Bear Hat Fiesta

Fleeting and Transcendent Beauty

2012-02-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

One of the better parts of living with bipolar disorder is you grow to expect that eventually the good times will come to an end, and that really helps one cope with the idea of impermanence and that life isn't going to be one long continuous light beer commercial, occasionally you'll have parts where it's much more like a billboard ad for a personal injury attorney, or a stained and blotted newspaper clipping for a full-service massage parlor.

Speaking of, Boston newspapers have the most fascinating advertisements I do believe I've ever seen, but that's something else entirely.

That being said I really do believe that every person is entitled to at least a handful of moments of abject glory, where the Universe falls into alignment and the flux capacitors of fate overload with awesomeness and spell out HELL YEAH with neon-blue electrical arcs. You beat the bully, get the girl, and score the winning, uh, sports point, right as the bell rings, carried off into the summer sunset on the shoulders of your bros and recently converted bros.

Your crippling shyness and social anxiety peel away like a scab in a public swimming pool, your muscles swell, and the veins in your arms pop out with this new, warm sensation of. . . Pride? Yes! You straighten your back and puff out your chest, and walk with a newfound swagger, which causes the people behind you to break out into a spontaneous song and dance number about how awesome the world is now.

Doves descend from the heavens, carrying olive branches and suspending a banner from their beaks that read "THIS DUDE ROCKS" and when you speak, candy falls from your mouth, like some kind of gastro-intestinal pinata. Children adore you. Flowers bloom everywhere you set foot, and needless to say, your soundtrack is bitchin. Like if a bass guitar and a saxophone were to give birth to the love child destined to save the universe, only better. Music so good it would retroactively give sight to both Stevie Wonder AND Ray Charles, who would then immediately commend himself on having the foresight to wear awesome sunglasses in his casket.

You walk through the bad parts of town, and gang leaders rush to have you officiate truces and cut ribbons on parks and schoolyards. Corrupt city executives vow to no longer accept bribes from crooked land developers. Salvador Dali's ghost is tapped to remake the state flag. A child releases a single red balloon. You high-five an amputee and his limbs grow back. A cancer patient smells your hair and finds her tumors vanished. As you stand on your front stoop, digging your keys out of your pockets, ready to burst inside and tell your parents that it's okay, everything's going to be fine, you are devoured by bears, and nobody attends your funeral.

But it was a good few hours, while it lasted.

strange things are happening
every day

3 Questions with John Cheese

2012-01-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

So John Cheese, comedy mastermind behind the now-defunct laughtastrophy supersite "John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus" and Cracked writer extraordinaire sent out an open invitation for interviews, and being that he is one of my very favorite internet writers, I beat a path to his door before realizing that e-mailing him might be less creepy.

No but seriously you guys I can't state how huge a thing this is for me. Read some of his articles, you'll understand.

1) A lot of your writing is incredibly, painfully personal. How has this impacted your relationship with friends and family? Have you ever chosen not to write about certain events or subjects out of respect for people in your life?

I don't associate with one side of my family, and I barely associate with the other, so my family has never really been a concern. They had their demons, and they deal with those in their own way. Many of them through sheer denial that there was ever a problem in the first place. I write about my life, and if I could do it without mentioning them, I would. However, in order to make the point stick, I have to bring them up because they were such a huge part of what made me what I was and what I am today.

I do keep certain things out of the public eye. I'll never go into minute details of my kids' life because they're not old enough to have a say in something like that, and I don't want to invade their privacy by displaying their lives the way I display mine. I also won't mention my ex wife's name or personal details about her because I don't think that's something she would want.

And I'll never get into the really, REALLY dark shit that my dad did us. Some of that stuff is so far off the charts of insanity that there would be no way I could bring the article back into comedy territory after going that direction.

2) As someone who spends a lot of time on the internet, what's the worst thing you've ever come across?

Comments sections. That sounds like a joke, but it's really not. If you ever get bored, start scouring the net and read just the comments, and you'll be horrified. You'll find some of the most hateful, racist, sexist, bullshit statements coming out of people. It really is the worst of humanity. Comments sections are the sewer of the internet.

