Coach McCree has a very important question for little Johnny: “You dogging me, kid?”

“No, Coach. Sorry. My knee hurt.”

“You think David Beckham’s knee never hurts, Johnny? You gotta suck it up, pick it up, and don’t quit on me.”

“Yes, Coach.”

At this point, I should probably make it clear the fact that Johnny is in second grade.

“Gather round, now, gather round. Get the lead out, Tim! That’s right, son. Everybody take a knee. I said a knee, not a seat! So the big game is on Saturday, and we’ve only got one more practice between now and then. We need to win this game, kids, we need it bad. If we don’t win this one, there wasn’t any point to playing all the other ones, with me? This is the cham-pee-on-ship. The big one. The last hurrah. Win this, you’re taking home the big trophies. You lose, you’ll get a trophy your parents are going to have to buy a telescope to see, and you don’t want that. You wanna impress Mommy and Daddy, right? Right. Alright everybody up, we’re gonna take a few more laps, and then I want everybody running while they’re home, right? Around the block every night?”

“Coach McCree?” asks Johnny. “My mom and dad said I’m not allowed to run after dark?”

“What are ya, kid, a fag? Just go run, you don’t need permission for that. You’re not living in the goddamn projects. Besides, you tell em the way I taught you to run, nobody’s gonna be fast enough to catch you.”

“Okay, Coach McCree.”

I should probably state, for the record, that I did once have a coach like Coach McCree. Alarmingly like him, even.

“Alright, Red Thunder, alright, let’s get this done. Who are we going to beat?”

From the team: “The other team!”

“Who are we going to do it for?”

“You!”

“How’s that going to feel?”

“Great!”

“And what WON’T we do?”

“Not win!”

“Attakids, attakids. I’m proud of you boys. You’re going to be champions. We’re all going to be champions. And do you know what champion boys turn into when they grow up?”

From the team: “Champion men!”

Labels: Stories

I went to a graduation today, to stand up and yell for my very awesome and cool friends who are graduating. It's been a year since I graduated, and as I sat between Dan and Pat, we exchanged awkward looks about that fact. A whole year. On the one hand, it feels like it's been about ten seconds since I sat in the sweltering heat in my stiff graduation gown, and on the other, like it's been an entire lifetime. Everything was up in the air at that point, and right now things are moving in a direction I like. I think that the uncertain (call it what it is, bed-shittingly scary) period after graduation is as much a part of the education you get from college as anything else is. But the grads this year will hopefully have better luck: there's more of us out in the work force in one way or another, and the last year (the last month especially) has taught me that the Union network is a strong and loyal one.

Anyway, this got away from me, but: congratulations to Miles, Brian, Katie, Jeff, Matt Byrd, Andrew Wilson, J.J. Fiddler, and any other college grads I may be forgetting. I love you guys, and I wish you smooth passage from this point forward.

Labels: Generalness

Journal, as you know, I cannot write poetry, or song-odes, or skysongs. This is nothing more than an everyday appreciation of beauty, method number 32 recommended by the AFLA in staving off cabin fever. I’m only halfway through my stint as a universal cartographer, five years out with five years left, and I miss my family dearly. But this morning, mapping a new solar system, I got a chance to see a sunrise, over the crest of an entire planet.

If I had been assigned to the task of writing, I would be properly trained to describe it, to come up with beautiful new names for the purples and reds that peeked around the edge of the green planet. As it is, I cannot do it justice. Let me just say that this morning, alone in my ship with only my thoughts, some food, and you to keep me occupied, I felt like I was in the presence of true beauty, like I’ve never seen before. There was no place on the digital mapping program I use to denote how stunning it was to go from total darkness to glorious light, no sidebar to recommend a trip to Planet K76-4. So it will have to be our secret, Journal, that after five years of piloting through darkness, mapping new solar systems, this morning I saw the face of God.

Labels: Stories

I grant that I am not the most politically-minded person I know, but I do spend a good amount of time each day following what's happening in our country and the world. After little to no discussion of the entire continent of Africa for the last three or four years, President Bush apparently remembered it this week, making two major Africa-related announcements.

The first is the implementation of sanctions against Sudan, which marks the only success my generation has had with protests. Immediately the cries of "too little, too late" have begun, which I think in the face of genocide is always true. However, this is a sign that our government is at least paying attention, and it's my hope that along with the U.N., we can begin to change things in Khartoum and in Darfur.

President Bush also asked Congress today to double the amount of money we're spending on AIDS relief in Africa. After our own homeless situation, because I always think a country's aid money should be spent on itself first, AIDS relief was at the top of my list for places that the money we're spending on the Iraq war would be best put to use. If it's approved, this would bring our contributions to that effort to $30 billion. According to the official stat-makers, this would up our treatment numbers from 1.1 million afflicted to 2.5, expanding our prevention base by 7 million people. Of course, a stupid amount of that money will be earmarked for "chastity education," which I believe is a concept that gets lost in translation. I've also read that abstinence would still be taught as a priority even in countries where the spread of AIDS is primarily due to intravenous drug use. The plan has support on both sides of the party line, though some Democrats have vowed to try and whittle down the chastity provisions.

Are either of these going to change the world? Probably not. The problems of Africa are so enormous, and so far-flung (people seem to forget that it's an entire continent) that everything we can do is going to be too little, too late. But I'm happy to see that we're doing something. Here's hoping we continue to do more.

Labels: Generalness

They’re poisoning us, from the sky. Please, you have to believe me, you if no one else. Just stop and let me talk to you for a second, man, that’s all I’m asking. You may have asked yourself, as I used to, why we’re so unhappy. We’re the richest country in the history of the world, most of our poor have electricity and running water and a goddamn television, yet we spend millions of dollars on pills and conversations with therapists that are supposed to make us happier. Why? Are we guilty about the people we built this country on? Guilty about the other people in the world who have nothing? Obviously not, man. I can tell you’re smart enough to know we don’t care about that.

When I first started asking myself, I was an aerospace engineer, working for NASA, occasionally helping the Air Force troubleshoot experimental propulsion systems. I accidentally uncovered what’s wrong with us, man, I’m not bullshitting you: they’re dropping poison on us, from inside the clouds. That’s why we get these weird clouds, they’ve been around for the last few decades, these fucking weird clouds where there shouldn’t be any clouds. Ask the meteorologists, ask the cloud scientists, something’s not right. Cuz they’re making the clouds, man, and they’re squeezing them, once a month, over all our big cities, wringing out their poisons like a sponge, filling our lungs with that shit. And so we mope around and feel sorry for ourselves, even though most of us have never had a real problem in our whole life. Starving to death, that’s a real problem. Women, divorce, alcohol: none of that’s real comparatively.

Only see, they found out I knew, man. They found out and they chased me out of my life, they were so scared I’d tell someone, that I’d steal the proof to make the people understand what was being perpetrated on them. Then it’d all come tumbling down, man, the whole thing: the pharmacies, the reality TV shows, all of it. Nobody would want to buy their shit because they’d realize they don’t need it. But they took everything from me man, I’ve got nothing but my word and my mouth. You have to believe me. Why would I lie to you? We have to end it, we have to make it chemically possible to be happy again. We have to destroy their clouds, bomb their planes, torch the entire sky if that’s what it takes. Light the whole thing on fire, and let the sunlight through again.

Labels: Stories

I am a house. I’m not your house, I’m the Stevelys’ house. Before that I was the Fillmans’ house. Before that I was the Dylans’ house. Before that I was being built, by the Dylans’ and other people I never got to know; I could not hear so well then. In the last sixty years, I have learned. For my kind, I am still young, what you would call a teenager, and it took me decades to understand the way that you talk to each other. Now I’ve learned.

The Dylans were a good family, even though they were so often unhappy. Anthony Dylan and his wife, Margaret, fought all the time. I understood: other than me, they did not have anything to distract them from each other. I was the only thing of value that they owned. The houses around me said that sometimes their people would hit each other, though, and Anthony and Margaret never did. They just worked, sixty hours a week, both of them, for over thirty years, until they were in their sixties. Then they retired, and they moved away. Their children had already left. They were happy to be moving away, and I was happy for them, but I was sad to see them go. I’d known them for so long, and in a way, they were my parents too. And I was the only one who got to listen to them, on the odd night they would make love before they fell asleep, when they’d look at each other after, and say “I love you.” They sounded like they meant it.

The Fillmans moved in not too long after that. I did not like the Fillmans. They were loud, cruel people, and when they got angry, which was often, they put holes in me with their little fists. They didn’t understand how easily I could tumble in on them, squeeze myself around them, and make them into piles of nothing. I am respectful, though, so I did not harm them, save to creak loudly and make scary noises when they were trying to sleep sometimes. Their son was a sad boy, and I felt bad for him. When he was sixteen, he killed himself. He was in his room. In me. I felt his spirit pass through me as it left, felt that he could feel me. He said goodbye; he wasn’t sad anymore, but I was. When the Fillmans moved out a year later, I was happy to see them go.

There were two families who tried to buy me after that: one of them was the son of the Dylans, and I hoped that he would buy me. He told the realtor that his parents had died, which was too bad. I had hoped they would come visit. The other family, the Stevelys, ended up winning out. The Dylans thought it would be too weird moving back into the home one of them had grown up in. The Stevelys had an infant son when they came, and brought an infant daughter home three years later. They are very happy together, and they very rarely fight. It is nice to have such peace and quiet in myself. When they do argue they are respectful and kind to each other, still. And they are all, the four of them, very very funny. We all laugh together, even though they cannot hear me. They have not learned my language as well as I have learned theirs.

Labels: Stories

I don't often blog about what's going on in current world events, and I promise I'm not planning on that becoming a regular part of this blog. This, though, struck me as such a repugnant and stunning story that I had to write about it, especially since the Gay Pride Parade was just last weekend. As backwards as we are as a country in so many ways, at least now I can look at us and say, "Thank God we're not Russia..."

The article in the link (at the bottom) tells it better than I can, but basically: Moscow mayor calls Gay Pride Parades "satanic acts." Gay activists, feeling this is unfair, try to present him with a PETITION to allow them to have a parade. In attempting to do so, they are spit on, screamed at, and physically assaulted by angry crowds. Fortunately, the police were there, to arrest the gay activists. Not before doing a little assaulting of their own, of course.

