Super Produce Boy!... and a very special PSA

On Jesus and Roma Tomatoes

Working in Grocery has its perks

SOMETHING NEW

Music Work Comics

Playas and Camp and Strokes

EPIC WORK DAY

Shorts and Trash-talking

Fantasy Land, Ogres and Trolls

Sorry about the lack of updates...

I haven't even been all that busy. Just lazy. BUT! Here are some comics.

Shorts

Friends to the end

I'm not paranoid

OK, seriously, more from Fantasy Land

More from Fantasy Land

I... I think that I misnamed a file somewhere along the line here... so, here's a picture of a patio! As a SPECIAL PRESENT for forgetting to upload some comics yesterday!

Fantasy Land

Boobies

Fred Meyer Radio

Sexy Work Comics, part 2!

Sexy Work Comics!

My workday by the hour part 2

My workday, by the hour

Moar stuff that I think is pretty

From an article about James Agee.

" "One by one, million by million, in the prescience of dawn, every leaf of that part of the world was moved." Why don't our novelists write in Agee's tender high style these days? Either something has gone out of the world, or something has gone out of them. His book reads like a prayer, and attempt to breathe life into the dead through mighty exertions of language. Everything is consecrated. Trees move in their sleep, stars tremble like lanterns, and a butterfly- yes, a butterfly- alights on a coffin.

Now that's writing.

Hi Josh!

Hi Josh! Thanks for visiting!

A quote

Just read this quote, and it struck me for some reason, so I'm putting it up, more as a place to have it, sort of a notebook, than for any other reason.

"Young writers need the courage to be marginal, and to write for posterity, just as much as they need pressure to speak to 'the vital centers.'"

Review of "Mirror Mirror"

Damn, book quotes are misleading. That’s the final thought I had as I finished Mirror Mirror by Mark Pendergrast. The tag that hooked me into it was “Want to save $160,000? Don’t send your son to college; slip him this book instead. It shoehorns an entire liberal arts education into a cultural history of mirrors”. Really? The question I had was, “What school were you planning on sending your son to, anyways?” Mirror Mirror is not a shoehorned liberal arts education. Mirror Mirror is a magazine article. A very long magazine article. A 370-some page magazine article, with all the insight, all the drudgery, all the sameness you’d find in a magazine article.

That’s not to say that it’s a terrible book; it isn’t. There are anecdotes of passing interest; small stories to pull out whenever you’re in need of something to say when conversation lags. Did you know that dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors? Yep. Did you know that humans have been fascinated by reflections since before the dawn of civilization? Yep. If you’re looking for anything deeper than that, though, this might not be the best book.

It’s a lackluster book, alright? Maybe I had the wrong expectations. I think that “natural history of…” books should be equal parts history and anthropology, with a small smattering of both hard and social sciences thrown in. This book is not that.

First, Pendergrast is too pedestrian of a writer to cover what seems to be too large of a subject for him. Here we are in Greece, tooling around with Archimedes. Next page, we’re in China, running with ancient mirror-makers. Flip a few more pages, and we’re in Mesoamerica, where, don’tcha know it, the Aztecs also had mirrors. In fact, it seems as if every civilization has or had mirrors. Wow. Pendergrast tells us this, and seems to expect us to be amazed by this. Guess how each and every civilization used mirrors? For looking at things. Amazing.

The book only picks up, ever so slowly, when Pendergrast (thankfully) gives up on cataloguing the cultural uses of mirrors in favor of ferreting out the scientific uses of them. He’s a science writer, and it shows. Non-scientific sections sag and the pages drag; for an example picked at random, “In England, belief in the supernatural was widespread”. But when he (paradoxically) gives up on mirrors and focuses on their use in astronomy, the writing picks up and the stories seem to spin themselves out easily. Bang! Out comes the story of mad King George III who had a love of stargazing and a willingness to sponsor inventive astronomers. Bang! Out comes tales of “the Leviathan of Parsontown”, a gigantic (just guess) telescope.

This book is not a crash-course in the liberal arts; it’s a roughshod history of astronomy. Correction: a history of Western astronomy, which, we all know, is the only type of astronomy that really matters. So why did Pendergrast keep on trying to slip in these cultural references and other uses of mirrors? They didn’t fit the story he was telling. It was embarrassing whenever the book went from being a general history of science to… something like being stuck talking to a boring relative with a vague grasp of history. The Renaissance, I tell you. It surely was a rebirth, or something. The Victorian age? How stuffy! And the 1920’s, they were roaring. What makes this even worse, even more insufferable, are the dog-scraps thrown to multiculturalism. Islamic civilization plays into this entire story as the keepers of the flame while Europe got its shit together, then disappeared from the story entirely. Middle and South American civilizations had some nice stuff, but vanished from the narrative following contact. Oh yes, the Chinese did some stuff too. So did the Japanese. These two stayed in the narrative the longest, but for some reason, were always attached to the end of a paragraph describing a European discovery. The book is Eurocentric, and the attempts at multiculturalism just reveal in stark contrast how Eurocentric it is.

