pennings are actually the incoherent scrawling of a seemingly mad-person. One arriving in the mail, unsolicited and uninvited in a crumpled and sweaty envelope, may be startling or downright frightening. Especially given my passion on this topic and my tendency to get carried away and off-topic.

The second (and I admit, more concrete) reason is, due to their age, these minors cannot be easily located. My first intention was to simply look up any Rademachers in Lansing and send the letter, addressed to Noah, to any and all of them. I was surprised to discover that 30 Rademacher families hold residency there, and not only would sending thirty copies of a letter be cost-prohibitive, there is also the real possibility that several of those households are related, and upon realizing they had all received the same postal rant, the police would be dispatched to knock on my door and analyze my mental health.

Sadly, I am at a loss for what to do next. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The direction of mass media

I have to write this before it slips my memory. My wife is asleep on the floor, face down, and I anticipate that I will be joining her shortly, and the more sleeps between me and the spectacle on the news earlier this week, the more likely I will forget.

It was Thursday, and the noontime news blazed in my television screen. Those poor saps, they have been in makeup since the wee hours, powder-puffed beneath the studio lights while most people are still sound in their beds. The noon broadcast is the end of their day. They are calling it in, the bottle in their desk drawer whispers loudly.

Congress had arrived at a compromise on the economic stimulus legislation, with Republicans loudly clamoring for concessions then voting against it anyway - with a few defectors however. The newswoman blinked into the camera. "And it looks like a victory for President Obama's massive package."

She knew immediately what she had done. Her ears brightened and her eyes watered, but it was difficult to say why... Was she just incredibly embarrassed by her thoughtless wording, was she holding in a huge guffaw, had she been set up by a mischievous TelePrompTer operator?

Her coanchor was a much easier read. After several seconds of uncomfortable air staring into those big dow eyes, the camera panned back to the larger picture. Beside the blinking, silent woman sat a remarkably red man. His lips were pursed and a vein was pushing out of his forehead. Either his tie was fatally too tight, or he was about to burst into spasms of middle-schooler giggles. Suddenly, he coughed very abruptly and picked up his glass of water.

As he took a very long drink, you could hear his sputtering breath behind the mug. By this time, the woman had lowered her head and now sat with her eyes locked on the desk. "Ahem!" the man exclaimed. "Sorry, I had something in my throat," and as he spoke the corners of his mouth betrayed the smirk that desperately tried to force it's self outward.

"And in our final story, we're going to tell you why lots of local fishermen are hoping you want to give your valentine crabs..."

Adventurous consumerism

I bought new underwear a few days ago, two pairs of red and blue striped under-shorts, the premiums. I'm still on the fence about them. My confidence in the capitalist market was first shaken by the absence of medium size Hanes tagless. There was an abundance of petite and large, even extra large and double x. I truly considered buying the large, my yearning for boxer-shorts-sans-tag was so strong. But we all know the perils of underpants that are too loose.

I tapped my forefinger against my front teeth and pondered my options. I began to sweat. Triple pack of standards, jumbo pack of economy quality, patterned, striped, themed ... or the premiums. In my humble opinion, it is a tarnish on the name Hanes that they dare label underpants as premium and still sew tags into the waistband.

There was one other factor that factored into my decision factoring. The purchase would be made with a shiny Target gift card. My budget would be unaffected. Pitching caution to the wind like a soiled sock, I strode with jolly confidence to the cash register, sparse two-pack of top of the line garments in hand.

Upon my arrival back at home, I shed my old vesture and tore into my new investment. I was apprehensive about the tighter thighs, but the fabric was soft and the elastic stretchy. For any of you who are following this story with a vested interest, I will surely pen a follow-up once the proper molding time has elapsed.

Imaginary Games

A cheerleader's coach barks at her squad. Her Adam's apple plunges and heaves the cigarette smoke from her airways as her furies are enunciated with carcinogenic blue wisps. "You suck!" comes a voice from the stands. Transported through the ether, the demoralizing prose intoxicates those grass-stained gladiators grinding their youth into the turf. They hang their heads and scan the withered and beaten sod that their jagged rubber soles have unrepentantly gouged. And in pursuit of what?

The home crowd shuffles from the bleachers. The burden of their single-file sorrow bends the turnstiles, and a subsonic groan lingers over the field. On the score-board (dedicated two years ago in memory of a 5th year senior guard killed in a hazing "incident") the yellow LED lights show an insurmountable deficit. With 15 seconds on the clock, the home town trails 21- 13, the visitors crouch over the ball with 1 yard to go on a third down.

