The Driver's Seat Has No Steering Wheel

Every once in a while there’s incident that shows you, you are not an island. Occasionally, something happens to show you that you live within a world that no matter how much you believe your perception alone creates it, your wrong. You’re not in control and then you are just left frozen and afraid. Nothing feels worse.
I hate it. I hate being afraid. I’ve spent a good portion of my life being controlled by one fear or another. I recently felt that I was beyond all of that. My life was mine. I felt that I was in control of it and that I made all the rules. I’m telling you, I was really beginning to feel like all I had to do was say it and it came true. Things have been like for the past year(ish). Then yesterday, it all came screeching to a halt and I was left hiding silently and being afraid. I was not in control of my world.
The details don’t matter. The point is that, I realized that my life, no matter how much I believe otherwise, is at the mercy of the world’s ebb and flow. So what are you suppose to do? Some people just face the world on their own terms and look it boldly in face and don’t even bother explaining themselves to the world. "I am me." And then let the pieces of the world fall around them as they may. Some people have no fear of being crushed by the falling pieces of life and would write off the crushing of themselves as merely a folly of the fates.
I hide. I stand in the dark and be afraid and be ashamed of myself for doing so. I thought I’d be able to write more on this, but I guess I’ve said it. I wish I was different.

Metahumans Not Mutants

Warning: I’m going to geek out.
So was talking to another comic geek the other day and we were just talking about what we were reading. I told him that I’m mostly reading DC stuff with the exception of the following Invincible, Godland, Spawn, Wolverine, Wolverine Origins (I don’t know why, frankly neither the story or the art are that exciting, but it’s not bad enough to take off my pull list until I find something I really want to replace it with) and the 3 Spiderman titles that are relevant to the core Marvel Universe. Off the top of my head, the DC stuff I am reading is Justice League America, Justice Society America, Teen Titans, Batman, Robin, Superman, Action Comics, Superman/Batman, The Brave and the Bold, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, 52, Flash, and Shazam and The Monster Society of Evil. I’m sure there are a ton of other great comics out there that I should be reading, but I guy can only spend so much on comics before it starts taking away from other aspects of his life, like drugs, fishing, food, and... oh yeah bills.
So me and this fella where chatting nad reads mostly Marvel stuff and really pushed me to read the Marvel Ultimates titles. I’ll probably try to catch one or two of them at the begining of the next story arch as he’s been reading comics for a lot longer than me. But I’ve gotta admit, when I got back into this whole thing in the last few months I was drawn to DC even though I hadn’t really been when I last read comics. I was into the early Image titles like Spawn, Max, Pitt, Youngblood, and all that stuff and sure I read Spiderman, a few X-men (Oh my God, I loved X-force) and I think the only DC title I really dug was Batman. Now let me take you back even further, to when I was a little kid with an allowance of $2.50 per week and Mom would walk with me and my older brother downtown to spend it wherever we wanted. We would inevitably wind up at this Paperback store which sold used comics for like 10 cents. These were old. In fact we purchased a bulk of comics that came with a first printing of Fantastic Four #10. It was all beat to shit, but I remember how stoked we were when we found out that it worth $410. Sh-yah right. I think when we took it into the local comic book store, the guy who ran it let us keep our valuable comic and pick a couple of comics out of the twenty-five cent bin.
So anyways, gosh I’m good at getting off track, I was trying to figure out what it is that draws me to the DCU as a opposed to the MU. Let’s begin with the fact that D-C-U sounds waaaaaaaaaaaay better M-U. Then let’s talk about the issue of Mutants vs. Metahumans.
When I was young I liked the notion of mutants. It just sounded cool; Mu-Tants and the heros didn’t’ look all cheesy with stupid masks that didn’t hide their faces and when I was teenager I I really thought capes were gay as hell. Besides the REALLY big guns were all the rage (Gawd Cable was a bad ass) and the DCU seemed a little bit G-rated compared to that; Magical Rings, alien Boy Scouts who are almost god-like except for an allergy to green rocks, guys who can run fast, I thought were all Gaaaaaaaaaaaay (said in a highpitched, just smelled freshly baked cookies kind of way).
Now though, I guess I don’t like all superhumans were explained away as "genetic mutations" or "the next evolutionary step for man-kind." I like what Wildcat said in one of those early issues of the new JSA said something along the lines of "Meta-Humans. In my day they were men of mystery." I know, I’m not digging on the phrase men of mystery or anything, but I think the sentiment is the same. There’ an old man grumpiness that I don’t deserve to have about my love of Metahumans vs. Mutants. But I have it.
I guess, I also like the boy scoutiness of the DCU. These are all kind of up right guys who have pledged to protect the values of the good ol` USofA and all believe in something. And then there is history. I know that Marvel has been around a long time, but I don’t get the same feeling of depth of history as I do from DC. I mean for god sakes they have Superman! The OG superhero. And while Wolverine can brood with the best of them, he’s got nowhere near the angst of Batman. Back to depth. I love the re-tooling the DCU has undergone in it’s time. You know something is big when time get’s lost in it. I love the huge amount of characters that seem to be off the radar and will make an appearance again. I’m sure Marvel has aspects of the same, however, it doesn’t call to me.
Also cool things that I like about the DCU. They are all about some magic. People with magic powers and magic artifacts (I know, I know Thor’s hammer and Dr. Strange) but Magic seems to be more alive and well in the DCU and I don’t there is something about magical rings that just make me want to leap in the air and roll a twenty sided die. Oh yeah, and aliens rule. I love how much more a part aliens are of the DCU.
And while I used to think capes were hokey and lame I like them now. Kings wore them. Knights wore them, why wouldn’t a superhero?
I’m sure there is plenty of facts that could be used to prove that my reasons for loving the DCU more than the MU wrong, but the heart doesn’t lie and my heart says the DCU rules all. But I would love someone to go through and pick this apart just because that’s cool and geeky.
So for me, it’s metahumans not mutants.

Chicken Pot Pie Conspiracy

I was just sitting here thinking about how I didn’t have anything to write about and then fate stepped in and served me up a rancid chicken pot pit.
A few months ago, I decided that my budget couldn’t support both lunches out (of any kind) and comic books. So I did the mature thing, I stuck with the comics and gave up going out to lunch. The added benefit to the comics over lunch is that I’m doing my best to alienate myself from my last few friends at work, because I hate them, and this is one more way to do so.
"Hey, you wanna go to Taco Time."
"Sorry, not in the budget."
"I hate you."
"And I you."
It works out great. But it left me hungry at lunch time because I am way too lazy to pack a lunch, even though I tell myself that I ‘m going to start all the time, but I never do. Maybe I’ll start. Anywoo, I went to the store and re-discovered one of the greatest things in the world. That being, the frozen chicken pot pie. Seriously, they cost $0.58 and make me think of a third through fifth grade, when I spent every weekend at my friend’s house, discovering the joys of four in the morning. Chicken pot pie was our 2:00 AM meal of choice.
I bought like twenty of them and put them in the freezer at work. At lunch, I cook them, I go in my office, I close the door and I eat them and then I take a little nap as I recall all of the good times that me, my pal and chicken pot pies had together. There are vague connections to Sega Genesis and discovering porno tapes. It’s nice to drift off in my guest chair and think of those days with the taste of freshly nuked chicken pot pie still coating my mouth.
Today though something terrible happened. I made my pot pie like normal and I went back to my office, shut the door, sat at my desk, pulled up the comics shipping list and made a list of what comics I should get. They’ve only missed one comic ever at the shop, so I do this mostly so I can think about reading comics and I just like making lists. I then poked down the top crust of my pot pie and took a very small bite (they come out of the microwave piping hot) noted that it tasted a little... "off." It had just a hint of that cold dusty flavor of something that had been in the freezer just a bit too long. But I figured it was my taste buds or my imagination which has caused me to send back more than one thing at a restaurant that was almost surely fine to eat. So I figure my chicken pot pie was fine.
I finished putting my list of comics I’ll pick up later this week. I have quite a bit of reading to catch up on as I didn’t pick any up last week because I was broke (as a joke). I then pulled up my email and took a nice big bite of my pot pie. Again it tasted odd. I figured it was in my head because I was thinking it tasted off before and now I had myself convince. So I took another bite, this time I was sure that it tasted as though someone found a dusty cat turd and rubbed it all over my chicken pot pie. I rushed back to the kitchen and found the package and read the expiration date and it said March 1, 2007. It’s April 23, 2007. I think I screamed aloud just a little. I stole some chips from one of the ladies eating lunch in the lunch room. I checked the freezer and there was my other pot pie that wouldn’t become rancid for another year and a half, shoved in the back. Now a little bit of history about the whole chicken pot pie thing. When I purchased my bulk load of chicken pot pies, there was one in the freezer that belonged to someone else. I recalled that it had been in there for quite a while. So I took it and shoved it in the back of the freezer and placed all mine in the freezer door. Now, today I discover that an old expired pot pie is up front and a new not expired chicken pot pie is in the back. Suspect? Fuck yeah it is. So now I’m sitting here with that tightness below my tongue and excess salivation that can only mean that sometime soon, I’m going to have a vomiting episode of the angry variety which probably means I’m going to get food poisoning or beaver fever or some other terrible poop and vomit disorder and I know that one of these mother fuckers here intentionally did this to me.
I just burped and it tasted like the inside of a dirty freezer. I hope you’re happy.
Fuck.

