Carter's Drops o' Sweet Acid

Good Day's Work

2011-09-06T08:33:00.000-04:00

When They came, it was with the inevitability of the tides. As the Sun darkened, and the blood red moon swelled in the starless night sky, They swarmed over the Earth. They came out of the corners, from underneath us, twisting angles and reality, driving mankind mad.

The tissue thin sanity of the human race was torn, bent, folded, spindled, and, beast-like, we mangled ourselves, human tearing into human with a frothing rage never before seen on our sorry little world, to the sound of Their mad, cacophonous laughter. Our blood ran into the hungry soil of what had been our planet, for Their amusement.

The ones who succumbed to the insanity, and those killed in the First Days of Their Return, they were the lucky ones. As They folded space/time into a hideous shape more to Their liking, the dwindling numbers of mankind found no solace in their holes and hideaways. As reality shifted and oozed into its new form, the last survivors found that their compatriots would suddenly shudder and swell, to be torn apart as one of Them was born, ready to savor the terror and the slaughter to follow.

In less time than we could possibly imagine, humanity vanished from existence. The last human, the first captured when They arrived, was forced to watch the last group of resistors degraded, tortured, broken, the shattered soul of each consumed in turn. Crucified, eyes unable to close, the last man was kept alive by Their will until, as a final terrible benediction, Their leader revealed Its true form to the tattered thing once a man. With one final, horrible sound, the soul of the last man was consumed and enjoyed, by Them.

As the last scream faded, the leader's chief lieutenant came forth to await instructions.

'Alright, enough fun,' the leader said, suppressing a burp, 'Tell the Boys to start scouring the planet, and have the Unfolders reset the physical laws back to the zero set. Don't let Them slack off, the Boss wants to plant the next batch of humans tomorrow! He says this time he's going to let them run up to producing atomic fusion, maybe we can harvest without all the hard work...'

You know what life is?

2010-11-13T21:37:00.001-05:00

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

These things matter...

2010-11-04T02:15:00.002-04:00

Second Son, Inc. Second Son Detective Agency. Paladin Problem Solutions.

I needed a name. Something to paint on the frosted glass door of my new office door.

Paladin Solutions. Paladin Solutions & Deli. Paladin Resolution & Bakery.

Old, rundown, mildewed, in a bad part of town, intermittently heated on the best of days, by clanking iron radiators that leaked steam and made the air like a sauna. A relic of a bygone era, somehow not yet pulled down, with broad round windows looking over the empty five way intersection below. It was a hole. I loved it.

Herr Doktor Roncevaux, Chiropractic, Evil Smote, Hats Blocked. Prof. Ollie's All-Scientific Anti-Evil Unguent, guaranteed made right on the premises.

I remember an old story about Dorothy Parker.

A few hours later, new paint gleamed in a small oasis of cleanliness amid the peeling wood and dusty glass of the office. 'Utica Drop-Forge Company', proclaimed the new letters upon the frosted glass. In smaller letters, under the company name, 'Please Knock'.

Now I am ready to start.

Where's my jetpack?

2010-11-01T17:41:00.004-04:00

What happened to your future? We're it. We, men from the future, have kidnapped you the day before you were going to make your ground-breaking new invention known to the world. We've taken the invention itself, and every scrap of paper and every shred of information about your process, and we're gonna keep it. All of it. And, this is the good part, we're going to remove not just all memory of your invention from your brain, but make it impossible for you to ever stumble down the mental path you'd need to follow to recreate it.

It makes us sound like Republic serial villains, doesn't it?

Of course, the Ape with the Brain of a Robot, our leader, knows the repercussions of your little machine would have led to an unacceptable level of upheaval and collapse, along with all the death and suffering such things entail.

Food for thought.

That's where the future you wanted went. The jetpack, the ones that maimed and killed thousands in the future, we made it disappear. We dropped agents into every year of this century, and they built up automobiles and air transport, along with the infrastructure to support them. And jetpacks faded into dream, only remembered by lovers of musty science fiction.

Weather control. Personal laser guns. All those crazy airplane designs. Dirigibles. We took them all away. The easy way, like this. We stop you, and whatever like-minded inventors might follow a train of thought similar to yours, from following through. We come here, remove your life's work, everything connected with it, including your memory and some of your ability to reason, and then we go forward and look in the history books to see if any of them still mention you. Your singular contraption will be displayed in the Museum of Unreal Inventions.

The first removal I took part in, we saved the entire world. All by this, what I'm doing to you, happening to another genius with no common sense. I'm going to make the modern house as clean as clean can be, this clever fellow thought, and came up with a living floor covering. A live rug, that would digest any dust or dirt that settled in it for too long. Its excretions? A scent of your choice.

Do you have any idea how many dead skin cells are in household dust?

By the time it occurred to someone that walking on something that was subsisting on your very flesh was not the best of ideas, we'd already lost. The rug-things had discovered they liked the taste of human. One of them found that they could produce a scent that was a soporific for us. Made us just want to lie down, spread ourselves out, and feel good. It was the most merciful way of killing a person I've ever heard of.

The cities were overgrown in days, but the things, although it might have been just one big thing by that time, well, they hit their stride when they got to open country. Places to root, soil to drink from, animals to lull and consume, they just spread and spread and spread. A huge, crazy-quilt blotch spread over the Bavarian countryside, growing visibly even when viewed from space.

The uninfected areas of the world were arguing their way towards doing something when Pakistan went silent. Cambodia dropped away. Kenya vanished, followed by New Zealand, all of Southern Africa, Taiwan, Peru, the Pacific Rim, the North American Union. Separate outbreaks. Projections indicated that the death of the last human would run neck and neck with the death of the entire ecosystem.

So we dropped back to the proper year, and made it all go away. We don't solve the problem, we make sure the problem never needs to be solved. Not removing the mistake from existence, but removing it from ever having existed.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry we have to do this. Your breakthrough would have made you a name for the history books, in many different ways. But, for the sake of 120 Billion people forward of us, I'm more than willing to cast you into an uncertain future. You'll still be a genius, after all.

You won't remember any of this, just like all the other times we've met and I've done this to you. You just can't seem to stop with the world-shattering inventions. Three more of these and we give you a neat tattoo you'll never know how you got.

Well, time to get to it. This is gonna hurt like hell.

I just got promoted to Lt. Commander in Star Trek Online!

2010-01-20T05:26:00.000-05:00

My life is so very, very empty.

Fun in Basic Training

2010-01-07T01:09:00.002-05:00

One day, our entire company was going through different stations covering the basics of first aid. When I got to the station for treating a gunshot, the guy handling the run-through had me treat my partner first. After he critiqued my attempt, he told me to pretend to be shot so my partner could try his hand. I pointed up the hill and said, 'Oh my god, a guy with a gun!'. They both turned to look, and when they turned back, I was lying on the ground. They both started laughing...

Allow me to blow your mind

2009-10-28T03:28:00.001-04:00

A list of the main points of interest in the movie 'Paint Your Wagon':

1. Clint Eastwood

2. Lee Marvin

3. The old west

4. Toe-tapping musical numbers, involving both stars

5. Bigamy

How's that for a gogurt tube of weirdness?

A new waste of time

2009-08-24T00:18:00.002-04:00

So, if you're one of my three readers, I'm sure you've noticed the new link listed on the right, up there at the top. It's for a blog/extended story I'm writing, following the adventures of Runcible 'Red' Hand, and some of his friends, who wander among the various dimensions and drink at a bar together. I make no promises about quality, as my writing style can best be described as throwing every idea that wanders through my head into a pot, and posting the unholy slurry that results online, but I can promise often correct use of grammar.

I'll also be posting three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so you can be bored by my writing at least that often.

If you've just wandered by at random, welcome! Please read my story, and forgive me my trespasses. You should also read the archives on this blog. It's genius, every entry. I promise. Would I lie to you, person I've never met before, and who I desperately hope will like me?

Found this online today, so... yeah.

2009-08-19T11:22:00.001-04:00

FOREWORD

It was Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, who remarked, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This statement appears to be just as true today as it was then. Perhaps it is even more valid today considering the pressures and frequent monotony of today’s world. The majority of today’s men and women live in boring circumstances, and when the opportunity for change arises, they are often quick to seize the chance. For the characters in this story, the opportunity is one which many would consider perverse and deranged. But it provides a release and a need. All morals and scruples are cast aside in a moment of madness — a chance to grab pleasure before it is taken away.

SOME NUNS SUCK… SECRETLY! — a novel about the quiet desperation in so many of us — and the extremes to which it may drive us.

Bad Cut

2009-08-10T06:25:00.002-04:00

Do you think there comes a point when, after a certain number of plastic surgeries, that you just give up on looking human any more? This question came to mind yesterday, after I tripped across a photo collection of various people who seemed to have gone overboard on going under the knife.

Now, I know that poo-pooing the fascination some people have with 'improving' their looks through surgery is the equivalent of hunting cows with a high powered rifle and scope. I know it's a slow moving target. But I have to wonder what goes through some people's minds when, after spending upwards of $30,000, they find themselves with a face that could have come from someone working them over with a crowbar. Seriously, most of them look like boxers do right after a big fight. I'd put up a couple of pictures as an example, but I'd rather not have them permanently on display. Also, I don't know how. But that's neither here nor there.

Are they happy with what they see, after all the work that's been done? Do they look in the mirror and think that if their doctor gets just one more chance to take a cold chisel and an angle grinder to them, they'll be perfect? Or, god help 'em, more perfect?

In which spoils are divided and drinks are spoiled

2009-08-01T21:16:00.003-04:00

I figured I owed Automatic Jack a drink. Given that he'd been taken hostage while collecting money for me on bets I wasn't supposed to be making, and threatened with death as a way to force me to do something I really didn't want to do, it seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.

So, immediately after handing a still warm, severed arm to the bastard who had been the cause of all of this, he and I made Grindlebone's our destination.

I call Jack a he, but it wasn't because of any obvious sexual characteristics on his part. Automatic Jack wasn't a flesh and blood creature, but an autonomous mechanical being. He might have been an actual robot, although his ramshackle, thrown together appearance suggested otherwise. I suspected he was either a spirit inhabiting a pile of random, humanoid shaped junk, or some sort of metal golem. I'd wondered about it, on occasion, but the situation had never seemed quite right for broaching the subject. I had quite a good friend in Jack, so it hardly mattered.

Grindlebone's, the location to which we conveyed ourselves, is one of my favorite watering holes. It managed to be both spacious and intimate through clever use of furnishings, had a number of Doors leading to a number of widely disparate places, and served surprisingly diverse and well prepared food, along with a vast array of drinks. Grindlebone often tends one of the scattered bars himself. He said it made the place more homey for the regulars.

Indeed, we saw the man himself as Jack and I entered through the Door leading from the Gambling Hell. General asking-after of each others health followed, and Jack and I were granted use of one Grin's private rooms. Jack and I had business to discuss, after all.

“Well,” Grin said, “You two head back on past the hall heading towards the pool room, walk through the next set of curtains, let yourselves in the purple door. I'll send Janx along with your drinks presently. And don't worry, it's a real quiet room. Oh, and avoid the back Oak Room, there's a bit of an altercation going on there, right now.”

Grin had added the last to let us know the room would be as secure as he could make it; some of his so-called private rooms were just private enough to let people think they weren't being watched. Not that either Jack or I had anything to hide at the moment, but it was a nice touch nonetheless.

So we wandered along to the designated spot, although we did take a peak into the Oak Room. A gang of the Red Brotherhood were lighting each other up pretty hard in there. They'd probably asked specifically for that room, too, as it was out of the way and the solid wood furnishings lowered the damage charges they'd inevitably be paying. The furnishings also made cracking weapons.

The room on the other side of the purple door was quite comfortable. The drinks that came along shortly after we arrived, whiskey for me, Bertham's Oil for Jack, made it even more so. Being metal and all, I don't think Jack could have been tired in the same way I was, but the day must have been quite wearing on him mentally, and for a moment we simply savored the alcohol and sat quietly. But there was business to be done, and we got down to it in relatively short order.

I leaned forward as Jack grasped the plate of iron covering his chest and lifted it off. Once it had been removed, two small metal grates that had been concealed underneath the plate swing open, and a box extruded from Jack's chest cavity. He removed the box and set it on the table between us, as the grates closed again.

While a bastard, the person who had taken Jack hostage had at least been a truthful bastard. He had promised, upon my completion of his task, to release Jack unharmed and with all of the currency he had been carrying. The cash was all Gambling Hell Exchange Vouchers, and it made quite a nice pile on the table.

Jack said, “I still can't say the day wasn't worth it, not while I'm looking at this much money.”

“Jack, my cast-iron friend, you are not wrong. By the way, I think I owe you an apology.”

Jack pshaw-ed the very idea, and we engaged in a friendly argument over who owed whom what, all the while dividing our large pile of money into two smaller, but still very attractive, piles. When the division was complete, we both settled back in our seats, and commenced with a discussion of what really quite clever and fine fellows we both were. And now moderately wealthy, to boot.

It was at this point that our budding mutual appreciation ended prematurely, due to the appearance of some heavily armed people, coming through the door to our room. Two hairy men in scruffy combat gear cleared the corners and then brought the muzzles of their guns to bear on Jack and I, still sitting quietly behind a table piles high with money.

Sighing, I took a sip of my whiskey. This day simply would not end.

Walking out of the World

2009-07-21T18:10:00.002-04:00

“It helps if you don’t know where you’re going,” the old man told me.

I’d been in McGinty’s most of the night, commiserating with a friend who’d lost his job and girl earlier that day. Jimmy’d gotten pretty far into his cups during the course of the evening, progressing from dislike of his ex-boss and -girlfriend into outright hatred for the whole stinking world, and this city in particular. Before the whiskey had robbed him of his ability to form consonants, my pal Jimmy had waxed rather poetic about what a soul-sucking hole our fair city is, an ‘envious and vindictive bitch of a metropolis, dedicated to taking the good out of any of her denizens and grinding them into compost to grow the poison flowers that would draw another crop of rubes out of the hills, to be destroyed the same way.” He’d seemed quite sure of himself, and seemed to feel the need to share this and other observations with most of the bar. It had all been downhill from there, and shortly another friend had helped Jimmy, still declaiming to the rafters, out of the bar and into a cab.

I sat back down, finishing my beer and deciding whether to head home or over to another bar to listen to a new band, the Murder Orgy, I’d been told about. My eye fell on a square bar napkin that Jimmy had been using early in his exposition about the evils of the world. The only legible things on the napkin were the words “Walk right out of this goddamn world”. I’d picked it up, and was poring over the words, and the odd squiggles and glyphs that surrounded it, and an old, gnarled finger had appeared and tapped the word once, twice, then a third time, and the old man’s voice had drifted into my ear, sounding like the rough rustle of leave in late fall, quiet but still perfectly audible over the background hubbub of the bar.

“It helps if you don’t know where you’re going,” he’d said.

I looked up and at the man for the first time that evening. He’d been sitting at the end of the bar, on the stool next to mine, all night, but I hadn’t spared him a second look in all that time. He had been there when I came in, and I suppose I’d assumed he’d be there when I left. He had the air about him of a regular, the feeling that he wasn’t so much in the bar as of the bar, a fixture, like the brass rail and the sticky floor. He belonged in the bar, and I’d accepted him in the same way I’d accepted the presence of the neon beer lights. The kind of guy you’d look at and never see.

But when I did take that moment to look at him, to see him, he became subtly wrong. The details of his appearance marked him as a stranger, and quite a strange stranger at that.

