Luana Ambivalence

I sat buffing my monument of nobility that appeared in my dreams. A mirror shine, as always. A faint buzzer went off in my room. The walls were coated in morning light. The radio clicked on and (as it turns out) I interrupted a major turning point: "Time of death: 7:20AM, Cause of death: 'Weather-related electrocution' - well that's it doctor, we did all we could - you should be commended for your effort."

The doctor hung his head and closed his eyes, his hand still holding a bag of oxygen - he felt as if he had given up. A nurse reassured him that this would not impact his status as chief resident. "How does she know," he muttered as he pulled off his gloves. He had flashes of nature in an overexposed state: blades of grass poking through the soil, butterflies emerging from their ugly wrappings, a bird diving down and gliding for the first time, an apple falling from a tower. Image flashes such as these propelled him forward forcefully. Call it 'delusional' if you must.

"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special announcement from the Coast Guard: As of 0730, gale-forced winds may shake things up near the gulf. Clipper ships, consider yourselves warned!"

I stepped out onto the deck, I noticed some of my crew had eaten breakfast already. "Good morning you wild taxonomists of the Southern half of our earthball. Did we name anything last night?" I looked around and no one really noticed me. "Yeah we actually saw a two-of-sixteen trichordate and named it." I thought of Gaia and knew she'd be pleased, so I guiltily filled out some forms for her and filed them away. Gaia was simply stunning, long hair...flowin' down, on the ocean...waves splashing down (against an enormous land mass).

"What did you name it?"

"Luana."

A sharp wave crest slammed the side of our ship, and then a few smaller ones followed. We really took off after that. Blazing down the shoreline, a powerful, frothy wake erupted behind our clipper ship. In a display of unanimous strength, the bow raised slightly out of the water and the wind whipped in then around the vacuum and howled so loudly men working on the docks stood up and shed tears of awe. I cried a little too, but mostly I gripped the wheel with one hand and held her steady. I pushed the throttle to its limit, knowing full well that any added velocity at this point came from the whims of the winds, tides, and fortunes.

Below the deck, I scribbled some personal thoughts on a notepad I bought back on mainland. Sheesh.

Pest Control

The cows shuffled in the fields and summer dew coated blades of summer grass and made tiny rainbows for tiny insects stuffing their faces in the dirt searching for culinary treasures in a pesticide minefield out in my meadow. All this was boxed in by a water-logged wooden fence built long before the most recent batch of cows swept over the fields. So the lightshow persisted. The sky turned grey and the vista wasn’t even close to where the Old Guard had set their lowest expectations. Such is the lament of the downtrodden technology chief as he comes out of the ‘pen, camera flicker-flashes assaulting his eyes, cable news sitting in the cat[fish]bird seat. They salivate with half the story in one hand and half the story whirling around in a pesticide-saliva monsoon that washes all the little vermin back into their holes (hopefully cracking their necks and killing their dreams) ruining their afternoon scavenge under the dew rainbows. in. my. meadow.

We are all profane, she exclaimed – so I spun her around and dipped her down and then we released for a time and did a little jig with our hands to the whitest beat in the tune and maybe moved our feet a little and swung our hips in a measured manner to the right to the left and back again and since we’re advanced, we would spice it up with a right-right here and there; then we clasped hands again and pressed against each other and maybe mouthed the words but I didn’t sing out loud because that would kill the moment and she sang out loud and we both loved it for reasonably different reasons. The sky quicktimed in a glorious gradient of blue to yellow orange red purple and the climate followed suit from pleasant to warm cool summer-night and still.

A long walk to the long table with the one microphone in the middle took the cows by surprise. They pecked at the ground and meandered towards it solemnly, agents in tow. The cow who had it the worst, we’ll call her “Sam,” had black eyes and on this awful day, Sam’s eyes hurt a ton. She approached the microphone and nudged it with her nose, a low feedback puff filled the air. She sighed. Her tear ducts swelled. She nudged the mic again. Blood pumped viciously through her veins. Then she regurgitated the scandal in most uncertainless terms: there was the cheating, the lying, the late nights, the gambling…the whoring…the fraud, the gluttony, the pain, the psyche, the mortar, and the incidents of larceny.