One of My Favorite Memories

I was just sitting at my desk thinking. As a quick side note, I’m totally faking being sick today, so everybody leaves me alone. It’s working. I’ve barely spoken to any of these assholes today. Good stuff.
Anyway, I was sitting at my desk thinking about how much I would like to be out fishing right now. My brother is. He called me and told me to fake sick and go with him. I could have, but I did it yesterday and blah, blah, blah... So that got me thinking, I wonder how many trout are feeding at this exact moment. I wish I could zoom back and be able to take in that sight all at once. This is one of my stoned daze thoughts. I try to visualize it and then I space off. I’m just searching for nirvana. Whenever I do that, I end up back at the same memory.
A few years ago, I was camping with my bro and Dad and this really cool guy who is kind of messed up in the head because of a car accident, he really liked rock cocaine ("lovely stuff"), but got pissed if you called it crack (we weren’t smoking just telling stories). Anyway, I was out camping with them at this lake up in the mountains. It was right next to this other fly fish only lake. My good pal Tim was going to camp with us, but something with either his work or his wife got in the way of that and he was only able to come up for a day. We fished the fly fish only lake until about noon and then went over and had a late breakfast with my brother, dad, and the crack guy. We then fished the lake were I was camping and fished a little out let stream and we did okay.
As evening approached, we went back to the fly fish only lake. I was in my pontoon boat and he was in his float tube and we just fished away without much luck. It must have been the story with everyone, because by dusk we were on the water alone. This is a very popular lake and there are always tons of people on it, but that evening everyone was done a bit on the early side, so it was just us. The night was windless and the sun set without a fiery protest. The whole world just kind of sank into the night without much noticing or caring. In the very last moments of light something amazing happened. The lake was still. It looked like black marble. Then without any warning, the entire lake was dimpled by rising trout. Clearly a midge hatch had come off, which in of itself isn’t amazing, but the entire lake had the hatch coming off all at once and there are so many fish in that lake due to a catch and release only regulation, that the entire lake from one end to the other and one side to the other was covered in rise forms. It was amazing. My hands started shaking so bad that I could barely tie on a fly. The air felt like a storm was coming, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Bats were eating bugs and so were the fish. I could smell camp fires and see their glow dotting the shore. The sound of men talking carried easily across the still lake and I was watching fish, many very nice sized, rising a swirling everywhere I looked. It was wonderful.
We caught some trout, some big trout, but that’s really not the point. I’ve heard the standard fisherman’s saying of "it was like someone flipped a switch", but this, this was amazing. I imagine that is what it would be like to look down through the eyes of God and see all the trout in the world rising at once.
This is the type of thing that keeps me out fishing. Amazing things happen when you’re "out there." This is why I go, this is why I think it’s important for other people to get out. Not everyone needs to fish, in fact they shouldn’t, but people should find something they love about being outside and do it, so that they can have memories like this.
The memory I’ve just shared is one that I find comfort in when I lay in bed at night and have a momentary realization that I am going to die someday. I think of the lake completely covered in rise forms and I think about the feeling of my 20 inch(ish) Sea Run Cutthroat when it grabbed my fly the moment after it landed on my absolute farthest possible cast. I think about a handful of fishing memories that are special to me. They bring me comfort, because even if I get old and can’t fish and even if I wither away from cancer, those are my memories. I’m not out there to catch fish alone. I’m out there to experience a part of the life and the world that can give me these beautiful memories. These little moments that are better than paintings or photographs, because they come with the smells of water and the way the air tastes at dusk.
I don’t really know how to end this poetically or well, so I’m just going to end it.

Virginia Tech Massacre - I wish I was surprised

I wasn’t going to write about this at all. Mostly because I feel bad for all the people who are really involved (students, families, friends, etc.) because they are going to become America’s tragedy of the week and all the spot lights on their grief is going to wash it out and prolong it.
But I’ve gotta admit, I’m not shocked. I wasn’t shocked by Columbine. I won’t be surprised the next time some kid decides to blow away a bunch of his classmates. Again, he’ll be disturbed. Again he’ll have feelings of persecution and rejection and after he kills a bunch of people, everyone that knew him will say "I’m not surprised."
I’m not defending this kid. Killing people is bad (this is a stupid obvious statement that I have say so that my true point won’t get lost.). I’ll say it again. Shooting people is bad. Violence in all forms is disgusting. Violence is a personification of the very worst elements of humanity.
However, look at the common trends in all these massacres. These kids may have pulled the trigger, but society loaded the gun. I know that’s a cliche as hell way to put it, but it is true.
Our society worships the alpha male. We like big strong men who are loud, boisterous, and pick on the weaker males around them. In everything, the alpha male is idolized. TV tells every girl that they should want to date the captain of the football team or at the very least, the most bad ass of the bad boys. Our images on TV, in print, and etched into the very soul of our society of these thick haired, muscled, strong jawed guys in their uniforms gazing dreamily off into the distance just before the sexy blond with bouncy tits comes running up to him so they can go do it under the bleachers, is enough to make every scrawny, fat, or pale kid grit their teeth a little and have a momentary fantasy about leveling a gun to his face. If you haven’t guessed; Yup I was one of them. I was the dorky, fat kid. But worse, I was the fat kid who wanted everyone to love me on my own terms. My terms were simple, I just wanted to be me and have everyone like me. It didn’t happen until I started picking on other people. A time in my life I’m ashamed of. But it worked. I had a lot more friends when I was an out spoken, asshole of a fat kid.
And that’s the thing here. We’ve shown kids how view each other. The roles and pecking order are defined by the time they reach kindergarten. We’ve already pumped it into them from the hours and hours of TV that they’ve watched. Kids have fuckin’ eyes. Kids have fuckin’ ears. And surprise, sur-fuckin’-prise, they even have a brain which is takes in every word of contempt they hear about a geek, nerd, or freak that their parents throw out as they are driving down the road or sitting on their couch. Because it’s still done. Even by people who have grown into adult hood, they are still seeing the world and the people in it in the same terms they were given as young children. Children are taught to reject the "weak" from an early age. Our sexes have the optimum roles clearly defined for children from the time they can walk. The best thing a man can be is a strong, broad chested, deep voiced giant and the best thing a girl can be is a super sexy dick tease who never puts out.
And these kids who are furthest from being the alpha male they get shit on by everyone who is in front of them in the pecking order. Which by the way is everybody. So they hide. I see it every week. I go to the comic book shop and get my comics and I see the kids in there. I know why they are reading about people with super powers and why they are playing games with where they control armies and are doing amazing things. Because when you’re rejected, it becomes necessary to pretend and why not play pretend about something that is cool, magical and powerful. Why do you think that I still get half a chub when I have the new issue of Superman in my hands?
Oh and so this escapes they create for themselves just go to further incite the rest of the populous.
"Oh man, that kid is having fun without a ball. Let’s mock him."
"Yes, that will make girls want to have sex with us."
"Yes. I like sex."
"Sex rules."
The thing is, we can’t just blame the fuckin’ retard assholes who are the ones throwing the Magic Cards in the air. It’s only partially their fault. The parents, teachers, and media (that’s right mother fucker, their not getting off the hook... MEDIA! I don’t give a shit if they get blamed for everything, it’s because everything is their fuckin’ fault.) have not tried to embed any notion of true compassion in these kids. They haven’t even really tried to tell them just to leave these kids alone. Most of these killings would be avoided even if most of the world wasn’t even NICE to these kids, but if they were just left to be invisible. That’s what they want. Just to get through the day without being made a spectacle of. Sure a hand job from a pretty girl every once in a while would be nice, but that can wait for fifteen years or so when most of these sluts have been beat and left by their husbands and that weird kid who played Dungeons and Dragons, but now has decent salary and would never think of hitting a pretty lady, is starting to look pretty fuckin’ good.
I’m not stupid. I know that not all these kids hide in the corner. I know some of them are loud, brazen, and dress "weird". That’s just another defense. They’re not hiding, they’re trying to stand out. They want you to deal with the fact that they’re not like you. Lord knows they’ve dealt with it all their life. So maybe now they are showing it to you. Maybe now they want to share it with you. "Oh but they all dress alike." No shit, moron. It’s a way to feel conected to each other and have an outward demonstration of their alienation from the rest of society. Again not their fault.
So the fact that some kid that felt alienated blew away a bunch of his peers doesn’t surprise me. It will happen again and it will keep happening until maybe we stop viewing each other in the same way a pack of wild dogs do and start seeing each other as people who can be damaged and made to hate themselves. Or just leave them the fuck alone and don’t mock the people who are willing to cross the lines and show some interest in the those "freaks" and "dorks."
And then maybe when that happens, we can avoid someone committing these terrible acts that just go to ruin more lives and maybe even the occasional tragic incidents where the quarter-back hangs himself because he hates himself for something about himself that doesn’t quite fit the mold that he’s trying hard to fit.
We’ve brought this on ourselves and we’ll bring the next one on ourselves too.