The whole thing is sickening, even for a guy who is generally pretty desensitized to news stories... I think it's the fact that they were treated like this for trying to present a petition, the physical embodiment of nonviolent action. Absolutely ludicrous. Thanks, Russian Orthodoxy and fascist nationalists. Way to cheapen the human race in the most efficient and ironic way possible.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/27/russia.gayrights.reut/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

PS- Gotta love CNN too for their hyperlink at the end of the third paragraph: "Watch angry opponents punch protesters". Wow, sounds neat!

Labels: Generalness

Alan had been working at the airport in Billings, Montana for five years before September 11th happened. But in all that time, he hadn’t cared about his job for even a second. Starting September 12th, however, he became the most zealous luggage inspector his state had ever seen. He attacked suitcases and travel bags of all sizes with the ferocity of a blood-crazed soldier brandishing a bayonet, plunging through pile after pile of underwear and sweatpants, waiting for the day (which he knew would come) he would single-handedly avert the next American tragedy.

Of course, Alan was destined to fail. But there was once a full forty-five seconds of hope that he had finally unearthed a threat to his airport, his state, and his country. The bag was an ordinary looking duffel, red with black straps. Alan was going to pass it by––he normally only took every tenth bag for a randomized check––when he noticed the dust on the handle. There wasn’t a lot of it; in fact, it looked like someone had tried to clean it off, hastily perhaps. He ran his scanner over it: the light didn’t turn red, which meant it wasn’t one of the recognizable forms of explosive residue, but it didn’t turn green either, which meant it wasn’t just ordinary dust. Alan’s heartbeat picked up, and he began sweating. The light on his handheld scanner was yellow: that mean it was dealing with an unknown substance, and he should investigate further.

He decided to opt against calling the bomb squad: this moment was his, and he wanted every piece of it for himself. He zipped open the bag, carefully, then threw caution to the wind and began whipping the contents of the bag out onto the table. Clothes, books, a few DVDs, all of it came clattering out as Alan searched for the source of the mysterious powder. Then, at the bottom, after emptying the entire bag, he saw a number of socks and paper towels balled up, covering something. They were coated in the mystery dust. Alan took a deep breath, relishing his big moment. With a flourish, he whipped the socks and towels off, revealing: a pile of rocks. Actually, they were fossils, but Alan didn’t know that. He knocked them against the table in disappointment, cracking a few of them. Then, disgusted, he crammed the prior contents of the duffel back into it, and shoved it down the line. He fumed for a moment, before angling his neck down the line to yell at the woman feeding the luggage machine and shouting, “Next!”

Labels: Stories

So I realize this is two posts in the last week about my sleeping habits, but this was too strange not to blog it. I went to Conor's moving out party (a housecooling? anyone?) last night, and got home pretty late. Then Shar and I waited till 2:30 AM for her best friend and maid of honor Robyn to come crash at our place, since she was flying out of Long Beach Airport this morning.

We hung out, and we all went to bed at around four; Robyn wanted to leave for the airport two hours later. Between the two of us (I was driving her) we had five alarms set, and managed to sleep through all of them. After some hustle and bustle, she got her flight switched, and I took her around nine. Then I got home and everything went to hell.

I have no memory of getting home. I woke up at 11 AM, fully clothed, in bed, gripping my book tightly. My elbows were propped up so the book was at eye level. Definitely odd. Then apparently I put the book aside, and fell back asleep. I woke up again at 12:30 or so, and got out of bed to realize I wasn't wearing any pants. Then I walked around the house to realize I had no idea where my pants were. About ten minutes later I found them behind the hamper; not in the hamper or on the ground, mind you, but behind it, where a sleepy Mike would have had to have moved the hamper aside to smugly stash his secret prize, then stagger happily back to bed, his mission accomplished.

I think I'm going to bed early tonight.

Labels: Generalness

The following is an excerpt from the 2114 edition of the history textbook “The Post American America: How Technology Shaped Our Nation”:

The prevalence of the bi-narcoleptic living unit (or Binal) is well known. The device has shaped our country’s present and future more than any single invention since the automobile. Few people know that the Binal’s origin is in fact, decidedly un-American, however. In the early 21st century, America’s population was still under relative control, but another country, China, had both the economic and engineering resources and the crushing population problems necessary to create the Binal. With some financial and research assists from America, China came up with a solution for its problems in the year 2015. We now know that American investors were funding this invention for their own reasons, testing it in China since the American population at that time still would have presented at least a modicum of resistance to the Binal.

China, however, was free to implement the sweeping social reforms required by a revolutionary product like the Binal. Effectively, they doubled their productivity and efficiency while cutting their functional population in half. All non-essential males currently unmarried and employed in lower-level commerce became paired with another male. The two shared the same house, the same job, the same life. They each lived for 12 hours a day, spending the other 12 in a kind of hibernation in the Binal. Upon waking, the man would dress and then work for ten hours, leaving him two hours of free time. At the end of his shift, he’d climb back into his Binal (facing severe repercussions if he failed to do so at the correct time), and press the activator button. That immediately ended the hibernated cycle of his partner’s unit, directly below his. That man would then wake and begin his 12 hour shift.

Of course, major adjustments were needed, primarily a streamlining of China’s production sectors, since the work force, while doubling in efficiency, was halved in its actual size. China’s labor force did begin producing at record speeds, but the biggest impact the Binal had on the country was in the amount of space it freed up. “Doubling up” such a large chunk of its population meant that for the first time in decades, China had plenty of room.

Over the last hundred years, the invention and its uses have been refined and expanded, most notably with the expansion of the ten year stints on the Binal to their present 25 years. After that, citizens are granted a small amount of property to retire to. The addition of low doses of steroids only served to make the work force that much stronger and more productive. The use of the Binal in America, as well as the creation of the Mid-National Work Centers, where American laborers are relocated to spend their 25 years in less populated areas, have helped to keep our country, even in its new state, a shining beacon to the rest of the world.

Labels: Stories

was awesome! Went with Pat to their little theater (and I mean LITTLE theater) at Atlantic and Carson, and for five bucks each we got three hours of excellent live Shakespeare. They're not running on a high budget obviously, but the acting was for the most part superb. The guy who played Richard was particularly amazing, and much better than I would have expected to see in a theate where Pat and I were approximately half the non-company audience. Seriously, it's a little theater with little money, but they put on a big show, and it's worth way more than you're paying if you go on a two-for-one Thursday. I'll link to Pat's review of the show for the District after it's done and published.

Labels: Generalness, Mike Recommends or Trashes Random Shit

When the bullet hit the dirt between his feet, the Man in White was almost relieved. He’d been on horseback for nearly three days straight, had run that beast to the point of exhaustion. He was exhausted, too, and ready to be done running. The son of a bitch that had been chasing him wasn’t going to give up, he realized. At least the bastard was going to give him an honorable death, if he was giving him time to turn around.

He turned slowly, the fat desert sun reflecting off his white suit, boots, and hat. He looked like an albino cowboy, a shining white figure in a town that was red, the color of the dust that had settled over every building, post and horse. Even the people looked like clay statues.

“Reach!” the man aiming a gun at him shouted.

The Man in White stretched both arms upward, made himself helpless before the lone gunman.

“This has been a long time coming,” the man with the gun spat. “You ain’t walking away from this one.”

“Damn right,” said the Man in White. “I’m running!” Like lightning his left hand was diving for the holster; the gunman was quicker. He put a bullet through the back of White’s palm. White squeezed his hand into a fist and squinted, refusing to cry out. “I’m not done with you, you son of a bitch. I’m coming back for you.”

With a shrug, the gunman smiled and said, “If you want me, you’ll have to,” then put two bullets in his chest.

White fell to the ground, covered up immediately by a cloud of red dirt. The gunman walked casually to him, reached into the dead man’s pocket and pulled out his daughter’s locket, the last thing he had to remember her by after White had stolen her from him. Tucking the locket away, he gave himself a moment to stand there in triumph, watching more and more of the disturbed dust come to rest on White’s once-pristine suit. “Ain’t so goddamn clean now, are you?”

Labels: Stories

It was a team of archeologists that discovered the Master, in Taiwan, in the middle of a mountain. When the Master last saw the sun, the temple was on the side of the mountain. He had gone into deep meditation, to cleanse himself, with only an attendant in the room, to help bring him out after one year. Without his help, the Master would have gone on meditating indefinitely. The landslide that buried the temple and killed the attendant meant that he did just that, sitting in a state so still that his metabolism slowed enough for him to survive for centuries. When the team found him, the skeleton of his attendant at his side, he had enough body fat to have lived for another fifty years. He had been sitting for nearly 350 years.

The Master, a simple Taiwanese Buddhist, became the biggest celebrity in the world overnight. The team had trimmed his beard, hair, and grotesque fingernails before presenting him to the world. Then they explained what had happened to him. They expected him to be distressed, or at the very least surprised, but he just nodded, and smiled. His muscles atrophied nearly to the point of nonexistence, he had to be wheeled before the rows and rows of microphones, where he answered questions that were translated into nearly ever language on the planet, by scores of multilingual journalists, all crowding to get closer to him.

The Master was clearly scared by the attention, seeming to shrink to half size in his chair. “Please, do not be hasty,” he said in Taiwanese. “There is time.”

Eventually the reporters settle down, and began asking him questions individually. “What do you think of our world?” asked one.

“I have not yet seen it,” the Master replied, already further from his home in the temple than he’d ever traveled in his life.

“What are you going to do now?” asked another.

“I am planning on traveling, and then retiring to my home to make my peace.”

“Is there anything you’d like to say to the nations of the world?”

“Yes,” the Master said, relaxing and beginning to smile again. “Hello.”

Labels: Stories

Upon waking, I got this letter via a Myspace bulletin from my fiancee...

Dear Mike-

This morning, forty minutes before my alarm was going to go off to wake me up 15 minutes before I needed to be in the shower (so I could be leisurely about things, you see) I was jarred uncomfortably awake by Band of Horses. Rolling out of bed, careful not to disturb you, I went into the office and discovered that your iPod was plugged into tiny speakers and serenading the morning air, just loud enough to wake me. I put it on pause and turned to go back to bed.