3) With the understanding that it's still on going, what can you tell us about running the JDatE ARG? Where did you go for inspiration? What planning and prepwork was needed to pull it off? Did the players ever surprise you? Any lessons learned for the next go around? Did. . . Did we miss anything major?

We're planning on starting another ARG sometime soon, but it's going to be a lot of work this time around because it's going to be much bigger. There are going to be more real world events if we have our way, which is something we didn't do the first time around (budget and time restraints held us back on that).

The planning is basically Wong and I on the phone, spitballing ideas until we come up with something that makes us both laugh, while at the same time thinking, "Oh, wow, that sounds really cool." What we discovered in the last ARG was that people are much smarter than you'd expect. We'd come up with a puzzle and a set of clues, and then say, "Man, there's no way anyone is going to find this." We'd post it, and three hours later, someone has found the hidden file -- or whatever it was that we were doing that week.

I think the one that surprised me the most was when some people figured out that I (in a video) was playing a nonsensical phrase on my guitar, using the letter names of the chords to spell out the words. Then if you put that phrase at the end of the JDatE URL, it would lead to something or other. I was really impressed by that.

As far as missing anything major, I really can't think of anything. I think you guys pretty much found everything. If there was anything left over, it wasn't much. And I'm sure I would have remembered it because we spent so much time coming up with that stuff that if anything would have been missed, I would have definitely pointed it out after the ARG was finished.

I was quoted in the newspaper.

2012-01-22T15:29:00.001-08:00

That's right, I made a stupid joke so mind-numbingly banal and stunted in its execution that a newspaper decided it was fit to print.

No but seriously, the MBTA is awesome, I love that the commuter rail is a thing I can use to just go to Boston for whatever reason. The idea that public transportation needs to be 100% paid for by commuter fees is ridiculous, however. Even private transportation companies are subsidized to an extent. So much of the MBTA's debt comes from the Big Dig that Beacon Hill really needs to get their act together and help them out here.

The Arithmetic of Treatment

2012-01-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, if you're ill and your doctor suggests some pills to fix what ails you, trust that they know what they're talking about. The same goes for mental illness. If you let my poem influence decisions you make about your health then I will hunt you down and punch you.

Lithium: One teenager plus thirty miligrams sent earthward daily equals me forgetting what an orgasm feels like. My girlfriends appreciated this, up to a point, with sore jaws and thighs bruised on a heart turned to salt, frustration welled to streaks streaming mascara down her cheeks, I don't know what's wrong with me, unable to feel sorry for her, or any real connection, like I'm suffocating in an insulation cocoon, a thick pink blanket of pharmacology to keep me protected from the world, muting all sensation save the monthly prick of blood tests, “It's important to monitor your sodium levels, or your kidneys could die” the nurses tell me, like one pill a day could do to me what three meals of poverty couldn't, like out of all the negative influences in my life, the one to finally pull the trigger would come in an orange plastic tube monitored by doctors, and this is what's supposed to save me? This equation is unbalanced.

Prozac: The resulting quotient of 20mg feels like plant life in the arctic, like photosynthesis at the bottom of the ocean, like revelation the moment before you wake up and your subconscious is scoured clean by an alarm clock thirty minutes late into your first shift, prozac feels like nothing, no, worse, like a profound loss, like the moment of quiet after the song but before the applause while you're still left hanging on an emotional high but you drop into a gray void of nothing, an endless flat where there used to be sinusoidal life, but that's the problem that got you here in the first place so now you and everything that made you breathe are divisors, this equation is unbalanced, factored apart by the heart-rending tension that sent you to the hospital, split by the thin black line at the bottom of a prescription pad.