I hate my coworkers

A Couple of Things I Hate
I feel like I’ve been a bit tame over the past couple of entries. So I just want to talk about something I hate Namely, my coworkers.
I hate my coworkers. To be completely honest, I don’t think that there is anyone that I work with that I would like to see tomorrow or any day thereafter. I’m not saying that I necessarily which death upon them, though for some of them I couldn’t help but to giggle a little bit if the grim reaper should find them while they are doing whatever it is that people do with their time. Real quick, I’m just going to go through and state why I hate them all. At the end of the office there is the champion of rightness. She’s like 50, single, thinks she can talk to animals and has a shrill voice whenever she is on a soapbox which is often. "I just feel like it’s always more-more-more from this company and there is no room for expression." If you want expression, go buy some fuckin’ water colors. Let me also point out that this bitch is the only person who’s been here longer than me (at least 8 years) and she has been screeching about expression the whole time and refuses to operate the same as everybody else. I know, I know, I’m a sell out for pushing for uniformity, but for fuck’s sake; Let’s do it the easy way and not look at insurance claims as a means to express ourselves.
The next lady comes closest to me always loving her always because she is just a mom, straight up. She mothers the hell out of me and I like it. But she is not good at her job and when anyone tries to show her how not to do a total dog shit job she cries and gets all pounding-on-her-chest-standup-in-the-face-of-adversity-freedom- fighter about it. Which is cool in a way. I like people who get all noble about things, but she sucks at her job because she is lazy and spends too much time preparing these huge lunch feast that she shares with most people. But can’t you please just do your job so management doesn’t have to sit around and figure out an excuse not to fire you every year.
The injured girl: This is one of these bitches who is defined by her health problems. She’s lucky she has them, because otherwise she would just be defined by her enor-fuckin-mous ass. The thing so big that it makes me feel like I’m looking at someone smuggling a set of Indonesian twins into the country in her weird purple slacks. She always has migraines. Like three times a week. They start like with her talking in this weird raspy voice and saying she is going to be late. I don’t get why a headache makes that voice come out, but without fail it does. Then she calls in at noon and says she isn’t going to make it at all. Then she comes in the next and she’ll just do something fuckin’ weird to prove that she is hurt. She’ll do this weird limp thing, that isn’t really a limp because the limp comes after the part where the leg should be supporting her huge ass, and says "Oh, it’s my leg drop. It happens after a migraine sometimes." Or sometimes she try to make her face hang all slack and then say that her face went numb. My favorite day ever was when she made sure to come into my office first thing in the morning and was doing the raspy voice. By this time I had quit asking if she felt alright, because I realized she was a faker. Then she came back in a little later and started tilting her head back to look at me (tunnel vision) and still using the raspy voice. By noon she was wearing sunglasses at her desk, limping, talking weird, and doing the head tilt thing. Then she went home at noon. Stupid bitch.
I’m not going to discuss my boss. He get’s his own entry.
The receptionist. Is there any job that creates more martyr than the position of receptionist. This crazy bitch will list off all the tens of million of things she does for the office and how important her job is and blah, blah, blah, but she won’t put a fuckin’ line on hold to answer another one and then comes into my office and says how she isn’t getting enough help on the phones. "You’re the fuckin receptionist! Why the fuck should anyone help you on the phone!!!" And she always goes on and on about her degrees and blah-fuckin’-blah, "I’m so under utilized," and "I’m not fulfilled by my job." Then please quit and go get fulfilled and utilized else where so I can hire a hot receptionist or at least one with a sexy voice so I have something to think about when I take my mid-day jerk off break.
The up and coming alpha male. This fuck got a job because his family is pals with my boss. He’s one of these ass holes who thinks he’s a fuckin’ genius because he knows the rules of grammar and has a good memory. I’ve never heard an original thought come out of him ever. Even his jokes are just quotes from movies. He thinks he’s one of these "I can get in your head and prey upon your weaknesses" kind of guys. But he’s not. He’s mostly just an example of what a life time of privilege and wealth can do to someone. He pouts worse than a girl, he get’s really fuckin’ nuts if you’re rude to him and sends you an email about how his "ego cannot handle that." and tries to identify your buttons so that he can push them. It is worlds of fun to let him in on your fake buttons and watch him try to mess with you. I hate him, but he’s my best friend at work. Not because there’s nobody else, which is a large part of it, but because he makes it so awkward if don’t be his friend that it’s impossible to alienate yourself from him without it becoming an thing. He also thinks he’s a lady’s man and lies about getting laid all the time, but he’s only done one real girl in the three years I’ve known him for and it’s a co-worker who he’s in love with but he tries to be all like "I don’t care about her and you’re an idiot if you think I’m doing anything other than fuckin her." Bull shit. He wants to be the father of her little bastard child so bad, but she won’t dump her boyfriend.
The crazy ass retarded, pathological liar, lady. This bitch is nuts. Fuckin’ nuts. Crazy McFuckin’-Looney Tunes. Her cubicle looks like an old ladies house with plants and books and drawings from her kids and a candy jar and a little table and photos covering everything and all kinds of shit. All the shit from her kids, I know she made for herself. Because it’s all shit about how she is the greatest mom ever and she let’s them feel like they can express themselves freely and always feel safe and nurtured, you know all of the "parent of the year" key phrases. It’s funny too because it all started showing up about the time someone else hung up a birthday card from her kid that said something like "you’re the best mom ever." This bitch went over and made a big deal about how cool that was. Then over the next week the following showed up "from her kids": A framed, horribly written poem about how much her daughter loves her, but hates the rest of the world, three mothers day cards (though none of them actual mother’s day cards, just the blank any time cards) complete with "you’re the best mom in the universe" and shit like that, little notes from her kids (written on our own post it notes and our pens) that say things like "Hey Mom, just wanted to tell you to have good day." She totally wants you to ask about them, so she can say how much her kids love her. I’ve met her kids. They hate her. And then she has just random shit to show what a unique individual she is (unique in a real Dharma and Greg kind of way). Things like a book of life lessons from Dr. Seuss's and a picture of Dr. Dre. Oh shit, I forgot to mention this. So when she started this bitch was as suburbs as anyone could be and then she mentions where she grew up and I made a joke about how she grew up in the hood and said something dorky about her being a "gangsta" or something. This bitch is the mother of two children and over forty years old and has been divorced twice, and need I say it... White as my inner thighs. All of sudden she turns into this ghetto princess and how starts calling everyone "homey" and "nagga" and "G" and all this shit. She starts listening to rap at her cubicle and when not rap, old R and B. And she says stuff like "represent" and shit. It just erupted overnight after I made a joke and now she talks about growing up in the hood all the time. I hate her.
Then there is the crier. There’s this broad who says her husband is a big asshole and always mean to her and does drugs and blah, blah, blah. She is crying at her desk at least three times a week and likes to listen to advice from all this other miserable sluts around here about she should get divorce. But she never will. She is the underdog overcoming adversity. That’s her whole identity and without it, she’d be nothing.
I’ll tell you all about the rest of the morons I work with later. Fuck I hate them.