The phone rang. Jumping, thoughts of emergencies told through sobs or screams on the other end of the line racing through my head, I grabbed the receiver before the second ring. A recorded message about "important business matters" for our apartment's former occupant. Now, of course, I was wide awake.

Slipping back into the bedroom, you had sprawled out over the entire bed, legs and arms taking over the space my snoozing self once had occupied. Annoyed, I shove you aside and check the clock: still half an hour before my first alarm. You say: "Who was on the phone?" I say: "No one. Your iPod woke me up this morning." You say: "Was it Band of Horses?" I say: "Yes." You say: "Impossible." I say: "Now I can't go back to sleep." You're already there, every inhale marked with this odd clicking sound that, even though I stuff my head under a pillow, I can't block out.

Sighing, I get out of bed and take a hot shower. When I get out, toweling my hair, I walk back into the room and there you are, looking just so goddamn content. You're snoring a little and you've sprawled out again, wrapping yourself in all the blankets and taking up all the space. One foot sticks out from the covers. You're a jerk. You're adorable, and I love you. I bend down and kiss your big toe. You don't stir, and that's just fine with me.

Hope you're having sweet dreams.
-Yours

Labels: Generalness

My name is Susannah and I am seven years old. My Mommy and Daddy said today we’re playing hooky. Hooky day is my favorite day, because it is fun and happy. Every time we have one my Mommy and Daddy let me get up and get ready for school like it was every other day. But then they will tell me “Susannah do you know what day it is?” and I will pretend that I do not. And then they get down on their knees and hug me and yell “It’s hooky day!” And then I scream and smile and we all dance together.

They told me to go change out of my school uniform, so I go and put on my favorite clothes, because they told me hooky day is for your favorite clothes and your favorite places. I hope today we go to the park, which is where we go sometimes on hooky day. Sometimes we go to the beach also, which is also good, because then we all play together and make castles in the sand and then walk around, and my Daddy will buy me ice cream. One time my Mommy bought me this candy from the ice cream store, and it was called button candy. The buttons were very good, but I could not get the paper off of them, and so it was candy buttons and paper. I still loved it a lot.

When we go to the park we play airplane and my Mommy and Daddy will swing me around and around, and Daddy will make noises like an airplane and Mommy will tickle my armpits and call me a Susannah Plane, which is what I am at the park. And then they will push me on the swings, and last year I tried to push Daddy but we both ended up falling in the sand, and Mommy laughed at us, and then she tickled me even though I was not a plane.

Tomorrow will be a regular day like all the other regular days, and Daddy will go to work, and be tired and sad, and Mommy will take me to school and then go to work, and get home later than Daddy because he picks me up from school. And I will go to school and learn about history and numbers, and play kickball which I’m very good at, and maybe it will be a lucky day and my teacher will bring us oatmeal cookies, which are my second favorite. But today is hooky day, which is my favorite day of all. And my Mommy and Daddy will buy me peanut butter cookies, which are my favorite. Mommy and Daddy say everyone should get to take hooky days. They tell me I’m lucky. And then they tickle me and call me Lucky Susannah.

Labels: Stories

He was halfway across the park when he realized he wasn’t going to make it. His cheeks burned and his eyes stung with shame as the first squirt squeaked through. It seemed like every pair of eyes in the whole park was trained on him as he closed in on the bathroom. He was painfully aware of how he must look: shimmering soccer uniform catching just enough light to help his bright blue jersey stand out even more, his gait stiff-legged and bird-like because his butt cheeks were squeezed together so tightly.

As he reached the bathroom, he could feel his hold loosening. He made a mad dash for the lone stall, praying it wouldn’t be locked. He knew if it was, he was going to have a cop a squat on a sink. The young boy kicked in the door and dove ass-first onto the toilet, losing control completely on the way down. As he touched the seat, the last of his pent-up diarrhea came bursting forth with Poseidon’s wrath. He was sure he’d popped a blood vessel––his eyes bulged, his tongue was hanging out. As his colon finished vacating itself, he looked over the damage.

There was shit all over his briefs, but thankfully not too much on the uniform shorts themselves. The cleats and shinguards he could wash, but that relief was fading as he realized that the stickiness under his left leg wasn’t sweat, lifting it to reveal brown smudges on the toilet seat, and slathered on the back side of his leg. He cleaned himself off as best he could, hoping that he’d pass the nose test. He flicked the door open and gathered himself up, trying to figure out how he was going to save face. He was holding filthy, shit-stained clothes in one hand, and scrubbing off shit-stained shoes with the other. Just then, Coach Grier came in the bathroom door, calling, “John? Are you okay?” He took one look at the boy and burst out laughing.

All John could do, for the first time in his life, was mutter, “Oh, shit,” under his breath.

Labels: Stories

It's been kind of a lazy sort of working day today; I'm sending off a few District emails, so my role at that publication should become clearer over the next few days.

In the meantime, I don't really have a lot going on to blog about; Pat and I have been working together all day, which has become a comfortable and highly productive habit. I'm going strong on the first of two novels I'm hoping to have done by the end of July, one that I feel fulfills me as a writer and one that I'm relatively sure I can sell.

Anyway, since my real life is so boring, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about my trip through the Works of Kurt Vonnegut. Currently I'm, oh I don't know, halfway-ish, having finished Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse, Happy Birthday Wanda June, Between Time and Timbuktu, Breakfast of Champions, and Wampeters. I'm currently reading Slapstick, which many have assured me will be my least favorite of the novels.

I'm finding that this kind of linear trip is very rewarding. It adds a touch of irony, certainly, to reading about Vonnegut's theories of time in Sirens and Slaughterhouse. He tells us that every moment still exists, and always will. His books are proof that at least parts of moments, or maybe collections of moments, do go on. And I get to pick them out of the air and read them in any order I want (this thought makes me feel that maybe a chronological study, for all its rewards, is actually kind of a boring choice). It's also been great to track his development as a writer, watching his self-referential, joky style kind of fold in on itself until it fully implodes in Breakfast of Champions.

Of the books I'd read before this study, Breakfast is by far the one that I've come to fully appreciate as a result of the ordered reading. I've always thought of it as a funny book, which it is in a way, but I think I laughed less at it than I did at most of the books that preceded it. The underlying sadness of the novel stood out like it was highlighted this read through; the fun and joy that Vonnegut clearly took in writing the earlier novels, particularly Cat's Cradle, seems to have dried up. That said, I liked it even more this time.

It's also been incredibly rewarding to track the development of the recurring characters, but Shar has told me that the really big twists and turns come later on, so I guess I'll wait until I'm done with the entire study to talk about that. Until then, then.

Labels: Generalness, Vonnegut

Evelyn Negby was a rich woman, and had been her entire life. Her father owned an enormous amount of land that contained an enormous amount of oil, and her mother had been smart enough to marry him. When he died, her brother took over all the business and Evelyn took over half the money, since she could care less about oil. Evelyn did not actually care much about much of anything, with one exception: Evelyn loved, cherished, simply adored scrubbing.

Technically, it wasn’t the scrubbing itself that she loved, but the idea of cleanness it produced. Her father, though wealthy, had been at base a man of the people, and spent a fair amount of time in the Midwest checking in with the people running his land. He would always come home filthy, covered in ash and soot and stink, and Evelyn, a young girl, would duck her head and pray to be taken back to the mansion on Cape Cod, where everything was sparkling, and there were no less than three servants whose sole purpose in professional life was to make sure it stayed that way.

When she bought her own mansion, after her father died, Evelyn doubled that staff, then tripled it. One day, Evelyn fell in love with a newly hired servant, a man who made her feel filthy and complicated, but eventually she scrubbed and scrubbed at him until he came out of her life, like a stain. Now Evelyn lives all alone in her enormous sterile mansion. She knows it’s perfect because she fired the rest of the staff, figured she’d be able to clean better than them, since they clearly didn’t share her passion for scrubbing. Now Evelyn knows that every molecule around her is in perfect, cleanly harmony. Except that one night, Evelyn started seeing bugs on her skin. Not flies or cockroach bugs, but germs. All over. And now Evelyn is sitting in front of the fireplace with a pad of steel wool in her left hand, and she’s scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing at her right arm. She has to be clean. So she goes on scrubbing.

Labels: Stories

Ah, yes…there she is, my lovely girl. Her umbrella twirling, dancing through the rain smiling. My camera is getting wet, but I don’t mind: she is never as bright and beautiful as she is in a downpour. My God…her calves, the thin curve of them…I’d rather spend two hours in wait for a glimpse of two inches of her than spend all night looking at the naked bodies of those ugly cows, clinging to a pole. My girl is perfection.

And I won’t be able to watch her forever, I know. Someday she’ll take flight, maybe find herself a partner, and soar away from me forever. That will be fine, too. I know I sound like a stalker, but I’m not trying to scare her, or force myself into her life. A woman like that would burn me up in a second. To try and posses her, to try to become one with her, it wouldn’t be fair. It is enough for me to sit here in a makeshift hide, my car, and watch her flit from place to place, trailing light and magic and beauty. My wonderful, beautiful girl. My bird of paradise, one of a kind.

Labels: Stories

They’d been working on the sitcom for seven years together, the five of them. The show was not, incidentally, called Friends, though they were all friends, on the show and in reality. For seven years, they had completely devoted their lives to being funny, for an audience of millions. The show had consumed four marriages and one civil union, and now, thirty seconds after they’d wrapped their last episode, not one of them regretted it.

No five people had loved each other or hated each other more than them during that seven years, and now that they had nothing to do together, they were standing awkwardly, each looking from face to face as though they’d find an answer written there. But there wasn’t.

Silently they trudged out of the wrap party early, opting for the burger joint they usually went to after each show finished, to spend time together alone. Of course, two years into their show’s run they started paying to have the place closed down, to keep paparazzi and fans out, but the principle remained.

Dinner was sad, and mostly silent. There wasn’t anything left to say, and they all knew it. They finished their burgers quickly, and got their coats to walk to their cars, to drive home to their separate houses, where they’d begin the rest of their separate lives. Eddie, who’d played the youngest on the show, who was five years younger than any of them, who had never worked this long on a show before, asked them all a question: “We’ll work together again, right?” he asked. “We’ll still see each other?”