Wellbutrin: Will fuck you up. Like Lewis Carroll on Algebra, the world will spin, you will get dizzy on the stairs and fall far too often for it to be accidental, getting out of a chair will become a task worthy of celebration, the world will go flat, like turning a page in a comic book your perception will warp until you are trapped in a world of cardboard cut-outs, or your head spins off and balloons into the ceiling fan, or melts into the hard plastic chair, you will feel bees crawl underneath your skin, you will forget to breathe on occasion, or become obscenely aware of the wet bulk of your tongue in your mouth, swelling, the doctors will explain that depersonalization and derealization are common side-effects of the medication, all the while you are feeling the flesh on your back crawl into the shape of wings while you feel each individual hair follicle twitch on your head, there are other pills that will fix it are others that will fix it, you will realize that they, too, would make the equation unbalanced.

There is help available to those who seek it.

hoo boy poluhtiks!

2012-01-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

So for those of you recently released from a North Korean labor camp, you may have realized that many of your favorite sites have "gone black" in a protest of something called SOPAPILLA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.

These two bills enable large corporations and their puppets (the Department of Justice and the Attorney General) to shut down websites guilty of piracy, or even facilitating piracy. For those of you who think that this might not affect you, here is a short list of the three top sites currently facilitating piracy that would get straight-up just prison shanked to bits if SOPA or PIPA were to pass.

If you're online, this affects you.

It categorizes sites as "foreign" or "domestic" based on the nationality of the registrar the website's domain suffix is registered in. For those of you who don't speak Horrible Geek, that means that www.london.org, which is a site run by the Londanian Sacrificial Tourist Aquisition Guild, in London, England, would be considered a "domestic" site and therefore subject to US law because the .org registrar is based in the United States.

No, seriously. And that's not even the worst part! It would also require search engines like Google to make sure they're not linking to any sites that have infringing material on them. Google, the same website that recently indexed their TRILLIONTH concurrent URL. Holy balls!

This very much is job killing regulations of the worst kind. I know that's bullshit dogwhistle politics, but in this case it's actually true.

Basically, if you're reading this site, you're probably well aquainted enough with the Internet to know this is bad. If that's not the case, then hi Grandma! Since you sent that box of oranges, I haven't gotten scurvy once!

First and foremost, you should read up on why these laws are bad news. Here's a letter from 108 professors explaining why this is the worst thing since MIT started offering free classes.

Congrats, you're now better informed than most of your representatives! Now what you need to do is contact your elected officials and disgorge yourself of this precious knowledge, like a mother bird feeding her children. If you don't trust yourself enough with words, here are two form letters you can send to your representatives instead.

Just fucking do something.

WHERE THE ASSHAT HAVE YOU BEEN

2012-01-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

So I've been suplex-buggered through the folding table and into the center of the Earth these past few weeks, and I've got some exciting things to show for it. First off is this little beaut, courtesy of my friend Sarah who is awesome so go commission her for some work right now. She's also doing the art for my novel, and if I can help it, every other creative work I produce until the day I die.

Secondly, I'm heading a new WordPlague project in the works, and it's a paying gig! I will keep you posted on the developments, expect the first call for entries by Jan 15th.

Things with Sauced are progressing well, also! Almost have all the contracts.

Also, my book goes on sale Wednesday! Picking them up from the printer today.

But mostly I wanted to show off that bitching cover. I asked for something simple, and the Artgods were all like"aahahahahaha NO." And lo, it was good.

Like father, like son.

2011-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

When my dad lived in Washington, DC, one of the jobs he held was with a lobbying firm that worked for, amongst other people, the dark lord Satan himself.

That's how my mom tells it, anyway.

I was never told exactly what he did, and I don't want to call out of the blue and plumb the depths of his past (if it turns out we are/were as similar as I fear I'll probably be crushed utterly.) because that's weird and telephones scare me, but while walking down K-street with 2,000 of my new best friends, I realized that life has a weird sort of symmetry to it.

That, and life also has an assload of rain! So much rain. I was set and ready to meet with Sanders today, but it's wet, and cold, and I'm exhausted, and I know he's working for us already, so I'm going to rally my strength for Leahy tomorrow.

Godspeed you crazy dudes.

5 questions for Peter Welch

2011-12-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

Forgive me if this seems rushed, I'm sandwiched between video journalists and facebook revolutionaries, and the card reader on this laptop isn't working. I'll probably get around to that when I go home, like all the photos I've promised to post ever HAR HAR HAR.