I would like to have something pithy to say, something tied into mirrors or reflections, but this book gives me no ammunition. The title and the premise were better than the actual work. Upon reflection (haha! Had to work that in), I fear I know about as much as mirrors as I knew when I started reading. That’s about the most damning thing that can be said about this book.

Weezer's Red album

OK, so, another album review. Weezer’s Red album. Song by song, this time without any of that extended metaphor bullshit.

"Troublemaker": The lyrics suck, the music sucks. Since when has Weezer been cockrock? OK, so it is not, viz. Urban Dictionary, “metal buttrock” but is music made by a cock, and it sucks, so it is cockrock.

"The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)": Lyrics= the suck. The overall feeling of this song (and album, sadly) is, “We are Weezer, and we totally rock, and we’re going to tell you”, and the audience will either take that as a witty self-referential joke, or will say, “No Weezer, you do not totally rock”. I’m in that second category.

And there’s a terribly, terribly annoying spoken word part midway through the song. I think I’m going to kick Rivers in the face if I see him. But then, immediately following the spoken word part, a wonderful hymnal based on the insipid line “I’m the greatest man that ever lived”. Stupid things should not be so pretty. So, I’m going to kick Rivers in the face, but not in the throat.

"Pork and Beans": Stupid things should not be so pretty. The video is soooo awesome; the song is, um… not bad. I still like the chorus when backup vocals come in with the rock hallelujah. I still think that might be one of the great moments of rock this year. The rest of the song is, um… not bad.

"Heart Songs": A slow song, pretty, for some reason sonically reminiscent of (and this will get me into trouble) “The Sweater Song”. Again, fucking Weezer, it sounds nice, but the lyrics are so bad.

Everything else on the fucking album: Don’t bother. This is seriously bad shit. I'm not a huge Weezer fan, but it is frustrating to watch a formerly good band make bad music.

The First Curious Incident of October 15

I walked down the street looking at the leaves as they scuttled along the broken pavement. A man, walking the other way, looked up and shouted something loudly before falling down in a bundle in front of me. I ran up to him and asked him if he was alright, but he didn’t move. I bent over him, and shook his shoulder, but he still didn’t move. The wind shook a flap of his coat. I rolled him over onto his back. His eyes, wide and glassy, reflected the clouds racing by. He was dead. I had seen my first death.

The Second Curious Incidence of October 15

You walked down the street watching your feet as they made their steady progress, left foot, right foot, left foot. You saw another pair of feet coming your way and then you heard someone shout in a hoarse man’s voice. You jerked your head up and saw a man’s form fall. You asked a question in a small voice, but you didn’t hear anything in response. You shook the body, but you knew already that it was a dead body. You looked at his face, one you’d maybe seen before. You were alone on a mid-October street with a dead body.

The Third Curious Incident of October 15

Elliot Clarkson walked down the street with his coat turned up against the autumn wind. Duncan McGill, taking his morning constitutional, looked up and saw a man who should have been in the grave. Fifteen years earlier, Duncan and Elliot had dueled, pistols, ten paces, over a small matter of honor. Duncan won, and the act had haunted him ever since. Now, Elliot walked towards him with that shy pace that he had, always looking down at his shoes. Duncan clutched at his chest. A vein popped out of his ashen face as he shouted, before collapsing, “Ah! Forgive me, Elliot!”

What We're All In It For, Really

I don’t know where the idea to go to Thailand really came from. I told everyone I knew that I was going there on vacation to soak up the culture, for the food, for the beaches. In actuality, I was going for the elephant rides. A fat guy from IT told me—out of nowhere while we were both in the break-room—that the most intense spiritual experience he ever had was while tripping on E at a nonstop beach party. The moon was huge and the way it hung over the ocean made it look like you could just walk up to it on a path of twinkling light. What do you say to that? I just wanted to ride an elephant through a city street, not have some epiphany. Another guy in the office—you could tell what his story would be just by looking at him—told me that the tightest pussy in the world is in Thailand. And they just give it up, no questions. Again, what do you say to that?

I imagined being picked up from the airport by an elephant and riding it all through the city, to the hotel. Me and my personal elephant.

The Breakout

Mike Irish paced around inside the small jail cell like some sort of animal in a cage. A lion, maybe. He punched his fist into his palm, and shouted angrily.

“Damn it! Here we are, trapped in this Nazi castle, while Hitler II is out there, breeding his new race of Super Nazis!”