After the press conference everything went back to normal: bees flew around and the army of insects scattered in the dirt in the grass forest and it rained and everyone spit and moist hairs sloped down everyone’s backs and the mud mixed with the pesticide and everything went down all around her but without her she’d been cut out – excised for being too ambitious, for letting her naively-formed dreams transform her permanently. Now she’s gone to far to go back, and gone to far to go forward.

Rhon Dar Especial

"Mmm, doesn't that look good? Gimme some of that..." So he ladled some broccoli florets into the frying pan and the creamy yellow shit started to simmer. Nestled in the village of butryic acid and its northwest environs, I noticed that Felippa hadn't greased her hair up today, I think I'll tell her to "have a good day" on the days where she doesn't slick that shit. "Hi, buttered bagel, thanks, have a nice day." Shit, "nice?" That's what I come up with, argh, I planned it. Smiling fine, suddenly, I feel your oily skin, oh holy uprights, maxillary performance to a leather cushion near you.

Sadly, we awoke in a communal sit-up across the city. In other cities, people slept in their DeMarcus Ware jerseys thinking, "we were a very vanilla team out there, if he runs through the ball, we win." Here's who comes out the best for the boys: Jason Witten, flak-free, got to hang with Jessica. Legendary quote from a literate fan: "Who's Jessica Simpson? Is that the bitch O.J. killed?"

"I've been looking for women at the grocery stores, but I never expected to meet one at the polls." Riveting. "Tom Brady and Giselle, locking lips at Nobu, the new Morimoto joint" "Hey didn't he have a game that weekend?" Actually Morimoto has nothing to do with Nobu Next Door, and Giselle has a last name, Cart. You are despicable and your partner is a choke artist. "And now the Cowboys are headed for vacation, even though their quarterback got a head start."

Gallop, whoo ha look at all this sawgrass, how much you think there is? The tall (6'4") Cowboy took off his hat and said, "39% switchgrass, 28% sawgrass, 23% bahiagrass, 10% ryegrass, with a 5% margin of error." I mean, "hats off to us, ya know?" I know Randy, I know. Oh Nick in Huntington, what are you talking about man, Terry Glenn? "It's simply not my style" - interrupt, here's how Chris would've played it: "Listen, Jessica, we'll go down there February 4, T.O.'s treat." T.O. can't be into that kinna girl can he? Yes.

Left hand to the doorhandle, rotate wrist clockwise, the latch retreats, pull the handle towards yourself to open the door. Darkness floods the hall, except for a strip of light under the curtained doorway. Poor soul, burning the midnight oil again. Maybe I'll learn all about grass, and switchgrass, and wonton soup. It would be useful to commemorate this nondescript Monday in a way that is both dignified and entertaining. But let's shoot straight, cowboy. Utilitarian writings, not my style (whimper whimper tear tear).

Maybe I'll look up corn starch. Oh one more thing to add about the whole doorknob issue: I have pretty dexterous hands for a non-amylophagic technician. Maybe I'll look up corn starch, see what it's all about: apparently it can also be used for making highly flammable and explosive jellies. All the food of the day has been devastating for my tired soul. I need to start eating healthy, no more pasta. As soon as you use a word like pasta no one takes you seriously. It comes off like a lamely-contrived colloquialism. You know, this dude's tryin' it. He throws in the ethnic word, look his writing is so grassroots, I can get behind that. I can stand tall behind that. We're solid sometimes but liquid other times. We thrive on an underabundance of heat.

All day, without her, my beautiful Maria. Wise man in the alley says real raspy: "Ohhh, son, focus focus, retrain your brain like Chris Kaman." So I say, "this morning I started getting bored with the New York Times columnists soI tried out some other ones, stumbling finally upon Cynthia Tucker, who writes clearly. Why do shitty writers get shitty copy editors? We'll come gunnin' down the sidestreets when we come, we'll be gunnin' down the sidestreets, we'll be gunnin' down the sidestreets, we'll be gunnin' down the sidestreets when. We. Come."

The wise man in the alley stoped paying attention when I repeated the same thing over and over again and he knew how it would end. I understand where he's coming from, it's difficult to stay focused on something that is really repetitive for the sake of getting to a long foreseen conclusion. It's like being a landscaper, you mow the lawn you trim the hedges, and what's on your mind? Nothing, or at least, nothing for long. The repetition consumes everything and you can't think of an escape plan. That's insensitive. You're insensitive, always pickin' apart my shit. You try it, you try trance jobs and then you try getting out.