The hat he wore had too high a crown and too wide a brim, his coat was of an odd cut and material, the suit under it was of a strange hue. The man wore thick, chunky glasses made of a black substance, coming close to being what a hip young person would wear, but arriving at slightly disturbing through a slight asymmetry. Both his thick mustache and beard stubble were an odd shade of gray.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you want to walk out of the world. It helps if you don’t know where you’re going.”

“What do you mean? How can you walk out of a world?”

“Oh, it’s easy, really,” He’d said with a dry chuckle. “Many a man has gone from this world to that’un simply by being a bit to preoccupied, oh, ayuh.”

“Preoccupied?”

“Yuh. When you know where’s your going, your mind helps keep yuh pinned to the path you want, see? But when you go a wandrin’ willy nilly, or get to distracted as you travel, a body’s apt as not to come on one of the lost ways, and take a turn right out o’ the places they know, and come upon someplace wholly different, oh ay.”

“Lemme see,” I said, slurring a bit as the old man took another drink of his beer, “Lemme see…You think that if I, right, me, I were to walk out of here, and just wander around, I’d ‘walk out of the world’? Really”

“Maybe, maybe you would,” he said, scratching his temple. “Most people, they don’t, whatchacallit, they don’t have the right attitude. They could stomp around with no fixed destination for all their lives, and never come across anything out of the ordinary, least that they’d notice. Not to say they wouldn’t cross a world or two, not at all, but they’d never know it, as where they ended up would be too near what they expected to notice. Y’ever gone to a place, and later found out someone ya knew, knew pretty well, was there the whole time, and yet ya never saw one another?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“It’s the kind of thing most people write off, right? They figure they just floated around such a way they never caught sight o’ one another. And most time is, they’re probably right. But sometimes…” He took another drink. “Sometimes, one or the other o’ them, maybe both, stepped just a little bit sideways on the way in, turned a little bit, right, and ended up in a world a hair’s breadth away from the one they thought they was in.”

“So they were in the same place, but not?”

“Oh, ayuh. Y’see, most people think a place is a single thing, right? But a place is an agglomeration, really…”

“A collage?” I said, getting into the idea.

“Exactly. A collage made up of what different people expect to see when they get to a place. If you was to ask each person here, in this place, to tell you about it, you’d get as many different places described as people you asked. And even when you put all the descriptions together, you still wouldn’t have everything that makes this place what it is.”

“But, how does that make it a different world? Just because people aren’t very observant?”

“Nah, it’s that people assume most of what they see, right? You walk down a street you walked down a hundred times before, how much do you really see? Not much, oh no. Your head builds a picture, and you think it’s the real thing. Sign’s might be wrong, numbers might be different, you might have wandered onto a street you never seen before, and’ll never see again, but your head takes away the things it don’t expect to see, and fills in what it thinks should be there.”

“Like, they don’t have to look, because they know?”

“Seems like.”

“But I still don’t see where the walking out of word, worlds comes in.”

“You from the city, here?”

“No. No, I moved here...”

“Remember when you first come here,” He said, cutting me off. “Did you ever head out and end up a little lost, someplace you didn't know was there?”

“Yeah, a couple of time. Of course.”

“That's all it is. People get set in their way pretty quickly, though, and they stop coming across new things. Part of 'em assumes that the city is only so big, and eventually the set o' memory they have put aside to make a map in their heads gets full, and they get done finding things. But there are 's many cities out there as there are bars in here, see?”

“So,” I slurred, “How do you keep from assuming like ever'body does, hmm?”

“This is a mighty good way to start, no doubt.” He said, lifting his glass.

I lifted mine along with him, and finished the last third of my beer in a few gulps. “So, lemme see here, you're sayin', right, that if I walked out into the night, here, and wandered about, I might walk right out of my everyday world? Do you believe that, really?”

“Don't matter what I believe. Question is, do you?”

I lifted by gaze from my empty pint glass, and looked at the dark eyes behind the black glasses, then looked beyond the stranger to the door behind him, and the unanimous night on the other side of the door's glass.

“Another beer?” I heard the bartender ask.

The thing what came out of Dexter

2009-06-22T11:01:00.008-04:00

By this time, Dexter’s skin had become translucent, a thin shell covering the thing that had destroyed him. Under the yellowish, parchment-like covering, lumps and tendrils moved back and forth, thrashing impatiently and pushing out, here and there, causing cracks and tears in the drying skin. Only the mouth, impossibly large and tooth-filled, and the eyes, burning red surrounding pit-black irises, showed the horror of the thing waiting to shed Dexter’s skin and be born into our unready world.

“Time itself will come to an end, Paladin.” The voice of the beast that was wearing Dexter’s skin was surprisingly high-pitched, piping and unpleasant. As it spoke, tendrils lashed out of its mouth, probing at the desiccated skin of Dexter’s face, tearing strips loose and bearing them away, into the open maw. “Those From Outside will follow my path, and this little realm will become ours; it will be rent and torn and changed to suit our whim. All that you know will end in pain and hate and terror, without end.”

With a piercing, staccato sound that might have been a demented laugh, the mouth-tendrils shot out and finally tore the skin of Dexter’s face and head loose, pulling it back into the creature’s maw in great strips, filling the air with a series of horrible tearing and cracking sounds. As the skin was consumed, the mass of thrashing, whipping, sucker-ended tendril spread and unfolded. This sudden, final destruction of the visage of a man who had been a friend to each of us brought out shrieks, groans, and no small amount of flinching from our little group, as we each fought the urge to flee headlong away from the monstrosity. The tendrils seemed to focus on our sounds, or movements, and, as more and more of them, impossibly more, unfolded, swelling to three, then four, times the size of poor Dexter’s head. The eyes had separated, each to its own tendriled stalk, above the mouth that gaped from just below where the head-stalks joined.

More ripping and tearing as all of Dexter above the waist split and then vanished, some pulled into the thing’s mouth, but most consumed by the suckers on the end of each glistening, flagella-like stalk that burst forth, freed from their chrysalis of human skin. As with the head, the monster swelled and spread out more tendrils than could possibly have been held in the dimensions of a human chest, and gave the eye-watering impression of unfolding from…somewhere else.

The appendages that had been encased in Dexter’s arm split each into two multi-jointed extremities that spread out fore and aft, and lifted the central structure, Dexter’s legs still dangling from it’s underside, off the ground. One shoe and sock dropped off, and some sort of claw like thing could be seen struggling to break free as the rest of the thing had. The maw of the creature began spitting out painful sounds, and suddenly the world around me seemed to have an unreal sheen to it, like the cheap plastic of a child’s toy.

Enough of this, I thought. Reaching to my waist, the familiar weight of the Colt 1911 came into my hand, and I could feel the sigil embossed on the grip slip into line against it’s mirror, tattooed onto my palm. As I began to speak the Words, time slowed, making it a physically taxing effort to push the weapon and my arm into line for a good shot. A burning began in my palm, and, as the incantation continued, spread it’s fierce pain up my arm and into my chest, searing my heart.

After a period I can’t measure, my eye, arm, hand, and weapon came into line for the shot, just as the incantation ended. Time stopped. I could see the white hot lines burning bright on the metal of the weapon, extending over my hand and arm. Mostly, I saw that the shot was aimed at the abomination a few yards away from me, and would strike just where I wanted it to. I said the final word.

Time snapped back, and I had to squint away from the bright, painfully bright, spectacle of the burning power of the round pulling the lines of heat down my arm, into the weapon, and through the space that separated me from the thing that had killed my friend. The shot made a burning line out of the end of the barrel, with heat and licking fire coming from it. It hit the beast just under the jaw, where it’s form thickened from the joining of the two upper stalks.

For a moment, the thing seemed panicked, with both stalks of it’s upper section flying down and slapping at its midsection. Smoke rose from the point where the shot had struck, and the sun-brightness of it flickered and spun as the tendrils surrounding it lashed and withered under the heat.

But this only lasted a moment. The horror paused for a moment, seeming to consider, and, as it became obvious to us all that it wasn’t going to be killed by this, it’s keening ‘laughter’ filled the air again.

I was paying attention to neither it’s fear or it’s joy. While it had been preoccupied, I had taken my second weapon in had. Though this weapon was also a .45, it seemed to only weigh a slight fraction of it’s brother pistol. As I swung my right arm into line, the weapon seemed to pull my hand forward, so that I had to spit out the three words of the activating spell as fast as I could. I didn’t even bother to aim, as the pistol would make the rounds strike where it thought they should. I spoke the Firing Word and squeezed the trigger four times, feeling the stab of the freezing sigil on this one’s grip shoot pain up my arm, covering it with freezing lines that flared and vanished instantly, leaving only the seared image on my retina and steam rising from the arm of my jacket where the frozen sections that had been exposed to the lines of force met the sections that had been untouched.

The four rounds struck almost in the same instant, forming a diamond pattern around the point where the hot round had struck.

The thing stopped. It yelped, then shook itself like a wet dog, then began to shake madly and whine. The light cast by the five rounds began to spread. Fire sprang out of a few clumps of tendrils, then a few more. Ice and hoar-frost solidified on other patches. As the abomination’s painful gyrations grew in intensity, whole sections of itself became engulfed in primal cold and heat, flame giving way to ice, frost burning away under the onslaught of insistent conflagration. Huge, suppurating wounds formed at the borders of the different sections, only to be consumed and exacerbated as each element spread and fought for space on the thing’s hellish form. As it beat its four legs against the unyielding floor, cold and ice covered almost one entire appendage, which snapped under the manic terror that consumed the keening beast. One of the head stalks leaned down and tried to push the stump of the amputated limb, now attached by a thin strip of skin, against the point of the break, but screamed as the limb burst into flame and melted the eye attached to the stalk.

I tore my eyes away from the spectacle of the thrashing beast, and looked back at Saren’s horrified face.

“Saren!”, I called out, “Saren!” No response from her, my voice bouncing off of her disgusted fascination with the pain of the beast that had come out of Dexter.

“SAREN!” I screamed, to no avail. “God damn it, Saren, wake up! MYKE!”

At the sound of her given name, Saren’s eyes snapped to mine. “Now! Do it now! This won’t kill it either! It’s just gonna piss it off! Send it back, before the rest of it breaks through!”

Saren gaped at me for a moment, confusion written all over her expression. After a second, though, she snapped into focus. She glanced at the beast, which seemed to be trying to beat itself to death, then back at me. With a curt nod, she started singing.

Saren’s voice cut through the awful sounds the thing was making. As her song continued, the thing diminished, shrank, folded back in on itself. Still covered in fire and ice, it was being forced back into the aperture from which it had come, into Dexter’s skin.

Even the bits that had snapped off from the cold or melted from the heat were pulled back into the husks of Dexter’s legs. At last, all of it vanished, and, with a huge cracking sound, the scarred and battered flesh settled to the ground, empty and flaccid.

This was all that was left of Dexter.

I turned and looked at my shell-shocked friends, and realized I had no idea what to say to them.

One day, mankind will conquer all of the ills of the world, of population, information, and government, and no one will want for anything.

2009-06-16T11:57:00.002-04:00

And on that day, I think the living will envy the dead.

So... Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhmedy

2009-06-13T12:50:00.002-04:00

Blake built himself his own little cubicle in the room we shared. By 'we', I mean he and I and about fifteen other guys, all of whom were part of the 1/503rd Infantry Regiment's headquarters company. We were assigned to a large room on the second floor of one of the buildings near the entrance to Fort Corregidor, just outside Ar Ramadi in Iraq.

The room had been partitioned off by various means, and I myself had used some wood panel, a bookcase, a bunk bed, and a hanging blanket to make my own private section. Blake had gone all out, though, well beyond anyone else. Along one wall, he used wood panel and two-by-fours, which he'd gotten from god knows where, to enclose a 6 by 15 foot area into his own little space. It even had it's own ceiling. The regular ceiling, about 14 feet high, was good enough for the rest of us, but not for Blake. I don't know, maybe he was worried about guys lobbing things over his wall.

He and I spent a lot of the nine months we occupied Fort Corregidor hanging out in his room, mostly talking about comedy. Sometimes, we'd compare religious views, which was always interesting, given that he's a committed Catholic and I'm just as devoutly atheist. But usually it was comedy.

We had, and have, a shared interest in making people laugh, and in what make good or bad comedy. For both of us, it was a way to get our minds off of the vagaries of being in the Army, and in a war-zone, and having to work closely with some guys who were, frankly, idiots. Blake had a worse time with that than I did, as he was a cook. The cooks in our unit weren't the best and the brightest. I most cases, they weren't very good or very bright at all, Blake being the notable exception. He's saw a lot of things that make good stories now, but that were aggravating as hell when they happened.

So, most nights, we'd end up chilling out in the hundred degree atmosphere of his room, watching Eddie Izzard or Jerry Seinfeld in Comedian, talking about doing comedy. We'd ping-pong ideas for sketches off of one another, using his computer to keep track of our genius, and we'd make plans for the day we were back in the States and out of the Army.

It kept both of us sane, or at least saner than we would have been otherwise. Occasionally, though, right at the start, one of us would look at the other and say, 'So... Caaaaaaaaaaaaahmedy!' This was the sign that we probably weren't gonna be writing anything that night, or even talking about performing except in the most abstract sense. It was our way of letting each other know that that night was just gonna be about hanging out, and feeling some kind of easygoing normalcy which comes along with spending time with a sympatico individual.

Iraq was a strange experience all around. It was made even stranger by somehow finding one of my best friends there.

It's a sobering realization

2009-06-11T20:22:00.002-04:00

I like to think I'm a pretty well-rounded guy, the type of dude who's interested in more than the everyday pablum you find on TV. I was, for instance, quite thrilled to see that Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' was available for viewing tonight.

It's on right now. So is VH1's 'I Love 1975'.

One guess: which am I watching?

sigh....

Meeting people at a new school

2009-05-25T14:32:00.002-04:00

Apparently, this happened on my second day at the Quaker boarding school I eventually graduated from.

I was sitting, eating lunch at at table with a kid I didn't know, whose girth met or exceeded my own. As an icebreaker, I leaned over to him and whispered, "Y'know, I've only seen two fat people at this school. Me, and you."

Blind Idiot Translation

2009-05-12T17:25:00.003-04:00

I was reading, today, about a phenomenon known as the Blind Idiot Translation. Basically, it's where something is translated from its original language by someone with only a rudimentary understanding of that language. This usually has the effect of ruining the work in question. Sometimes the translation is unintentionally hilarious, but more often it's simply a string almost-but-not-quite-comprehensible nonsense.

Since my time is worthless, I figured I'd give you an example, taken from my own writing. I dug up an online translation program, Yahoo's Babel Fish, and translated one of my blog entries from English to Japanese, and then back again.

Here it is, in all of it's joyous senselessness!

You try by your, as for the decision which kills between, you are brought up in me for being rather long. When I return from Iraq, they'd Platoon I'd which is broken at on; As for d which is part at the line company moving human everyone of the infantry. As for me being moved by Able Company in noncommissioned officer and the Simmons same platoon, person I' You obtained; d used the majority of the years when it drives for HUMMM-V.

Still, I trouble we' Approximately 6 months which the rear starts possessing; The house which can by d immediately after the start 2006. I drank the movie, my room which is seen passed most evenings independently. With method of working my every day of the thing which is the soldier, you did not obtain that under any condition with all clear methods without of being. I passed most nights and the weekend when exactly shock is drunk after the shock.

The 1st platoon was the group of the good man. They' The majority of the heavy raw materials being middle, d which is the right, the city of Ar Ramadi of our battalion parts directly we' So it is; d year we' Being posted outside because of the majority; D which is used in Iraq. It seems that I like the majority, like me.

But I think, I wasn't You obtained and I couldn't which it corresponds; The vibration of t it is loose that. As for me, me all raw materials you which are done; You tried; It re-was supposed to. I me thought of thing at least.