“Ja, Mike”, replied his extremely brilliant cellmate, the wizened Dr. Helmut Gottdammerung, “Ja, but vhat can ve do? Ve’re in jail, avter all!”

Mike furrowed his brow in extreme thought. “We’re in jail…we’re in jail …” he murmured to himself repeatedly. Suddenly, he lifted his head, and punched the wall with his thick fist.

“Helmut, we may be in jail now, but we can break out!”

The good yet Germanic doctor looked incredulously at Mike, his prince-nez glasses slipping down his nose. “Break out?! Mike, are you insane?”

“If staying in jail is normal, then I don’t want to be sane,” said Mike, gritting his teeth together. “We’ll break out tonight and then stop Hitler II.”

“Quiet down in there, you two!” shouted the guard watching the cell. Little did he know that in a few hours, he would be dead and his prisoners would be heading to Berlin.

*A 202 word story present.

Begin the Battle!

The ancient wyrmwood doors crashed to the floor, torn off their hinges by a single blow from the holy sword-axe Ngrasil.

“Buryne!” cried Iander, his lungs aching as he strode into the reeking hall stinking of death, “Come out and fight me like a man!”

“Oh, I will fight you,” hissed a malevolent voice inside Iander’s head, “And I will kill you as well. But it will be on my own terms.”

Suddenly, Iander clutched his head with both hands, letting Ngrasil drop to the filthy floor. “Argh!” he roared in pain. A million screams echoed through his head. On top of the gale of screams, Iander heard a nefarious chuckle followed by the sickeningly raspy voice of the twisted magician Buryne, “Ah, not so pleasant to hear the death-cries of all those you’ve slain, is it, hero? Do you feel remorse now? Do you regret all the bloodshed you’ve caused?”

Howling in anguish and rage, Iander fell to his knees. His vision swam before him. He knew that if he didn’t break this magic spell he would be doomed to die on the floor of this cursed hall.

“I regret NOTHING!” bellowed Iander. The cries died off. The spell was broken.

*Note: It's been two days since I wrote a 101 word story, so today, I decided to do a 202 word story. Word.

Recipe: Rainy-Day Hummus

Rainy-Day Hummus

(Loosely adapted from Joy of Cooking)

1 can chickpeas, drained
Roughly 1/3 cup white wine vinegar
Roughly 1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon extra-chunky peanut butter
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 cloves pre-minced garlic (1 teaspoon)
¼ medium onion
Several pinches salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pinch paprika

Process all but olive oil and paprika in food processor until semi-smooth. Use as much water as necessary to thin out paste to make more malleable. Drizzle with olive oil, dust with paprika.

Notes:

-Salt, salt, salt. Seriously, taste as you go, it’ll be several big pinches of salt for these.

-Process is a funny verb to use. So industrial!

Tasting Notes:

-a little bland. Should have used lemon juice rather than vinegar. Also, should have used tahini rather than faking it with peanut butter. But, screw it, it was a lunch.

The Best Part of Waking Up

The great space-god Zizik drifted asleep through the cosmos in the form of a planet devouring octopus for nine eons following his expulsion from the Higher Planes by his traitorous half-brother Hazrog.

He awoke as a slight scent wafted by him on a cosmic breeze, and for the first time in eternity, he sighed in contentment. He turned his gargantuan eye toward the source of the scent, a small blue planet. Focusing ever so slightly, he found the exact location of the emanation, a small structure where Chuck Haynes was brewing a pot of Folger's coffee.

Zizik coiled himself towards Earth.

The Essence of English Literature

Todd watched a strange grey cat make its way through his back yard. The cat stopped midway through, sat down, and proceeded to lick itself. Todd took a sip of beer, and remembered how his ex-wife loved cats. The cat rolled over itself, and began licking its belly. Then it started licking its anus. Todd took another sip of beer, and the strange grey cat continued licking its own anus. Todd tilted his head back, pouring the remainder of beer at the bottom of the longneck down his throat. The cat was still licking its own anus.

Todd envied the cat.

Backseat

“I’m not too heavy, am I?” Lee asked, as he sat on Ben’s lap in the back of their friends’ overfilled car, on the way to some bar.

“No, feeling the weight of someone I like is a good feeling anyways,” Ben said as he leaned back into the seat, hoping Lee wouldn’t also lean back and feel his excitement.

“We’re just two fruits in a box of vegetables,” Lee said, and smiled, placing his hand in Ben’s. A bright white light struck Ben’s eyes from the right. He had enough time to put his arm around Lee before the crash.

War on Earth II!