"Wow..." What is going through these people's heads? A reply-to-all, ferociously lame comment. Do you have any idea the last time calling out your own indifference to bureaucratic correspondence got a laugh, a smile, or anything but unmitigated disdain? The pain! Maybe this is how Willy works the ladies. Maybe he leans his meaninglessly-toned frame back against some midtown booth and has the world he covets wrapped around his dork-ass fingers. He goes home and subconsciously reinforces his behavior because of the rabid self-assurance that some petty courtesy smiles have earned him. He might even do a few pushups, maybe take his shirt off and do something faux-gangster with his hands in the mirror. Maybe he'll cross the line and realize to himself that he should tone it down, and even in that moment of retreat, a tool survives, multiplies and thrives.

I am suggesting it's genetic. Yes, like an affinity for sesame oil or something. If I were Wikipedia, and I'm not, I would throw together a GUI team and work on something portable, extremely user-friendly, and highly derivative of the primary-colored bullshit that sells today, and sell it. Imagine Wikipedia in ten years, it's borderline scary, you know? If we don't equip humans with the ability to easily access Wikipedia at any moment, some hacker-type will develop a robot armed with the knowledge of Wikipedia, and deploy it in the American midwest. I thought a lot about children this weekend, it's going to be essential to have some kind of portable Wikipedia access. I won't have kids without it.

Oh here we have it, after seven and a half hours - an insider look. I've been flooded with clarity and the desire to perform at a high level. Cha cha cha. Maybe I should learn this stupid stuff, after all, it's the biggest market on earth, and assuming we make contact with intelligent life outside Earth, what do you think, don't be a jerk, will be the first thing we'll set up? Obviously, some kind of marketplace. Now, what could be more useful when talking to actual aliens, besides some kind of proper indentification system, than knowledge of Earth's largest marketplace, one that requires knowledge of ancient bartering systems and the Bretton-Woods agreement.

"If Tom Brady's the Golden Boy, Antonio, what's Brett Favre?" Without skipping a beat, "GOAT." "Oh well, that's right, he is a bit of a goat..." "No, no, man don't be confusing what I said, GOAT like, 'Greatest of All Time' not like on the farm." Gotta be up on that boys, that's been around the block.

Cynthia...no one knows your number, no one knows where you live. You walk down to the grocery store where none of the attendants cares about what you're purchasing, they just care about extraoccupational activities. See, that must have been beautiful, even "unremarkable" jobs were at least dignified. You had your little shop going, you know the customers, you say nasty stuff under your breath about new customers, and as difficult as it was to get up in the morning, there's a life, there's life-based interaction with people. You know their names they knows yours. Now everything is just a "Careers" link or a hookup. You know what? Metricize that, lifecycle that, stage that, test it throughout each lifecycle stage, tabulate the data and report it.

I really lost touch with my mathematical side once all those stupid Greek symbols got into the mix. Especially the capital E, you know, the sum sign. See other symbols just represent something, but the sum sign is a function with an exact prescription for variable inputs. What's most frustrating, of course, is the tendency to deviate from the conventions outlined in textbooks. So what happens? You try to figure out what the E thing means, you get the definition somewhere, and then no one does it like that. So you bootstrap, but you don't really get it. "It's a unique, Monique." Yeah and it cost me $850 so why don't you keep your dumb little jokes to yourself.

My Pins

There are five pins on my desk. I keep them in this little black plastic tray underneath my monitor array. They are white, yellow, green, blue, and red. For about three months I only had the red, yellow, and blue ones. One day I turned around and realized that there was a green pin in the wall behind me. I took it out of the wall but something about the even number of pins upset me. I stood up and noticed a white pin in the synthetic cubicle cloth behind my monitor array. I took it out. That’s how I acquired the fifth pin and restored harmony.

Sometimes I pick them all up and turn the yellow and blue ones on their heads and then stick the green one in the space between them, resting its shoulders on the upside down shoulders of the two upside down pins. I like this configuration because of the color combination it implies. The bottom of the pin resting on the shoulders of the upside down pins does not touch the desk.

Sometimes I line up the blue, yellow, and red pins on their heads, and stick the green and white pins on top of them. This configuration is not as perfect, because yellow and red don’t make white, they make orange. I wish I had an orange pin.