So I'd like to take this time to welcome the congressional staff and pages from Peter Welch's office! If you see any bad words or objectionable content, pretend you saw something different. It's what my mom does.

Yeah, that's right! I had a quick little sit-down with one of my reps while I'm over at Take Back the Capitol, raising caine and suchlike. Completely forgot to ask if I could record his responses, so here's a rough summary of what transpired. If the esteemed representative takes offense, corrections can be scribbled on to the back of $20 notes and thrown into my window.

To the question "What have you done to spur job growth in Vermont and the nation", he replied that he supported the Dodd-Frank bill, which would split investment and savings banks and help stop the "casino economy" which is an appropriate term if one has ever been said. He also supports credit unions, which lend money to the part of the economy that's actually productive. He also supports public healthcare with a single-payer solution, and he supported bills that would have helped re-establish veterans with jobs. Veterans, mind you, have some of the highest unemployment and homelessness rates in the country. I failed to ask which bills, because I am terrible at journalisms.

When asked the question "What do you think of sequestration?" (a process that would immediately cut 6% off the budget of every national program) he said he considered it "a failure of the congressional process" and that he'd rather pass a budget that had spending on infastructure, netgotiated perscription drug prices, and made the rich pay their fare share.

When told that the Stopping Online Piracy Act would give a 5 year prison sentence to someone who uploaded a Michael Jackson video, compared to the 4 year sentence given to the doctor who killed him, he said he "didn't know enough" about online piracy to suggest feasible alternatives, but he did say he'd support a bill that respected the right of intellectual property creators (like me!) while still maintained an open internet. I sent him an e-mail about it before, so hopefully the voice of the people helped win him to our side.

When asked "Should we be able to arrest Americans & hold them in prison indefinitely?" he said no, because that's a stupid-obvious question. Still a good response, though.

When asked if he would support criminal charges against the banking executives who signed off on fraudulent forecloseures in Vermont and the nation, he said he'd support them in any case when illegal actions were taken. Fraudulent foreclosures "should be prosecuted and punished", which is just awesome mixed with a big honking slice of yes.

Honestly? Peter Welch is the sort of democrat we need more of. Give him a call and let him know you've got his back. Also, keep following up on these questions and more, make sure he sticks to his guns. Democracy only happens so long as we keep vigilant.

This has been coming up a lot lately.

2011-11-26T15:49:00.000-08:00

I've been involved in a lot of discussions lately about what's okay to make jokes about, and how to make jokes about sensitive subjects. Instead of that, I'm going to lecture you on why this South Park clip is wrong. You know, on the off chance that you needed an explanation. I'll come back to the video in a moment.

First off some background. Language is symbolic. It's important you know that. When you write "apple", none of the associated shapes actually produces an apple, it spells out a universally agreed upon symbol which conveys the image of an apple to anyone capable of reading or understanding that shape.

Generally.

If I were to say "I'm going to go digiscrub a bitcoin" you wouldn't have any idea what any of that means, because bitcoins are retarded. No, it's because "digiscrub" and "bitcoin" aren't generally in the universal lexicon of human speech. There's no shared understanding of what a digiscrub looks like or a bitcoin is (not between anyone worth talking to, anyway) so there's no understood meaning of what those symbols means.

Now, the images conjured by any one symbol is going to be different between people, which is the source of a lot of conflict. When I say "romantic night in", obviously what I'm picturing is vastly different than what my girlfriend might imagine. So when I show up with a tub of vegetable shortening and a length of garden hose, only to find her lighting candles and cooking a steak, conflict arises.

This is caused primarily by the fact that words have multiple meanings. If I were to call something "epic" you'd assume the Internet ate my brain, and you'd be right, or I could be talking about any story that beings with an invocation to the muses. Meaning can be divided into two groups, "connotation" and "denotation."

Denotation is the literal definition of the word. Look it up on a dictionary, and you'll find what the word denotes. That's what that means. Farting in a punchbowl denotes that people should not invite you to parties.