The First Summer that Mattered and the Devil's Power

As it begins to stay light until a reasonable time can any self respecting person with thinning hair keep themselves from harkening back on summers past? Is that a dorky way to begin this? I kind of thought so... Let’s try again.
Flowers, lawn mowers, and slutty, underage, girls with their tits hanging out making me have to jerk off while I drive, all can mean only one thing. It’s going to be summer soon. A guy can’t help but to think back about prior summers.
When you’re a little kid in your first couple years of elementary schools summer seems like it last for-fuckin’-ever. The endless feeling of them is something I’ve never felt since. I lived in a pretty cool neighborhood a kid when I was a kid. My house, was piece of shit. It’s life started as a shack in a blueberry field. Somewhere along the line someone started adding to the shack and eventually enough had been added to where you can stand back and look at it and proudly proclaim "I have turned the shack into a hovel." Mediocrity at it’s finest. By the time my family moved into it, the hovel was past its prime. I’ll probably talk about this house again. In fact, I know I will, it’s built into my coding of shame and self hatred (that’s halfway a joke).
Overall though, it was a great place to live as a kid. The house sat in the shadow of a large wooded hill side. It was covered in ivy, huge trees, bamboo and stinging nettles, it even had some flying squirrels in it. Behind our house was a natural free stone stream that you could walk up approximately half a mile or so. Beside us was a tall grassy field with a huge blackberry bramble which we had cut an opening in so that we could explore it’s natural tunnels. Before you reached the corner, there was what we called a swamp, which I suppose was really more of a bog and in part of it was a place where a bulldozer had sunk and when it was pulled out it left a huge odd shaped hole which made for a fantastic place to catch frogs. So basically, for a couple of white trash kids with a fondness for dirt and mud, it was kind of like our own little piece of heaven.
When we moved in there my dad was working for (or rather on strike from) a company named (I kid you not) "Erection Incorporated." Also I think this was when Dad was having his little battle with crack cocaine. My mother was about the age I am now when we moved in and all this was going on so I’m sure it was a quite a time for her. So these were odd times for my family, but frankly I was too young to notice right away. I didn’t start realizing that I should be embarrassed and ashamed of my circumstance for a couple of years yet.
We moved into that house right in the middle of July. I know because I think we moved in the week of my birthday. My older brother would be starting his second year of kindergarten that fall and I was going to start pre-school. So I didn’t know that that summer was the beginning of the end of childhood. I wish I had and I wish I knew what that meant. I should have taken it as a sign when the first thing that happened out that house was our dog got beat up by another dog who had gone to lounging on the back porch of that house while it was vacant.
So the first summer was spent at my older brother’s side as we explored our new world. Seriously, I don’t know if this type of wonder exist for kids who are brought up in sub developments. We made a ton of discoveries. We found a basement of a house that no longer stood, which we named "the well." I’m not sure why but I guess that’s what we thought it was. We found a junk pile in our neighbor’s horse field which we named "the dump." We followed the stream up as far as we could. We explored the swamp, the nearby blueberry fields that had been abandoned and we explored the hill side and the fields. We explored the construction sites of several apartment complexes and a nursing home that were being built. Everywhere we went there were piles of stuff for us to go through and in them we found things to take. Bottles, marbles, little foam puzzle pieces, tools, porn magazines, nails, boards, and tons of other things. The junk piles and forgotten "storage piles" in the huge and dilapidated storage shed were treasure troves to us. And everywhere where there was a shelf, nook, or cupboard we displayed our treasures.
We met some of the neighborhood kids. There were two brothers who’s names I don’t remember. There was this older guy Jimmy who had his left ear pierced like 3 times and wore pink and purple star earnings. He was later accused of trying to molest the two brothers previously mentioned, he was always a bit on the creepy side, so he probably did. There was this girl Trina who was older and lived across the street in this big old farm house and she had a horse and a rabbit. There were probably some others around too but I don’t remember them too much.
Mostly what I remember about that summer was plodding along beside my brother and we explored our world. As brother’s go, we got along okay. He was just a couple of years older than me, but seemed infinitely wiser than me. So we explored and occasionally, he would shove me down into a patch of stinging nettles or get me to climb into the bottom of the "well" and then leave me in there.
I didn’t really play with the neighborhood kids much. I was scared of them and my brother was more interested in them than me when they were around, so generally I would hang out with Mom when he was out playing.
I don have many specific memories of playing with the other neighborhood kids that summer. We were all sitting in a patch of grass between the road and this fenced field that set beside our house. It was August. I don’t remember the date, but I know the feeling of August and it felt like that. I swear to God this was the first sunset I ever remember. It was red and orange and fiery looking. I’m shocked that my mother even was letting me be outside at that late in the day. There were a bunch of kids and I’m sure I was the little kid of the group.
"Look at the sky." Someone, maybe me, said. "Why’s it like that." There was a bit of a pause and then Trina stood up and began screaming
"It’s the devil’s power." Everyone joined in with the shouting about the devil’s power.
"We’re all going to die!"
"The devil!"
"The devil’s power!"
It was mass hysteria. They were all standing and spinning around and running in circles screaming about the devil. When I think back on this, all I can see is silhouette of children dancing with their heads looking at the sky and screaming about the devil. It was crazy. I don’t know what overcame all of them. I can still feel the perfect coolness of the August evening and smell the dry smell of grass turning brown from the summer’s heat. I remember the feeling of the air hitting my face and the fading sounds of what was surely a bunch of children possessed by the devil as I ran home to my mother.
So that was my first summer. I go back to that time so often in my head. It makes me happy. I get the same feeling every now and again, when I’m out fishing with my brother or when I can smell dead grass and I see the sky ablaze during an August sunset. I can’t help but think about the devil’s power and joy of what I think of as my first summer. After that I started school and they the process of ruining me and robbing me of magic and wonder began.
But I still like summer because of all the boobs and nice weather.

Transcendence Via Big Trout

My older brother and I went fishing this weekend. My brother originally started fly fishing slightly before I did. By starting, I mean he bought a fly rod. I tend to recall that it was like most people’s first fly rod, or at least what they should be like; It was a K-Mart special with a cheap real and a cheap line to go along with it. I bought mine shortly after that and the plan was that we’d learn to fly fish together. I was pretty excited. We had grown up fishing, but I don’t think Dad ever touched a fly rod though he wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know anything about it. He was intrigued though. That’s a whole other story. After a couple of outings that didn’t result in any fish, my brother lost interest and fly fishing took a back seat. But over the years he has gone out with me a couple times and one time I hired a guide for half a day and we went out and he was taught some good stuff and caught a couple of fish. I, however, have been fairly saturated in fly fishing for five years.
I mentioned that I had lost my zest for a lot of things lately and I was thinking that it might have something to do with the fact that I smoke too much dope. So when my brother called me and asked me if I was going out fishing this weekend and if he could come along, I realized that I better get off my ass and go do it. It’s not often that my brother wants to get up early and go out fishing so when he does, I think it means he needs some time to clear his head and I know that I need the same, though I wasn’t sure of what.
So I picked up my brother around seven in the morning and we headed over the mountain. We were listened to a Brian Posehn CD on the way over and laughed out asses off. We both confessed that neither of us brought any dope, which even furthered my suspicion that something was bothering us both. As we drove over I thought about what it was that was getting to me. As I wrote last week, I haven’t been excited about a lot of things lately and I guess I just wanted that back. The night before we went fishing, I did read some John Gierach which always gets me stoked to fish, though recently I hadn’t been doing much reading other than comic books. But it didn’t fail. I was totally pumped to fish, but not enough to pack the truck the night before. So as we drove, I was getting itchy for some fishy and it felt good, but I couldn’t help but wonder where that had been lately. I was glad that I didn’t bring any dope and happy that my brother didn’t seem to be bothered by that fact.
We stopped by a fly shop where I know the owner and shot the shit for a bit and bought a handful of flies and my bro got some shades. We talked about where we should fish. Then I picked up on something, I’m not sure if it was something or not, but I had heard next to nothing about this one stretch of river. I inquired about it and I thought I saw a "Oh shit! Why’d he ask that?" look on the guys face. He said something like "I’m not sure what’s going on up there, and I don’t know what the hatches are like but there’s some nice water at..." Sometimes it’s all about people don’t say. So we started there. Following another hunch that we should bush whack a little bit past the easy access. And we did. And we crossed the river in a spot where the only thing that kept us standing was the fact that we are large fellows. My bro was fishing up in front of me and following the tips I had given him and he had learned from previous trips. Overall, his fishing looked pretty good, not well practiced and he kept dropping his back cast, but he looked alright. I fished behind him, noting the likely spots that he failed to fish. We were fishing two nymphs underneath indicators with some small split shot added, so this wasn’t graceful fly fishing, but we wanted fish. I was fishing this pool that looked just ideal. We hadn’t caught any fish yet and I knew that I was fishing over trout so I slowed my drift way down and did what I could to keep it slow. I don’t even remember my indicator going down I just remember the realization of the fish was on the line and then feeling the fish realize the same thing and it took off down stream. Before long I realized that I had a nice fish on. Then I saw it and I realized that I had a big fish on. Then I saw it a little more and realized that I had a big nasty pig on. And I was excited. I was hooting as I followed it down stream about thirty of forty feet and did what I could to keep it out of the brush. I had the fish and I was in control and as long as I didn’t screw up, I’d get to meet a real nice trout. After a long fight, I landed this lovely fish in my rubber fishing net. My net is big and the fish was too big for it. I had my brother snap a couple of pictures and then I watched her swim off, happy to see that she swam off easily. I knew she was a female because her lady business was sticking out. It sucks that she was just post spawn or in the middle of spawning. I hope I didn’t ruin that. But oh my gosh, what a fish. It took me a full ten minutes to decompress. I wished I hadn’t quit smoking cigarettes because that would have been a good moment for one and I also wished I had brought some whiskey, but I didn’t. Either way though I just stood there saying "Woooooooooo!" and "What a pig!" over and over again. I was happy. I was excited, I had just caught my biggest trout of my life. I quit measuring my fish a while back, but I would say that it was pushing twenty-four inches. For about three or four minutes, I existed purely in those moments and I was thinking about nothing other than the interaction between me and this fish. And it felt so good. And I was excited. Not to sound too much like a wanker here, but for those couple of minutes I was operating on another plain of existence, I was ascended. I was yelling without thinking about it and I didn’t care if anyone heard me. It was a moment of joy devoid of any self consciousness or thought of anything else. I love that fish. From the moment I hooked it to right now.
So I guess what it all comes down to is that I need to get out there and do more and I’ll get excited and have fun. So the good news is, I can still be a lazy ass stoner so long as I get out there and fish.
What a fish.