Still, I’m happy now that I have five pins, you know? They’re my little buddies. They hang out in the little tray right in front of me, next to the book of stamps that only has two stamps left on it. If someone ever took my pins I’d be pretty upset, because some days, the only emotional interaction I engage in is between me and my pins.

I also have this little black clip thing. It came with my IP phone headset. It’s serial number is LR66181, but to be honest I didn’t even know it had a serial number until I started writing this. It has moderate-to-aggressive spring action and is about an inch long with the spring in the middle. There are three circular grooves in the clip part of the little black clip thing.

Sometimes I put the pins inside the little grooves on both sides and spin it around, holding one pin steady and rotating with the other. One day I put a pin into the top groove on one side of the clip and another pin on the other side of the same groove. You have to press a little harder but they actually both fit in the groove tunnel. The clip thing opens up a little in this case and you can’t really spin it.

I’m not really attached to the little black clip thing as much as I am to my five pins. They are my dudes, the little black clip thing is like an acquaintance. If someone walked by and said, “Hey do you have one of those little black clip things?” I’d probably get really excited and say, “Yeah, actually I do, here you go,” and hand them the little black clip thing. Then they’d probably just walk away with my the clip.

I’d turn around and wipe the fake smile off my face and grab my five pins and line up the yellow and blue ones upside down. I’d clear a little space for the green one and stick it between, “I can’t believe I gave that asshole my little black clip. I miss it.” I bet the person will never stick pins on both sides and spin it around. They’ll probably just use it to hold the wire of their headset and talk about servers and helping traders with their stupid spreadsheets.

Inflatable Ego!

Do you have flaccid self-regard? Do you suffer from self-underestimation? Oooohh! The pain! The agony of your hapless muscles. The routine of appearing indifferent to conversation. The monotony, loneliness, and relentlessly eroding downward spiral of self-deprecation. All that can end as soon as you finish reading this. With these three easy steps, you can banish insecurity directly to the core of your heart (where it thrives and never dies):

1) Above all...it's showtime, baby. You must remember this. When you enter a room, when you move along down the city sidewalks, when you play with little kids - it's showtime. Uh. Yeah. What. The lights go black, the crowd comes to its feet, the public address announcer clears his throat and says, "aaaand now..." There's a hot 20-something above the tunnel holding a sign that says, "TAKE ME HOME, {First Name}." People paid to see you tonight.

The place is rocking and you're still standing behind the security guards with the yellow jackets in the tunnel. You half-stretch your calves one by one, you give a little neck twist, maybe throw in a few hops. You're wearing a white headband, you take it off and chuck it to the side and think, "". Nothing. Nothing at all baby. The spotlight hits the tunnel entrance and casts a blinding light at your toes, "It's showtime, it showtime, it showtime," you whisper it.

The PA announcer belts out your name, "{FIRSTNAAAAME LASTNAAAAAAAAAAAAME}!!!" You hop a little, distributing the weight slightly onto your back foot (no one's that confident), and then you explode out the tunnel, spin around and show your face to your adoring fans as you high-five the trainer and the hot member of the support staff. You get to center stage, raise your hands above your head and say, (politely), "A buttered poppy-seed bagel, please" or "I finished that assignment you gave me" or "Happy Holidays Aunt Laurie." It's gotta be goin' through your head at all times, that scene, that's you, you're the star, it's showtime.

2) Because it's showtime, things go your way. When the subway arrives just as you descend the stairs, it's because of your aura. Your presence in the station literally adjusted the timetable and composition of the entire transit network. Cut ahead a few old folk (they won't even notice), maybe slap the top of the doorway like "yo wutup, I own this car," and go wedge between two comfortable groups of seated people and lean your ass all the way back. Yeah, who got the broad shoulders now! What.

When you're not sure if it's one of those vending machines that can take the bill both face sides up and you give it to it the face side that's less crinkled, and it takes it, that's cuz it's showtime baby! When you buy a bunch of stuff at the pharmacy and one of the items was actually half price and the math in your head was one dollar denomination too high...you know why. Baby it's cuz you're so good lookin' in the spotlight right now. Whoo!