It was seven in the evening, and someone was mowing their lawn. The two suns were shining down the long town streets; one half-sunk under the horizon, the other following its partner languidly to the end of the day. It feels like happiness; it felt like something eternal to Jeorgax, as he looked at the setting suns when the five Hyperion-class skyereasers tore overhead, wrenching his town and his life into a night of confusion and despair. The war with the Waldlots began at sunset, and just as Jeorgax hadn’t seen it coming, he had no idea when it would end.

On The Road

Sasquatch sighed, thinking, it’s gonna be a long drive to Ottawa.

“Ah Jesus” said Sasquatch as he spilled what felt like half of his soda onto his lap. He steered with one hand while rummaging through a bag of uneaten French fries sitting in the passenger seat, looking for a napkin. He found one at the bottom of the bag, and tried to mop up the spilt drink. This will be a long drive in a borrowed car, to see his girlfriend after living alone in the woods for four months. And now he had a sticky, smelly crotch.

Just great.

Melissa in a Bottle

The carnival lights glared into Melissa’s eyes, as she stood in a giant glass bottle, hanging twenty feet over the ground. The Amazing Noel stood directly under her, snidely asking the audience for silence so he could concentrate on his difficult task. Some abracadabra, a shower of glass, and for the finale, her draped in his arms. What an asshole Noel was.

Melissa stomped her foot. She and the bottom of the bottle fell out onto Noel’s unsuspecting head. Melissa rose, and waved her hands and smiled. The audience paused for a second, then burst into applause.

So That's How They Can Stay Up All Night

“God, Abelard, you look like death tonight!” said Mercano as his friend sat in an empty chair next to him in the after-hours café.

“Well, I am a Dark Lord of the Night…” said Abelard, with a slight smile, revealing his fangs.

“Yeah, but still, you look terrible! What happened?”

“Long day. Need coffee. Where’s that waitress with my espresso?” said Abelard, looking over his shoulder at the barista behind the counter.

“Does coffee do anything for you? I mean, what with you being a vampire and all.”

“Oh yes. Coffee and blood. Those are the only two things vampires need.”

The Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World Diet

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a book by Haruki Murakami. Murakami has an odd predilection for food and drink; in each of his novels, he seems to go out of his way to tell you what his protagonist eats. It’s one of the reasons why I think I love Murakami as a writer—gasp! His characters eat! His characters drink! That’s actually kind of rare. Most books, you’d be lucky to read something like, “had a quick dinner,” or “ate a little for lunch”, but that’s about it. It’s a rare thing to actually read what the characters ate, even down to how the food was prepared. Murakami loves food, loves thinking about food, and it shows.

There is a slight sense of dislocation about Murakami’s food. He is a Japanese writer, but his characters are more extremely westernized. This balancing act, this being caught between two worlds, comes through most apparently in his descriptions of food. His characters eat salads for breakfast and think nothing of combining what I think of as traditional Western food with what I think of traditional Japanese food. There’s a certain class of food that can be best described as Westernized Japanese, and that’s the kind of food that Murakami is describing. It’s delicious and it’s ever-so-slightly exotic, like seeing a blurred snapshot of a friend—it’s both recognizable and foreign.

While reading Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World I made a conscious effort to note down all the descriptions of the food and drink in it, so that I could try to emulate the diet of the protagonist. After finishing the novel, I’ve become increasingly serious about this. Maybe this will be a step towards Becoming a Writer. Maybe it will be like some sort of magic spell; if I eat these things, in this order, maybe I will gain an insight into the mind of how one goes about creating a work of fiction. Even if I don’t, I’ll at least have a good story, “This one time, I ate nothing but stuff I read about from this one book by this one Japanese guy.”

So, here’s the list of foodstuffs and drinkstuffs, with page numbers. I tried to get exact quotes wherever I could. This diet might make me an alcoholic, caffeinated mess. I am willing to try though.

-From page 46, three types of sandwiches “cucumber, ham, cheese… washing the lot down with coffee”

-From page 60, “vegetable stew… a minestra”

-From page 72, “shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer” and “an after-meal coffee”

-From page 75 “a double cone of mocha chip on top of pistachio” (yay ice-cream!)

-From page 80, “poured myself an Old Crow” (I think this has something to do with whisky) and “I opened a can of asparagus, which I happen to like. I canapéed some smoked oysters on crispbread. I had another whisky.” So, for this meal, two whiskeys, a can of asparagus, some crackers and some smoked oysters. Got it.

-From page 89: “I mashed an umeboshi salt plum with mortar and pestle to make a sweet-sour dressing; I fried up a few sardines with abura-age tofu-puffs in grated yama-imo taro batter, I sautéed a celery-beef side dish.” “I had a beer as I tossed together some soy-simmered myoga wild giner and green beans with tofu-sesame sauce.” Big-ass meal. Probably will have to do this one as a party, not just for myself. Also, not entirely sure about the fried sardines.