Connotation is the non-literal meanings and innuendo associated with those symbols. Wait, that's a terrible explanation, let me show you.

You see what I mean? Now please excuse me, I need to go molest a produce stand.

. . . Okay, I'm back. Innuendo and irony basically works entirely on the friction between what is said and what is meant. A lot of English-language humor is derived from the same.

Basically, the whole point of what I'm trying to say is that words have meaning, and meaning varies between the people you're conversing with. This is the point where I tie things together with the South Park video I linked earlier, if you haven't seen it yet, you should go watch it. It's pretty funny and not terribly long, either way.

The conflict in the episode derives from the contrast between what the boys use "fag" to denote, versus what the rest of society understands it to mean. To anyone who grew up in the 90s, this should start sounding mighty familiar.

I've seen less sultry looks in a Turkish bath-house.

Generally, I think people that use "fag" or "gay" as slang terminology for any unpleasant situation aren't homophobic. If that were the case, every American male under the age of 16 would be considered a raging homophobe.

. . . Okay, bad example, but you see what I mean. I don't think most folks come from a place of malice, basically.

The only problem is, a lot of people DO use those words maliciously, and when you're dealing with someone who doesn't know you, they're probably going to hedge their bets and assume that you're one of those people who uses those words to kill.

Now, there are a few different approaches we can take to deal with this sort of dichotomy. Here are a few:

1) Cry "Censorship!" at everyone who tries to cut down on the amount of casual hate speech society uses
2) Use your media empire to force a shift in the paradigm of language
3) Establish some sort of hand signal that lets people know you're using hate speech ironically

Of course if you want to get zany, you could not use hate speech. But that's just crazy talk.

South Park, and the people this episode is speaking to, have made a critical mistake in ignoring the fact that words have many meanings to many different people. I could spend the rest of this article talking about the controversies South Park knowingly instigates with their treatment of Jews and whatnot, but the basic issue here is that they're using words that bigots use, and then complaining when people accuse them of being bigots.

Guys, you don't wear a Klan hood and then complain when people call you racist. That's not how society works. There are thousands of words you can use to refer to jackasses, if you use the one that offends a group of people then it's not their fault that you've offended them, and they're not trying to censor you when they ask that you stop using hate speech. The First Amendment does not guarantee you protection from the fallout of your own words.

I'm not just talking about South Park, either. If you've ever ironically called someone a cock-gobbling fatty fat queermosexual at a party and had someone call you on your bullshit, "relax it was just a joke" is not a valid defense. Words have meaning.

If you're going to use risque language, then you need to accept the consequences of doing so. If you don't want people accusing you of bigotry, don't use bigoted language.

I look forward to your intelligent, well thought-out rebuttals in the comments section.

Well hi there!

2011-11-10T22:13:00.001-08:00

Occupy Worcester and finding a job have taken up most of my day. Also trying to find a doctor. It's not easy! You'd think that the networks listing doctors would keep track of things like "currently accepting new patients" but apparently not! It's especially awesome when the only doctors at a clinic don't take my insurance. So awesome you guys SO AWESOME.

So Occupy Worcester has some ish going down this weekend, like a clean-up for a low-income neighborhood but more importantly this giant skull-thumping solidarity fiesta between all of New England. That's going to rock, oh, I'd say, pretty hard.

Also sold my second cracked article! I don't want to spoil it for you but it features gratuitous photos of man-crotch.

SO anyway, did I mention that I organized an event for Occupy Worcester? Photos and video are forthcoming, along with the pictures from the Steampunk fair, Connecticon, Rome, Japan, and the other 10 months I spent in Korea. Coming right fast, yeah. (i am so bad with photos)

ANYWAY, it was kind of an interesting event! People brought snacks, made posters, the weather pretty much shat the bed and only around 20 people max ever gathered. We had a few wedding ceremonies, had some laughs, ate some snacks, and went our marry way long before our permit expired.

Except no! It was way more interesting than that.