3) You mad famous. You on top the world, baby. When people make eye contact, it mean one thing and one thing only, they are just dyin' to get with you. You see some old dude looking at some mad young chick and you cut in front of her, right in his way. He looks at you in the eyes: yeeeeah. Take a number gramps. Please. You walk past a coffee shop and startle some babe in the window because you're staring at her with your mouth open, she looks you right in the eyes: yeeeeah. Go round up a few mo'. What.

You stand on the elevator with reflective doors and everyone looks away as you stare at your reflection: yeeeeah. What now. The little bell rings but the doors don't open so almost everyone looks at the little blue number to see what up but as they realize you lookin' straight ahead they look into your eyes in the reflection: yeeeeah. "The'y a ho lotta lovin' 'go around, baby." Maybe give a little smirk. Nah. Nah. What now. Uh.

Now that you've read through the steps to achieving instant confidence, it's worth mentioning that before these foolproof guidelines become habitual (studies suggest habits take almost three weeks to solidify), you may need an easy way to remind yourself of the steps, here's how: once you get yourself all did in morning, take a last look in the mirror. Raise your dominant hand about 5 inches below your chin, extend your thumb and index finger, cupping the other three fingers, this should make a pistol-shaped figure with your hand. That little arrangement doesn't pack any punch and is for sissies.

Take your middle finger, extend it, and line it up just beneath your index finger. Now you got a hand cannon. Do you feel the difference? Try it a few times. Good. Anyway you want to look at yourself in the mirror, and fire the gun once. This should remind you of Step 1, when showtime begins. Next, blow out the top of the gun because it's all smoky. Then, put it in its holster at your side. This should remind you of Step 2 because it's cuz of your skill that the holster doesn't catch fire even though, because of you, it's so hot. Next, and this harkens back to Step 3, give yourself a last look and either wink with your dominant eye or give yourself a slight smootch. On days when you really need a big performance, you can do both, but baby... don't waste it.

Wasn't the Spring

You'd suspect that tall yellow-green weeds in front of a boarded-up house indicates an extended period of neglect, and in most cases, you'd be right. So let's analyze those cases when you'd be right, ok? You call up the town commissioner's office to ask about the property, and they tell you "nothing's been reported." You call up other local authorities, and they tell you, "haven't had any problems." So you walk to the library and check the newspapers for natural disasters in the past year and all the papers say is "..." (See #1 below.) Alas, nothing about any natural disasters, including epidemics, I forgot to mention that you'd look into epidemics in addition.

So it's looking more and more likely that your original suspicion was correct. You double back to the house because this is a blog and there's no time to walk. And as you approach it, you notice that nothing about the house has changed, it's still boarded up and lots of weeds remain in the front yard. The sun is setting because of all you've done today and because there needs to be some kind of trigger for the surreal events that follow:

A small red ribbon blows [like a tantrum]. Then it lands near your foot. You bend over for the ribbon but it swings all the way to the left [of you] and so you pivot a little and go to grab it on the left. You know you're getting old when you bend over to pick up a magic ribbon and wonder, "what else can I do while I'm down here?" Oh yeah it's a magic ribbon, forgot to mention that, just figured you'd have another one of your well-educated suspicions. Who has AIDS? The magic ribbon is sticky on one side.

There you are - supporting a guardian angel and a devil's advocate on each shoulder standing in front of a boarded-up house that's almost certainly been subject to long-term neglect, having spent a good part of the day researching that very issue, and holding a magic red ribbon.

The angel says, "do the right thing," and the devil does a spinny motion with his fingers and the ribbon becomes translucent and tape-like. He expands it over your eyes and nostrils and ear canals and tongue and fingertips and says, "Do you think this cape goes with these boots?" And you say, "sure, you're the devil and things look appropriately hellish." The devil says, "Have you ever heard of salvation?" And you respond, "Ha, well of course I've heard of it but there's not much to say." The devil replies that you are completely incorrect about the cape, boots, and salvation. So you look at the house in front of you and it still looks boarded up. Then, the reality (See #2 Below) slithers into your mind: there might be malnourishment going on in the house, the government may be making some kind of statement, there could be a class action lawsuit against the proprietors, current or previous, of the residence - The devil has black hair.

There is no resolution because it's not spring yet.

#1 - Newspapers sure say a lot when you request historical information.
#2 - Remember that your senses have been cloaked in the devil's Scotch red tape!