-From page 90: “I made myself a big Old Crow on the rocks, flash-broiled a block of atsu-age fried tofu, and topped it with grated daikon radish to go along with my drink” “I prepared a katsuobushhi dried bonito broth and added wakame seaweed and scallions for the miso soup. I served it alongside a bowl of rice and umeboshi.” So, tofu, miso soup, rice and pickles.

-From page 91: “a beer… and a double ration of frankfurter links, which I tossed into the frying pan” “I set out ready-made potato salad, then dashed off a quick wakame-tuna combo for good measure. Down they went with her second beer” “my third Old Crow” “chocolate cake for dessert”. OK, so, two beers, whiskey, hot dogs, potato salad, tuna salad, and chocolate cake. Whew.

-From page 92: “another round of bourbon”

-From page 93: “a vodka tonic”

-From page 125: I poured myself two fingers of whisky”

-From page 127: “I grabbed a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and drank whole white gulps”

-From page 130: “I ordered a coffee. I drank it black, slowly.”

-From page 131: “I got potato salad and a beer”

-From page 154: I drank the rest of my beer”

-From page 163: A “jigger” of whiskey.

-From page 184: “coffee. Occasionally we share biscuits or fruitbread she bakes at home”

-From page 189: “A double cheeseburger with french fries and a hot chocolate” “a regular burger and a beer” “a regular burger and a Coke”

-From page 190: “A couple cans of beer and a flask of whisky” “I immediately drank both cans and a fourth of the whiskey”

-From page 224: “light broth” “warm milk”

-From page 252: “corned beef and peaches”

-From page 286: “Another slug of whisky”

-From page 317: “A hearty vegetable chowder with noodles”

-From page 322: “two cream of corn soups and hone ham and egg-salad sandwich”

-From page 342: A draft and some oysters on the half-shell” (probably will not do this one)

-From page 348: “coffee”

-From page 356: (aperitvo)“wine” (antipasti) “insalata di gamberetti alle fragile, ostriche al vino, mortadella di fegato, sepia al nero, melanzane alla parmigiana, and wakasagi marinata” (primi) “spaghetti al pesot genovese… tagliatelli alla casa… maccheri al sugo di pesce” (with “branzino” or “suszuki”), (contorni) “spinaci and risotto al funghi… verdure cotte and risotto al pomodoro”… (dessert) “granite di uva, crema fredda, suffle al limone, and espresso (X2)” (I need to look up what these all are, and will either do this as one MASSIVE food party, or as several SEMI-MASSIVE food parties)

-From page 361: “some frozen pizza and a bottle of Chivas”

-From page 362: “A bottle of wine”

-From page 377: “I put some water on to boil, took tomatoes from the refrigerator and blanched them to remove the skin. I chopped a few vegetables and garlic, added the tomatoes, then stirred in some sausage to simmer. While that cooked down, I slivered some cabbage and peppers for a salad, dripped coffee. I sprinkled water onto a length of French bread, wrapped it in foil, and slid it into the toaster oven.” Served for breakfast. Got to love the Japanese. Is it sausage with a cabbage salad and bread?

387: A six-pack of “Miller High Life” (because it’s an import, so in my case, Kirin?) at ten in the morning.

The End of an Era

Jammin’ 95.5. Jammin’ ninety-five point fuckin’ five. Shit.

Jammin’ 95.5 was a hip-hop/R&B radio station. The main, if not only, hip-hop/R&B station on the FM dial in Portland. And now, it is gone.

Oh, sure, I’ve been told that it’s moved somewhere else, that it’s moved to some bullshit like 107.5. I don’t give a flying fuck. Jammin’ 95.5 was called Jammin’ 95.5 because it was at 95.5 on the radio dial. Anything else is, well, heresy.

I mean, shit! This station was Portland’s jammin’ist jamming station, Portland’s partyin’ist party station, Portland’s jammin’ist party station, and lastly, it was Portland’s partyin’ist jamming station. That sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, and it is, but it meant something to me. It meant something very important to me.

Jammin’ 95.5 was a part of my youth. Kind of. I discovered the station sometime after I was legally an adult, so I can’t really claim that it was part of my youth. But, I would have liked to. Jammin’ 95.5, in all its vapidity, in all its inanity, in all of its shitty, shitty music, still struck a chord with me.

It might have been the DJ’s. Here’s Bootz. Here’s Freeze, and here’s K-Reeze. Over there, on the one’s and two’s, is the mighty mighty massive Juggernaut. Here’s Felix the Asian Housecat. These aren’t the names of disk jockeys; these are the names of superheroes. An entire pantheon on the radio! All of them dedicated to keeping Portland (in this universe of superheroes, “P-Town”) partying and jammin’.