A Stoner's life

Do I really need an introductory line here?
I’ve said it before. I smoke dope. Unless I’m on vacation somewhere that I had to fly to, I smoke about three times a day on the work days and maybe a couple more no the weekends. I’m not even really sure how it got to this point. I was a typical kid in junior high and highschool and I smoked a little bit here and there. I can’t really remember the first time that I smoked, because I lied about it for so long. I’m not sure why I did. Most of my friends weren’t doing it when I started lying about it, but then I had a tendency to lie a lot back then.
I do remember the first time I bought it. Me and my buddy Alan were down at a skate session at the highschool. I was a God-awful skater, but I suppose it was more social than anything. This was the mid 90's so skate sessions weren’t quite viewed as the evil activities that they became viewed as a few years later (What?!?! No uniforms! No Coaches! No Supervision! How can that be a sport!?!?!) But it was back before the whole football team had charged hair and knew how to kick flip, so it was cool. We were kind of left alone and veiwed as mostly harmless. There was this kid who was a grade or two older than us and he was openly selling nickel bags and providing a pipe to smoke them out of. So Alan and I bought one and we went and ducked into this nook on the back side of a nearby church and we smoked. This was the most dangerous thing I had ever done up until then. Doing drugs, outside, in public, at a church. My mother would seriously cry if she had found out. It was so exciting. I don’t really remember being high. I was like thirteen or fourteen and when I think back to those days, I kind of always remember everything with this fuzziness and happiness that reminds me of being stoned now, so I don’t really have much to say about side of it. But it was fun; I was being bad; I was doing drugs, but not hard drugs. It was pretty damned exciting. The coolest thing about that day was that later, Alan ollied over my entire body for the first time. That became something that we would do pretty regular. Alan was probably one of the best skaters in the area and it was impressive for people to watch. I had no fear of him landing on me. I had seen him ollie like six skate boards stacked on top of eachother. Very cool. It was also pretty exciting to watch from my perspective. Very nice.
Slightly before that, I had another exciting day involving dope, but I didn't smoke any. It actually started a few weeks before hand. I was over at my buddies house and we were out back having a cigarette and he was being kind of weird and quiet. An oddity for him.
"Can I show you something?" His voice was kind of shaky and he was clearly nervous. I thought he was going to show me something really weird like his second dick or something.
"Sure." What else was I going to say. I’d known the guy since the first grade. If he had two dicks, I should know.
We walked into the big garage that was back behind house. It was a used as a shop and storage shed, no one ever parked in it. I’d been in there with Chuck and his dad hundreds of time. This further led to my suspicion that I was going to see something I didn’t want to see. We walked in and walked to the corner where there was this big ass plywood box that went from the floor to the ceiling. I’d never even taken note of it before. You know what was next. They were growing weed and my buddy was freaking out because his parents were doing something that seemed really bad and illegal. He said that he wondered if he should turn them in and was worried that he was going to get taken away from his parents. I assured him that it wasn’t a big deal and his parents were still good people.
"My dad was addicted to crack for two years." I matched his confession with my own that had been eating at me. We made a secret promise not to tell anyone. I asked if he had smoked any and he said that he hadn’t, but we agreed that we should.
Later in the week we let this new guy that Chuck started hanging out with was let in on both our secrets. I’m not sure why. It was clear that he was a temporary best friend and didn’t have the same sense of sanctity that we had, though he could be trusted not to tell the police or anything. Why I told him about the my dad’s deal I don’t know. It seemed like my and Chuck’s secrets were kind of a package deal now. Chuck was buddying up with this new guy and then a few days later I find out that they had smoked some of the weed together. I was a little crushed that he hadn’t waited for me.
The Friday of that same week, we all three stayed the night at Chuck's house and we were going to smoke some of the weed. I should explain that this was just some leaves off the plant that they had dried in the oven and not any bud and it was just hippie dirt weed so I’m sure it wasn’t that good. So we played some Sega Genesis and hung out like normal and the plan was to wait for his folks to go to bed and then sneak out in the back yard and toke up. We had a pop can pipe all made and everything. Chuck’s dad was a terrible night owl and wasn’t showing any signs of going to bed by the time we started to get tired so we went to bed, but we set an alarm for 3:00 AM and put it under my pillow. I woke up, confirmed that Chuck’s dad was passed out naked on the front couch and then I started shaking Chuck and John. They wouldn’t wake up. Lame. I tried hard, but then I heard chuck’s dad stir and got freaked out thinking that he would know we were up to something. So I didn’t get to smoke that day.
The next day the three of us went down town. We had the weed and the pop can pipe, but we weren’t really sure when or where we would smoke it. I was kind of getting third wheeled by chuck and John and it was bugging me, but John was this charismatic asshole that you took abuse from because at least you felt cool for even hanging out with him. Besides he had like ever Pearl Jam and Nirvana shirt produced which made hime cool. This is when the day turns into Dazed and Confused or some similar coming of age movie that involves long hair, dope and muscle cars.
We were walking down to the local Indian Tribe’s smoke shop because they would sell cigarettes to kids sometimes when this thrashed Trans-Am roles up blaring something typical and this long hair guy leans out the passenger side.
"Hey John." He says with as typical of a stoner voice as humanly possible. "What’s up, Dude?" And I’m not fucking joking. John says
"Hey Roach. What’s happening?" True shit. This guy’s fuckin’ name is roach. Even at that age I was wondering how typical can people get.
"Not much, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. You guys don’t know where to get some weed, do you?" We all looked at each other and then Chuck spoke up.
"I got some." He was nervous and proud all at the same time.
"All right. Get in." We piled into the back , which wasn’t much of a back seat, but due to the lack of a seat back, we were all able to cram in. There was some other guy driving who was baked as hell. Another exciting first in my life; Being driven around by someone who’s on drugs. "Where are you guys going?"
"The Indians."
"Us too. Will they sell to you guys."
"Sometimes."
"I’ll buy them for you." Then we discussed the weed. We showed it to him. He asked how much we would cell it for and I piped up and said fifty dollars. He laughed and said more like five dollars. We just had a few grams of shake. He bought us smokes and then we went to a nearby park and they busted out this cool little portable bong and filled it with Chuck’s weed and began passing it around. I wasn’t standing in the circle and declined the weed. There were people around and I didn’t want to get in trouble (story of my life). So they all smoked. I don’t remember the rest of the day really. It was insignificant.
There a few other stories about various {firsts} involving dope, first time being so stoned I didn’t know where I was, first time I bought an ounce, first bong, etc.
But I didn’t start this just to reminisce about being young and doing dope. I want to discuss what it’s really like being an adult stoner or at least what it’s like for me.
Me and my lady started smoking fairly regular about two years ago. We were just talking about stories like those above and we were like "Hey, let’s get some weed." I found someone at work who could get me a forty sack and I got it. It was skimpy as hell and not the best weed in the world, but we smoked it and got high as hell and it was very fun. I used to roll my own cigarettes, so I knew how to roll decent joints and we smoked joints. At first it was a weekend thing, then it became more frequent, a couple of times a week. Then we took a break for like a year and became total fucking drunks. But drinking got old. So, we started smoking again. I bought this nice little bong and our best friends started smoking too. Then I bought an once and before long it turned into an every day thing.
My life now, is weird and fragmented. It’s separated by work and the times that I’m not high, and the times when I am. The times when I’m not are usually irritating and I fully blame the world for pumping out too many people with nothing to do other than get in my way of my quest to be left the fuck alone. I don’t handle much of anything well. I want my entire life my way. So when some fuck-tard is tailgating me because I’m rolling five miles per hour under the speed limit because it’s a nice day and I’m not in a hurry, it gets me so shook up and angry that I want to stomp and scream and beat them in the face with a bat, but I've said that I am afraid of most everything, so I just mumble to myself and get hearburn. I wish I were exaggerating but this is the truth. I hate going to restaurants because it’s always ruined by some screaming brat or a server who is irritating or dumb. I think the world has become so made to order in everything that people are always expecting too much or trying to provide me with too much, both of which drive me nuts. All I want in everything is for people to be polite and not offer me a bunch of options when I know what I want. Then I want them to do their job, get on with their fucking life and let me do the same. Alas, I live in a world where nobody gets that and it sucks. Beyond that I hate the fact that every time I turn around some piece of shit is trying to get me to explain myself or define myself or my life for them. I don’t want to. I value not doing so so much that I feel like I have to hide from the world all the time if I want to be happy. So I walk around frazzled a lot. I know it’s my fault. I know that I’m expecting too much, by expecting that we all just live our lives and try not to impede on other’s and not expect that everyone be willing to explain to their motivation for wanting to read this months issue of Justice League America. I don’t! So leave me the fuck alone already and don’t fucking cut me off when I’m on my way to Taco Bell. It’s a shame, but little things like being cut off or when someone at the store insist that I go to the self check lane really ruins my day. I know it’s stupid, I should fix that about myself and I do. I go home and roast a bowl and then I do a Mad Lib and eat dinner that taste better than anything else in the world and then I sit down and have Snapple and play a little Halo and pet my cat. It’s my copying mechanism. Makes me happy.
Lately though, I’ve found that I’m losing interest in a lot of things that I love. Fly fishing for one. I was so obsessed with it for five years and then lately I’ve been having trouble wanting to go do it. Tying flies, same deal. I have a lot of other things that I could blame on it, but they all come down to this kind of lack of interest in doing anything that isn’t the warm, smokey, fuzziness that is being baked. So I don’t know, I’m going fishing tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll have fun, but I’ve gotta get up in the morning and do it.
I guess that’s the problem. Being stoned makes me so calm and happy that I tend to avoid everything else, but... I don’t know. I guess I need to just get off my ass and do stuff, because this is all a kind of recent phenomenon and I’m probably just relishing in the relief of my life hitting a stride in a lot of areas. I don’t know.
Also, I’m fat. I eat too much, especially when I’m high. I want to become one of those active stoners. I think I’m going to. Pray for me.
I guess that’s it.