I did speaking to the pastor and 1 morning. I asked to him concerning the possibility of changing my specialty something other than the infantry to. Because as for me at that office which how has expressed me I wasn't You killing who, as intended to be able, me who feel there it destroyed; t sufficiently good soldier. The idea' But from beginning the basic training me certain d now as for that I happen, it was something which is and has known.

I couldn't It is that in t. As for me cause of the death of one someones of the thing where the companion of the platoon dies in me, it was not possible to be.

I Anderson spoke in noncommissioned officer Simmons and Lt. One time respectively. But what which changes greatly. As for Simmons noncommissioned officer my person, we' Was; d two degree it is blasted together. And Anderson Lt, he good platoon leader, the smart person and the graduate of the West Point, seems that really worries our everyone, was. Those tried the fact that it helps. As for me those must've It presumes. But that didn't seems that is changed with anything. And I couldn't t is dissatisfaction for the second time.

As for with, me I how thought terribly whether I was the other person, which rank of the millstone, I couldn't It had done; The hateful person who was broken by the fact that also t is a is added. That' What which was called the person who has the problem of a certain kind always in s, it had to be handled, it is there was every [wa] always.

And night of 1 Sunday, as for me I wasn't It decided which can take another week of failure and goes. As for me I'd It decided on the other hand dies

In which I am chased by werewolves

2009-05-06T21:51:00.002-04:00

I ran as fast as I could. I had been running for quite a while, so that was not very fast, but I was still moving. The pack of werewolves that was following me made sure of that.

They weren’t really werewolves, not in the classic sense. This particular Earth parallel had found its destruction at the hands of a plague that killed most of the population and drastically reduced the intelligence of the survivors. The few who were still alive had become feral creatures and responded badly to anyone that entered their territory. I had entered their territory. Now, I was prey.

Normally, I wouldn’t have had a huge problem with this. I can bridge across most dimensional rifts, so my normal response to having unfriendly locals chasing me was to ‘port myself to a more genial locale. This particular parallel, however, had been declared off limits by the Travelers Guild, in all of their idiotic wisdom. They had done whatever they do to keep people out, which meant that I could not open a bridge at will. In order to avoid the ‘werewolves’ and leave this place safely, I had to reach a stationary gate. Luckily, the locals really were quite stupid, and the gate was now very near.

Yes, I know that I ended my last entry in the midst of what should have been a very lucrative card game. Various things had occurred which led inevitably from that point to this. Suffice it to say that the Immunoman who had sat across from me during the card game, the Infected fellow in the full isolation gear, had turned out to be not very nice at all. When I had chosen to give up my seat at the table, he had accompanied me, and explained that I was going to undertake an incredibly dangerous trip to a forbidden, diseased world and bring something back, or else.

I scoffed of course, even going so far as to laugh into my whiskey and deride his intelligence. He had then explained that one of the officials of the Gambling Hell was well aware of my placing bets through a proxy while also receiving a percentage on my play from the house. This official, a close friend of the Immunoman to whom I was speaking, was prepared to issue a lifetime ban on me for breaking the rules of the house.

Furthermore, a close friend of mine, who had collected my winnings from Andros and X after I had left the Hi-Low table, had been taken as a hostage. In the off chance that I was willing to accept a ban from the Hell just to spite the Immunoman, who I had admittedly come to loathe in a remarkably short period of time, this friend would then be exposed to the Immmunoman’s touch, which would result in their messy and painful death.

Alternately, I could choose to accept the snatch and grab mission. Not only would my violation of the Gambling Hell’s rules be overlooked, I would be allowed to have the percentage I had bought from the house. My friend would be released unharmed and still in possession of the cash they had received before being kidnapped.

All that would be required was to step through a gate, and find something. Granted, on the other side of the gate would be a world in ruins. A world destroyed by a hideous disease, for which there was no cure. Once in this hell, I would have to search out the very dangerous, highly contagious locals, secure a piece of still warm flesh of not less than two kilograms, then make a happy jaunt back to the gate. What could go wrong?

This might seem like an odd and pointless thing to ask someone to do. Why not just leave well enough alone? You see, the Infected made their money by curing disease, oddly enough. Their mighty immune systems let them be exposed to infections that would destroy most other organisms, and distill a cure from their blood. They were unparalleled masters of curing diseases. They also needed diseases to survive, as a way to keep their immune systems occupied fighting outside invaders, and new sicknesses were always needed. A new, uncured disease could therefore be sold to both those who might contract the disease and to the Infected themselves. A third source of income could be gained by buying sole rights to the world the infection had come from, then allowing immunized colonists to reclaim the abandoned world and kill off the diseased original inhabitants. All of these together would profit the Immunoman who secured the first strain of a new disease immensely. More than enough to make the commission of bribery, kidnapping, and blackmail worthwhile, really.

This is how I found myself leaning against a wall in a room on the second story of a ruined house in the middle of what had been London, unless I missed my guess.

My gasps for breath served as a counterpoint to the constant thumping coming from downstairs. The disease that had run amok on this world had reduced the intelligence of the survivors to the point where I had bought myself some breathing room by simply closing the front door behind me as I entered the house. No longer understanding how doorknobs worked, the werewolves were reduced to throwing themselves against the door as hard as they could. One would beat itself senseless against the still solid oak while the others ran in circles, barking and yipping. Three to one said that if I just kept quiet for long enough, they’d forget why they had been trying to break through the door, and go running off, chasing birds.

Of course, there always have to be the smart ones, two of whom I heard coming up the back stairs. They must have circled the house and found an open back door. They had no concept of stealth, though, so when the door finally burst open, I was ready for them.

The first one through took a solid blow to the side of the head, delivered by the hunk of meat I was engaged in bringing back to the Immunoman. As the hunk of meat was most of a left arm, it worked quite nicely as a club. The werewolf fell into a heap under the window, as I punched the second one in the head with my left hand.

As I believe I mentioned, my left hand is not flesh, but metal. As such, striking the werewolf with it did me no harm at all, while doing a great deal of damage to it. My fist was in fact stuck in its skull, so that by turning and bringing my arm around, I managed to throw the now limp body at the other werewolf. Which worked out nicely, as both of them were pushed through the window, falling into the front yard below.

So I continued on my merry way. Down the rear stairs, out the back door, across the backyard, quickly over a wall, and there I was at the gate leading out of this place.

Well, now, there you have it. Blackmail, through a gate, stealthy search, steal an arm, a bit of running, some medium violence, back to the gate, and bob’s yer uncle, the job was done.

It started at a card game

2009-05-05T22:22:00.003-04:00

Some people swear by card games like Dragon Poker, or Cripple Mr. Onion, or Damage, even Double Fanucci. Some people play Pyramid, or Tall Card; hell, I've known some who swear Cups is the greatest game ever invented. Personally, I like my games a little more basic. Blackjack works for me, War, and I have taken part in some very lucrative rounds of Combat 52 Pick-Up. Once won an enchanted sword at that last one, one fine night.

But when I’m in the Gambling Hell, I play Hi-Low. Well, I bet on Hi-Low. The actual game is as simple as can be. Two to four players take turns drawing off a standard deck, and the highest card wins. Winner of the last round draws first, then draw proceeds around to the left, until all players have drawn, at which point all players show their cards. That’s the whole game.

Betting on Hi-Low, now, is something else entirely. You can bet on the winner, on who gets second, third, or fourth card; you can bet on whether one player will beat another, on the number of times a given player will win or lose, on the total number of wins or loses by a particular player, on the number of times a particular player will win or lose in a row, on how many times a particular suit or number will appear during a set run of draws. You can, in fact bet on anything that comes into your head, as long as you can find a taker. Some of these bets may seem like incredible long shots, involving sets of factors on which no person could possibly make odds. When the individuals who make up the betting pool include Demon Princes and hypermetric computational entities, psychic precognatives, persons with access to workable methods of scrying and divination, those who can speak to the unquiet dead, and Stochastic Men who read order into chaos, well, all bets are off, no pun intended.

So the simple game was really the quiet eye of a very complicated storm of wagers, some taking place before the game began, some taking place before each shuffle, some taking place before or after each player made their draw.

I’ve made a good amount of cash over the years, betting on my gut. Today, though, today I was flush, and felt lucky, so I’d gone whole hog. I’d bought a spot at the table, and hedged it so guaranteed to leave with at least something I wanted, and possibly a whole lot of it. See, along with my place at the table, I’d bought a percentage on my bets. That is, I’d bought, from the management of the Gambling Hell, a payback on winning bets placed on me. The Hell took a 1% fee for all bets placed, win or lose. Of the money they took for those bets based on my place in every draw, I got 2% of what they took. Way I figured it, if I stayed in the game long enough, I was bound to at least make back the cost of my place at the table, and maybe the percentage charge as well.

However, my real hope for cashing in lay with Andros and X, my betting partners. Andros and X were very successful professional Hi-Low bettors, with a clocked win rate of 56%. It wasn’t strictly legal, by the house rules, for me to have money on a match while I was getting the percentage back. You could get paid coming or going, but not both. It was one of those rules that everyone broke. It was a way for the Hell to toss out people they didn’t want around anymore. The Gambling Hell never let its own regulations get in the way of business. Bless the owners’ black and flabby little hearts.

So I spent ten hours sitting around a small, well-lit table, drawing cards, eating free food and drinking free drinks, listening to the joy and pain of the betting crowd roll over me at the end of each draw.

My fellow card players were an interesting lot, too. The fellow across from me was wearing a containment suit, with the most complete coverage I’d ever seen. Made sense, really, as he was one of the Infected, from a locality of such lethal diseases that that the local human stock had evolved to the point where they could survive anything but the absence of disease. The containment suit was as much for him as for the rest of us; if the illnesses he carried had spread, instead of re-infecting him constantly, his super-charged immune system would have begun to destroy him for lack of anything else to fight.

To the right, there was one of the Celestial Architects. This particular specimen might have been human or human derived, but who could tell without asking impertinent questions? It was humanoid, anyway. The Architects made their money by using proprietary dimensional and temporal technology to produce made to order planets, solar systems, localities, and other, more outré topographic places for customers with very deep pockets. I’d never been this close to one before. A bit staid for my tastes, but very polite.

Our fourth for the game was less commonplace than the rest of us. Wreathed in shadow, even under the table’s spotlights, it seemed composed of writhing tentacles, red, staring, only occasionally visible eyes, and distractingly misshapen appendages, it was an authentic Deep One, a horror from beyond space and time. It had spent the game snacking on small, screaming creatures it grabbed from a covered dish beside the table and speaking in a voice that was composed of hugely disconcerting buzzing, whistling, and screeching, which was only slightly improved by the cultured Indian accent that came out of the thing’s translation cube. For all of the Deep One’s off-putting presence, it did make quite amiable small talk.

And there was me. Compared to these three, I was as normal as could be, even with my third eye, and the left hand made of crimson metal.

Some stuff I've written...

2009-05-03T23:52:00.000-04:00

http://www.365tomorrows.com/04/22/seeing-clearly/

http://www.365tomorrows.com/01/11/stillness/

http://www.365tomorrows.com/11/19/the-more-things-change/

I don't really know how to write this

2009-04-17T09:52:00.002-04:00

The decision to try and kill myself grew inside me for a pretty long while.

When I got back from Iraq, they'd broken up the platoon I'd been a part of, and had transferred all of the infantry guys into line companies. I got transferred into Able Company, into the same platoon as Sgt. Simmons, the guy I'd spent most of the year driving a HUMMM-V for.

Still, I started having trouble about six months after we'd gotten home, just after the start of 2006. I spent most evenings alone in my room, drinking and watching movies. It never got in the way of my day to day work of being a soldier, not in any obvious way. I just spent most nights and weekends drinking shot after shot.

1st platoon was a good bunch of guys. They'd been right in the middle of most of the heavy stuff our battalion had been a part of, in Ar Ramadi, the city we'd been posted outside of for most of the year we'd spent in Iraq. I liked most of them, and they seemed to like me.

But I got the idea I wasn't measuring up, and I couldn't shake it loose. I tried, I did all the stuff you're supposed to. At least I thought I did.

I went to talk to the Chaplain, one morning. I asked him about the possibility of changing my specialty to something other than the Infantry. I broke down, there in his office, talking about how I felt like I was going to get someone killed because I wasn't a good enough soldier. That idea'd been with me since the beginning of basic training, but now it was something I knew was going to happen.

I couldn't have it. I could not be the cause of someones death, of one of my platoon mates dying.

I talked to Sgt. Simmons, and to Lt. Anderson. Once each. But nothing much changed. Sgt. Simmons was my guy, we'd been blown up together twice. And Lt. Anderson, he was a good platoon leader, smart guy, West Point grad, really seemed to care about all of us. They tried to help. I guess they must've. But it didn't seem to change anything.

And I couldn't complain again. With how badly I thought I was doing, how much of a millstone I was on the other guys, I couldn't add in being a broke dick, too. That's what you called the guys who always had some kind of problem, always had some shit that had to be dealt with.

And one Sunday night, I decided I wasn't going to be able to take another week of failing. I decided I'd rather die.

It's all about context

2009-04-07T13:03:00.002-04:00

So, I was wasting my life away yesterday, again, and I came across a TV show which had a bit set at a bullfight in Mexico.

Now, just on it's own, the outfit of your average bullfighter is quite fey. Slippers, frilly capri pants and short jacket in bright colors, and what can be best described as a very odd hat. Not to mention the cape, which is to be waved in a highly theatrical manner.

But then you see the guy in his proper surroundings, going toe to hoof with two tons of angry pot roast. Then you realize the guy could be wearing body paint, a g-string, and a feather in his ass, and he'd still be the manliest guy in the room.

I'm just saying, is all.

And I giggled myself to sleep

2009-04-02T13:08:00.002-04:00

I woke up around 4am this morning, and couldn't seem to get back to sleep. So I got up and messed around online and sampled the wide array of infomercials being broadcast at that time of day. Being that it was unusually early for me to be awake, and the soothing sound of a hard rain out in the night, I found myself in a rather introspective mood.

So it was nice that another friend of mine was also up, and we chatted over IM for a while. As the conversation began to wind down, I figured I'd pick her mind for her thoughts on some of the questions I'd been pondering earlier.

So I told her I wanted to ask a question, and I didn't need an answer right then, but I did want her to think about it.

Instantly, she sent back the message, 'I don't want to get married'.

Thought of by an interesting mind

2009-03-17T21:31:00.002-04:00

My mom once saw, out in the wilds of Pennsylvania, a sign advertising 'Freshly Mined Coal!'

Coming to grips

2009-03-07T23:33:00.002-05:00

I'm in pretty good shape. Well, I think I'm in better shape than the next guy, as long as the next guy in question is Jack Black. Or Jonah Hill. Maybe the late Marlon Brando.

OK, I'm in crappy shape. How crappy, I did not realize until this morning, when the act of getting out of bed left me gasping for breath. Hell, I had to take a nap to recover.

Sometimes, there is no answer

2009-03-06T22:32:00.002-05:00

No matter how many different dream interpretation websites I check out, nobody seems to be able to tell me what it means when you dream that you're being beaten at ping-pong by the wicked serve of F. Murray Abraham.

Fin de Siecle

2009-03-05T14:59:00.005-05:00

So it’s the end-times, as I think the existence of competitive cup-stacking proves. But what does that mean, to average folks like you and me? What is the role of the common man in the coming storm of chaos? When the craziness begins, when various gods begin returning, when the asteroids rain down from the sky and the war of angels commences, when the stars begin to go out and various diseases run rampant through the land, where do you fit in?

Well, this is an important question. The last thing you want, when the winds of final destruction begin to blow, is to be caught off guard. Much like when one graduates from high school, it benefits one to decide in which direction they would like to head when the world enters the mouth of madness.