It might have been the shitty shitty music that they played. I met L’il John on Jammin’ 95.5. I saw the ascendancy of the Dirty South, the rise of crunk music. I heard the scribbling of something evil and subterranean but which made me move motherfucker. I was there to watch the Dirty South submerge itself (oh, Atlantis of the Gulf Coast!), and in its place, from the city on the hill in the West, I heard the clarion call of hyphy, and that Sindarin-inflected tongue of T-Pain. I heard heavy shit, I heard light shit, I heard all kinds of shit on Jammin’ 95.5. It was mostly trash, but it was trash that made me jam, that made me party.

It might have been that Jammin’ 95.5 was so tied up with my memories and concepts of freedom and of easy rebellion. I only listened to Jammin’ 95.5 while in the car, while driving. My main memory of Jammin’ 95.5 is this: The window is down, the speakers are turned up, it is summer, and it is twilight, and the bugs are out, and I’m going to see my friends, and I’m jammin’ along with Jammin’ 95.5. I don’t remember what is playing, and it is not really important. What was important was that the radio was set to Jammin’ 95.5, and that I was jammin’ along with Jammin’ 95.5.

The name was an invocation; the name was a magic spell meant to call down a fucking party the likes not seen outside the halls of Asgard. Shit yeah, can you feel that bass? Doesn’t it make you want to move? It was stronger than booze, stronger than weed. It fucked me up. One time, I ran into a parked car whilst blasting Jammin’ 95.5. What else would you expect? It was a nonstop jammin’ party!

And now, Jammin’ 95.5 is no more. Jammin’ 95.5 has moved, or is off the air, or some other utterly whack bullshit like that.

Jammin’ 95.5 is dead. The party is over, the party people have all gone home, Portland sleeps.

Ever-Blooming

Bloom, one hundred-fourteen and still randy as a billy goat, tottered down the hall of the retirement home, following behind Nurse Jenny. He watched the sway of her hips in her slacks, and felt the customary century-old twinge in his crotch.

“Jenny!” he croaked in his old-man’s voice. “Is it time for my bath?”

She turned around, and shot him a narrow-eyed stare. “Don’t pretend to be senile with me, old man. You can bathe yourself.”

“Maybe I’ll fall down here and break my hip,” thought Bloom. “That’d earn me a sponge-bath from Jenny, certainly. It would be worth it.”

You Are What You Love

Susan looked over his shoulder at the city while hanging thirty stories off the ground. She shook her head at the familiar grip in her chest, and told herself that she was not having a heart attack as she drew her damp cloth across another window pane. She was getting too old for this, but these windows would not wash themselves.

Thirty stories down, Frank held his father’s big hand in his small one, and looked up. There, against the morning’s glare bouncing off the building was the best window washer in the world. His mom.

WTPh?

I found the body of a bird laying on the pavement, burnt beyond recognition, its wings twisted unnaturally. A breeze ruffled past, and I could have sworn that I saw something glowing on its chest in the twilight. I leaned in closer, and suddenly, the entire bird burst into flame. I jumped back and watched in amazement as the bird moved, its wings turning back, its head rising, its beak opening and letting out a melodious cry. It flapped its wings once, twice, and then it rose into the air, flying off into the sunset.

A phoenix. A phoenix in suburbia.

Message in a Bottle

Rows of various shaped bottles, some square, some ovoid, others twisted about themselves like a coiled snake, glistened in the candlelight of the apothecary’s shop.

“Excuse me, do you have anything for courage?” asked the meek youth, his voice trembling.

“Courage?” replied the apothecary from the back of his shop, his slender fingers casually playing over the surface of one blue bottle. “I don’t sell anything for courage here. If its courage you want, go to the Painted Boar.”

“The tavern?” asked the timid youth.

“There’s more courage in the bottom of a pint than in any potion in the world.”

Trips

I'm going to be going to New York sometime frightfully early tomorrow morning. I'm going to be there until Saturday, yay for me! All sort of adventures are heading my way, I can tell.

Anyways, that means that I won’t be updating this blog for all of four days. A terrible, terrible thing. Especially because I made such a hullabaloo about writing one 101 story a day. What is a homeboy to do?

Write a bunch of stories! So, without further ado, the 101 word stories for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This is also 101 words, but that’s just lilygilding.

Battle of Doom!

The goblins formed a ragged circle around the party of adventurers. Haphalstaff hoisted his mighty battleaxe above his head, bellowing, “Do ye goblins fear death?!”

“No.” hissed the lead goblin through his broken teeth. “We fear nothing!”

With one mighty grunt, Haphalstaff drove his battleaxe into the goblin’s skull, cleaving him neatly in two.

“Then I will teach you fear tonight!”