Matt, the oldest, mussed his hair the way he knew Eddie had always hated. “Sure. Of course.”

Labels: Stories

Yesterday:
So this Friday and Saturday have been my first of those days since I was 19 that were totally Union-less, and tainted with the knowledge that all future ones will be Union-less. I'd be an idiot to pretend everything has sunken in, because it hasn't, but I have been thinking about it a lot. Mainly, I think it's weird. The thing I'm most clearly going to miss the most is the office. It's become apparent that I'm going to keep working with my friends, and keep seeing them, but the Union office became a very special place to me over the last three and a half years, a place I slept, worked, sleep-worked, and did other unspeakable things in. Really, it's the first place I've ever felt was "home" to me as a writer. And that's a special thing.

In the last week, pretty much all my friends there have strung together something awesome for themselves, and I couldn't be happier or prouder. You've all been an inspiration to me, and I hope I can be of use to you in your various endeavors. It's been a pleasure working with everyone, and I don't want that to stop just because Kobane's locked us out of the office.

Today:
Today (I'm writing this late Friday night), I met with Will Swaim and Theo Douglas from the District to talk about what I might be able to do for them. Swaim was rad, and it's easy to see why he inspires such loyalty in his worker bees. He made jokes about blowjobs and compared coercing his wife into late-night layout sessions to date rape; what more do you want from a boss? I went into the meeting with low expectations, and a handful of good friends. I walked out of there with the potential opportunity to write for the Arts section, help put together the Books calendar for the city of Long Beach, and the go-ahead to organize a city-wide short story contest. Jesus.

Then I hung with Dan for a bit before hitting the ASI Volunteer Night (and hitting it hard) with the rest of the Union. As everyone was being ridiculous and awesome, I thought about how much I'd miss getting to work with such outlandish, amazing people. Then I remembered the impassioned discussion I had about ball powdering with Dan, Pat, and Jeff on the way to the District thing, and I felt happy. It was a good day.

Tomorrow:
I had originally planned on taking a month or two off from any kind of responsibility after things wrapped up at the paper, to just focus on finishing a few novels and planning a wedding. Instead, I took three days off and ended up in the deep end at a great publication. I have the opportunity to prove myself to an entirely new group of intelligent writers that I respect and admire, and I couldn't be happier about that. I'm also still going to be working, as I have for a bit, on this novel. Not the one I started at the beginning of the year, but a newer one. I'm writing 5-10 pages a day under Brian Vaughan's Only Advice You Need to Be a Writer Plan: Write more, do other stuff less. I'll also be continuing with this blog and its daily stories, various piddling freelance gigs, and of course, the wedding planning. There should be a LOT of news on that front soon. The fucking thing is three months away, so there had better be.

To sum up: I'm busy. I'm happy. I love my fiancee, I love my friends, I love my work, and I love my life. And I love you for reading this, whoever you are. Chances are at this stage of the blog's development, we know each other pretty well anyway.

Labels: Generalness

He was handing the guy at Sushi Studio his credit card when he first noticed it: the nail on his right ring finger was gone. He paid without saying anything, and then, turning away, pressed another finger to it, tentatively. The nerves on the now nail-less part of his finger tingled and burned. When he woke up the next morning, his whole finger was gone; there was no blood, no pain, nothing. It was as though that finger had never existed, as though a surgeon had stolen it during the night and managed to completely heal him before he woke.

The next day, his arm was gone, and he began to get concerned. He went to his friends, at a party, but they didn’t seem concerned. He felt his toes going one by one. His friends didn’t seem to notice that anything was different with him at all. Then, the rest of him started going all at once, a foot, an ear, his remaining limbs. His friends and everyone else around kept on talking. When his eyes went, he saw that nobody was watching, nobody recorded his disappearance from his life, from theirs. All he could do was hope with a mind that was no longer there that wherever he was going would be just as happy as the place he was leaving.

Labels: Stories

This should be fun...I've got about ten minutes to knock out an awesome story, kind of on purpose to do this as an experiment, and kind of because it's been an enourmous day (I'll blog about it tomorrow). It won't be a long story, but I promise it will be as good as I can do. See you soon!

Labels: Generalness

Timmy loved ice cream. He loved it so much that one day he politely informed his mother and father that he would be eating nothing else for the rest of his life. Most parents wouldn’t even bat an eye at this assertion, but Timmy’s parents knew better. He had never been prone to the imaginings and drama of childhood, had never threatened to hold his breath until he died, never pretended to run away. When Timmy said something, he meant it.

And so, a week later, the boy was on the edge of starvation, and his parents were getting calls from his fifth-grade teacher about his nutrition. They bought him a ten-gallon jug of chocolate ice cream at the drug store, and Timmy started eating again. Doctors assured them that it was a phase, that he’d grow out of it, and gave them handfuls of vitamins and supplements to put into his ice cream, to make sure that he grew healthily in the meantime.

Of course, as Timmy got older, he gained a great deal of weight, and fell under the scrutiny of his peers. He shrugged their insults off good-naturedly. “How can I be unhappy,” he asked himself, “When I live in a time and place that allows me to eat nothing but ice cream?” By the time he graduated high school, Timmy weighed in excess of 250 pounds. Cut from stocky stock, he still looked more or less normal.

Since Timmy had done something remotely entertaining in a country starved for entertainment, he got very famous very fast, and ended up making enough money from a speaking tour to pay for college, as well as several yeas’ worth of ice cream. After a bidding war, he signed an endorsement deal with his favorite of the major ice cream companies, getting loads more cash as well as a lifetime supply of ice cream. For the five years it took him to get his degree, Timmy was in heaven. But by the time he graduated, he’d put on another 100 pounds and was looking a lot less normal. The company sponsoring him was getting nervous.

They paid for personal trainers, and liposuction, and his doctors told him he had to cut his habit or die. Timmy, who had never gotten into the habit of breaking habits, died two years later, of a heart attack. He was grotesquely enormous, and smiling.

The contrite ice cream conglomerate issued the following statement after Timmy’s death: “We are very sorry for the loss of this young man, and for the role we may have played in his death. Our product, and all other iced creams and frozen confections, are meant as occasional treats, not the basis of an entire diet.”

While still in college, Timmy had requested the following be read at his funeral, “Just in case I should happen to ever die”: “Life tasted good, and I got to taste more of it than anyone. Don’t be sad about me. Just do or watch or eat something that makes you happy. Get as much as you can; everyone’s cone melts eventually. You might as well try to be a sweet flavor while you still can.”

Labels: Stories

[As mentioned below, the first half of this story is a word for word, typo for typo transcription of a story I wrote in first grade, while attending Young Writer’s Camp at CSULB. It was mysteriously left unfinished, so I’ve written an ending in commemoration of Dino Day]

When Mrs. Stephanie opened the door, out burst a dinosaur Mrs. Stephanie screamed the dinosaur roared. The class and the teacher raced to the back door but it locked and the tirannosaur then was running toreds them but right at that moment a pice seling fell in front of the teacher and she had gotten eaten buy the dinisour all of the kids wher even more scared now. Then all the kids thought the computers and elcherict the dinosouer so then every body had to leave the college. But one teacher never made it out and her name was Mrs. Stephanie.The next day the children had a new teacher named Mrs. Canter she was a nice teacher and fun to have as a teacher.

Mrs. Canter had heard of what had happened to poor Mrs. Stephanie and when she opened the door she saw a t-rex’s head Dustin decided to scare her with a fake dinosaur head. Mrs. Canter screamed, Dustin took the mask of and the teacher kept screaming and Dustin turned just in time to see the real t-rex gobble him up. Thenthe dinosaur disapered. Mrs.Canter breathed a sigh of relief that she had not been eaten but she did’nt want to take any more chances so she quit and no one else wanted to either except one person and that person was Mrs.Anderson when she opened the door she saw Ari lying dead on the floor every kid in the class was bent over him some were crying over his death but every body was thinking the same thing who was next? Who would be the next victim to the hungry dinosaur. They found out the next day, it was Tim everyone was scared so fat three campers and a teacher. Who would die next.

* * *

Rick Stephanie was mad as heck. The bureaucrats at the local college were still giving him the run around as to what had happened to his wife, Stephanie Stephanie, who was teaching there. She hadn’t been home in two weeks, and Rick couldn’t get anyone from the school to tell him anything about what she’d been doing at school the day she disappeared. Finally, Rick, a professional big game killer, decided to take matters into his own hands, loading up his favorite shotgun, which was as big as one of his legs.

He stalked around the campus, shotgun hidden in a hockey gear bag he carried over his shoulder. On his second pass, he noticed a small trail of blood at the bottom of a concrete stairwell on the side of the sociology building. He hustled down the stairs and kicked the door open. Light fell across eyes that clearly hadn’t seen any in days. Rick was horrified by what he saw: two dozen kids, all pale as a sheet, sitting upright in their plastic desks, staring straight ahead. A few of the kids had wet themselves.

There was a closet in the front of the room; that’s what they were staring at. Rick went to open the door. A few of them screamed, but it was too late to stop them. What looked to him like a pygmy T-Rex burst out, and he emptied a shot into it, killing it instantly. The kids all ran out the door and up the stairs, before Rick could ask them what was going on.

The back wall of the classroom was a giant mirror; Rick kicked through it and stepped gingerly into the hidden room behind it. The room was empty, except for a bank of video monitors, showing the classroom from various angles, and a stack of handwritten notes. Rick grabbed the notes and got out as quickly as he could, tracking Tyrannosaur blood all the way to his Jeep.

Labels: Dinos, Stories

Dino Day couldn't have gone better. Phil, Kobes, Jayj, Vince and Beef were all here for over six hours of dino goodness, and now I'm watching the Suns/Spurs game on TNT while I work on my special Dino Day story. I highly encourage everyone to start their own Dino Day, or to attend the next one. Really one of the most fun days I've had in a while. The story I'll post later, by the way, will be in two halves: the first, I wrote in first grade, and I'll do my best to preserve all typos and incomprehensible spellings. The second half will be written by 23-years-old-but-still-fascinated-by-dinos Mike. What a great day. Thanks to everyone who came, and to Shar, the patron saint of Dino Day.