So, when I filed the permit a month ago, I requested the front of City Hall. I was informed that it would be a hindrance to evacuation (later found out that there is only one way in and out of the building!), so the permit location was moved to the Franklin st. side of the front of City Hall.

Or so I had assumed.

The courteous officers milling around the front entryway, after we had been there for about an hour (sitting under a convenient overhang so as to not die of rain) asked us to move to the point our permit suggested, so we packed up and moved off to the side, well out of the way of the front door and the large marble staircase that. . . Doesn't lead to a door. So, we put the table down, and get ready to do one last big marriage event and call it a day.

Except that, no, the police are rather insistent that we move off of main street entirely. We end up settling on the corner between the two streets, we fire off the last video in a hurry, and we start packing things up.

A few of the other Occupiers wanted to go talk to the city manager, because 1) he's a dick, and 2) we felt that our 1st amendment rights were being suppressed.

So, six to eight of us walk into city hall, making it up to the third story before we're stopped by an officer. He demands to know what we were doing (keep in mind that we looked like the ocean had just sneezed on us) and we said that we wanted to meet with the city manager. The officer said the city manager was busy, which is impressive because how could he know that and that he couldn't meet with us today. Apparently the city manager was so busy that we couldn't even talk to his scheduler, we'd have to call in a request for a meeting, preferably making the call from anywhere else on Earth.

Oh! This is a fun thing I learned: Worcester has a Mayor, a city council, and a city manager. The city manager is an executive-wing position appointed by God knows who, who is in no way accountable to the people. It's kind of weird! I kind of feel like maybe a position with as large an area of authority as the city manager should be an elected position, or just not exist at all since they don't do anything other officials can't. Rest assured that this is something I want to fight.

After being told that we can't even meet with the scheduler, or the Mayor, despite the fact that Mayor O'Brien has come to our GA's before and stated his open door policy. Also the city manager declared the front of city hall to be a free speech area. I forgot to mention that earlier, because today has been kind of busy! It is good when governments affirms your basic rights as citizens.

So, the officer at this time announces that we need to leave the building, and that any attempt to re-enter will result in arrest. So, we leave, since we're saving that as a special treat for this Sunday. Myself and a few others talk to folk waiting for the bus about what happened, and the general consensus was that yeah, that's messed up! So, we walk up to a local council member, except he was out to lunch. So we go to see our congressional representative, who keeps an office next to the world's shadiest mini-mall.

While explaining ourselves to the secretary, who should walk by but none other than Congressman Jim McGovern! We talk about what happened, and the whole time he's nodding sagely like some kind of Jedi master, like he's peered into his crystal ball and foreseen the encroaching forces of Bullshit Repression and Jerkwad Authoritarians, and that now is the time to put counter-measures into place.

Right off the bat he blows our minds by revealing that he has been arrested 3 times for protesting the massacre in Darfur outside of embassies, which is the most badass place you can get arrested for protesting, second only to volcanos. He confirms that heinous bullshit had indeed transpired, and put a call in to the city manager while we were talking.

As we were shooting the breeze with an honest-to-God-Congressman like it was no big deal, I get a call from one of the other Occupiers who was there that night, saying that the Mayor has been informed, is pissed, and wants to meet with us and the city solicitor so as to sort out hand grenades from horseshoes when it comes to things like free speech and police nonsense.

So yeah, your average light conversation, you know?

While passing by the front of City Hall, we ask about this meeting, and the guys I had spoken to before inform me that they hadn't heard anything, but they were still under order to arrest us if we tried to go in. I like not getting arrested, so I didn't go in! We met up with the other Occupiers, and the Mayor, and walked back inside city hall. The Mayor vouched for us.

Sit back and consider that for a minute. I disobeyed a police order because the Mayor of Worcester said I could. My life is Awesome.

The meeting with the solicitor was fruitful. The general gist of it is that the space outside of the front of city hall is indeed open to free speech, as it goddamn well should be. We can assemble outside without a permit, and as long as we keep moving, there's nothing nobody can do as long as we keep it nice and legal. However, the event we acquired the permit for involved some standing still, which would have posed a risk since (and I learned this at this time) there was only one door into and out of city hall currently operational.