The rest of the goblins gibbered and leapt back, their eyes afire with terror at the sight of the mighty warrior. They slunk back into the night, as Haphalstaff boasted, “Goblins don’t fear death, but they do fear… my axe!”

Death Cab For Cutie: Narrow Stairs

How does that Costello quote go? “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. You know, Elvis, you might have something there. It passes the test of a good aphorism; it rings true if you don’t think about it too much. Dancing about architecture? That sure sounds stupid! But, like almost all aphorisms, it falls apart if you spend some time thinking about it. With that little piece of pith Costello is trying to say that the experience of music is too far removed from the experience of literature, as the experience of dancing is too far removed from the experience of architecture. I don’t think that this is so. These are all aesthetic experiences, and there is no distinct line between aesthetic experiences. Or, closer, one type of aesthetic experience can heighten or add greater understanding to other ones (fuckall Wagner). Basically, what I’m saying is, get your best shoes and nattiest threads on homes, ‘cause vamos a bailar the tango Frank Lloyd Wright.

Death Cab for Cutie has always seemed too sad to pull off being as good as it is; too good to pull of being as sad as it is. The band’s songs seem to live in the same gloomy ramshackle neighborhood as those of the Smiths and the Cure, yet they do not seem like they fit there entirely. This might be due to the personas of the bands themselves. The Cure and the Smiths are both messedupinthehead bands from England, where (we all know) it is always overcast and glum. Death Cab for Cutie isn’t from that murky isle, so how come they’re so sad?

Fuck knows, but it works. The band’s new album, Narrow Stairs, touches some raw nerve, and touches some exposed bone, and touches sonic brilliance. The album is like a road-trip to the beach. Let’s go to the beach.

Bixby Canyon Bridge, the first tune, is (it must be mentioned) a throwaway song. No matter, here we are at the beach. Imagine standing at the edge of the ocean. The sand is wet and hard under our bare feet. The mid-afternoon sun is slipping out from behind the clouds and there’s a salty smell on the breeze. Without even touching it, we know that the water is cold. Still, this is a beach road-trip, and certain things must be done when at the beach, and one of them is to walk into the waves, even if just a little. This first song is like dipping our toes into that cold water, and is like feeling the surf curl over and between our crinkled toes. It’s bracing and electrifying.

I Will Possess Your Heart, a promise and the second song, builds from a long ways off. Look out to sea. What do you see out there, just along the horizon? Not much, just a wavering line of waves. Can you see that one wave there? The one coming in fast, much too fast for a normal wave? Not really; we don’t notice it until it has come up to the shore, until it has come up over our toes and over our legs and over our hips, Jesus, what just happened, and we’ve been knocked over and into the water entirely. We can still see the world above the water, sometimes, the foam and the scud flies around our heads like crazy clouds caught in some massive wind. We can still see the world as it was before the album started playing, before this truly awesome song started, but in fragments. Funny, we should be worried, I mean, here we are, completely submerged in a sneaker wave, but everything seems alright. It is nice to get wet, and it is nice to be pulled along by a wave every once in a while.

No Sunlight, pulls off the old DCFC trick, cheery fast music, sad lyrics. On the beach, we’re lying on our backs, completely disoriented by that sneaker wave, and for some reason now we’re being drawn away from the beach, being drawn away from the parking lot where our car is parked, and being drawn out to that wavering horizon.

Cath… Oop, there’s the undertow, hope you got a big gulp of air, cause you’re going down under the waves. It’s a strong undertow, it’s really pulling us all down to the bottom. No, this is no normal pull, there’s something weird about this. Too insistent. If we fought against it, we’d wear ourselves out, so, we’re just going along with it. By now, we should be worried, how long have we been under water? But it all seems to be OK, and it seems that breathing isn’t all that great to begin with, and it most strange of all, it seems as if we don’t even need to breathe anymore.

Talking Bird. Gills? We have gills now?

You Can Do Better Than Me. Yes, we have gills. How strange is that? This is something serious! Death Cab for Cutie does that sometimes, and does it very well on this album; it pulls you under into its submarine soundscape and it gives you gills, and says, play here for a while.

Grapevine Fires. The finest song on the album, one of the finest songs the band has ever made, both apocalyptic and microscopic in scope. The chorus sways like seaweed on the bottom of the seabed, where we are now, looking at all the little crabs running around. There’s a sense of longing down here at the bottom of the ocean, an easy-drifting sense of loss. Remember what it was like up above the water? Remember what it was like before this album started? It was nice up there. Want to go back? Yes—but not yet. It’s too beautiful down here to leave so soon.

Your New Twin Sized Bed. Ah. This is classic DCFC. Sad? Yup. Telling details? Yup. Soft vocals, twinkling guitar? Yip yip yup! It’s surprisingly warm down here, under the waves. You’d think that it would be cold, that we’d be cold, but it’s not so bad. And look at all those fishes! Look how their scales catch the watery light!