Now, some might claim that your options re: the end of time and space are limited. But this is a needlessly shortsighted view. Given the breakdown of law and order, not to mention basic morality, your choices are actually much wider than they are in everyday life. So let your imagination run wild! Did you like Mad Max? Get yourself a muscle car, weld on some armor plate, lay hands an autofire shotgun and a cool leather jacket, and you’re in business. If you prefer something that will still let you hang out with your friends, have three or four pals throw on face paint and some old football armor with fur stapled to it, and run amok on dirt bikes. Maybe throw in a couple of steel pipes, or a bat with nails driven through the hittin’ end.

Myself, I’m going the whole ‘heavily defended bunker’ route. I’m slowly digging a deep hole/tunnel system. It’s amazing how much work you can do with a jackhammer when you’re living in an extended-stay motel. When my shipments of guns, ramen and …other things comes in, I’ll be ready for anything. I’ll sit tight, occasionally harvesting fresh meat from attackers, and wait for the final end.

But, when that end does come, stop on by, won’t you? You’ll find me sitting atop the pile of rubble that used to be this hotel. We’ll hoist a glass of champagne while we wait for the final shockwave to tear the flesh from our bones!

Accentuate the positive...

2009-02-06T13:47:00.001-05:00

It's all about how you spin it. I'm not overweight, I'm a caloric over-achiever!

The Horror...

2009-02-02T13:53:00.001-05:00

The forces of the Clown Kingdom are some of the most feared in the universe, and the terror of their attacks is almost unrivaled. The sonic attack always heralds the arrival of their tent-ships; The blasting of a discordant calliope in a pitch that cannot be ignored, and which often induces collapse in buildings and seizures in men. Sometimes entire cities are decimated by rains of explosive confetti, or sliced apart by falls of monomolecular ‘cotton candy’. Clown soldiers sometimes rain down, floating on anti-gravity floppy shoes and ill fitting, baggy protective armor, melting their opponents with blasts of hydrochloric seltzer, unleashing hordes of cannibalistic balloon animals, smashing creme pies impregnated with slaver nano-viruses in the faces of their targets, firing gasses that cause hallucinations and madness from flowers mounted on their lapels. And when the entire world has been ’converted to happiness’, the survivors are herded into the tent-ships, and only exit as corpses or new soldiers of the Clown Emperor. Fear their coming, and run as fast and as far as you can.

Spreadin' the crazy

2009-01-31T14:04:00.001-05:00

I don't know why, but sometimes, when the phone rings, I have the urge to pick up the receiver and scream incoherently into it for ten or twenty seconds. Then maybe make a gurgling noise, and hang up.

Comedy Bit

2009-01-21T23:38:00.001-05:00

There's this thing guys do, when they're bored and feeling kind of stupid. You can see videos of this particular kind of dude all over youtube. Guys who who were doing nothing one day, hanging out with friends, who suddenly think, "Hey, you know what would be cool?"

And whatever they come up with is just incredibly stupid. "Hey, film me riding this skateboard off of this roof onto the roof of my car!" "Dude, you drive down the street in yer Hyundai at like 30 miles an hour, and I'll run towards you in the opposite direction, and see if I can jump over the car!" "Me and Jim, we'll get on his motorcycle, and he'll come driving down the street to where you're parked on your bike, and at the last second, he'll do a stoppie, you know, one of those things where he brakes so hard the whole bike comes up and balances on the front tire, and I'll leap from the back of his bike to the back of yours, and then you'll take off really fast with me on the back. It'll be like the pony express!"

Now, the only reasonable response to a request like this is, "No! Fuck, no!" "But, it'll be cool man!" "No, Cletus, it'll be cool if it works out just right. And given the case of beer we've been working on since 10am, my bet is that your little Rapid Motorcycle Passenger Pony Express Transfer is gonna go horribly, horribly wrong, and we'll spend the evening in the hospital, in pain, instead of finishing this beer. Which is what God wants us to do."

And then you get the ultimate guy insult, "What are you, a wuss?" You know what, I'm just gonna go ahead and cop to that. I am a Wuss! Now don't get me wrong, you need something moved, I'm there. I can lift heavy shit, no problem. I've been in the Army, I went to Iraq; I've been out with friends and shit started and I took part; That I get. Sometimes, shit happens and you have to throw down, and damn the broken bones. I get that! We're at a bar, your girl gets fucked with by some drunk asshole who's got pals with him, I'll be throwing punches right next to you.

But. But! If I look at an idea you have, ESPECIALLY if it comes up after I've been drinking, and all I can think is, "Well, that don't make no fuckin' sense..." I'm out. If my semi-inebriated self looks at your plan of action, and finds it wanting for logic, I'm out. That's it. Call me a wuss all day, that is fine. You do your thing, and I'll watch from a safe distance, ready with a phone, so that when the inevitable happens, and the unforgiving pavement separates your jaw from the rest of your head, I can call 911 so the can come out an spatula up your various parts and sew ya back back together. And I won't laugh, in front of ya, and I'll come by the hospital and agree with everyone else that you were Just THAT close to making it work, but now way in hell will I be the guy in the bed next to you. I've been badly hurt before, enough that I have no interest in experiencing it again unless absolutely necessary. Internet fame is fleeting, and pain take FOR EVER!

One thing we could do, though, is start using all this 'cool' stuff as punishment. Instead of incarcerating most criminals, we should just make them do crazy stunts. "James Weston McNeil, You have been found guilty of drunk driving, resisting arrest, and ramming another vehicle, causing the death of a nineteen year old girl. You are sentenced to ride this dirt bike down this ram and attempt to leap it over these fifteen school buses." " What if I crash?" Well, then you're going to be hurt quite badly, Mr. McNeil." "What if I don't get on the bike?" "Well, if you don't get on the bike, we let Big Earl and Moose back there go nuts on ya with their night sticks and tasers, and when you've been beaten enough to stop arguing, we strap you on your bike, and send you down the ramp. So, you can get on the bike right now, or you can get on the bike with a couple of broken ribs and a shattered kneecap. But one way or another, Mr. McNeil, you ARE getting on the bike."

"Tom Williams, you have been found guilty of defrauding old people to the tune of 17 million dollars, and you will now involuntarily skydive off the top of the Sears Tower, here in lovely downtown Chicago." "Wait, I don't wanna..." "Throw 'im off boys." "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......" "Lets go to Ron in the observation booth!" "Thanks, Marv. Williams has cleared the 90th floor, he's past the 80th, he has not pulled the ripcord on his 'chute yet. This guy only got ten minutes to learn how to work a parachute, I think he's forgotten which is the ripcord... He's down to the 30th floor, the 20th, and he pulls the cord! Just a little too late, though, parachute didn't have time to open fully, he hit the ground pretty hard....Annnnnnnd, the doc on the ground has pronounced him dead. Well, a bad day for Tom Williams, convicted of fraud, but a good day for any of you viewers out there who guessed Williams was going to land in the red square, each one of you has won a case of Pepsi!"

You call it cruel and unusual, I call it Justice!

A cunning plan

2009-01-17T18:16:00.001-05:00

I'm going to buy a Mini Cooper, and tell everyone I'm compensating for something.

Come the Apocalypse...

2009-01-16T17:42:00.002-05:00

If it ever comes to pass that man's o'erweening ambition brings him low, and I find myself leading a new generation of children through the shattered remnants of our once great civilization, I think I'll start spicing up human history. Our shared history is, in many ways, a rather extensive collection of stories about how horrible we've been to one another. I wouldn't want the new generation coming in to lose sight of what man can do to man, but I think the outset of a whole new era in human history might benefit from the inclusion of a little whimsy.

When I gather the young'uns about the fire after a long day of exploring ruins for useful objects and fighting off mutants and zombies, I think I'll make world history a little more... colorful than the history that we're taught today. I'll tell stories about how half-man/half-bovine 'cowboys' won the west, in a generations-long game of cards. I'll talk about how the world was revolutionized by the advent of the Monkey Express Postal Delivery Service, and teach them to settle internecine disputes with West Side Story-style dance offs. I'll fill their language with a mishmash of gangster lingo, Brooklynese, and hepcat style.

Why not. Living in a harsh, scarred world, in what way could it hurt to teach them that Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde struck fear into the armies of Fu Manchu by attacking dressed as giant rabbits, the most feared beasts of the old world?

Resolution

2009-01-15T21:53:00.004-05:00

It's not my normal thing, but this year, I made a new year's resolution.

I've decided to only have sex in the month of February.

And, I'm back-dating this resolution to the year 2000.

This is not because I expect to actually have sex in February. No, no, no. That way lies madness.

This is just so that I can look back at the last decade and make a reasonable claim to only having been involuntarily celibate for nine months. The rest of the time, I simply wallowed in my own purity.

Also, having not gotten laid for nine consecutive Februaries minimizes the overall total days of involuntary celibacy I have to admit to.

Quality of life, my children, CAN be directly tied to which particular delusions one chooses to embrace. Believe it.

The Wisdom of Uncle Robert

2008-12-17T19:29:00.004-05:00

A week or two before I was to head off to Basic Training at Fort Benning, I got a call from my uncle, Robert. He's my Mom's youngest brother, and travel for his job had brought him to New York City. He wanted to get together, buy me dinner, and give me some advice about what I was about to take part in.

So we went to a nice deli style restaurant, and enjoyed a companionable meal. The talk ranged over quite a number of subjects, but as we came to dessert, the topic of Basic came up.

Robert had a number of good suggestions for making my time in training as smooth as I could, but the most interesting thing came about because of a flip answer on my part.

"Look," Robert said in his deep, somewhat intimidating tones, "There are some things you never want to do..."

"Never volunteer, right? I volunteered to get in, and that used up my quota?" I piped up.

"No, not at all." He said after a moment of thought, "You just have to be smart about what you do. Use your head. For instance, at the end of our course in Basic, my platoon had to make a twenty mile march. Right before we left, they asked for volunteers for a detail, so I raised my hand and nudged my closest pal to raise his. When we got called out, he asked me if I was crazy. I reminded him that everyone else was about to walk twenty miles, and asked him what they could have us do that was worse.

"Sure enough, we loaded a truck, and drove out to the end point of the march, where we set up everything for the breakfast the guys were gonna be served when they got finished with the march. Then we sat around for a couple of hours."

Smart guy, Robert is.

A Picture

2008-12-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

I found a picture online this morning. Someone had chalked onto a paving stone, 'Real Life is Here'.

I've spent the last four hours trying to find out where the picture was taken, so I can go and see real life.

There She Is

2008-12-10T09:22:00.003-05:00

I like animation. Enjoy Studio Ghibli, loved The Incredibles, and Akira, and I've seen enough of Spike and Mikes Festival of Animation to want to check out each new one I hear about.

So I was pretty happy, a couple of days ago, when my perusal of the Intarwebs brought me to the site of a little gem called 'There She Is'. Its' the story of what happens when bunny falls in love with a cat. Not a girl from Playboy and a beatnik, but a rabbit and a feline.

The animation itself is a deceptively simple, anime style. A little on the cutesy side, but that's not a strike against it, especially as the true depth of the story unfolds. The hero, Nabi the cat, and heroine, Doki the rabbit, are drawn in a quite basic style, and it speaks to the skill of the creator that each shade of emotion is readily apparent for both of them, and the world they inhabit.

The story starts of quite simply, with Doki becoming enamored of Nabi, and follows them from their first meeting, through Doki's pursuit and Nabi's acceptance, and then begins to show how the wider world responds to the realtionship of these two disparate types. Each of the four available chapters of their story gives increasing depth to both of the protagonists and the world they share, all while eschewing any dialogue in favor of action and appropriate music.

'There She Is' is a gem of story-telling. The fourth chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the fifth is not, as I write, available, but I find myself checking the website daily to see if it has. I'd urge you to take a bit of time to watch one or two, and as none of the four currently viewable are more than six minutes long, it is more than worth the time to experience them.

There She Is
http://www.sambakza.net/amalloc/tteotta_main.htm

The Wisdom of Robert Heinlein

2008-12-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — and I had known it — and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

The Wisdom of Theodore Geisel

2008-12-06T17:11:00.001-05:00

"Don't cry because it's over,
smile because it happened."

Mugshot

2008-12-05T11:58:00.003-05:00

I've never had a mugshot taken, thank god. I've done my share of stupid and even illegal stuff, it's true, but somehow I've always managed to make it away from whatever situation came up without having forced some roly-poly cop to take a picture of me. Once, believe it or not, I actually managed to avoid it by sprinting away as fast as I could, which, for those of you who know me and my attitude towards moving faster than a slow mosey, is something of a miracle.

So I suppose that it's bad form of me to get so much enjoyment out of The Smoking Gun's weekly mugshot round-up, or this site I just discovered...http://mugshotdujour.com/

I'm really hoping there isn't anything to this Karma concept...

Wake-Up Call

2008-12-01T02:03:00.002-05:00

So, I got assigned to drive an LMTV from Camp Manhattan, right on the Euphrates, to the Combat Outpost we were setting up near Ar Ramadi. It was an easy run, but for some reason, we ended up having to stay the night. There were about four of us driving the trucks, and a Humvee with one of the sergeants in it. It was kind of a pain in the ass sleeping in the trucks, especially for a guy my size, but it was better than being back at Manhattan, where the rest of the platoon was undoubtedly being pimped out on random work assignments so Lt. Nelson could look good for the CO.

Anyway, the night went by uneventfully, and, come morning, I got woken up by Dyer, telling me that the cooks had breakfast up. I pulled my head back under the blanket. It was a toss-up which was gonna be worse, chow cooked in primitive conditions, or an MRE.

Not a minute later, a mortar landed in the middle of the Outpost. About fifteen meters away from my truck.

'Jesus Christ!', I thought. 'All right, I'm up, I'm up...'

I hope everyone had a nice Halloween

2008-11-02T19:36:00.002-05:00

It seems like a lot of people enjoyed themselves. I have one friend that wore a perfect Ming the Merciless costume.

Me, I went as 'The guy what springs out of the bushes, kicks the kids and steals their candy, then runs away'. It was great. I even got a picture of myself on the news!

Some thoughts on McCain

2008-10-27T17:48:00.001-04:00

http://pattonoswalt.com/index.cfm?page=spew&ID=90&mode=comments#post

Why I'll never have a kid...

2008-10-24T14:28:00.001-04:00

There's only room in my life for one person that looks like a pile of uncooked bread dough.

And that's ME!

#2 is the International Space Station

2008-10-23T13:04:00.002-04:00

Number 3 on the list of all time best places to fall down a flight of stairs: Hasbro's Nerf factory!

A Little Angel

2008-10-20T09:42:00.002-04:00

Most years, as Halloween started to creep up, may parents would eventually recount the story of the Little Angel.

Seems like, back in the before time, in the long, long ago, before they had decided to get around to their purpose in life, namely, having and raising me, my parents were occupied with giving away candy, one dark All Hallows Eve. And, late on the aforementioned evening, when all candy had been disbursed to smiling, costumed cherubs, a final knock was heard at the door, just before the porch light was doused.

Not wishing to be rude, my parents opened the door, and were greeted with the sight of a young girl, decked out in the finery of one of the Lord's own servants, wings and all. The wide-eyed, solemn, and be-winged urchin spoke not, but simply held out the bag she carried, already filled with the sweet swag of a profitable evening.

Both my parents were nonplussed, but didn't want to send the hopeful youngster away empty-handed, fearing that such disappointment would lead inevitably to a life of dissolution, communism, and chicken-raping. So, thinking quickly, my father made haste to our kitchen, laid hands upon a bright red apple, and, returning to the front door, dropped the fruit into the still-open bag.