Obcessed With Hipsters Chick Should Go Choke On A White Leather Belt

First read this http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/04/12/hipsters/. Done? Good. Now let me begin to tell this bitch why she is stupid.
Here's what it comes down to. You suck. You have always sucked. You will always suck. Not because that you didn't wear chucks, but because you see the world only through very stupid pigeon holes. I've known so many chicks like you growing up that had no truly organic sense of where they existed or who they are but only wanting to cram yourself into some group with a label on it. If you can’t enjoy yourself as you are, nobody will.
Why is she depressed that her "indie rocker boyfriend" dumped her stupid ass? Because, she like so many other stupid ass bitches will always just be washed put photo copies of their boyfriend’s persona. Her sense of identity comes only from her association with her boyfriend. She sees herself as an accessory. Let me promise you something chicky-poo, don't morn the loss of your "friends" from your break up. They didn't like you. They probably were irritated by you because you are obsessed with being hip. You never will be and worse, you can't even grow up enough to embrace that. Give up! It feels so good. You crave fashion peacockery and want to be around it because you suck. Your only hope in being satisfied with your life is to try to look some part and be able to talk the talk enough to get by and criticize "posers." I hate you so fucking much it's unbelievable.
You are what is ruining the world and watering down everything you become a part of because you over think it, talk about it too much, and try too fucking hard. You and those like you add a handicap to every other woman in the world who contributes. You are ruining everything. I'm not even joking. You brainless retard whore. Let me give you some advice. Chicks like you are only really happy after they have kids because now you have something to identify yourself as. You'll be a mom. Go find a dick donor. Or better yet, kill yourself. Don't gently slit your wrist so you can tell everyone about the time that you tried to kill yourself because you were "obsessed with being a hipster." Swallow a fucking gun barrel and pull the trigger.
Man, I hate you so much.

Thought on Kurt Vonnegut in Light of his Passing

Well, Kurt Vonnegut died today, or yesterday, I’m not positive which. It doesn’t matter. Mr. Vonnegut the person no longer exists, but he will exists for decades beyond how long any of us last because Mr. Vonnegut contributed. I guess I shouldn’t’ say none of you haven’t or won’t contribute, just working within the odds. Besides to the best of my knowledge, the only person who reads this so far is my lady.
I read this morning that Mr. Vonnegut’s home town named some year The Year of Vonnegut. That’s pretty cool. Who wouldn’t be happy. If there is a small town out there who would like to create The Year of Anarchy and Crosswalks (or Crosswalks and Anarchy if I get around to changing the name) I’ll come hang out in your town and mope and over think my life and all the good stuff that. You can raise a statue in my honor. But enough about me...
I had my own Year of Vonnegut in my senior year of highschool; 1998 - 1999. Back then, years began in September. It started at the library in mid November. I was up there with my friend, Alan, who I had known since Junior Highscool, but since that September we had crossed the bridge to best friends and we spent essentially every waking moment together. I checked out two paperback novels by Kurt Vonnegut on Alan’s account. Mine had fines. I’ll admit, that I had never read a lick of what Mr. Vonnegut wrote before then, but I knew the name held reverence among those in the know and as an aspiring writer, I wanted to be sure that understood what it meant when someone said "He’s kind of like Vonnegut, but..." Basically, I wanted to read stuff that people who read smart stuff read. Stupid, eh? I was 18. So I checked out worn out copies of Slaughter House Five and Cat’s Cradle. I did a lot of reading in those days. It was the one activity you could get away with in most classes that wasn’t the assigned work for the class and teacher’s were always impressed when they asked you what class you were reading for and you admitted that you were just reading. So I tore through Slaughter House Five and loved it. First I was shocked. I guess I expected Vonnegut to be more... I’m not sure... more of a classical novelist (Hell Yeah! That’s what I was looking for, I guess I do still have some brain cells rattling around in here yet). I was shocked at the science fiction elements in his writing and yet he still maintained a legitimacy that I don’t think most sci-fi writers are able to hold on to, even when they do have significant things to say. I’m going to go ahead and say that I respect the hell out of all writers who sit their asses down in chairs and pump out books, and I go through phases where I totally dig sci-fi, I just think that the relevance of the works can be overshadowed by the fact that the dark elf just got a magical scimitar or that the video game is really a remote control for a space ship in a distant solar system. Remember, I’m a nerd, I’ll show you my dice bag any day. Not alienating my non-existent readers aside; I was totally impressed with how his books were filled with fun and jokes even and not losing any of their clout. I finished reading Cat’s Cradle soon after.
Before the books were due back at the library, Alan and I were hit head on the highway and Alan died a couple days later. I managed to stumble out of the car unscathed, but in shock and after a while I was in my boxers in the rain with people’s who’s faces I couldn’t quite make out and a helicopter was landing. After I got my bearings back, the whole thing felt like an alien abduction and reminded me of Slaughter House Five. It sucked and I was a head case for a year or so and I tried hard to live in the happier moments of my time line instead of right then, as described in Slaughter House Five. It only worked to keep me from wanting to blow my brains out most of the time, booze, dope, and really good friends filled in the rest of the time. During that time I read, a lot. And I mostly read Mr. Vonnegut. Still to this day, The Sirens of Titan is one of my favorite books of all time due in whole to the fact that it has one of the most perfect endings ever written. I’m not being romantic because of Mr. Vonnegut’s passing. It is perfect and I’ve been saying it for years. I remember finishing that book around 10:00 PM on a warm evening and going out side and smoking a cigarette and thinking about the ending. I’m not going to give it away here, because you should go read it. Not just the end, but the whole book. I think it may have been my situation that made me feel like it was so perfect. The re-union of two friends in a magical way that people with dead friends dream of. I remember that night so well, the moon was full or near full and the back deck of my parents home was covered by the moons silvery light and the chipped blue paint of the deck looked lovely. I remember thinking that the ending was so good I could have died right there and been okay with and kind of hoped for it. That’s how good of an ending it was.
I burned through a whole load of Mr. Vonnegut’s book over that year. They kept my mind occupied during the hours of the night where I was prone to become delusional about my situation and the death of Alan. They helped me see that a great novel doesn’t have to be War and Peace to be relevant.
It was also during that year that Mr. Vonnegut was involved in a couple of other life lessons for me. It was in 1999 that this "song" (I guess it was a song) with a speech that everyone was saying was Kurt Vonnegut talking and his speech set over some techno music was a hit on alternative rock stations. It was great shit. Really good life advice and it was really cool timing with my class being about ready to graduate highschool. It meant something to me and this other kid in one of my classes. This kid and I knew each other and talked, but were apt to mock one another, the way you do in highschool. But when that song was out, we talked about it and I turned him on to some more Vonnegut books. You probably know the story, the speech was not written or spoken by Mr. Vonnegut and frankly I forget who it was written by, but it the whole thing taught me something big. You don’t have to be a big famous author to say some really relevant shit. The kid from school was disappointed. I guess I should mention that the kid was in a class that Alan and I had together and it was a small advanced art class. I don’t why that seems important to me, but it does.
The final lesson was I think late that spring, or maybe some other time in proximity of my senior year in highschool. I was reading Jail Bird and I was finishing it up on a flight to go see my Grandmother. I had been reading it the whole flight and there was this old guy sitting next to me that was just kind of looking out the window the whole time. It was a night flight and mostly over mountains and stuff so he was just looking at blackness, but I guess that might be life when you are that age. He occasionally glanced at my book. Just as we began making our final descent (that’s right bitch, I know the lingo) I finished the final word of the book and the guy happened to be glancing at my book.
"How’s that for good timing." I said as closed my book.
"I know what you mean." He said looking out the window as we descended. "It’s beautiful, isn’t it?" He was looking at the lights of the town we were landing in. It was his home.
What I learned is that moments of great timing and little victories over the universe that apply to you alone, nobody else gives a damn about them, so don’t make yourself feel stupid or make the moment less significant by sharing it with anyone. It’s your’s, own it.
So I guess in closing, I’m quite happy that I discovered Mr. Vonnegut when I did and the passing of great people is always sad. Mr. Vonnegut has been a part of some life lessons for me, so I’ll always remember him. To be totally cliche` and to say something that is going to get said about a thousand times in the next few weeks; God bless you Mr. Vonnegut.
I’m grateful for your contribution.