Labels: Dinos, Generalness

Welcome...to Jurassic Park!

Today is the first annual (or bi-annual, or whatever) DINO DAY! Dino Day was hatched, like a velociraptor, from Ryan Kobane's and my mutual love for Jurassic Park and all things Dino. In celebration, I've taken the day off all responsibilities (the first day I've done that this calendar year), with the exception of posting a story here. We, and any other friends who want to join us, probably a half dozen or so, will be watching the JP trilogy in its entirety, as well as snacking on gummy dino snacks, popcorn, Welch's grape juice, and other assorted munchies. I will also do a dramatic reading of my 1st grade horror story about dinos, which I may post here later this evening. I'm wearing one of my paleontologist shirts, and there are dino toys for the first people to arrive; so if you love dinos and you're not doing anything today, stop by for a bit. Just don't let the T. Rex in the corner get you.

Labels: Dinos, Generalness

The sun is setting, and as the shadows bloat and finally overtake downtown Long Beach, life is beginning to creep from the corners where it has lain dormant all day. Watching from overhead would present the same effect as turning over a large rock on a moist lawn. The little bugs are moving.

Charlie is settling into his niche, in front of the vacant lot between two of Long Beach’s hottest (only) live music clubs. People who’ve just seen live music were more likely to be generous, Charlie knew, because they’re happier. It had been a long day for him: he’d spent the bulk of it begging at Cal State, since it was Tuesday, the busiest day there. Cops had tossed him after an hour and a half, and Charlie hadn’t gotten what he’d hoped for. He was hoping that one of the clubs would have a good enough act on tonight to help him make up the difference. He was not optimistic.

A young couple walked by and Charlie shook his cup at them expectantly. The young man reached into his pocket and deposited something in Charlie’s red and white In’n’Out cup. It did not chink, so Charlie knew it was paper, and hoped it was paper with a big enough number on it to buy him some dinner before the evening’s rush started.

Pulling it out, Charlie saw that the young man, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not, had given him his receipt from Panda Express. Charlie tossed it to his left, where he tossed all the receipts, lint, tickets stubs, and other refuse people donated to him. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and tried not to feel the dull ache in his stomach growing.

* * *

Across town, in the California State University of Long Beach’s Student Union Auditorium, Dr. Charles Thompson, Sociologist, was giving a speech as part of the guest lecture series presented by the campus Progressives. His speech, about the homeless problem, in Long Beach and across the country, was coming to an end. He had begun the speech by arguing against the term “homeless problem.”

Nearly pounding the podium, he finished: “The measure of how a country treats its helpless, its destitute, its weak, is the measure of that country’s morality! I look at how we treat our brothers and sisters and it makes me sick! I urge you, all of you, do what you can. Do something. Give something. Thank you, and good night. I hope I haven’t made a nuisance of myself.”

He walked off the stage to applause from the thin audience.

* * *

Charlie, in the unique position of hearing two live bands, can tell that neither show is going well. The disappointed and occasionally angry audience members pass him by, not wanting to make a shitty evening worse. Charlie is neither surprised nor hurt. He simply waits for the crowds to thin, then slinks into the alley to dig through their leftover burgers and waxy pizza slices.

Labels: Stories

Detective Mulligan was watching the security footage for the 47th time when he finally realized what had happened. The cashier/victim, a 22-year old senior at Golden West, had been reading OC Weekly when the killer came to the counter to purchase art supplies. Then, he tries to pay with his credit card, and the cashier asks to see his I.D. The guy pulls out his license, but right there, Mulligan can see her grunt in the affirmative, despite never looking up from her paper. Then for some reason, the guy throws the paint and portfolios on the ground, pulls out a gun, and fires four shots into the cashier, before running off without the supplies. It was the fourth time in the last week and a half that a service sector civilian had been killed with apparently no financial motivation. The press and the city of Huntington Beach had been starting to get antsy.

Mulligan felt hot though, and he pulled up the other videos. In the first, the gunman (Mulligan could tell from the hair that it was the same guy) sneezed. The man ringing up his milk doesn’t open his mouth to say God bless you. In the second, it’s the opposite problem; the cashier is talking nonstop, never letting the killer get a word in edgewise.

There was no video from the third killing, which had been in a divey Italian joint, but a detail from the crime scene suddenly jumped to the front of Mulligan’s thoughts, spotlit. The waiter serving the gunman had his phone in his hand. Mulligan had assumed he’d tried to call an ambulance, but 911 hadn’t reported getting a call. He must have been getting a call from a friend. Five minutes in the evidence room confirmed it: Mulligan had a real nut job serial killer on his hands.

He told everyone in his precinct to keep it quiet, but sure enough, on the front cover of the next day’s Register was the headline “Good Manners Killer Terrorizes Huntington Beach.”

“Shit!” Mulligan shouted, kicking the newspaper stand and spilling the coffee he was holding. This was just going to make setting his trap that much more complicated.

* * *

Everyone had noticed that the four killings had taken place more or less in a rectangular pattern––you could tell everyone noticed because every parking lot and store in that rectangle was empty. The killer wasn’t being careful. Mulligan and his men had a hot zone, and they were locking it down.

Mulligan put six young, pimply officers on undercover duty along the perimeter of their rectangle, told them all to act like assholes, and call it in immediately if they noticed any brown-haired Caucasian men acting suspiciously. Whoever had been trying to raise the level of discourse in HB wasn’t dumb; a week passed and Mulligan hadn’t heard a peep from his men. No one else had been killed; he must have seen the newspaper and gone into hiding.

But Mulligan knew his supplies, his food, must be running out. Sooner or later, he’d have to come back out. Mulligan doubled his street team, had a dozen men just strolling the streets sneezing at people, talking loud on their phones, and bumping into other pedestrians. Every theater in Huntington had two cops talking loudly in it. For a whole week, Mulligan waited.

* * *

Finally, Mulligan got his phone call. A patrol officer by the name of John Lee had bumped into an incredibly average looking white male in a white t-shirt and tight, pale blue jeans. The man had pulled a knife and stabbed Lee in the side. He’d then taken a hostage, using a pistol, and was currently in a standoff at Warner and Bolsa Chica. Sirens blaring, Mulligan was there in two minutes.

“What’s your name, boy?” he asked the killer. The woman he was holding looked like she was about to bolt.

“Don’t––don’t call me boy,” he stammered, his right eye twitching.

“Why’s that, boy?”

The man’s face turned bright red. “It isn’t! It isn’t po-LITE!”

He shoved the woman aside and pointed his gun at Mulligan. Before he could complete the motion, a dozen bullets hit his torso, legs, and gun arm. He hit the ground pathetically. Mulligan kicked the gun from his dying hand. The killer twitched a few times, staring into Mulligan’s eyes. Then, with a little snort and a sound like rustling leaves, he died, his life blood foaming from his nose and mouth.

“God bless you,” Mulligan said, draping his handkerchief over the dead man’s face. He spit, then turned on his heel and walked away.

Labels: Stories

“Honey, can you run to the store for some eggs?” she called from the kitchen.

“Uh, sure,” came the faint reply from the study. “How many?”

“Just grab a dozen.”

“Alright, back in five.”

“Thank you so much.”

She heard the car start in the driveway, and knew she had the house to herself. She stared again at the recipe on its little wire holder. It was written in the shaky hand her mother possessed towards the end of her life. It was a recipe for her from-scratch chocolate cake. Susan was finding that this recipe, like all others, was harder to make than it was to read. She’d never been good at cooking, something her mother teased her about until she’d died, four and a half months ago. She left her all of her physical belongings, as well as a stack of hastily written recipe cards, with the heartfelt plea that Susan, “Please not let them gather dust.”

Susan had let them gather dust from that day forward, until today, Mother’s Day, when she got a craving for cake and decided to spend the day trying to bake. She was on her third try.

She pinched the card tightly, reading once again over the list of ingredients. She could taste the rich, spongy chocolate on her tongue, just by thinking about it. She remembered the way her mother always cut it, as meticulously as she’d made any part of it. Then she looked at the dirty bowls, whisk, and flour-covered counter. She put the card down and covered her eyes. She couldn’t remember what order to mix in, and there was nobody to ask.

Labels: Stories

Had a really relaxing, low key Mother's Day, mostly spent recuperating from last night's Union goodbye-a-thon (I'll post about that later, when I'm even less exhausted). Shar and I went to my mom's for dinner, which my little brother cooked up; it was pretty good. Yummy ice cream dessert ensued.

Anyway, congrats and thanks to all the mothers in the world. You're crumbelievable. I'll post a special Mother's Day edition story within an hour or two. Shit it's ten o'clock, I guess I have to post it within an hour or two.

Labels: Generalness

He unsaddled, without help, in yet another anonymous, dirty town in the “Great Frontier.” Wiping sand from his thick, greasy hair, he tried to decide what ugly, little, mean story he’d tell in this town’s saloon to earn his free round. Walking through swinging doors he knew he’d seen a thousand times already, he snorted. His whole life: one long string of ugly, mean stories. The doors squeaked together behind him.

While preparing to tell the story of how he escaped execution at the hands of the Mexican Army, an old favorite, he remembered a different story, one he kept for himself. It was about a great love, not his. His horse’s last owner had been a tall, strong man, who’d traveled, foolishly, with his wife. Her horse had been black, a filly, big for her age. His own horse had been young then, too. This man and his wife, and their horses, rode out west from a comfortable Virginian home, to seek out a fortune. It was a few months later that they’d died, painlessly, together, from a pair of gunshots to the back of the head.

The man in the saloon had not shot them, though he may as well have. He did not kill the man who had, much as he’d wanted to. Instead he took his share of the bounty, wisely choosing the brown colt he rode today; when he’d been steering him away, riding further west, the horse had looked back at that black filly with a longing and a lonesomeness the man himself had never known.

And every time he saddled up, he looked the horse in its dull, dead eyes and wondered if horses could remember. He sat down, told his story, collected his drink, and left, despite the protestations of the down-and-dirty crowd. He used the same lousy excuse about his imaginary shrew of a wife, told with the same knowing wink, that he always did. Then he saddled his horse, no longer a colt, and rode off into another sunset, with nothing but wind and dirt at his sides.