The little angel looked into the bag at the gift she had received, then spoke to my father.

"You broke my cookies, you dumb shit."

I'm an American

2008-10-16T04:38:00.003-04:00

If I can't fix it, I need a bigger gun.

Heh

2008-10-14T10:14:00.000-04:00

Dark, unsettling, malevolent, surprisingly thoughtful. Truly a comic for the 21st century.

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php

I feel all warm and fuzzy now.

Where everybody knows your name.

2008-10-13T13:25:00.002-04:00

It crossed my mind that I was ordering Chinese food too often today. The proof was in this exchange:

"Hi, I'd like to make an order for delivery?"

"You the guy down the street, right? You want Mongolian Beef again?"

My Word

2008-10-10T20:08:00.000-04:00

http://eroticfalconry.com/Site/Home.html

Really?

Maybe, just maybe...

2008-09-28T02:46:00.002-04:00

I think most people have heard about how UFO's have supposedly been abducting our cows. If you haven't heard of this phenomenon, congratulations, you are being much more productive with your time than I am. To bring you up to speed, aliens have been helping themselves to our large dairy creatures for quite some time. Unbelievable? The truth always is, my friend.

But what if these Space Brothers aren't just running away with free chuck steak? What if, open your mind real wide, and just ask yourself, what if the little gray dudes are trying to help? What if there's a war beyond the stars, with the Human-Gray Alliance opposed by the evil Bovine Imperium? Suppose this war came to our little planet ages ago, and was fought to a standstill? In the end, the Gray's died off and the cows lost their intelligence?

But every once in a while, a genius among cows is born. One which possesses at least a little of the psychic powers that allowed its stellar cow brothers to subjugate an entire galaxy under their mind-controlling hooves. And the Gray midgets who keep watch over us until we're ready to rejoin the Alliance sweep down, and remove this threat from our midst.

Make me feel better about liking steak, y'know?

International Relations

2008-09-23T19:04:00.003-04:00

I think, during my year in Iraq, I saw the moment that Iraqi/American relations hit their peak when I saw a small kid approach the barbed wire fence my platoon was working on and say to Sgt. Cota, "Hey! Hey, you give me water, I let you freaky-freak my sister!"

The "You Die" Line

2008-09-05T09:21:00.002-04:00

There are any number of things I liked about working for the circus, but I've never told anyone about the little spark of joy I always felt when the "You Die" Line was mentioned.

The circus isn't a safe place, at all, at all. There are many possible ways to hurt yourself when putting up or taking down a circus tent, any number of things to get cut by or fall off of, and that doesn't even take into account the deranged quality of your co-workers. Or the elephants.

But most of the accidents that could happen would be rather mundane, really. Tripping over all the things that would be laying around, taking a wrong step and twisting an ankle, having a finger pinched by something heavy and suchlike. But being inside the "You Die" Line when an accident occurred meant that, you would, indeed, die, and that your death would go down in circus legend.

The Line only existed for about 20 minutes during the course of loading in or out. This would be during the course of raising or lowering the multi-ton metal masts that supported both the tent canvas and the light array. Nothing else happened while this was going on, as only about four guys were really involved in the process, but none of the rest of us could do our things until the masts were set. 98% of the crew would just be watching and waiting, and, like me, hoping just a little that the worst would happen. It would have been a hell of a thing to see.

The "You Die" Line was just that, the demarcation circle at which, should you be within it's boundaries when the wheels came off, you would be reduced to a sack of bloody pulp and bone splinters. Short of being on the grenade range during basic training, it was as close as I'd ever come to being near such singular possible mayhem.

I couldn't tell you why, but the very idea of the "You Die" Line Makes me smile, just a little, every time I think of it.

Basic Graduation

2008-09-03T05:06:00.001-04:00

I didn’t have to wear the dress uniform for my graduation from Basic Training, which I am quite thankful for. My company, Alpha 2/58, were inducted into the Infantry on a hot day in April, 2004, and most of the company was forced to stand at attention on the parade ground while the ceremony took place, sweating under the unforgiving sun while dressed in dark green.

I sweated, too. But I and the rest of the Infantry Squad were dressed in camouflage BDU’s, wearing pseudo-ghillie suits and camo face paint, and carrying weapons. We had a full squad, with two SAW gunners, two Grenadiers, two Riflemen carrying anti-tank weapons, and a squad leader. We spent all day running around in full battle gear, and it was glorious.

None of us got to see the start of the demonstration we were putting on, because the nine of us were stuffed into the back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, waiting and perspiring. We knew there was going to be loud music, and that some smoke grenades were going to be fired off, after which the Bradley would be raced across the open graduation lot. When it skidded to a stop, the rear deck would drop and we would exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. I’m sure a skilled Mechanized Squad soldier would have found our performance laughable, but it wowed the crowd when we hit the ground running. I had been stuffed into the most forward corner of the squad area, farthest from the door, and was the last man out. I managed to make it through the various bits of metal that all seemed to be at shin-damaging height, and kept myself from doing a face-plant on the lowered deck, although just barely. Down the deck, sprint a short distance to the grassy area and to the end of the line of my squad mates, hit the ground with weapon pointed towards the grandstand filled with our assorted families and well-wishers, and fired off my twenty rounds as fast as I could. Not to worry, they were all blanks.

The up, onto our feet, weapons at the ready, scanning back and forth while walking forward at the ready, as if we were on patrol. There was a voice on the loudspeaker, but the only words any of us heard were, “Infantry Squad!”, which was our cue to stop patrolling and run full tilt to the muster line, all the while sounding a might roar.

Hit the muster line and fall back into patrol stance, scanning back and forth through our weapon’s sights, until we received the order to come to attention at port arms.

Each member of the Squad was introduced, by their position, and each stepped forward and held out the weapon they carried as the loudspeaker reeled of the litany of duties and armaments each one was tasked with. I hear “Rifleman”, and step forward, holding out my M-16 rifle when it is announced, then doing an about-face to give the crowd a view of the anti-tank weapon I have strapped to my back. Then, again on cue, I step forward, back onto the muster line, and execute another about-face so that I’m in line with the rest of the Squad.

Another command comes, and the Squad performs a bayonet strike, and draws back up into the patrol stance again. The Bradley roars in and drops the back deck again, and we back towards the vehicle in the combat stance. Except for the Squad Leader, Sgt. Pickett, I’m the last man in. The Bradley normally carries six fully armed soldiers, and were stuffing nine in, so when my turn comes, I barrel up the ramp at full speed, hitting the press of bodies hard to make room for the Sergeant and myself in the small area. The Sergeant is right on my heels, and the groans caused by my impact double as the deck closes, forcing the already cramped Squad to squeeze even closer together. I hear various imprecations heaped upon my person, and laugh even harder.

My family was there that day, all of them, along with some very beloved friends. But it was being in the Infantry Squad that took my graduation from being special to being spectacular.

I need some input on this...

2008-08-05T18:05:00.001-04:00

Do you think it would improve and/or clarify the Bible if, after every description of a miracle, you added the phrase, "Do I need to mention we were really drunk?"

Just another day in Basic

2008-07-10T14:26:00.005-04:00

Basic Training is hard. That's a cliche, I know, but it's a cliche for a reason, because it's nothing but the unvarnished truth. The Drills do all kinds of things to you, and order you to do other things you're not sure that you are capable of. It's part of the process of teaching a recruit to be tough enough to make a decent soldier, teaching a recruit the things that very well might keep him alive in dangerous places, during evil times. I'd do all of it again, if I had to. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd stick it out, and do my best, without experiencing much dread.

Except for the niggling thought that I'd once again have to go through the Gas Chamber.

It's called the Gas Chamber for the very simple reason that it's the room in which you and your fellow recruits are exposed to CS Gas, a generally non-lethal riot control agent. This is done for two reasons, near as I can figure: One, to show the recruits that the Protective Mask they are issued will indeed protect them from gas attacks, and Two, to show the recruit what happens when you're not protected.

The first part is easy. The Drills call out the warning that a gas attack has commenced, and the recruits struggle to don the disturbingly S+M style mask in the nine seconds we've been told we might have before feeling the effects of the gas. Then your platoon is marched into a small, one room, airtight building, where two of the Drill's have fired up some of the actual gas, and let it build to a nice, painful level. You spend a few moments just breathing through the mask, noticing a strange tang to the air, but nothing particularly bad. Then you're told to pull the mask away from your face, breaking the seal to your skin and letting just a bit of the gas in.

You know you're in trouble from the first whiff. By the time you're told to completely remove your mask, you already know that you really, really don't want to. But you do, because you know that if you refuse, the mask will still come off, probably at the hands of the Drills, and nobody wants to be that guy.

That first whiff was bad, but getting it full on is like experiencing Satan's Halitosis. The gas crawls into your eyes, up your nose, and down your throat. It's like inhaling razors into your lungs and Tabasco into your nose while pouring sand into your eyes. Your eyes pour out tears and clamp shut, which doesn't help at all, your nose begins to run, and you cough hard enough that you think some lung might come out.

It's all you can do to stand there, trying to breathe and not breathe at the same time, waiting out the time until the Drill's open the doors and let you stumble, red eyed and hacking, into the clean air outside. I honestly don't know how long we were required to wait, because all I could think was 'Oh god, this shit is gonna kill me." Later, one of the other guys in the platoon told me that from what he could see, I handled the exposure pretty well, but at the time, it was all I could do not to break for the door, and to hell with what the Drills would say. I managed to hold out, though. Just barely, but I did it.

Johnson broke, though. He was headed for the door pretty quick after the mask's were removed, and when one of the Drills grabbed Johnson by the back of the Load-Bearing Vest he was wearing, Johnson hit the snaps on that thing and motored right out the door, leaving the Drill with an empty vest clutched in his hand.

Somewhere between a minute and a century later, the doors were opened, although the only way you could tell was by the fact that a brighter light was now swimming through your tears. Stumbling, tears pouring and snot running, you get into the light and are pushed away from the door, to walk up and down a dirt road. You walk until the hacking cough subsides, and your eyes dry, and there's no more snot to wipe away. You spend the rest of the day slowly getting your sense of smell back, and trading quips about how bad it was with the other recruits.

And, if your like me and my platoon-mates, and happen to be the duty platoon that week, you have to go back into that god damn room at the end of the day and hose it off, to eliminate as much of the residual gas as possible.

Return to Dreamtime

2008-07-06T13:49:00.004-04:00

I took my last hit of weed about seven months ago, now. It's had a couple of benefits, including less money wasted and a slightly improved ability to get things done, but the most enjoyable has been a return of regular dreaming to my sleep cycle.

I don't think weed keeps you from dreaming, but it does keep you, or at least keep me, from remembering them in the morning, and being, well, I suppose 'fully engaged' with the dreams would be the best way to describe it. I might have only fragmentary memories of the dreams, but I do know I was involved in what can only be called 'weird shit' while I was asleep.

I never really missed having fully experienced dreams, while I was using. But now that Morpheus' Technicolor Wonderland is again open to me almost every night, it's turned into a pretty good reason to not smoke again.

Dreams are just fun. Fun while they're happening, fun the next morning, when you go into the whole 'what the hell was that about' part of the experience, fun to recount to others, just like any other god-you-won't-believe-what-happened-to-me experience. Fun all around.

Why, last night, was I on the roof of a skyscraper that was being attacked by, well, something large? Why, after dropping a cartoonish dynamite bomb down it's throat, and having the subsequent explosion cause the building we were on to lean against it's neighbor, did I stop my headlong flight down the second building's stairs to look in on a small comic shop, where I met a short-haired blond girl? A girl who was so enchanted by my calling her cute, that she left a rambling, and very cute, message on my cellphone. Why, on the subsequent date that instantly began, did we see Michael J. Fox, and a guy who was in Blade 3?

Who knows? Hell, who cares? Not me. I just enjoyed myself.

Now I'm gonna go take a nap.

One good way to find out the limits of your lung capacity

2008-06-23T19:39:00.001-04:00

Try sprinting as far as you can while singing 'The Hills are Alive', from the Sound Of Music, as loud as you can. It's a humbling experience.

Wisdom for the Ages

2008-06-18T13:02:00.004-04:00

'Beware thy hindquarters from gunblasting.' - Benjamin Franklin

Band names

2008-06-06T15:27:00.002-04:00

The Little Engine that Could Have Molested You
Read Along with Art Garfunkel
Abe Lincoln Died for Your Sins
Spider-Man Died for Your Sins
Avenging Geek-Boy
Multiple Entendre
Slow Boat to Mundo Fine
The All-Male Amazons
Henry Kissenger Dance Explosion
The Dumb Ones
Donner Party BBQ
B Funky B Cool
2 Funky 2 Cool
2 Funky B Cool
B Funky 2 Cool
Dirty Sanchez and the Rusty Trombones
Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his Fun-Loving Fascists
Scum Monkey
Scumbitch Troll
Angry Sock Puppets of the World, Unite!
We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Minds
Dirt Nap
Deep Space Mime
Kicked by an Angel
Dingoes Ate my Grandma
Monkey Wrench of the Gods
The Podiatrists
Electric Pagoda
Steam Punk
Lampshade Aura
My Parents Never Liked Me
Probed by an Alien
Fantastic Lemon
Psalm 420
St. Thomas, Swimming Instructor
Book of Tobit
The Rock, The Chain, The Lightning
The Amazing Dr. Thing and his Thang
Shopping Cart of Dooooom!
Rhymes w/Orange
Baby-Punching Daddies

Any other suggestions?

Story while polishing boots

2008-06-02T19:56:00.003-04:00

Many a year ago, before the crazy house, or the Army, or the circus, or New York, I bought me a pair of combat boots. Why? Who can say? In those bygone times, the salad days if you will, I was prone to such flights of fancy. A young man does these things.

One evening shortly afterwards, I made my way some miles to the home of my parents, to get free food. And enjoy their company. Of course. Anyway, I brought my new boots along, and asked my sainted father if he would show me the proper way to apply a shine to such a style of footlery. My father, bless his fine heart, was sanguine that his long-gone expertise as a young Cockney bootblack would return to him anon, and that said expertise could be imparted to his youngest scion, namely, me.

And so pere et fils laid hands upon the necessary rags and polish, and commenced to apply much elbow grease to the pristine leather, in hopes of achieving a sheen in which one could confidently comb one's coif, or trim one's nose-hair, with supreme confidence. As our labors were undertaken, my father was moved to reminisce about some of the more interesting aspects of his long-gone time in the Basic Training which our esteemed Armed Forces require of all young men engaged to become soldiers.

So a story emerged, detailing how each callow recruit was outfitted with two sets of combat boots; one set to be worn, and the other to repose in glistening perfection beneath the bunk of each citizen-soldier, with one pair alternating with the other in a day of use and a day of rest.

My father detailed, also, how some of the gentlemen in question sought to avoid the daily necessity of removing the marks of use from the hardy leather in which they had been shod, by the simple expedient of keeping one pair of boots in constant use while merely dusting the finely polished specimens of their footwear each morning. By doing so, each such individual managed to husband a little more of their never-copious free time.

The tale continued, however, with the description of the day in which each young man was ordered to fall in for formation with both pairs of boots, one to be worn, while the other was to hang about the neck of each individual. All of the smart young men who had kept one finely shined pair of boots untouched by the rigors of time in the field naturally wore this pair of boots around their necks, while having the besmirched pair, in which they had labored for weeks and were well broken-in, on their feet. So, there was some consternation expressed in the ranks, when the fine sergeants in charge of these proto-soldiers ordered the men to take off the boots on their feet, and replace them with the pair which hung from their necks. Many of the young men were now wearing their well-shined boots for the first time, causing some slight groans of worry.