And then... the fumble. The quarterback lets the snap slip, spilling the essence of the game between his splayed legs. A collective gasp sucks the atmosphere out of the vicinity, leaving the players to choke on oxygen deficient air as they scramble for the precious bauble. Wagers are suddenly clutched tight in mid-transfer as eyes bulge... the whistle sounds, as does the buzzer. The visitors have recovered the fumble and the game is officially over.

And so we all, myself included, breathe again. And we will... until next year.

The Run

I am going to call this, "Race against micturition." I personally think that would be a great slogan for a charity run for prostate cancer. I use humor to ease my own life's tribulations. However, benevolence has nothing to do with my own race. No - I pair myself off against... myself. Will I break in that ugly face of necessity, or will my bladder break first? Is this a valid, scholarly pursuit, or a drunken belligerence?

The race against my bladder has been greatly impeded by a freakish inability to spell even the simplest of words. I know the words, I know the meaning, but expressing myself has been the true barrier. If only I lived in Olde Englande... I have no point to make, but I was curious if I could manufacture one before... well...

I ... lose.

A single plastic container, all alone

My wife made this comment, offhandedly. The subject: a plastic salsa tub that she had just washed, now destined for the recycling.
It struck a chord in me, and I immediately blurted, "That is going to be the title of my next blog post!" though I had no notion of a topic for said post. And so, in the tracks of the great word-painters (inebriated, stumbling through the black, bleak blankness) I contemplated this single sentence. Could it describe the grotesque tableau that surrounds the average man? Plastic containers... stationary figures... solitary...

I've been reading Kafka, if that is not obvious already.

I guess I have no choice but to surrender this sentence to pure poetry. Something ethereal and serendipitous provoked that prose. And yet something deep-seeded and tyrannical within me desperately wants to make it my own, to swage and sinter it into a uniform theme, an impression, an epos. Yet my hammer is weak, my anvil soft, and no matter what my concentrated effort, unadulterated this phrase stands stronger alone.

And thus is life. To detect inspiration, unprovoked, and clutch and claw at it, and occasionally fall flat. Only occasionally, though, for that is art.

Suck on that, Princeton.

I just finished watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000, The Movie. I was returned to 1995; Clinton was the president, Gorbachev jokes were still vogue, and humor was a simple equation for my friend Brett and I. Most sleep-overs took place at his house, considering he had Oregon Trail on the computer, super Nintendo, unlimited Nerf toys and satellite television ... whereas my house had public radio and was wood-heated. To be fair, though, my house had superior food. At Brett's, meal time was typically sugary cereal or white rice with butter. My mother, on the other hand, would prepare vegetable lasagna, sautéed tofu sandwiches on home-made bread, pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

In retrospect, my house developed us as physical young men quite effectively. We were compelled to play outside by the complete lack of lazy enertainment inside; kicking soccer balls through the laundry line supports, hitting rocks with baseball bats against the corregated walls of the International Curling Club, throwing water-balloons off the roofs of downtown businesses after scaling the fire escapes. Granted, Brett had a sizable collection of Super-Soakers and a Slip 'n Slide... so on hot days, it was really a toss up.

However, Brett's house held the coup de grace... the nudie channel. Somehow Brett was able to decipher the pass-code of the parental lock on his satellite receiver. If I remember correctly, it was the expiration date of his father's credit card. (Please don't ask me how he knew his parents' credit card information... not only did my parents not own a credit card, we did not own a microwave, a computer, or a CD player.) So, after guffawing at Mystery Science theatre 3000 and stealthily ascertaining that his parents had truly retired for the evening, we would punch in that sacred numerical cypher and gawk at the nubile bodies afforded by the soft-core cable porn industry of the day. Those are sweet memories.

Anyway, recounting this is relatively pointless. What chiefly compelled me to start orating about it was the simple fact that the fictitious hero of the movie was wearing a UW-Stout sweatshirt. Suck on that, Princeton.

So, my slovenly posterior has defaced this chair irreparably. My two months spent out of work have passed quickly, and the calories and carbohydrates have mounted within me in haste. The rain sinks me, and I miss my bike.

A muscular woman on television beckons toward some bizarre machine, a spindly, spidery confluence of tension bars and flywheels and cable-winders. Her arm is veiny. It encourages me to try a free trial; to unfold this glistening miracle of modern mechanics and reshape my o-so-pliable physique. This cyprian employs the devils of the sales-trade, plumbing the depressed and sleepless to fatten her pocketbook with the spoils of commission.

My own objectives are far less clear. Why do I sit at this black hour, listening to the rodents who nest in my attic and the late night adverts for personal-enhancements, typing into the silence? Why, indeed.