Labels: Stories

Tiny Tina and Jim the Giant are in love, despite the approximately 41-foot difference between their heights. Tina, a human woman, short for her species, had been the last surviving citizen of her town, which had been destroyed by Jim, a giant man who was very tall, even for a giant. Jim had squashed or eaten every person and animal Tina had ever known, but like a stereotypical woman, she did not care. Jim, like a stereotypical man of Tina’s species, had been driven to do horrible things his entire life by forces he neither understood nor wished to. Now, even more stereotypically, he allowed himself to be stilled by another force he didn’t understand, emanating from the presence of this little woman, barely taller than three chickens stacked one on another.

They saw each other across a clearing (the clearing was the high school Tina had taught at). She waked across the place she used to pour all her soul into, unfazed by its sudden destruction. In those steps was a courage brought on by true love. Tina didn’t know what Jim would do to her (eat her or squash her came to mind), but she did not care, either.

Jim, for his part, got very nervous, shifting his massive weight from side to side, standing on the sides of his giant shoes, cutting great wounds into the soft turf of Tina’s former village. For the first time in his life, he was experiencing regret, embarrassment. “Um. Hello,” he said.

“Hi!” Tina shouted.

Startled, Jim chewed his tongue for a minute, an old giant habit. “I’m real sorry about your village. I don’t know what happened. I just get so angry sometimes, by the time I come out of it, I’ve eaten a whole village. Something must have come over me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Those people were all wasting their lives anyway, down to the last one. They’re better off, believe me.”

This brightened Jim’s spirits considerably. “You mean you’re not mad at me?”

“No. I guess not. I should be, huh?”

“Well, yeah.” He looked around dramatically. “I’d say so.”

“You’re probably right. Do you promise not to eat anymore villages?”

Jim looked hurt and defensive. “Well, I am a giant after all.”

“I know, Giant, but––”

Jim cut her off. “I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced. My apologies.”

“Oh, don’t be foolish. My name is Tina.” Her face reddened. “Folks call me Tiny Tina.”

Jim stuck out a pink for her to shake. “Folks call me Jim the Giant. Except for the giants. They just call me Jim.”

Tina grabbed the end of his pinky with both hands and shook it up and down with an exaggerated, almost vaudevillian motion. “Well, Jim,” Tina said, climbing up his arm onto his shoulder. “Where do you want to go now?”

“I don’t know, Tina,” he said, climbing the hill that overlooked the village. He turned to look in the other direction, a forest dense and untouched by man or giant. “Somewhere new, I suppose.”

Labels: Stories

This is kind of a scary story: apparently a fire (of as yet undetermined cause) burned out of control on Catalina Island yesterday. On her way to work, Shar said that the sky on Ocean Blvd. had pretty much been blacked out with smoke. 4,000 people (which is the entire population of Catalina) were evacuated, and had to stand around on the beach waiting for boats to evacuate them. Fortunately it looks like firefighters and the national guard got things under control yesterday, which is really a relief because the flames were headed for Avalon.

Shar and I spent our fourth anniversary on Catalina; though we're both Long Beach natives, neither of us had ever been. It's a stunningly beautiful little paradise, where everyone is nice and nobody drives cars, opting for golf carts instead. I wish all its residents well. Hopefully the winds die down and things can return to normal for you all as soon as possible (with the exception of the six square miles already consumed by the fire).

Labels: Generalness

The car was calling to him again, and as James listened to his wife drone on about the grocery list, all he wanted to do was hop in and get the fuck out of Dodge. “Now don’t forget the damn milk this time, okay James? If you forget the milk I’ll have to make a trip anyway and there won’t have been a point to you going at all. I’m picking Stacy up from ballet and Christ from soccer, and I’ll be home in an hour. Can you be back by then?”

“Of course, darling.”

“And James?”

“Yes?”

“You won’t take off?”

“No.”

“You won’t.”

“No. Or yes. I won’t.”

“What will you do?”

“Stick to the roads I know.”

“Thaaaaat’s right, honey. I love you, I’ll see you soon.”

James picked up the list she’d prepared him, which read:

Bread
Cereal
-Wheaties (2)
-Cocoa Puffs
***Milk***
Yogurt
Oatmeal

He climbed into his car. He told himself he’d keep his promise, stick to the surface streets; he was fifteen days deep into a new experimental 12-step designed to treat an addiction to wanderlust. Then he told himself he’d just hop on the 405 and ride south for a few miles to clear his head, then pop back up.

He did the grocery shopping first, hoping that the thought of milk going bad in the trunk would help keep him rooted. But two hours and a dozen missed calls later, he was on the 10 East, curdled milk and all. The sign said he was on the road to downtown Los Angeles, but, as a man of vision, James could see further than that. East meant only one thing: New York. He’d never been. Now he’s on his way.

Labels: Stories

Tomorrow will be one month since Vonnegut died, and I have to say, the world still seems a little different. I've never been this affected by the death of someone I didn't know; the fact that I was likely to meet him in June doesn't help, I'm sure.

I'm currently approximately knee deep in a chronological Vonnegut study (as it's the only tribute I'd know how to pay). I've read Player Piano, Sirens, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle, and am currently loving God Bless You Mr Rosewater, the first book on my list that I haven't actually read before. It's very good, of course, but you knew I'd say that. This is the third chronological study I've done, after Joyce and Fitzgerald, and I have to say that there is no better way to appreciate the scope and development of a writer. Watching Vonnegut's spectacular rise from "good sci-fi writer" to "Vonnegut with a capital V" has been amazing. And to think we all shared an orbiting spaceship with him...

I've sent the Union's Vonnegut tribute to his art dealer and friend, who was nice enough to sell me a hand-signed asterix litho for my fiancee last Christmas for a scant $75. The same piece is now going for $300. So it goes.

Labels: Vonnegut

He was so excited to leave he could barely sit through his going away party. All the people swirling around him, family, friends, they seemed so small, so inconsequential. Not that he didn’t love them, but…Berkeley. Shit. That was fucking huge. Next to that, his home town, his whole life seemed miniscule. No one from his rinky-dink high school had ever been admitted , and he’d become something of a local celebrity when word got around. Everyone kept asking him questions about how excited he was, what he was going to study, how much this all meant to him.

He could tell that an image had formed in the town’s collective unconscious, so crystalline and real that it had already been written into the as-yet unwritten volume of town lore. The image was of him, Stephen Roswell, returning to Lakewood, four years from now, with a degree in one hand and a beautiful Berkeley grad on the other. They’d marry, settle down, and produce genius children for the town to prod at. This image in his head, Stanley gave an audible snort. He was never coming back. And the only question that concerned him was whether to take the 5 or the PCH up the coast tomorrow.

* * *

The next day he kissed his parents goodbye and took off. He chose PCH. His town was situated squarely between Los Angeles and San Diego, so he was prepared for a long drive. The winding road would along the cliffs of California, and the sun was making the water clear and beautiful. All that day and the first half of the next he drove through boring flat lands, spectacular cliff scenes, and winding mountains roads that snaked back on themselves, slowing his pace to a crawl.

When he got off the 580 and cruised through the streets of Berkeley, he felt like he was being pulled along on some invisible string. He felt like a fish who’d been hooked.

He parked at an on-campus lot on the north side of Bancroft, and got out, closing the door with almost post-coital gentleness. He inhaled; the air here was clearer, thinner. He walked towards the center of campus, leaving all the earthly possessions he wanted or needed in a dingy lot. His step was brisk, his eyes wandering over the near-empty campus. Summer session had ended and fall classes wouldn’t start for another two weeks, so the only other people around were the odd stragglers, the homeless, and the young professors who cared enough about their courses to start planning early.

Stephen soaked it all in, and in minutes found himself standing at the edge of Strawberry Creek. The water ran lazily by him, tiny dark fish darting around just above the bed. He sat down, let his felt dangle over the edge, tracing lines in the water. Leaving his feet ankle deep, Stephen lay back on the grass and took another deep breath. 20 yards away, he heard two girls discussing Proust and laughing. They were beautiful. Stephen smiled. His orientation and dorm assignment weren’t for another two days, but he couldn’t have cared less. After 18 years, he was home.

Labels: Bizerkeley, Stories

PAIIIIIIIIINNNNNN…..ow. My God, the light’s bright. Feels like it’s burning through my eyes. Is this heaven? So bright…no, I think that’s some kind of operating table over there. Oh my God! The cryo program! It must have worked. Someone must have thawed me out. They must have cured cancer! Oh, I wonder what year it is––maybe Carolyn’s still alive…

I wish I could get up and move around. My muscles must have atrophied, or frozen through or something. I wonder if I’ve been in the freezer for a long time…Wait a minute. Oh my God! Where’s––where is my body? I’m looking down, all I can see is…holy shit.

* * *

Christ. These lights burn just as much now. Okay. Calm down. I have to keep my breathing steady, so I don’t pass out again. I want to be awake when the doctor comes by so I can find out what’s going on. This looks like a surgical room––I’m sure they’re just preparing to reattach me. Or maybe put me in a robot body or something. I’m sure there was just a problem with the body––it was still a new science when I had them freeze me, they explained that when I signed the papers. So yeah, they must just be figuring––oh, there’s the door.

Oh my. What is that? That’s an…alien? Oh Jesus. So tall, so spindly. He looks like a vertical spider. Here he comes. I hope I can communicate with him somehow. Maybe these wires in my forehead are to help him read my mind. He’s turning something on now––I can hear a hum, getting louder now.

Okay, focus. Hello. If you can hear this, please know, I am a peaceful man. I am curious as to where I am, when it is, and what has happened to me. I am excited to learn about––wait, what’s that crackling?

LIGHTNING click-hummmmmmm

YLLLLLLLLLAHHHHH!!!!!

Oh Jesus don’t don’t please don’t not again never again

Click-hummmmmmm

YARRRRRHHHH!

Oh no, please no more, Holy God, please stop him, no more. Oh God I didn’t want this please not this I didn’t want this, I just wanted to see my wife again. I just wanted to live forever.