Following the twenty-mile hike which followed, the groans were more than slight. Boots made for hard working soldiers are notoriously punishing on one's feet when they are first being worn, and walking long distances in such a pair before they are well broken-in is, as you might guess, not recommended.

And so my father and I shared a gentle laugh at the folly of these men, recalled many years later in the soft light of my parents kitchen. This story led me to ask my esteemed pater if he had been caught in such folly.

Poppo related to me how he had been apprised of such a possibility, amongst other possible traps laid for the nascent soldier, by his own father, a career military man himself, who had risen to the rank of Lt. Colonel in his time. My father also received a weekly letter from his own patriarch, with name and rank of my grandfather listed in clear, large writing upon it; as such, it was understood, though never stated, that the command structure under which my father labored knew that there was someone of rank, somewhere at large in the Army, who had a very clear interest in the well-being of then-Private Lee.

Truly, I am heir to a noble lineage.

Me and my Moobs

2008-05-28T18:35:00.002-04:00

ABC recently announced that they will be starting to film a new round of their venerable 'After-School Special' series, and I'm getting ready by prepping a script I've been working on for the last few years. It's called 'Me and my Moobs'.

The story follows a young man named Clarence, unpopular at school because he's overweight. One day, after being taunted by the 'cool' kids, he hears two voices telling him to cheer up. To his surprise, Clarence finds that his man-boobs, or 'moobs' as the kids to day call them, have begun speaking to him! Calling themselves 'Lefty', and 'Righty', the vociferous and amusing moobs lead Clarence on a journey of self-discovery and burgeoning self-confidence, showing him that even the 'cool' kids aren't sure of themselves. The moobs help Clarence by prompting him in tough situations, using voices only he can hear.

There are times when Clarence fears for his sanity.

The wackiness culminates at the school dance, which Clarence is attending with Thelma, the prettiest girl at school. But Clarence suddenly discovers that he's on his own, as his increased confidence has kept him from overeating, meaning that 'Righty' and 'Lefty' have become too small to be helpful. Clarence manages to make it through, and ends up telling Thelma about how him moobs had helped him over the last few weeks, and how he'd been scared without them, but now knew he could make it on his own. Thelma is proud of Clarence, but tells him that, secretly, she'd always thought he was cute as a big guy.

This leads Clarence to ask, "Wanna go get some cheesecake?", after which he and Thelma head to a diner while the credits roll.

God, I can almost taste the Emmy!

"Demons shall rend your flesh"

2008-05-16T19:33:00.001-04:00

Just to round out the week in style:

http://weirdfortunecookies.com/

Enjoy!

I give up. Let's just go ahead and call this 'Random Link Week', shall we?

2008-05-15T14:00:00.003-04:00

Say, do you want to take over the world? Have the leaders of the free world grovelling at your feet? Show that 'super-agent', the one that looks like the guy who used to beat you up in high-school, exactly who's boss now?

Sure, we all do.

But have you considered the actual logistics of it all. In our daydreams, it's all hunky-dory, a piece of cake; after all, your Magma Detonator is almost finished, out there in the garage, and once it is, who's to stop you?

C'mon, use your head! World domination is just about the threat of massive destruction if your petty whims aren't catered too, it's also about style! You can't call the President and demand huge sums of money while wearing a bathrobe and eating Fruit-Loops! Nobody's going to take a super-villain based in suburban Portland seriously, no matter how powerful his Earthquake Machine might be! You need to show them you mean business! You gotta have a lair, henchmen in matching outfits that you can randomly murder to make a point, a slinky assistant, robots, lasers, all kinds of stuff that says, "Kneel before Zod!" in no uncertain terms!

But where can you get all of these things? I'm glad you asked! VillainSource.com is here to help!

Lairs, traps, henchperson gear, small, medium, and heavy arms, super weapons and powers, doomsday devices, VillainSource.com has it all! Whatever you need, provided in one convenient website, and designed and built by such respected names as Scaramanga and No S.A., Evil on a Budget Inc., the Arctic Nazi Consortium, Syko-Systems Inc., and The Sharper Image. Anything and everything you need, all with convenient and obvious self-destruct mechanisms.

VillainSource.com, the successor site to VillainSupply.com, is open and ready for business. Run by the always helpful Preserved Brain of Josef Mengele, these fine homicidal maniacs are ready to help you, yes, you, TAKE OVER THE WORLD! BWAH-hahahahahahahahah.....

http://villainsource.com/ -Don't be a wuss!

This thing is killin' me...

2008-05-14T19:38:00.002-04:00

I started this entry last month, and just finished it today, and the blog insists on publishing it on the day I did the first draft... So I gotta link to it... Gonna go lay down now...

http://carterlee.blogspot.com/2008/04/intelligent-design.html

Click the link!

2008-05-13T20:21:00.001-04:00

Hands down, one of the greatest documents ever created by the hand of man.

http://www.nelsonrocks.org/disclaimer.html?Active=1

I can rap!

2008-05-11T17:23:00.002-04:00

It ain't about the bitches and the ho's
but those who chose
to oppose
the same old status quo
to strike a blow
for the average joe
to give hope
to the average mope
to give scope
to the average dope
to give 'em the key
to something transcendent
put a song in their heart
that can't be ended
lift up their soul
and help 'em to mend it
for you see
that's the key
to all artistry
you can say I'm wrong
but that's just me...

Dad and the Dome

2008-05-08T15:32:00.003-04:00

People really can surprise you, especially those you think you know best. I just recently found out a good friend of mine, an old circus pal, is a Republican. I don't hold it against her, not at all, these things do happen, however inexplicable they may be.

Take my father, for instance. One of the smartest cats I know, always has a tidbit of information I've never heard before, still thinking clearly and cogently about deep things even into his 70's. When I was a young un', and not yet hipped to my Dad's wily ways, he managed to put a sense of wonder into my brother and me that still lingers, just by walking about 60-70 feet.

The family was on a visit to Washington, DC, where Dad had spent a good few years growing up and working his first jobs, most notably at the Pentagon (the world's largest office building). So the visit was a return to old haunt for him, and he showed my mother, my brother Eric, and me not only all of the expected sights, but a number of little things that most people would pass by all unaware.

The cool trick came when we visited the capitol dome. This was back when the hoi-polloi were allowed to simply wander through the building at will. We looked at the paintings, the statues, the frescoes, and the amazing frieze that runs around the rotunda, and enjoyed the odd open feeling that comes from being inside such a huge covered space uncluttered by supports and pillars. After a bit, Dad pulled Eric and I over to a painting, god knows which one.

"I want you guys to look at this picture," he said, "Because there's something wrong with it, and I want to see if you can spot it."

So Eric and I scrutinized the painting, searching it closely, trying to divine what the error might be. After a minute or two of this, Dad spoke up.

"Don't see it, huh? Well, that's all right turn around and look at this."

We turned towards Dad's voice, which had seemed to come from right behind us. But, lo and behold, he was clear across the rotunda. Our faces, all covered in surprise, must have been clear even at the distance he stood from us.

"What's wrong?" Dad spoke innocently, and still it seemed like his voice came from someone within arms reach, not a good stones throw away.

He explained it to us, after he got done enjoying our bewildered expressions. The huge dome acted as an acoustic reflector, carrying sound, clear and unmuted, from one end of the dome to another, as long as you were in the right spots. There are plaques on the floor, showing where some of the famous early legislators had had their desks, and Dad showed us where one crafty politico had his workspace situated so that it stood in the sweet spot to listen in on the plotting of a rival group that gathered on the other side of the dome.

That is still one of the neatest things I've ever seen. Thanks, Dad.

Shame

2008-05-02T17:51:00.002-04:00

The way my feelings of shame cling to me never fails to surprise me. Like barnacles on a ship, they seem to crust onto me, constantly slowing me down and inhibiting my attempts to move.

Twenty-three years ago, in middle school, for about a week, I'd sneak over to where the littler kids left their lunches in the hall while they were on the playground, and I'd steal candy from their lunch bags. Twenty-three years, and it still comes up with the rest of the tornado of shameful moments from my life, whenever part of my mind feels like the rest needs a good ass-kicking. One voice among many, saying "Of course you're worthless, you have been since you stole candy from the other kids."

And since this voice was in my own head, it hasn't been until recently that I've thought to doubt what it says. In a way it's always been right. Stealing from the other kids was a thing to be ashamed of. But why does it still have power over me, after so long?

Steam

2008-05-01T17:48:00.002-04:00

At the Circus, when it's time for the tent to come down, the tent comes down. I can only remember two or three times in the year or more I travelled with the show that weather did more than slow down the work. January's in New York could get cold enough that work might stop for a couple of hours, or a day, and when we were setting up in Boston near the Atlantic, the wind was strong enough that, when the tent was unrolled and then lowered to have the seams joined, it would lift the tent fast, and a couple of people got thrown around pretty good.

But mostly, things like rain and wind and cold just slowed the process down, and not much at that. You'd look around on a cold night, everybody running around in t-shirts, and realize why everybody was working so hard: if you slowed down, you were gonna freeze to death. As long as you were working hard enough, you were warm enough.

The coolest times, though, were when the air was just cool enough, and you were just warm enough, that steam would start to rise. You'd see something up at the top of your field of vision, and flick your eyes up, in case it was something falling, and you'd just catch sight of it. Then you'd take a moment and look around, and see that everyone, while scurrying around doing the thousand and one jobs that taking down a circus tent involves, had a halo around their heads, rising from the top of their skulls. Steam would be rising, just a couple of inches above sweat-soaked hair, then vanishing. On everyone.

Then you'd put your head down and get back to work, because your sweat would start getting cold, and you didn't want to freeze to death.

Intelligent Design

2008-04-27T18:20:00.004-04:00

There's a phenomenon that occurs when less technologically advanced cultures are forced to deal with higher technology cultures. The best known cases have occurred in the southwest Pacific area following World War 2, with the sudden appearance of English, French, Russian, German, Australian, Japanese, and American material goods as part of the war efforts of the various counties, among the Melanesian and Micronesian islanders. Having little or no understanding of western-style mass production, or the engineering principles that allow metal planes to fly and metal ships to float, the locals often adopted the belief that the cargo they saw arriving by ship and plane was intended for them, and was taken, by mistake or through malice, by the armies that were passing through when the cargo appeared.

They locals will form something known as a 'cargo cult'. The cult will usually involve a syncretic union between whatever god the foreigners worshiped and the local chief god, and have the cultists attempting to use the methods they observed the foreigners using for calling the cargo to them. To that end, the locals will set up mock airstrips that mimic the ones built by the engineering companies, mock radios made from local materials, and the staging of Armed Forces-style drills and marches. If these rituals are observed assiduously enough, surely the gods and ancestors of the locals would re-route the cargo back to them.

Richard Feynman used the term 'Cargo Cult science' in a commencement address at Caltech in 1974, in reference to work that seemed sound but that lacked "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty". One of the first things a scientist must do is avoid fooling themselves, Feynman said.

"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."

And so we come to Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design appears to be, at it's core, an attempt to redefine science itself to allow a theistic, or god centered, explanation for the presence of life on our world. And while Intelligent Design has been carefully crafted to appear to meet the standards of the scientific method and rational thought, all of the careful verbiage exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: as an attempt to get people to ignore the fact that it is based on the untestable thesis that a deity consciously put together all life according to a plan.

The key there is 'untestable thesis'. If an idea cannot be tested, and if that test cannot be repeated by others working in similar conditions, it is not, and cannot, be science. But the proponents of Intelligent Design, like the Cargo cultists of the south Pacific, truly believe that if they follow the forms and recite the words, this small fact can be ignored. It doesn't matter that there are no planes coming with cargo, and it doesn't matter if your thesis cannot be tested. What matters is that you believe, fervently, without question, because if you do, one day you will be rewarded with cargo. The cargo might be manufactured goods, it might be acceptance by the scientific community, but it will come as surely as the sun rises.

This is all pointless, of course. Belief and faith might be able to change the hearts of men, but they cannot alter the physical laws under which we live. That the cult of Intelligent Design believe their theory, and don't believe in the Theory of Evolution, matters not at all. But these are people of faith, and have been told all their lives that faith can move mountains. And they are all the more misguided because they are not entirely wrong. It does take a lot of faith to move a hunk of rock the size of a mountain, but it also takes a huge amount of hard knowledge and skill, working with forces that can't be appeased or bargained with, but must be dealt with as they are. Faith alone doesn't do the job.

The most troublesome thing, too me, is that there is no inherent divide between the theistic and scientific approach to the development of life. It's true, the idea of a supreme being creating the universe we know can't be tested, but there is no particular reason a person cannot have both a faith in such a being's existence and an acceptance of the truth we have discovered for ourselves. To my mind, nothing shows the truly incredible nature of the supreme being more than the wonders we have observed in a reality that stretches from the tiniest particle to the entirety of the universe, and from today back into the incomprehensible depths of the past. What an amazing being this must be, to have made such a place!

It's true, you can't reconcile the story of Genesis with the theory of Evolution, and this seems to be the great sticking point for most serious Christians. It's not an attitude I can understand, myself, as it paints a picture of God as being rather small minded, and a bit petty. You risk his wrath if you take the stories in this one particular book as anything other than the literal truth.

And so the debate, which is not about the primacy of man of God, but about the truth of one story, and not a particularly original one at that, rages on. One side is forced into atheism and agnosticism, and the other into zealotry and hatred.

And the cargo cult of Intelligent Design stumbles on, making us all smaller with its Calvinist insistence that the man who thinks for himself rises too high, and usurps God's prerogatives.

Such a sad thing.

Mom Story #3: She's quick, I tell ya...

2008-04-25T20:07:00.002-04:00

A good number of years ago, when my family was living in the wilds of Massachusetts, it was decided by the powers that be, otherwise known as my mother, that simplification was the order of the day. And so we embarked upon that grand suburban tradition, the garage sale.

A grand success it was, too. Near the end of the day, as my father haggled with another of the waning stream of customers, Mom and I enjoyed a brief respite from our day of mercantile endeavors. As was sat talking of this and that, a question occurred to me.

"Mom," I said, innocently, "What are you and Dad gonna do, once I leave and it's just the two of you?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Walk around naked."

She's a cool lady, no doubt.

The horror... the horror...

2008-04-24T19:46:00.007-04:00

I don't remember when it first began.

I don't remember the first time I caught sight of a painted grin in the midst of a crowd. The first time I noticed that the crowd at a ball game had a few too many fright wigs dotted amongst the spectators, or spotted a polka-dotted shirt worn with a business suit. I remember thinking it odd, though, that baggy pants would become so popular with so many different social groups. Even when I saw three of them in the space of less than an hour, each with sad face and damned eyes not hidden, but accentuated, by their pancake makeup, their weary hands twisting tubes of air into ghastly shapes to be handed listlessly to random passersby, each of whom found themselves caught suddenly in a bitter depression; even then, I didn't realize the truth.

Once it became obvious, it was much too late, of course. Once those of us still unaffected began to mutter about the changes (Models walking the runway in floppy shoes; The President appearing at a press conference with two bright red circles on her cheeks, a bent top hat, and one tooth blacked out), the battle was already lost, and they had taken over.

The streets were filled with dour, dead-eyed harlequins, knocking one another over with ladders, spraying seltzer into each other's pants, and landing their pratfalls with a thud that reminded one of a dead body falling to the floor. The gutters were filled with the detritus of pies flung into faces, and confetti from buckets that should have been filled with water.