Wood Stove Culture

I think it was about three years ago that I bought my house. When I bought it a big selling point for me was the fact that there was a fireplace with a blower on it. I figured that I could avoid paying much of a heating bill because I could just burn wood. I thought the heating system in the house was shit other than fireplace. Cadet heaters one in each room. I suppose they are a step up from baseboard, but just a baby step. Inefficient and expensive, right? So I never turned them on, ever. I got some wood and I burned wood and I would keep my hose at like 85 degrees and sweat my ass off so that I wouldn’t be able to see my breath when I woke up in the mornings. But it was fuckin’ cold in the mornings. My cat hated me and told me I was an asshole all the time, but I would just tell him he was a winey bitch. So for three years, I would stop on the side of the road and pick pieces of wood and get cords delivered and save my wood from cutting down bushes and stuff around the yard. Sometimes someone would tell me that they had some wood that I could come haul off and I’d jump at the chance. Most of the time it was total dog shit, rotten wood and they would act like I just raped their child in front of them if I told them I didn’t want it. Sometimes I would take it and throw it my pile of stuff to be sent to the dump, just to avoid acting like an ingrate (I know, retarded, eh? But that’s the kind of guilt driven, non-confrontational guy I am. I also will eat the wrong thing at a restaurant most of the time if they bring it out to me. I am a wuss.), because everyone acts like they are the best people in the world for having you drive forty minutes to cut up a rotten log in their back yard and wind up with 3 crappy pieces of rotten wood.
A few times I would get my wood delivered and pay a couple hundred bucks for a cord. I got screwed over so many times by people delivering wood. One guy told me "I sell 100 cubic feet, not a cord." But besides being a pussy, I’m also lazy as hell so I was like "Okay, as long as I don’t have to dial the phone again." A word about most wood cutters in the greater Pacific Northwest area: They ooze meth from their pores. These are the assholes that make you try to slyly lock your door when they are at the cross walk. So this jack off shows up at my house with a Chevy Luv pick up (What else would he be driving?) with wood piled high so that it was taller than the cab and I’m thinking "Wow! That truck is really full. Good deal for me." Before I even walked outside the guy’s tweeker helper buddy is already throwing the wood right in front of my garage instead of having me open the gate so they could back up to the wood shed and throw the shit in there, but again, I’m a total pussy so I didn’t say anything. In like thirty second the Luv is empty and ready to hit the road and seek out under-aged girls with bad self esteems (a.k.a. future strippers) and the guy is holding out his greasy hand to be paid. Naturally I pay him. Then I start lugging the wood around the house to the wood shed and stacking it. The entire time I am mumbling to myself about what a little girl I am for not even saying something like "Uh hey, dude. If it’s okay can you not be a total retard and fag and back up to the gate so that I can not spend my evening hauling this junk wood (did I mention the wood was total dog shit) to the wood shed?" So I stack and it looks like enough wood for a healthy camp fire and I just paid like two hundred bucks for it. So just to be sure that I got ripped off, I measured it and did the math. 80 cubic feet! Did I call the guy? What do you think! I’m afraid of pissing off the pimple faced asshole who hands me my taco bell bag, like I’m going to cal this guy and tell him that he ripped me off. So I go inside and I probably get drunk or stoned or something and think about the fact that I hate life and I wished the world was more honest so it would be easier for me to act a little girl forever. Every other wood guy I’ve ever dealt with has been the same. All retarded, all probably on meth and all rip you off and bring you shitty wood.
Cutting wood sucks. It’s hard work and I’m not cut out for it. The parts of my body that aren’t cream filled are totally resin filled so I’m not that great with heavy labor for longer than about an hour. But I enjoy it in some masochistic way. I know the pain and shortness of breath are just my body paying me back for being a lazy stoner. I’ve gone out wood cutting a handful of times with my dad mostly, but with some of my friends too. Chainsaws rule. I don’t care if they are red-necky; they are fun. I own two now and that’s one of the huge benefits to burning wood. But the reality is that when you burn if you want it to actually save you money, you have to go out and cut wood a few times during the year and then have somewhere to store it for about a year so that it can get nice and dry.
I built a wood shed recently because I had to tear down my old one so I could get a bunch of trees cut out of my yard. No I didn’t get to keep the wood. Ironic, eh? So I built this nice big wood shed. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I built it, even though a lot of the time I stood there playing daddy’s little helper while he and my buddy built it, but sometimes I got to play construction worker. Roofing it was real fun, I fell off like three times. Let me tell you a little something about building anything. It’s fuckin’ expensive. The wood shed all told was like $500. It was about the time that I finished building that thing that I started to realize something about my wood burning. It doesn’t save me any money. In the past year, I’ve spent like a thousand bucks on saws, axes, a wood shed, getting my chimney cleaned, and fire wood. Not to mention, I should have bought a ninja outfit for all the stealthy firewood stealing that I’ve had to do from my parents. Did I mention that they live less than a mile from me. Oh yeah, I moved out when I was twenty-four, but not far enough to where I can’t have them come over to get the boogerman out of my closet if necessary. So I started realizing that wood burning wasn’t saving me money.
But I was reading a lot of this guy John Gierach (one of the best writers on the planet earth, mostly if you fly fish, but even if you just like good outdoor writing by aged hippies who have something to say and can say it damned beautifully) over the past year or better and he had me thinking that sometimes it is important to be in touch with things like your heat, and maybe that everything shouldn’t be easy because all this ease is ruining people. I did believe that and I still do. So I kept on with the burning.
Now there’s another character in this story, a big one. My wood stove. It’s actually a wood burning insert, which means that it is wood stove that fits into a fireplace. It’s black and it is noisy. Not just noisy like a loud fan. Nope this bitch is possessed by demons, loud noisy demons with bad indigestion and a bad tempers. It screeches when the fan kicks on. But just to get the fan to kick on you have to pull the front cover off of it and stick your finger down into one of the fans and spin it. That’s only after you’ve started the fire and got it heated up just enough without getting it too hot (if it’s too hot it won’t turn on). So if you do all that just right it rewards you with hot air being spewed into your living room with the lovely sound of babies in a blender. After about twenty or thirty minutes of screaming it stops screaming and for like three minutes you have this lovely semi-silent blowing of hot hair. It’s heaven. You can talk to people without having to yell and the cats don’t walk around screaming because they are positive that I am hiding another cat who is horny as hell. Then the rattling/rumbling starts. I’m not sure how to describe this, but I’ll give it a shot. If you took an old metal garbage can and put it in the middle of an empty garage. Then you filled it half way up with gravel and put an epileptic toddler with a helmet in there and threw in a strobe light so he was sure to have seizures that would cause him to bang his helmet against the garbage can for hours that is pretty close to what the wood stove sounds like when it’s working it’s best. So yeah, it’s quiet and rad.
There’s a final element to all this. And that is my lady. She is a very cool chick who can split kindling so thin that you can wipe your butt with it and she would split kindling and wood in the freezing cold and then make a bad ass fire and suffer through being crazy cold for a couple hours until the house was warmish. Then if she kept moving constantly, she wouldn’t freeze to death. She gets off work about three or four hours before me, so if she came home, then she would have to do this, then I’d roll in and the house would be all nice and toasty. But she never really complained.
The fireplace, the wood, all that was part of our culture. We would have conversations about about the best way to make a fire and what tricks you could do to get the fan to kick on faster. We were artist. We knew how to pick out the perfect piece of wood to split kindling from and we knew when a fire was going to be a "good one" and when it was going to suck soon after we built a fire. We kept the house so hot that everyone who came over bitched, but we loved it because we made that heat. We would compliment each others fires and we would tell each other how to make one fire better. It seemed like a very defining factor. We were in touch with our heat source.
Then one day, it didn’t make sense to me any more. My lady was in a bad mood and was saying how it sucked to have to work for so long to get warm and I felt bad. This was my point to prove, not hers. So I turned on the heater. I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. The house just got warm. It was like when I started eating meat after being a vegetarian for like five years. I took the bite of soft taco supreme and nothing happened. No bloody cows fell from the sky. God didn’t come down and give me a disappointed look. The meat just tasted good. Likewise, the house just got warm without having to do a bunch of stupid shit first.
I miss the fires, but not the work and I keep telling myself that I am going to fix the fireplace so that I can start burning as well as using the heaters and have the best of both worlds, but I don’t know that that is ever going to happen. I can just flip a switch. The house is quieter, which I like. The power bill is more, which I don’t. But I miss the fire place culture sometimes, when I think about it. That’s not often because I just flip a switch now.