Labels: Stories

I went on a hectic two day road trip with my little brother to Berkeley a few weeks ago, while he was trying to decide whether to begin his collegiate career either there or at NYU (he chose Berkeley). The whole time we were up there, I was having an amazing time, but I felt like I was missing something, some essential part of the Berkeley experience that I've always found during my other half dozen trips there. Then, in the Shakespeare and Co. used bookstore on Telegraph (great store), I heard what I'd been listening for.

The owner was discussing the Virginia Tech shooting: "And then these nuts, they actually use this as an example of why MORE people should own handguns. And these guys are Senators! This country is a joke man. A sick, disgusting, perverted joke."

Ah, Berkeley. I love you.

Then, walking back to our car to begin the drive back to sunny So-Cal, we heard two homeless people having my favorite argument of all time:

"You're an idiot! You are tripping on your own bullshit!"

"ME?!? You're the one! You don't know fucking SHIT about English Literature! I have my degree!"

"Your degree is worthless!"

"Well I sure as hell learned that Dante didn't live in the nineteenth century!"

Etc. Anyway, now that my brother has decided to attend, I'm sure I'll have many more opportunities to make the trip. I couldn't be happier.

Labels: Bizerkeley, Generalness

Stumps the Cat got her name when an overeager six year-old pulled the end of her tail off. They were playing hide and seek, and Stumps, then called Nancy, had hidden too well. Reaching as far into the hamper as he could, the young boy felt fur, grabbed it, and pulled as hard as he could. When he saw that he was holding half a cat tail, the little boy screamed and immediately passed out.

Hopping out of the hamper and stepping gingerly over him, Stumps swished her half-tail and said, “Ryahr.”

* * *

The story of how Stumps escaped the house later that night is very exciting and scary, and frankly is too much for you, little girl. I will tell you that story when you’re older. For now, let’s just say that the McKittrick family spent a lot of money on home repair and psychiatric help that year.

As you know, Stumps lived on her own for quite some time before coming to live with us. She told me all her stories when she first arrived, as part of her extensive interview process. I’ll tell you my favorite, the story of how Stumps chased all the stray dogs out of El Dorado Park.

* * *

Stumps, like all cats, loves grass, trees, and duck ponds more than anything else in the world. So it’s only natural that she quickly found herself living in the biggest park in the city: El Dorado. She would happily fritter her days away rolling in the grass, climbing trees, and eating ducks from the pond. Eventually, the stray dogs caught sight of her, and though they took pity on her because of her tail, word inevitably got back to Bruno, the head dog of the park. He was not a sympathetic dog.

“This cannot continue,” he barked. “A cat playing in our park? People will laugh us deaf if we let this stand. I want that cat out of here, tonight.”

“Gnyahr,” yawned Stumps across the park, settling down into her bed of ivy.

* * *

Bruno had sent his best three dogs to make sure Stumps didn’t spend another second in El Dorado, but there was one thing he hadn’t counted on: feline ingenuity, and Stumps’ keen night vision. Again, little one, this part of the story is better suited for far bigger ears than yours, but we can safely say that three dogs went limping back to Bruno with their tales between their legs and a paw across their noses.

But this just made Bruno madder. And when Bruno got mad, Bruno schemed. He stayed up all night, and when the sun rose over El Dorado’s lush green fields the next morning, Bruno said he had a plan to make sure Stumps was gone before the dew dried.

* * *

Stumps was crunching dead leaves between her paws when she first heard the noise. Advancing fast was a circle of dogs, like the ones she’d chased away. Bruno’s voice called from behind them: “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but I do not allow cats in my park. You’ve got ten seconds to get the heck out of here, or I’m going to tell all of these dogs to tear you apart.”

Stumps cocked her head.

“Well?” asked Bruno. “What will it be?”

“Mrgnah?” Stumps said, quizzically.

“Get her!” Bruno hollered, setting his poorly-formed dumb dog plan into motion. The whole ring of dogs jumped at once, and Stumps had to use all her feline strength to leap above them, twisting her head to look down at them from above, so she could better hear and see their heads bonking together like so many empty coconut shells.

She landed on one of them, swiping at his nose, then jumping from dog to dog, giving each one a ferocious swat on the snout. Soon the dogs had all fled, and it was just Bruno and Stumps. Bruno tried to pretend he wasn’t scared, but as he backed away his voice trembled as he told her, “I’ll be back for you, ugly. Even if it’s just me. Nobody does this to me.” Then he turned and scuttled out of the park.

Stumps went back to crunching dead leaves.

* * *

After that, Stumps was queen of the whole park, and all the cats who came to live and play there thanked her. “Finally,” they said, “we cats have a place to call our own, a place where we can be free of worry or fear.”

“Nyarh,” Stumps purred majestically in reply.

Labels: Stories, Stumps the Cat

When she first saw him, Mary was wondering how many goddamned commercials she’d have to film before her head would explode. His hair was dirty blond, but really…really, really clean looking. He had perfect, commercial actor teeth, and commercial actor blue eyes. Mary herself possessed both of these features, so she didn’t hold them against him, much as she wanted to.

They were filming a commercial for a luxury sedan, because they both looked successful and happy, though the fact that they were filming this commercial meant necessarily that they were neither. They were introduced, clumsily, by the prick directing the commercial, who left them to get acquainted while he yelled at the gaffer for taking too long with the lights.

“My, uh. My name’s not actually Steve,” he told her, his sheepish grin exposing exactly the right amount of sparkle.

“Oh, that’s alright, mine’s not actually Maria, either.”

He laughed and offered a hand. “Scott.”

She shook it. “Mary.”

“Scott and Mary,” he mumbled to himself, pleased in a goofy way that seemed very out of character for a commercial actor.

“What was that?”

“Oh. Sorry. Um. Christ. I just, you’re beautiful is all, and I was just noticing that our names sound nice together.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, right?”

“That’s really crazy.”

“I know. But listen, do you want to grab a bite to eat? You know, after all…that,” he said, waving a hand at the polished silver car behind them, which the director was examining from every angle.

“If you promise you’ll wait until the second date to propose, Scott.”

“I can’t make any promises, Mary.”

She laughed, and the prick director called them over to check their makeup again.

* * *

The filming went fast, and both Scott and Mary seemed to enjoy giving each other what the director called “smitten glances. Real look of love type shit.” Dinner went even better. To both of their surprise, they fell in love, and were married six months later. Mary had always sworn she never would, and Scott had done the same after his divorce. Right now, as you’re reading this, they’re celebrating their tenth anniversary in a getaway cabin in the mountains. They’re both still surprised, but, as they start dinner, they couldn’t be happier to have been proved wrong. Their eyes catch over the candlelight: real look of love type shit. No acting necessary.

Labels: Stories

Bobby Larenzo hated those goddamn birds. He shut his car door, staring resentfully at the tall oak next to his driveway. Hearing those birds when he got home meant only one thing: the sun was about to come up, and it had taken entirely too long to kill someone last night. By all rights, it shouldn’t take a man of his abilities any more than two hours to track down and kill anyone in Miami. But tonight…he looked again at the tree.

Then he stooped, plucked three blades of grass, and rolled each one into a tight thin dart. Then he flicked them, one, two three, into the tree. One, two, three the sharp green missiles slashed through the throats of the morning thrushes.

They hit the ground in a quick staccato succession. Bobby allowed himself a quick smile before his countenance darkened again. “This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve come home to a sleeping wife and three chirping birds,” he thought. “The jobs are getting weird. Someone is testing me.” Bobby hated tests. He replayed that night’s scene over again in his head, looking for anything irregular.

It had started ordinarily enough, just another address and name slipped into his palm. He showed up at the aptly named Strobe’s, a hot young club that utilized, of course, dozens of strobe lights. Bobby had timed his blinking to the lights, so he was scanning the room with what felt like normal vision, looking for anyone who fit the description he’d been given. It shouldn’t have been hard; there weren’t that many amputees in Miami, certainly not in clubs like this, where rich, attractive people met with rich, attractive people to have sex.

His target was Benny Biggs, a small man who was supposed to be missing two arms. The fact that Benny had survived to the age of 42 in the Miami underworld without the ability to pull a trigger inspired a grudging sense of admiration in Bobby. Still, he was anxious to leave two bullets in the little man and be on his way.

After ten minutes of fruitless and frustrated searching, Bobby felt the familiar jab of a gun on his spine. Meaty hands on his shoulders guided him into the club’s private lounge. He didn’t resist.

Inside, Bobby found no little man, but rather four large, angry men. Each had a good six inches and seventy-five pounds or so on him. They were all wearing identical suits, but it was obvious that the bald one with the sunglasses on was in charge. Bobby sized him up, while the one who’d steered him here took his guns and knife away from him. This was going to be no problem at all. But Trish would be pissed he wasn’t making it home for dinner. She was making a vegetarian lasagna.

A hard cross to his jaw brought Bobby’s attention to the present again. “Who hired you to kill Mr. Biggs?”

Bobby smiled. This was going to be really easy. They didn’t know who he was working for, and that meant they didn’t know who he was, though they’d probably heard rumors.

The guy on his left punched him again. Bobby tasted blood, and felt the anger begin to boil.

“Stop smiling at me, you pretty boy fuck. Tell me who wants Biggs dead before I put a bullet in your nut.”

Moving faster than the other men could comprehend, Bobby spat the toothpick he kept next to his molars into his hand and spun, shoving it all the way into one of the thug’s eyes. Before the others could react, he’d disarmed him and shot them all, one bullet each, between the eyes. All, of course, but the bald asshole who had threatened Bobby’s future children.

He put the gun’s last bullet into the man’s left knee.

“Where’s Biggs?” he asked, politely.

“Fuck off,” the bald man spat, scared shitless.

Forty five seconds later, Bobby had a location. Two hours later, Bobby had earned the second half of his contract money. He did Benny messy, bloody, just for making him take the extra trip.

At home, Bobby tired of thinking, and slipped into bed with his wife. He kissed her behind her left ear, then settled between the 400-thread count sheets that covered their California King-sized bed. The sun was coming up, but Bobby would be sleeping in. He was spending tomorrow at the zoo, with Trish.