The soul of our civilization gasped and choked under the unholy assault. From our hiding places, those few that remained could hear the constant, soul-crushing call of the never-ending calliope, each note just off enough to kill sleep and work itself into a tired brain, until finally, the end came. Time and again, the mind of one of us would finally crumble under the assault, and they would change. Skin would whiten, lips would redden, shoes and pants would enlarge, and finally, some flimsy pretext would cause them to fall backwards, landing with feet raised and legs splayed. I swear you could hear the soul of the person crack, and when they arose, they would follow the sound of the organ, and take their place in the carnival of the damned that our world had become.

Some worlds end in fire. Some end in ice. Our world met it's end in the cruelest way imaginable. Our world ended in...

The Clownocalypse.

Male Intuition

2008-04-16T17:19:00.002-04:00

I heard a girl once ask why guys didn't have their own version of female intuition. Well, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. It's hard to recall, as there was a lot of alcohol involved. What the hell, for the sake of this piece, I'll claim someone said it to me, once upon a blue moon.

Ahywho.

Thing is, guys do have their own kind of intuition. Actually, it's like counter-intuition. Guys have a little voice inside them that constantly urges them to do very, very stupid things.

It's the voice a guy hears when he decides it might be fun to wrestle an alligator, just for the hell of it. And because his friends are calling him a pussy. And he's been drinking.

It's the voice a guy hears that tells him that if he gets on a skateboard, builds up some speed, rides this curving structure up until he runs out of wall, and then tries some kind weird acrobatic move, after which he will theoretically be able to land safely, it would be 'cool'. Or, worse still, 'hardcore'.

In case you didn't know, the word 'hardcore', when used by, well, any male, is synonymous with the word 'dangerous'. And the words 'intensely stupid'. It's a way of letting other know that they really should watch whatever this muttonhead is trying to do, as it will likely kill him, and will definitely make a funny story for others.

This is the same little voice that convinces guys that every girl they meet wants them. Nuns, a pal's mom, angry butch lesbians, it doesn't matter. The voice says, 'They need you, you, to straighten them out. Don't deny them your essence. It would be cruel.

This is the voice that whispers, 'If she were awake, she'd say yes. You're fine. Go ahead.'

Believe it or not, male intuition makes most men even stupider than they are normally. Like some kind of genetic herd-thinning instinct, a way to improve the breed as a whole.

And produce really funny YouTube videos. I could watch those all day.

All day, I tells ya.

Mom Story #2: Uh, my bad...

2008-04-15T18:41:00.002-04:00

So, I was travelling with the circus. This was back around the turn of the century, of course. Out on the road, footloose and fancy-free, hanging with the clowns and the elephants and the rest of the weirdos that make up a circus. Just rolling form town to town, ingesting various substances, drinking at bars, and engaging in the daily Russian roulette that was eating in the chow trailer. It was glorious.

Anyway, one day, an off day when we didn't have the show going, it occurred to be that I should probably call my parents, just to check in and see how they were doing.

"It's about time!" My mother greeted my call with less enthusiasm than I'd expected.

"Geez," I said, a bit hurt, "it hasn't been that long."

"FOUR MONTHS!", came the rather loud reply.

Really? Dammit.....

Just a thought

2008-04-12T12:12:00.003-04:00

Life sometimes overwhelms me.

There are so many nuances to living in our world as a responsible person. So many things one should know so that it's possible to go to sleep at night with the thought that you've at least tried your best to your best. The upcoming election, the War in Iraq and the place of America in the world, finding ways to live that do the least amount of damage to our only home. Eating in a healthful manner, making sure that those you love are taken care of to the best of your ability, trying to help others when and where you can. Knowing enough to be a responsible citizen. Making sure you pay your bills, and trying to prepare for the future. Trying to find ways to leave this world a better place than it was when you started. Taking care of yourself well enough that all of the other things are possible, and tending to your own happiness.

I don't think any reasonable person can look at the scope of what is required to be a good and responsible person, citizen, or friend, without being a bit taken aback at how much there all is.

Perhaps that's why we're all short-sighted sometimes, why we limit our view to only what is close and immediate.

Maybe that's why I like online comic strips so much.

An announcement to my three readers

2008-04-05T17:20:00.003-04:00

If my small cadre of readers would take a moment and look in the comments of my last entry, 'Taste the Yellow', they'll see that two comments were left in regards to it. It's actually only one comment, posted twice, but I thought it deserved a rebuttal from yours truly.

The comment reads, in its entirety, 'What the heck is synesthesia?' The comment was also posted by Anonymous. Now, I don't think it was the Youtube group that has declared war on Scientology, and I don't know that it was one of you, dear readers, although I am looking Blake appraisingly, but I would like to pass something on to the person who took the time to comment.

Find a dictionary.

A bitchy response, I'll admit. Nevertheless, I stand by it.

I can almost hear the type of statement my response will evoke. "Find a dictionary? What, you mean haul myself off my avoirdupois (look it up, dammit!), walk across the room, and open a book? What am I, Amish? This is the digital age, buddy! I oughta get my learnin' like I get my porn! With very little effort! And no pants!

"Hell, they oughta mix the two! Call it 'porno-cation', or 'edu-nography' or somethin'! Hell, if they'd had that in my day, I'da made it past fifth grade! Hell, I'da been early every day!

"With no pants!"

Taste the yellow!

2008-03-31T13:57:00.002-04:00

I was eating breakfast this morning, and an odd question occurred to me: What does yellow taste like?

No, Mom, I'm not ingesting things I shouldn't, I was merely glancing at the top of my single serving bowl of Corn Pops. There, under the bright red logo, was the phrase, "Big Yellow Taste!"

What the hell?

What kind of a motto is that? Is Kellogg going to start marketing Corn Pops to people suffering from synesthesia? Y'know, "Corn Pops, the cereal that tastes yellow, feels lemon, and smells G-Sharp Major!"

And it begs the question of how they can know that it tastes yellow. What kind of tests is this cereal put through to make sure that no batch goes out tasting too green?

Given that the Corn Pops I was eating didn't really taste like, well, anything, I suppose you could make a case that it was true. You can't taste a color, not without a major neurological disorder, anyway, so saying that the Pops tasted yellow could be correct.

It is odd, though.

Mom Story #1

2008-03-30T13:42:00.002-04:00

My Mom and Dad went on a cruise, while I was living in New York. My Aunt Betty, Dad's sister, and her husband, Stan, were having an anniversary, or something, and they had all of their children, and spouses, and grandchildren, and my parents, join them as guest stars in their own personal Love Boat. By all accounts, a great time was had by all. I wouldn't know. I wasn't invited.

Bitter? Don't be silly. I laugh in the face of bitterness, and chuckle condescendingly at sadness.

Anyway, about a week after my parents got done seeing what Gopher is really like, I got a box in the mail. My mother, sweetheart that she is, had picked up a shirt for me during her travels. It was a nice shirt, too. Light brown, with a loose weave to the fabric that made it great for summer, which was raging humidly about the city at the time.

There was one small problem, however. This shirt, so nice in other ways, had a pocket on the left breast, on which had been inflicted the words 'KEY WEST', in oh-so-bright sparkles. This is what happens when your mother chooses clothes for you based on what she would want to wear.

I looked at the shirt, pondering. I really did like it, other than the eyesore of a pocket. Inspecting the shirt, I found that the weave was loose enough that I could get to the thread used to attach the pocket without damaging the rest of the shirt.

So I cut the thing off.

I spent about a half an hour, carefully finding each point of attachment, making sure I was cutting the right threads, slowly excising the overly happy pocket from the quiet goodness of it's home garment. When I was done, it was apparent, upon semi-close inspection, that there had been a pocket attached, but it wasn't too obvious, and looked like it would fade as the loose weave was exposed to washing. Even if it didn't, it was a small defect, and I could explain it away simply by saying to any who asked, "Hey, it's an imperfect world. Sometimes, pockets come off. Whatcha gonna do, eh?"

Felling quite happy with my new, slightly altered gift, I wore it to work that very day. Upon arriving home again, I made a quick call to my parents, making sure to thank them for the shirt, and expressing my happiness with it, telling my mother I was wearing it at that very moment. It was all skittles and beer, until I mentioned that I'd had to remove the pocket to make the shirt wearable. Then I asked Mom why she had bought something with such a gaudy embellishment. There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

"Um, none of the shirts had any writing on them." She said in a quiet, hurt voice. "I had them put that on. It cost extra."

Oh, Christ... Life ain't fair...

Who wants to shoot a clown in the face?

2008-03-22T18:04:00.000-04:00

A new reality show, this fall on Fox.

Just a thought...

2008-03-19T18:29:00.002-04:00

Much tragedy could have been averted if the Big Bad Wolf had simply been honest with himself about his fascination with crossdressing.

An Action News 5 In Depth Report

2008-03-16T14:47:00.003-04:00

Good evening. On tonight's 'Eye on the Family' segment, we will be looking at a very important question: are your children using illegal drugs?

The answer is yes. Yes they are.

If you have children between the ages of 3 and 27, and they are not currently in your sight, they are getting high right now. If they are in your sight, they got high while you couldn't see them. Or, possibly, they got high while you were watching me and not them.

They might be smoking Marijuana or Crack, the might be shooting Heroin, they could be huffing gas, or paint thinner, or nail-polish remover, they could be eating your wife's lipstick or your husband's shoes, or they could simply be breathing too deeply to give themselves an incredibly dangerous 'Oxygen high'. But, somehow, your children ARE getting high.

You have only yourself to blame. It was you who sent your children out into the real world, to school and playdates, where other children could introduce them to the wonders of Mescaline. You, who were so easily fooled into believing that Little Jimmy from across the street isn't involved in manufacturing Crystal Meth and white slavery.

There is only one solution. There is only one way to keep your children and yourself safe from the taint of drug use, a taint that will inevitably lead your sons to knifing strangers, and your daughters selling themselves on the filthy streets.

But first, here's Jim Crandall with Sports! Jim, how'd the Cavs do tonight?

Mojo of the Blood Fire Apes!

2008-03-09T14:12:00.002-04:00

The night hung over the city like a dead fish on a clothesline. Hot, damp air sidled up close and wrapped itself around me like a wet fur coat, which wouldn’t have been comfortable even if I didn’t have my own fur. But Primate City was lit up in all her neon glory, throwing cheap light up to the overhanging clouds, telling the vanished sun that she’d be fine if it never came back. I’d lived in the Big Banana all my life, but she never looked better to me than she did at night’s beginning. I didn’t even miss the daylight, anymore.

I took a last drag off my smoke and flicked the butt out the open window. The falling ember’s momentary arc joined the flashing lights of the city, adding it’s little glow to the dazzling array. As it disappeared into the shadow of the grubby alley below, I considered what the night might have in store for me. Sometime before dawn, I had to meet Crackers down at the stockyards, to pick up my ‘medicine’. I also had a bit of business to work out with Eddie Medium-Size, current boss of the Capuchin Brotherhood. I’d worked with Big Eddie, the old Capuchin boss, a couple of times, but Eddie Medium-Size didn’t have Big Eddie’s brains or flair for business. Cash is cash, though, so I might take a job from him.

I wasn’t worried about finding action tonight, though. I had that feeling, the old familiar one, down in the gut, that I wasn’t gonna be hanging around my office here in the Hominid Building all night, rhapsodizing about my city in the night. The fur on the back of my hands were tingling, and Sally, nestled in my shoulder holster, seemed restless. Something was up, tonight, and headed my way. So I sat back, and let it come.

There was a knock at the door. I smiled, a little. You learn to trust your feelings, as a PI, even more so than the average gorilla. I ran my tongue over my sharp canines and thought that you can bet the bank on your gut when you’re a…Vampire Gorilla, PI.

That Guy

2008-03-08T17:46:00.003-05:00

I know it's time to shave my head when I turn into 'that guy'.

'That guy' was someone I have noticed, and ridiculed, fairly regularly throughout my life. You might not have noticed him yourself, but I assure you, he's there. He's a balding fellow, receding hairline, one who's pretty sure he's unobserved. He's the guy who takes advantage of his reflection in a store window or a lobby mirror and tries to quickly rearrange his thinning coif to somehow hide the fact that in the war of scalp and hair, hair is making a strategic retreat. He's looking for a bit of magic, that guy is, a way of folding or turning or entangling his locks so that not enough hair can hide too much skin.

There's no way to do it, of course, but he, that is I, keep trying, like a fat lady in 'slimming' spandex and a belly shirt. We can't help it, but that such magic exists is just one of those illusions we need to get through the day.

Fortunately for me, I also labor under the illusion that I have a well-shaped, and not at all egg-like, skull. This allows me to see shaving my head as a viable option. This is good, as I hate being 'that guy.'

Ah, yesterday

2008-03-07T15:24:00.001-05:00

Remember yesterday? When today was tomorrow, and tomorrow was a couple of days from now? Yesterday, when a couple of days ago was yesterday, because yesterday was today? Last week was still last week, and next week was still next week, unless yesterday was the end of the week, so that next week was this week, and this week had suddenly become last week?

It's kind of a lateral move

2008-03-02T12:45:00.001-05:00

I seem to have traded my addiction to weed for an addiction to BBQ-flavored Fritos.

Created by a kindred spirit...

2008-02-27T11:04:00.003-05:00

Check it out:

http://www.kylebaker.com/www/multi/content2/GhostChimp.htm

Ghost Chimp, M.D., where have you been all my life? I mean, you're up there with Sgt. Gorilla, from DC's old WWII comics, and Detective Chimp, and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, and Rex Mantooth, Kung Fu Gorilla, and Super-Gorilla Grodd...and Sky-Ape...and Monsieur Mallah...and the Mod Gorilla Boss...

I need to lie down...

It really does boggle the mind

2008-02-25T09:10:00.000-05:00

Here’s another entry to my ever growing list of really, really bad marketing ideas: Wild Eye caffeinated schnapps.
Caffeinated schnapps.
Caffeinated… schnapps.
CAFFEINATED SCHNAPPS!
The mind reels.

Patton Oswalt, one of my favorite comedians, has said that alcohol ads usually tell the saddest short stories you can imagine. The billboard for Wild Eye I caught sight of in Denver is, sadly, proof that he was correct. It was on Colfax Ave., in a good spot that made it visible for nearly a quarter of a mile. “Denver, here’s your wake up call!”, it blared, and can you guess what picture accompanied it? A pretty girl, you say? In cut-offs, on a bar stool, holding the neck of the thick, cylindrical bottle in a death grip, down near her groinitological region? With a knowing, ‘Come on big boy, you know you want it’ look on her face?

How ever did you know?

“You ever have one of those mornings where you roll out of someone else’s bed and know from the volume of vomit on their floor that it’s gonna be a hard day? What with your boss, and the kids, and the wife bitching about how you didn’t come home last night, you know you can’t face the day sober, but you can’t afford to be found sleeping on your desk in a pool of spit again? Brother, we got the sweet nectar you need, and a little something extra. For those times you need to be stumblin’ drunk, yet awake, there’s Wild Eye caffeinated schnapps! It offers the best of both worlds, and lets you be inebriated AND jittery at the same time. What better combination could there be for rush hour traffic than the twitchiness of caffeine overload mixed with liquor’s gift for making your small motor skills truly minimal? Wild Eye caffeinated schnapps will give you the energy to punch out a cop, and the impaired judgment needed to think it’s a good idea! Wild Eye, you can’t make the police chase last for three hours without it!”

Good lord, where’s Carrie Nation when you need her?

I'm sure this would make money.

2008-02-18T16:55:00.006-05:00

Are you an old freak? A senior citizen who's into water sports, coprophilia, S+M, B+D, A+P? Do the other old people at church not understand your love of latex? Are they confused by your references the works of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch? Look aghast at your vast number of lovingly collected 'toys' and antique porn?