Long Division. Here comes another drag, another pull, it’s pulling us in a new direction. We’re still under water, but we know that we’re leaving the aquatic kingdom.

Pity and Fear. Another long pull around our ankles, this one drawing us up to that wavering light, and as we rise, pop!, there go our gills, falling off and slipping away into the deeps behind us, and now we’re on the beach again, how’d that happen? a little stunned, a little startled, with water coming off our shirts and out of our ears.

The Ice is Getting Thinner. We stand up, and look back out at that horizon of waves, and out at the sunlight playing on the water, and turn back, to our car. We’ve got to head back home, even though we don’t want to. Every adventure and every album has to end sometime. I’m just glad that I got to take this one.

In The Presence of His Regal Majesty King Wu

King Wu stared out impassively over all he ruled, over his entire domain. A slight breeze ruffled his truly ancient beard, and he heaved a deep sigh. He would give up this entire empire for what he truly desired. He felt an inexpressible longing for something that he could not define pounding in his heart, as the last rays of the dying day flickered through the trees.

“Wu! Dinner!” cried the servant.

An immense smile creased his timeworn face. Yes, this was what he was waiting for. A simple meal. He was completely satisfied as he carefully stepped towards his meal.

101 Word Stories

I found this site http://www.ommatidia.org/ today, though I’m slightly ashamed to admit how I found it (OK, it was through Penny Arcade, you happy?), and I love the idea behind it. Simply, each and every day, a new 101 word story.

I think I will try this out for myself.

Reason for the blog

Do things have to have reasons for being? asked the undergraduate who too high of an opinion of himself. Yes, and no. Most things, things like rocks, and birds, and ummm… dolphins don’t have to have reasons for being. They’re just there; they don’t have to have any reasons. A rock just is a rock, man, like a bird just is a bird, and dolphins are just the most wicked smart fishes in the world. There are some things that do need reasons for being though. A journal is one of them, and by extension, so is a blog. And this is a blog, not a dolphin (though it would be totally radical if this were a dolphin. AN ELECTRIC INTERTUBING DOLPHIN OH MY GOD.)

Reason? It’s embarrassing. OK, here it is (guess it wasn’t that embarrassing). I want to Become A Writer (first step: learn When to Capitalize and When Not To), and I think that, to Become A Writer, I have to write a lot of things, and I have to read a lot of things, and I have to have a lot of “life experiences”. So, this blog is my attempt to wrestle with those things that I have read (book reviews, etc.), and to present things that I have written (heh, heh, like that’ll happen) and to keep a record of the things that I have experienced (reviews of X,Y,Z). I’m looking at it as a repository of reviews, of how this person who is trying to Become A Writer engages (critically, aesthetically, and emotionally) with the many world around him.

That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Meaning of the title

A long time ago, in a far away land, there was a great big war. After it ended, a lot of people were very sad. One small group of artists was particularly sad. How could they make art after such a cataclysmic war? They just couldn’t make art the same way that they had before that huge war. Instead, they went about making new art, strange art, crazy art. This new art had to have a name, because everything new has to have a name. The artists got together one night in a cafe and took out a dictionary. They opened it up, and look! The word they had opened to was “dada” French for “hobby-horse”. Their art had a name.

Not so long ago, in a not-so-far-away land, a group of musicians got together, and played their instruments together, and liked the way that it sounded. They decided to form a band. But they had to come up with a name for their band, because every new band has to have a name. So, they got a dictionary and a couple square bottles of whisky, and stayed up all night playing their instruments and drinking their whisky, and at the end of the night, the opened their dictionary, and look! The word they had opened to was “R.E.M.”, short for “rapid eye movement”. Their band had a name.

Just now, in Corvallis (which, it must be admitted, is at the edge of The End Of The World, but more on that later) I decided to make a blog (I’m still out to sea about if the word “blog” is beautiful or not) and every new blog has to have a name. I sat down at my laptop, in a cubby on the first floor of the Valley library. Instead of taking out a dictionary, I pulled up the Oxford English Dictionary Online, clicked the “Lost for words?” button and look! The word I had opened to was “shalloon” which is “a closely woven woollen material chiefly used for linings.” This blog has a name.

There is a moral to these stories. Going to dictionaries for names for things is mostly stupid. Then again, naming things is mostly stupid, but is also mostly necessary. New things need new names. And while there might be better names for this little blog, “shalloon” is still a fun word to mentally shout. Shalloon! Also, shalloon does not, nor will it ever, show up in any spellcheckers as a real word. It’s somewhere on the tightrope between real word and imaginary word. Shalloon!