Here At Home

[Ancestrally-privileged moguls] sometimes have these uncrinkled pieces of legal paper with manicured black characters drafted upon them, and from these West Indian (not East Asian) manuscripts, a showstopping food chain of sociopolitical implications expands – in to the inner-city, out to the shore (the ’burbs), in to the classrooms, out to the playgrounds, in ivory doors, out closets, in hearts out of iron. The networking is just splendid and the chicken is almost always prepared to perfection, their rooms are made made of bulletproof glass - a great irony considering the classes they’ve attended and the security at the iron gates.

Welcome to the Johnson & Johnson’s, leave the .223 at home next time, Damien. Would you care for a drink did you ask the trainer don’t worry I already did (what a question in this period, Mrs. Robinson reflected)? Mirrors slanted away from the walls as they soared towards the stratosphere interrupted by the arched ceiling and the golden molding in the great hall of the balding mogul’s mansion. The realism of the gazes trapped in the European paintings challenged the indifference of the Iowan safety established near the turn of the century. Safely looking up at the ceiling (because no one else was looking), Mrs. Robinson noticed paintings by Woody’s heroes on the walls.

As her shiny heels clicked behind her husband and his boss, the felt her face sink into its bones, her chest press down at her stomach, “oh, that’s George Washington,” she whispered as a code red level of inhibition began to swirl inside her. There he was, “The Father of His Country,” mounted on a horse in the New Jersey woods. Woody and Damien had a similar relationship [to other professional relationships like this one].

Right, right, oh of course. Next time, no such thing. Bust down the double doors on the field next time. Haha, yes. The logs from the inner thoughts during this interaction proved so large as to be correctly-termed ‘unwieldy.’

Winning Race

September 26, 2007

In a wild frenzy induced by tripping over a cord, our cameraman executes an opening scene that Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and Quentin Tarantino wouldn't have come up with if they were having Sunday "dinner" at Martin Scorsese's house on a red-and-white plaid tablecloth with Mario Batali in the kitchen and Bruce Springsteen in the bathroom. And there, with ambiguously-striated focus, greyscale color imbalance, a cracked lens, and flickering light from a fountain of sparks at the site of the rupture, our hero opened his eyes and noticed a cameraman in his bedroom.

"Good morning son, what did I tell you about sending your feed to the editing software in real-time? Only problems, only problems my son." And so it was. Our hero stood up and cracked his meaty knuckles, leaned forward a little bit and reached for his toes, coming just fourteen inches short as his back cracked. Smoothly, seamlessly, like an American submarine in the Gulf, he torqued left and right, cracking some other stuff. He reached for the ceiling, formed mighty fists and more stuff cracked. He stretched his arms out to the side and briefly rotated them as he began a yawn large enough to end the day here at 4:30 a.m. But his day was only getting started, our hero had awoken, and his son returned to his room.

With a sponge the size of a small stubby brick, he alternated scrubbing. What was more valuable, the carefully-cultivated patina on the all-copper shower walls, or his tropical skin that had endured the pressures of a society that had grown complacent about having him in it? Probably the walls. You could fit an 18" pizza within the shower head's perimeter, and our hero'd have it bigger! On one wall a mirror, on the ceiling - a map of his homeland (interrupted by the shower head's pipe). He swished some hydrogen peroxide in his mouth, and allowed a little to trickle halfway down his esophagus - when, like an economy toilet in reverse...

At our hero's deli, which he owned in another life, he was putting new tape in the register when a little kid placed a Gatorade on the counter between the thick glass covered in lotto tickets and the beef jerky or whatever. The little guy then reached into his pockets, cupped his hands and began lifting his arms up over his head. His hands descended on the counter and he slowly let one hundred and seventy-five pennies cascade onto the immaculately clean surface (underneath which a black Sharpie had scribbled "100" beside "Million Dollars"). As the copper-plated coins fell on top of each other, our hero had a vision of the little guy's future.