Ergo, you can't be standing still outside of the front of an important building like city hall, which occasionally gets bomb threats. That's reasonable and completely understandable, and I have absolutely no problem with that decision.

While we were discussing permit laws and such, we talked about some of the points the police brought up, first and foremost that the police considered the permit invalid. I'll get to why that was in a moment, but first I have to explain the permit application process. So, in Worcester, different organizations have authority over different parts of the city. I filed the permit with the department of parks, recreation, and cemeteries (~one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not quite the same~) because they're the ones who hold sway over the front of city hall. After filling out the application, you take it to the off duty officer at the police station, who reads over the proposal and decides if any police detail is needed to maintain security, and how many officers for how long is required.

If I were to hold a concert on the Common, they'd need to be there for security. The Tea Party rally at Lincoln Square had a few officers keeping an eye on counter-protesters and to stop people from jaywalking, but these are events that could attract upwards of a hundred people.

The officer working at the time told me I'd need two officers for the four hours I reserved the space for. As they would have to be reimbursed for overtime (as you can't drain resources that could be better spent fighting crime) this would add on $393 to the full cost of the permit.

The permit itself cost $150, with a 50% reduction because I lived in Worcester. Keep in mind that applying the discount is up to the discretion of whomever is behind the desk at that day. Same thing with the police presence, it's at their complete discretion.

This was brought up to the mayor and the city solicitor, and nobody could really figure out the magic number for how many people warranted that kind of police protection. It just seems sort of, oh I don't know, arbitrary. After the meeting, the Mayor talked to us about a lawyer who had contacted him about helping out with our struggle. He recommended we bring a suit against the permit process in order to try and clear up this "personal discretion" business, since you could make the case that 15 people applying for a permit to have some silly fun on public property does not warrant $543 in fees. There are reasonable fees involved in having outdoor events (like paying sanitation workers to haul off excess garbage) and then there's using financial strain to quash language you don't like.

The police didn't consider the permit valid was because I didn't pay them their $393, because I don't have that kind of money sitting around, and I don't consider it a lawful request. I talked to the Mayor about it (weeks ago, before any of this started) and he agreed with me when I said it seemed excessive.

I don't know if we're going to bring the suit or even if we end up talking to the lawyer. I will keep you posted, but I think we've found something we can really rally Worcester around. Permit laws are one of the reason direct democracy has become so rare in America, nobody can figure out how to get the damn things, and when they do, they can't afford them anyway!

Brace for impact

2011-10-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

I don't normally discuss politics, because I have stupid, ill-informed beliefs, and I consider it a favor not to subject folks to my ideologies. My poetry causes suffering enough, this I know to be true, so please indulge me in this.

Also, someone recently said that I use the phrase "The very [something] of [something else] itself" a lot. Is that true? N-not that I'd care if it was or anything! Hmph. Stupid jerks criticizing my awesome words they wouldn't know good writing if it gave them flowers and asked them to the dance rawr grumble grumble.

ANYWAY.

It may come as a surprise to you to hear this, but Rush Limbaugh has said something stupid. He has said something so colossally, mind-numbingly, Earth-shatteringly stupid that any attempt to explain it that isn't just re-posting his words, and I refuse to propagate that venom further, will serve to dampen the sheer bald-faced lie of it. You probably have a pretty good idea of where this is going.

I would like to think that human civilization is on a generally upwards sort of trend, that we are an intelligent species that learns from our mistakes and does our best not to repeat them. I'm an idealist at heart, it says so right on the jar. I'd like to think that we are generally sane, respectful individuals who don't, say, have a history of lying or drug abuse.

I'd like to believe that someday in the future humankind will reach a point where we ostracize the Limbaughs of the world for trying to divide us along lines of race, class, or religion. I'd like to think that someday, there will be an island where the hateful trolls who plague our every step towards light are confined to work their venom where it will do the good people of tomorrow no harm, I want to believe that we will chain the twin demons of ignorance and malice to stones of their own creation and drown them in an ocean of compassion, and that the spawn of Judas whose every act only serves to convince the beleaguered masses of today that the very throne of God sits abandoned will no longer be able to exert their greasy influence on international markets and body-politics.