My First Memory (And Second And Third)

The other day while I was at work, I decided that I was going to write my whole life story. It didn’t’ happen and I didn’t even really start, but I the one good thing about it is that I did determine what my very first memory was. Truly, I’ve narrowed it down to three (which I will go over here), but for the sake of poetry, I’ve picked one as the first.
I was young. From the house were the memory took place and what I’ve been told of when we lived there, I was probably three of four years old. It was a very warm and sunny day. I was out in the front yard, alone as far as I could tell. It was unfenced, so my parents both a super duper parent award for that, but hey, times were different and I suppose Mom could have been behind me in the flower bed or something, but I tend to remember the excitement of freedom. I was on the edge of where I was allowed to go. Right near the side walk on a big ass rock. The way I remember it, I could have laid on this rock and it was a bit of a chore to climb up on. I tend to remember it as being sun bleached, but it may not have been. I do remember there was a little bird poop on the rock.
So there I was. Alone, on my big rock that had nothing on it, save a little bird shit and I was happy that I was alone. Then out walks the neighbor kid from across the street. He was about the same age as me. Even at that age, I remember not being entirely fond of the kid. We were friends because we lived across the street and our mothers were friends. But even as a three year old, I remember him being a cry baby and being whiney. He walks out to the sidewalk and starts talking to me from across the street.
"You should come over." He said.
"I can’t." I told him. "I can’t cross the street." Oh thank you sweet rules!
"That’s too bad." he said shaking his head. "Because I used to be God." At that point in his life, both his parents were super churchy. So having been God in the past was just as cool as know Karate (and having ninja pajamas) or something to most other kids.
I don’t know what it is about this memory that seems like such the right starting point for my memory.
Me alone and happy on a big , slightly shitty, empty rock and I’m disturbed by someone I didn’t like. Then when I have an excuse as to why I can’t come over, he tries to bully me into it by claiming to be something far greater than he is.
The memory kind of ends there, but you know, it’s been essentially the same thing ever since.
The good news is, that kid has managed to bump into my life over the past 25ish years and I think he’s either retarded or just an absolute idiot and his mother is now the angriest of the angry man-hating lesbian types. She hits on my mom every now and again. So there you have it, leave me the fuck alone or you’ll be retarded and your mom will become a butch dyke.
You can stop reading here. You probably should and this should probably be another post, but I’m lazy and I want this down before it is lost in the smoke.
The other two memories that were in the running for my first memory are as follows:
1) It was in the same proximity of time as the above memory. I’m on the back of my mother’s ten speed bicycle. It was light blue and had taped grips. It looked kind of like the ones that only Lance Armstrong and homeless guys ride now. I was crammed into one of those baby seats and it was uncomfortable. We were looking for our lost cat. His name was King Tut and we were riding around forever yelling "Tut, kitty, kitty, kitty. Tut!" It seemed like hours. We never found him. I’m sure he was dead.
2) Again, same time frame as the others. This is vague and feels way to much like a family circus cartoon, but there is this sense of hyper activity and joy associated with it. I walk into this down stairs room. I lay on the ground and put a small plastic Indian in a small plastic teepee. I stand up. I jump twice on my mother’s little exercise trampoline, I walk up the steps to the landing and then up stairs. I think I twirl or something as I’m walking. I walk into the living room and note that a cartoon version of The Cat in the Hat is on television. I walk through the room and go look out a window. That’s it.
There is some poetry in both of those, but not as much as the first.
Later.

Back Up Mayo

I suffered a startling realization the other day.I was getting ready to eat some burgers that me and a lady had just grilled up. It was a day of suburban paradise, lovely early springtime weather, a side effect of global warming no doubt, and I was standing with the fridge open looking for the mayo. My lady came up behind me and asked me what I was looking for."Mayo." I responded."It's right there in the door." She pointed to the small squeezable mayo that was up near the butter."No, that's the back up mayo." I wish I was joking. But that's the real-deal-holyfield truth. I have back up mayo. I am a guy who not only loves mayo enough to require a back up mayo, but who will not use when I know damned well that I have another jar in the fridge. I chuckled a bit because it’s fuckin’ hilarious for anyone to have a back up mayo, however, as the day wore on, it ate a me a little bit.
I’m twenty-seven. I guess that means that I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t think that my age alone precludes me from being a "kid," but my actions do. I work behind a desk in a middle management job that I hate. I have a mortgage and a car payment. I have two cats. I live with my lady. I very rarely "go out." I smoke a ton of weed so that I can forget to remember to save the world and the moments were I really dig my life are far out weighed by the moments were I dream of something different.
I used to be, at least in theory which is usually the case, a bit of a radical. Which mostly means that I dressed like a punk (before you bought it at Hot Topic) and talked a lot of shit about how stupid the world was and how stupid everyone in it was and I was just a victim of circumstance and that when my life was fully in my control, I wasn’t going to be another drone retard working a job he hates so that he could work so that I could maintain a comfortable life. Nope, not me, I was going to live in poverty and be a fuckin’ monk sitting on the floor and writing the next novel that was going to change the world, I wasn’t going to be concerned with the modern comforts of life because they were designed to keep the masses placated so as not to stand up to the government and other evil powers that are ruining everything for the sake of world domination.
There was another moment where my perception of my life came to a screeching halt. I was on break from work, and I’ve gone to taking this little drive down along a river with my co-worker during my two breaks a day, because I quit smoking cigarettes and we have nothing else to do other than to drive and mock those we work with and I had to hit the breaks because some teenagers crossed the street in front of me causing me to slow down a bit.
"Fuckin’ retards, there’s a crosswalk right there." I didn’t dare shout it out the window (after all, teenagers are dangerous) I just said it to the guy in the car with me.
"I thought you were anarchy." My friend always eager to point out when I contradict myself. I have always jokingly claimed to be anarchy. I am an anarchists in a very utopian-type way, but we know how that goes and my claim of being anarchy goes way back to me and bunch of my friends being dumb kids. If you don’t get this, I don’t suppose I won’t be able to explain it. It’s not deep or anything, just vague. Anyway, he said "I thought you were anarchy."
"I am." I said. "Just anarchy with crosswalks." I could go into a big thing about how this really makes sense, but I won’t because it doesn’t matter. It nut shells my life right now.
And back to the mayo...
So I have back up mayo, I am exactly what I never wanted to be and it bugs me. But not in the way I thought it would. It’s just a mild shame running though my veins, for not being the idealist that I really am, ideally.

I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea, I’m not an aging hipster who is trying to be the soccer dad deadlocks or whatever, I just didn’t realize that my parents were going to be so right when they said "you’ll grow out of it." and all the other cliches. Wasn’t I go to change the world? Wasn’t I going to be a bad ass never take shit from the man? Wasn’t I going to tell this country to take a dive and go live in the forest of Canada or something? Wasn’t I going to be anything other than a dude with back up Mayo?