Labels: Stories

First, a note: I see on average somewhere between 5 and 10 movies a year, in theater. I think theaters are so excessively expensive and hassle-filled (as a rule, I hate movie audiences) that I would almost always rather wait for something to come out on DVD. Whenever I go, I go with Shar, which means that we're spending between 16 and 22 dollars to see a movie we could own forever for the same price. So because of this rarity, I generally have a great time at the movie theater when I do go, because it's still the kind of treat to me it was when I was 7 years old and I had to beg my mom to take me. I do my best to approach every movie on its own terms, and judge it based on how it presented itself within the world it creates.

So: I loved Spider-Man 3. I think it may have been the first actual comic book movie, as opposed to action movies starring superheroes. Was it over the top? Yes. Was it well acted? Immeasurably more than the first two in my opinion. Was it cheeseball? I really didn't think so. I thought there was genuine emotion in it, yes, but a lot of what I've heard deemed "cheeseball" just felt like well-paid off emotion that had been building for two movies. I loved Spider-Man 2, but I did so in the face of glaring dialogue inadequacies, and a relationship between Peter and MJ that never felt real to me. This movie had a better script (anyone who wants to sit down and read them side by side would be hard pressed to deny that, I really do think), and Peter, MJ, and Harry's relationships felt really, really real. This is coming from someone who was the "emp" kind of athetic to the problems Peter and MJ were having, as well as the experience of having a violent episode end a "best friend" kind of relationship.

The action: there was no elevated train sequence. If you watch 1, 2, and 3 back to back you won't see the best action sequence in the third movie. But you will see numbers 2 through 6, in my opinion. The pitch of the action was breakneck, and it was all infused with the kind of emotional brutality that Spider-Man fans have known and loved since Norman Osborn stole Gwen Stacy thirty years ago.

Honestly, I spent a combined four hours talking about this movie yesterday, either arguing with people who didn't get it (and were either criticizing an epic movie on minutia, or comparing it to the sinful Batman Forever) or having great, intelligent conversations with people who did. For the most part, those people were comic book fans. This was not an action movie; it was a comic book movie, one more made for the true fans than any other I've seen. Reaction seems to be divided between people who hate this movie, and people who think it's the best movie ever. I really liked it, even loved it, but it's not the best ever. Yes, there's no Spidey sense and that makes no...sense. Yes, they tried to put too much in, although the movie left me wanting more, not less. And YES, Bryce Dallas Howard or someone else should have played MJ from the start, even though Kirsten Dunst finally seems like a really human, realistic MJ in this movie. But really...none of that is nearly enough to soil my enjoyment of the wildest cinematic ride I've ever been on in a theater.

I could think of a milllion other things to say, but frankly, I'm tuckered out. I'm sure as I see it, and love it, a dozen more times, I'll post more. For now: go see it. And put your mind in a place to allow you to love it. Don't saddle the movie with your own expectations or desires. Allow it to be what it is, and enjoy that Sam Raimi had the balls to take a third movie in a new direction, something that rarely happens in the bloated and near-pointless world of Hollywood movies.

The purpose of art is for enjoyment and betterment; any philosophy or mindset that will allow you enjoy a movie the most, is the best mindset to be in, for any given movie. We're lucky to be alive with these kinds of spectacles being made purely for our enjoyment. Go see Spidey 3. Enjoy it. It really is a great movie.

Labels: Generalness, Spidey 3

When Scott Dufreyn woke up, staring at the back of his wife’s head, he knew something was wrong. He felt like his mind was a record player, going around and around, hitching a notch every loop, disturbed by the same incomprehensible obstacle. He kissed her thick black hair and went to work.

Maria, his wife, called during his lunch to say she’d be visiting a few friends in L.A. She’d gone to college there (they both had), but since they’d graduated a few years ago, most of Scott's friends had made the pilgrimage, along with he and his wife, to Orange County. Maria’s friends, a snobby art set who would never set foot in the OC, remained remote. “Don’t forget Pat’s birthday party tonight,” he said, hoping she hadn’t forgotten again.

“I won’t, Scott. I should be back by ten.”

Scott’s stomach growled, though he’d already finished eating his club sandwich. “And honey?”

“Yes?”

“Drive safe, okay? It’s supposed to rain.”

“I will. I’ll call when I’m on my way home.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The rest of the work day Scott spent worrying that something would happen to her, or trying not to worry.

At 7 o’clock, she called to say she was coming home. At 8:30, she made it, and Scott felt an overwhelming sense of relief. His wife was confused by the strength of his welcome embrace. “Scott?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah––it’s weird. I just had this horrible feeling all day that something was going to happen to you.”

She flicked his nose, as she always did when she thought he was being silly. “Of course I’m okay. I wouldn’t leave you all alone.” She clutched him tightly, stroking the back of his hair.

They left for the party an hour later, only staying till 11, since both were eager to climb into bed and put the oddness of the day to rest.

That night, they slept with the kind of desperation they’d had when the bed they shared was a dorm-issue twin. Their bodies pressed tightly together, his head buried in her hair, the phone rang four times before Steve heard it.

“Mr. Dufreyn?” asked a tired voice on the other end.

“Yes?” Scott said, looking at his alarm clock, which read 1:11 A.M.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Your wife is Maria Dufreyn?”

“Yes, that’s my wife.”

“Well, I’m afraid she was involved in an accident this evening on the 405. We…we need you to come identify the remains, Mr. Dufreyn.”

Scott looked at the bed, where just a moment ago his wife’s warm body had been. The sheets were wrinkled as though around some invisible form, but there was nothing there to see.

Labels: Stories

A story and review to come later, but for now, a treat. Before the movie last night (we were let in early and sat there for four and a half hours) they played the usual pre-movie music fare...EXCEPT for the AMAZING "Who Am I?" by Lenny Revell, which is probably the worst song ever written. It's great. Here are the lyrics (this song is not on the Spidey soundtrack, somehow):

Dreamin' about what could be mine
This red-haired girl I've loved my whole life
And it screams this radio-active blood inside
As I swing through the canyons of Manhattan tonight
If you could just see me the way I am
Fate placed a gift and curse in my hand
I'm obliged by responsibility
For the power I hold inside of me
Who am I? Who am I? You could never understand
Who am I? Who am I? An arachnid Peter Pan
Fighting the forces of evil everyday I can
Who am I? Who am I? I am Spider-man!
Holding back the tears I have shed
Keeping the guilt I alone have been fed
My best friend's father has long been dead
And my girlfriend Mary Jane was almost wed
Yet still I force myself to fight
For the good and the brotherhood of mankind
If you could live my life for one day
My power would just sweep you away

More at myspace.com/lennyrevellband, including video of him playing this song, at a BOWLING ALLEY. Fuck.

Labels: Generalness

I really really liked and loved it a lot, for tons of reasons, a few of which were really subtle but most of which are really obvious. I'll post a full review sometime tomorrow after I've battled with a hater or two, since my reviews are always best when injected with a little venom. Har.

Labels: Generalness, Spidey 3

I'll repost this later (once more than just me and Pat are reading the blog), but: feel free to comment with anything you have to say about the stories I'm posting. I'm a salty old bastard of a writer, but I'm good at taking criticism, as well as (hopefully) the occasional compliment. I've got the first story out there, so...we're off and running. Thanks for joining me. Now I'm taking the rest of the day to relax and enjoy Spidey 3.

Incidentally, I've set up the navigation as easily as a techtard like me can, but let me know if you have any ideas for how to streamline it.

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement

He was having one of his “sensitive days,” when it felt like the top two layers of his skin had been peeled off. When he saw a couple holding hands, he felt in love, and when he saw on old woman flip off a young woman who had cut her off, he winced. These were days when he felt like some kind of conduit between the universe and humanity. Today he felt it even more strongly than usual. So, he did what he usually did when he woke up and felt like he had the world in his lungs: he called the bookstore he worked at and said he was sick. Then he jumped into his car and drove downtown, where he pulled over, got out, and sat and meditated on the corner. He knew the moment was coming today, and he wanted to be prepared when it did.

He wasn’t surprised a few hours later when the rain started pouring down. From behind him he heard scattered cries of “Shit!” as young white men in khakis and powder blue shirts covered their heads with brown and black leather briefcases and scuttled out of the way. The confusion grew as the young men looked up and saw that the sky was as pure a blue as they’d ever seen.

Soon, the water began to rise, and the young men retreated to their buildings. The meditating man stayed where he was, trance-like, until the water rose to his chin. Then he opened his eyes and stood up, the water lapping at his waist. He took three elevators to get to the top floor of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. It took twelve days, but eventually the water rose to the roof.

The man looked at it quizzically as it came up to meet him. He watched as gumball-sized bubbles appeared and popped on the surface of what was now the world’s only ocean. He turned and looked, seeing nothing in any direction but water. All the world had been swallowed, and now the only life he could see was those little bubbles.

A family playing in the park.

Pop.

The sound of a screen door slamming in anger.

Pop.

Nuclear bombs detonating in a desert.

Pop.

America.

Pop.

Europe.

Pop.

Everything.

As he stripped naked, the man watched one bubble swell up, quiver, and explode. Then he took a deep breath and fell backwards into the water. He was cold, but the water was warm, so he took a deep breath and plunged beneath.

Labels: Stories

So...today is Spider-Man 3 day! In honor, I've spent the day writing on the couch next to Pat as we watch Spidey 2.1 and sip tea from our sophisticated Spider-Man 3 7-11 cups. To quote the late great Vonnegut, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is. Today will also mark the start of story posting! Word!

Labels: Generalness, Spidey 3

A friend of mine suggested a cure for writer's block might be, you know, writing. A lot. So, as I'm working on a novel I'd rather not be "blocked" for, I've started writing one story a day, every day, with no sabbath or holidays. They'll be in every genre, tone, and style I can think of, and they'll probably be pretty short, 300-1,000 wordsish. I'll be posting here every day for the next year, and I'd love to hear any feedback you've got for me. I am keeping busy with a number of projects, from this, to the aforementioned novel, to a blossoming and consuming freelance career. I'm sure from time to time I'll be posting about all of that, too. Sounds good? Sounds good. Good!

Labels: Generalness, Mission Statement