Like the beginning of a trailer for a bad movie, the little guy’s silhouette (he was 18) contrasted with the setting sun and heat lines waved tensely in orange and red all around him. A slick black assault rifle bumped up and down against his back. He turned around and mouthed something in a foreign, barbaric tongue. The little guy was great at rolling laterally, springing to his feet, and firing like a stud. He entered a hut and shot someone in the thigh, saying “you won’t be so cheap next time!” (rough translation). The little guy had been on his own since he was eleven, climbing mountains, killing wild animals, enamoring little village girls, stealing from dusty markets, etc. He went into another hut and shot someone in the arm. Their elbow exploded, he said, “you won’t ever know me!” (same). When the little guy wasn’t off shooting people, he would bring girls to the top of a mountain that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. “Woman, one day I’m going to get out of here altogether” (same). He had a vision of himself with two prosthetic falcon-feather-wings that he had been working on for a while. The little guy ran and jumped off the mountaintop. He glided eternally.

It actually took a while for him to get the hang of it, he took some pretty drastic plunges. Luckily, the mountaintop was about 10,000 feet above sea level – a fortunate buffer. The trick was to let air under the wings so as to glide – no need to keep flapping. See but it actually was eternal, he didn’t get tired, the wings didn’t erode, he didn’t get bored. He’s still up there because he earned it and because there’s always something to see.

The Ballad of Calendar Math

As our pudgy little stick-figure frames slog through the screechy terrain of September, we occasionally pause for a bite to eat. When we eat our minds tuck themselves into the cozy inertia we've recklessly purchased...again. And just as our minds begin to shut their eyes, we are reminded by the speciously apologetic nudge of similarly listless travelers, ordering something similarly acrylamidic. The path we're on is the pit, and everyone here is 100% legal. We look out at the bright lights whizzing in the distance and say, "It's always so backed up."

Back on the road there are two choices in front of us: "Merge" or "Return" We rarely choose the former. It makes us sleepy. And when we sleep...a glorious procession of gears and other submachinery, to their beds...we sometimes travel down the path marked "Merge." Complicated by all that precedes us, our driver turns his head briefly to see his briefcase then quickly turns his head back and focuses on the road. He sticks out his hand towards the briefcase and twists the combination on the right side to 6-2-4 and then again on the left side. The case flicks open and parenthetical fumes suffuse the back seat, where we have been seated all this time.

An explosive mixture of chemicals and poor decisions emulsify at once and traditions grow taboo under the intense glow of a halogen flashlight - strapped to the helmet, the yellow plastic helmet, of the leader, of our team of miners. We employ about four miners, so... Sometimes gases from the crust of the earth ignite the mixture and we spin out of control as the last domino in a chain of people who aren't the last domino. Our hands tied behind us, we see a lineup of the alleged perpetrators. An unfriendly, dishonest officer asks us to pick out the one who's done this to us and we all start to cry - and I become nostalgic.

Burnt by a Tuft of Fire

Immediately after [human catastrophe], the [human] villains were identified. They received the usual treatment of a villain: lots of press, some roundtable discussions, some new hardcovers. "Inside the mind of [villain]" by [human expert]. If their CV is lengthy, we'll pay the intern a bit more to buff up all the graphics. Maybe we'll do a special edition. Maybe [partisan pundit] will weigh in. Maybe [unrelated subject's radio talk show host] comments, and maybe [I] will shake [my] head. [Local news co-anchor, male] shakes head at [local news co-anchor, female]: "What a shame." [Homemaker] [temporarily completes homemaker task], forming an expert knowledge base of what they heard, which comes in handy in the [social realm]. [Web aggregator] reports [10^(# references to barbarian nation-state [from America's perspective] or terrorism [perceived/actual/both]) multiplied by top story average] stories are being aggregated for [human catastrophe] topic.

I remember questioning the existence of my "permanent record." After The Net, I decided that more energy should be expended questioning the validity of my permanent record. My first fear was of bumblebees, my second, cicadas; third, wasps; fourth, roaches; fifth, tornados; 6th, genital papercuts; 7th, caterpillars, 8th, lightning, and my ninth fear was tarnishing my permanent record. That probably had more to do with my discovering of the difference between "permanent" and "temporary." When the mind stores a pristine copy of the word "permanent (and the semantics thereof)," after it has done the same for the concept of death, the word "permanent" is an air-conditioned hut on a desert island.

But more than any of this is the desire to tempt the fates with relatively villainous deeds, and so to light a flame and hope for a clear calm day. Turbulence begets tufts of fire that swirl upwards and tempt the body-canister into exploding, ending it all. The skeins of white organic matter swirl and become whiter. Nothing about an egg is black or blue.