Then come to KinkyWrinkle.com! Where you're never too old to get your freak on! The place to meet oldsters just like you! The kind who could teach these kids today something about the proper use of a bullwhip and correct orgy etiquette! The kind who says a hard slap is the same as a loving caress! The kind who really want to punch the midget! The kinds who like their sex just the way you do: deviant!

Velma G., 81, of Teluca Lake says: "I met a hot slab of manhood the first time I went on! The moment he saw my burlap teddy, he could barely control himself. He all but dragged me into the coatroom of the bingo hall, took off my panties, unrolled my labia, blew the dust off of my clitoris, and went to town. 'Course, I broke a hip, but it was worth it!"

Vern H., 78, of Hybiscus adds: "All kinds of sweet honeys have flocked to me since they found out I can't get them pregnant, and they call me 'the Sandblaster'. That's because, when I come, only sand comes out! And they love it, yes, they do..."

If you're a MILF, a FILF, an AILF, an UILF, a GMILF, or a GFILF, KinkyWrinkle.com is the place for you! So unlock your 'Secret Drawer', blow the dust off of your rubber Gimp suit and strap-on, get online, and get off! Go for the gusto! Find the weird turn-on you were always too shy to ask your long-dead partner for! C'mon, you're gonna die soon! Get the lead out, you white-haired sack of raging hormones!

Never a dull moment...

2008-02-15T18:44:00.000-05:00

Life in a VA hospital can be boring, but there are moments that more than make up for it. We’re housed pretty close together, and there come occasions that a normally laid-back individual suddenly loses his cool over something. Might be a neighbor slamming his drawers too loudly, might be someone making noise early in the morning, or hogging the TV, or just the result of whatever oddness landed that person in the VA in the first place. It’s these outbursts that give this place its spice.

I’m employed in a therapy job in the recreation center of the VA I’m currently living in. It’s a cool job, with decent co-workers and patrons. Mostly, it involves assigning people to computers and helping them find whatever they need online, with a lot of web-surfing in between. Not a place where a lot of drama occurs, usually.

But yesterday was a little different, apparently. I was the only person working at the time, and had to use the bathroom. I closed the door, and put up the ‘Back in 15 minutes’ sign, but I neglected at lock the door. And while I was…occupied, someone’s craziness came out.

Reports are inconclusive, but someone, for some reason, apparently locked themselves into the computer room and began gallivanting about shirtless. The mystery person might have been sans shirt, but did possess guts to spare, as the recreation area had a number of people in it and they couldn’t have known when I’d return. The internet here is closely controlled by a VA security program that is quite good at keeping pornography inaccessible, and everyone who frequents the computer room knows this, so we’re all a little confused as to why the doffing of clothing was necessary. No odd stains were found, nothing seems to have been stolen, and the person got away clean.

Maybe it was just one of those times when a person needs to be alone, shirtless, in a computer room. I doubt we’ll ever know.

I should stop eating oysters before bedtime

2008-02-14T19:29:00.002-05:00

You know what I hate?

When you get hungry late at night, so you drive over to McDonalds, but when you walk in, you realize it's not a McDonalds, it's a crackhouse, so you figure 'What the hell, I'll buy some crack', but the dude selling it wants to haggle over the price, which takes, like, twenty minutes to set, and then he insists that he wants to be paid in Dutch Guilders or some damn thing, but then the cops raid the place, and you manage to make it out the back door and down the waterslide; then, as you're running down the street from the ruckus, you notice you forgot your pants, and while you're looking around with something to cover yourself with, so you won't shock the ladies when you get to your mother's tea party, Henry Kissinger and Mickey Mouse jump out of the bushes, and Kissinger's wearing a Bozo costume, and Mickey has a double-barreled over-and-under shotgun, and shoots you right in the goddamn face with a couple loads of double-aught buckshot.

That's what I hate.

I like Mashed Potatoes

2008-02-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

It's like vanilla ice cream.

But made out of potatoes.

And with gravy.

Nothing wrong with that.

Brothers know the coolest tricks

2008-02-04T13:57:00.000-05:00

I'd been visiting my brothers, Mark and Jeff, in Atlanta. As always I'd had a great time, probably more fun than the bro's did, given that I was 11 or 12, and they were 10 or 15 years older. It was kinda like hanging out with cool uncles. They didn't mind me staying up late watching TV, fed me a lot of junk food and took me to movies, did all of the cool stuff the parents wouldn't allow.

Our time, as with all good things, came to an end, and the three of us were driving down to the airport to catch my flight home. We were in Mark's boat of an Olds, which was appropriate, as it was pouring rain, the thick stuff that cuts visibility down quite a bit. The car dipped down under a bridge that had standing water, and, all of the sudden, the feel of the ride... changed.

It was like the car was floating, a sensation I enjoyed immensely, and the front of the car began wandering off to the right. Now, Mark claims that the car made several revolutions, but I only recall one. What we agree on is that the car did spin some number of times, and at a moment that the hood happened to be pointing in the correct direction, the tires got traction and we sped on our merry way.

Again, I was 11 or 12 years old, so I just assumed that what had just occurred was some kind of cool rain-driving trick that Mark broke out every once in a while. Y'know, something he was doing to send me off with some last minute fun. I suppose that when Mark looked back at me and said, 'Let's not mention this to Mom', I should have gotten an inkling that something unplanned had occurred, but I thought it was one of those brother things, like getting your first hit of weed, that was between us and didn't need to come to the parents attention.

It was about five years before I figured out how close to death we'd all come. I learned the term 'hydroplaning' and found out that a good number of people die when things like that happen. A great big 'Hmmmmmmm', indeed. I mentioned the incident to Mark, and he said he had been pretty scared through the whole thing. I'm actually glad I didn't know how scared I should have been, 'cause it seemed like an amusement park ride to me. Good times.

I did end up telling my mother about the hydroplaning when I was in my twenties. And, predictably, she threw what can best be described as a 'tizzy'. Given that it had been more than a decade, and my mother had spoken to all three of us multiple times in the intervening years, I didn't think freaking out was warranted, but, hey, she's a mom. It's what they do.

You should learn something new every day!

2008-02-02T12:41:00.000-05:00

So, military school was not a lot of fun, but I did learn a couple of things there. For instance, if you get into a fight with an upperclassman, all you really have to do to win is not get your ass kicked. If the upperclassman doesn't beat you like a red-headed stepchild, he automatically looks like a pussy. There are times that living in a place with the general mentality of a pack of monkeys can be turned to your advantage.

During the Annual Federal Inspection that took place at the end of my last year their, I learned a new word.

I, and the guys in my section, had been waiting for most of the day for the inspectors to get to us, sitting around in full-dress uniform trying not to get wrinkled. We were one of the last sections inspected, but we finally got called to stand at attention outside the doors of our rooms, and the inspectors, who must have been pretty bored themselves, were making pretty quick work of us.

The Colonel who was leading the inspectors got to my room, and my roommate and I followed him in and stood at attention by our lockers. The Colonel glanced around our room, as exactly like the hundred other rooms at the school as we could make it, in a cursory fashion, looked briefly in our lockers, and was set to roll out when something caught his eye. His brow furrowed a little as he looked closer at the gap between my locker and a wall.

"Is that your nickel there?” the Colonel asked me.

"No, sir!" I continued without thinking, "You can have it if you want it!"

The Colonel looked at me closer, his eyes showing surprise. Behind him, I could see Colonel Horton, the head of the school, close his eyes and sigh silently.

"Son," The inspecting Colonel said, not unkindly, "Try not to be facetious, all right?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Do you know what 'don't be facetious' means?"

"No, sir!"

"It means don't be a wiseass."

"Yes, sir! I'll remember, sir!"

"Carry on." And the Colonel led everyone back out of the room.

See what I mean? Everyday, new things come up.

Baby steps to gettin' healthy

2008-01-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

I used to eat 2, sometimes 3, sticks of butter every day.

Then the last doctor I talked to told me it was bad for me. I think 'You're gonna die in a couple of weeks' were his actual words.

So I cut out the butter.

Now I'm satisfied with just a tub of 'I can't believe it's not butter' every couple of days.

And, y'know, I really do have trouble believing it.

My chest hurts...

And it was going so well...

2008-01-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

Ever suddenly discovered that something you thought was completely wrong, and found out that you were an asshole? I did.

I never ask women out. Look in most dictionary's and you'll see my picture next to the entry for 'gutless bastard'. I don't know why, but when I think of putting myself out there, I immediately find myself right back in ninth grade. I gain weight, I feel pimples cover my face, and my voice takes on this tone that makes the Squeaky-Voiced Teen from the Simpson's sound like Robert Mitchum. It's sad. Very sad. And emasculating.

But this one time, I did it. At work no less.

I was behind the counter, at a copy shop on a beautiful Wednesday, and she came in, looking to fax something. A little chatting, a couple of corny jokes, commiserating over the fact that her fax wouldn't go through, all in all a nice couple of minutes. She said her name was V (Thomas Pynchon stole that from me), and she was new in town. So on impulse, I mentioned that one night every week during the summer, there was a free movie in a park downtown. I went almost every week, and maybe she'd be interested in coming along...? And V said yes.

On the appointed day, I met V at the shop, and we caught the train uptown. We got there early to stake out a spot, grabbed some food from a local shop, and hung out, chatting, until it was dark enough for the movie to start. Good times. The conversation was smooth without any of the uncomfortable pauses that are the usual hallmarks of my dates, and our senses of humor seemed to mesh pretty well.

Right before the movie started, V said she was going to run to the public restroom so she wouldn't miss any of the show, and headed out into the gathering twilight.

She never came back.

The previews rolled, and then the movie itself began. Stalag 17, as I recall. Not my idea of a date movie, but it was free, I was poor, and sometimes you just don't get to choose. I sat there, people packed in on every side, growing more and more incensed as the time ticked by. Jesus, she must have secretly hated me! She'd even abandoned a lighter and half a pack of smokes. Just broke and ran. Well, fine, I fumed, fuck 'er. Bitch.

Anybody see where this is going?

I sat through the entire film. Didn't get any joy out of seeing Peter Graves get killed, needless to say. But screw it, I was going to see this film all the way through to the last credit.

After it was over, I headed out into the night. On impulse, I hit a payphone and checked my messages. If you think there was a message from V, you are incorrect.

There were two messages from her. The first explained that V hadn't kept track of where we were sitting, and couldn't find her way back. The second was left about twenty minutes later, and, in a disappointed tone of voice, V said that she kept getting yelled at to sit down, and was heading home. Guess she hadn't abandoned her cigarettes, after all.

I did call her then, but I don't seem to recall being very contrite, or apologizing at all, even. V was less than enthused, herself. And we never spoke again.

This all happened about five years ago. I swear to god, it didn't occur to me until about a month ago, I mean really hit me, that I should have gone looking for her. It never even crossed my mind, not once. Nor did being actively sorry, or explaining my thought process to her, maybe turning it into something we could laugh over. Not for five years.

My friends tell me I'm smart, but I know better. I look back on how I screwed up then, and how it took five years to figure out what I should have done, and I know the truth: I'm the King o' the Maroons.

One of those times

2008-01-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

I tend to do pretty stupid things when I get angry. That's one of the main reasons I work hard to contain my anger. When I was just starting school, I was forever getting into trouble for bouncing blocks off of other children's heads, and suchlike.

This particular incident happened while I was in military school. My parent's enrolled me there about halfway through my freshman year of high school, after a run of failed classes. If you're interested in seeing what my school looked like, rent 'The Omen II'. I found it perversely appropriate that a film about the Anti-Christ was filmed at my school. To anyone considering military school for their child, I recommend taking a good long look at the monkey house of your local zoo. That's pretty much what your baby will experience, but with more weapons and less with the flinging of the feces. Mostly.

Anyway, it was near the end of my second year, and it had been a long one. The school was getting ready for the annual federal inspection, during which actual military fellows walked through the school for a few hours. I suppose they wanted to make sure no students were being beaten, or kept in cages and suchlike. The inspection, which occurred every year, involved a frenzy of cleaning, and added even more pressure to an atmosphere already tense with the need to get this shit over with, already, and get the hell out of school for the year.

My freakout came on a weeknight, a day or two before the inspectors arrived. I don't really remember what the catalyst was, but something, a fellow student tearing apart my carefully ordered locker, another stupid assignment by a section leader who hadn't gotten off his ass all day, a recalcitrant bed sheet, set me off, bigtime.

I'm a lover, not a fighter, and don't like getting hit, so instead of beating the crap out of whoever was responsible, my rage-maddened eye fell onto my bunk. It was a warm night in late spring, and my window was open, and how to dissipate my rage suddenly crystallized. The bunk had to go.

And go it did. I grabbed the mattress, knocked my startled roommate out of the way with it, and stuffed that son-of-a-bitch out the window, letting it fall the story down to the ground.

By the time I had the metal bunk frame about halfway out the window, my roomie's half frightened, half amused yelps had drawn a crowd. As I recall, most of them seemed rather amused, and some were cheering. When the raised window dropped down unexpectedly, one of them rushed past me and held it up, so that I could continue ejecting the frame unimpeded. By this time, I was a little winded, but the frame only needed a little work to send it dropping out of sight. I assume it made some noise when it landed, but everyone was yelling too loudly for me to hear.

My company commander came in. He looked at the open window, at the other babbling students, at the space where a bunk should have been, and then at my red, sweaty face.

"You threw your bed out the window?", he said, not even sounding surprised. I nodded.

"You freaking out?" As he said this, I saw him calculating how crazy this might get if I was truly going nuts. He could have taken me, no doubt, but nobody would have come out unhurt.

"Not any more.", I said, chest still heaving.

"Go get your bed. And don't do that again. Really."

So I went outside and carried the mattress and frame inside and back to my room.

I did feel a lot better.

Idea, and a bit more

2008-01-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

So, I decided to try a new commercial venture. I'm going to market my own scent, for men and women.

It'll be made from a base of unrefined crude oil and choice, finely minced hobo, and each bottle will have just a splash of holy water, to make it Jesus-tastic. Christ-rific. Whatever.

It will be named, 'Stanque, by Carter'.

On a related note, I shared this particular idea, which is the beginning of a comedy bit, with my friend Sarah. She was quiet for a second, and then said, "The holy water... doesn't make sense."

My brain kinda locked up over that. The crude oil and diced homeless were perfectly fine, reasonable as can be, but the wheels came off with the holy water?

Confusion, thy name is Sarah.

Come with me on a little journey...

2008-01-09T15:07:00.000-05:00

I'd like you to take just a second, and contemplate God. Doesn't matter which one, just pick one you like.

Now, take a second to contemplate the mystery of our existence, and the majesty of the universe in which we find ourselves. Try to capture the scope of it, from the smallest particles through the vast spaces that comprised most of the reality we call home. Include the wonder that is you, and the people you love, the ones you don't like, stretch back to consider all members of the family of man, and those that will follow us. Add in the uncountable number of other creatures that share our home, the variety of the plant and animal life, the beauty of the natural processes that make it possible, from the shift of tectonic plates to the growth of crystals. Consider time itself, stretching billions of years both in front and behind us. Contrast our smallness and beauty. Savor it for a moment. Really try to picture it all, the whole of existence in it's nearly infinite variety.

Now turn your mind back towards the concept of a creator. Picture the being capable of beginning, and, if you have certain beliefs, guiding to this very day everything that we know is, was, and shall be. A being (Male, Female, Black Lady with a Marmoset, what have you) of power and insight that we can hardly dream of. All-knowing, all-loving, all powerful, and everywhere. Omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent. Imagine this being looking down upon their creation, picking out the spot that is our galaxy, the mote that is our solar system, the speck that is our lovely little planet.

Now picture that being becoming angry, saying "Fucking fags!"

Does that make sense to you?