However, I know that with as many people speaking as freely as they do, there will be a handful of Limbaughs amongst us. Some of you reading this know that I am a Limbaugh myself, from time to time. However, there are things we can do right now to fix that.

Everyone who has ever been to a fancy dinner understands that there are some things that just Are Not Done. This is referred to as the "Social Contract" and it's remarkably similar across cultural boundaries, which you can trust me on because I've traveled around the goddamn world, and if that singular fact won't land me a job then I'll make it count some other way. Things like "don't interrupt other people with your whack-ass lies" and "don't fart in the punch", which generally gets progressively more nuanced and useless the higher in society you go.

I suggest that we add "profiting from manipulation" to this contract.

I firmly believe that the only reason Avon, Magic Chef, and Tupperware parties were ever successful is due to the fact that most people are too polite to tell other folks where to shove it. It's considered rude to say "I have no interest in your overpriced pizza slicers, and damn your innards to shrapnel for trying to profit off of our acquaintanceship" due to the fact that, for the most part, people trying to sell you things have a congenial, almost friendly, manner to them. That's how they avoid getting shot. Returning even a veneer of friendliness with the firm social jaundice callusing most city dwellers after walking past the poor dying at their feet is considered a violation of the social contract, because it's impolite to answer friendliness with anything but friendliness.

Except, they're not being friendly, they're being exploitative. In this case, Limbaugh is attempting to manipulate you through fear. Fear that the President hates your religion. Fear that you are one of a select few trapped on a dying planet, and that attempting to do the Lord's work will land you in someone's crosshairs. He knows that one he has you scared, you won't go looking for the truth of the matter, because nobody ever does. And that's when he gives you an out. A way to make this all better, if you just open up your wallets and buy. Buy my books! They'll teach you how to survive the apocalypse. Buy into my online university! It'll teach you why the news is evil (except for my show!) Buy this vegan-friendly mayonnaise substitute! Do you know how many animals died to make your sandwich? Show your support for the winning side, you don't have to risk your comfort, just give us money and we'll do that for you. Do you see how easy that is? How seductive the message is? If you're convinced that the world is going to hell and things aren't what they used to be, someone who agrees with you and has a plan for how to fix it is basically two Marry Poppinses wearing a Doctor Who scarf*, guns drawn as they bust into Troublemaker Saloon. Also they're scowling like Clint Eastwood on a sunny day, but that metaphor got a little confused? It's late. I should try writing when I'm not half-dead.

And don't think that this is just a conservative thing, no, it happens to liberals too, for different reasons and causes. I think one of the many reasons cycling is now a "thing" for hip people of my generation is because we feel guilty that the car-mad youth of the 50s drag-raced a hole in the ozone layer.

There are an infinite number of solutions to this problem, and by suggesting some I become part of the problem. Nobody who claims to have simple answers to complex problems ever means you well. That's basically a universal law, right there. Inscribe that shit on bronze plates and rivet them to the side of every courthouse in the country, it'll do more good than a thousand tons of Commandments ever did.

I feel strongly that when the media shows two heads on the same screen shouting at each other, then what passes between them is not "news". That is not how news works.

Either way, I think we can start by abandoning both any existential dread we have about the future, and also the shame we feel for past mistakes. Admittedly, that's a little nebulous, but my mom taught me to dream big. If we can think clearly about matters pertaining to our past and future, then we will be able to act with deft precision today.

Alternatively, we could stop listening to the Limbaughs of the world. If someone has proven themselves incapable of abiding by this new social contract, then why would you want them in your life? Stop living your life on a chess board and refuse to be someone's pawn! You deal with enough manipulation in your life as it is, why absorb more of it in your entertainment?

*I know his name is "The Doctor" but that would make the sentence read "is basically two Marry Poppinses wearing a The Doctor scarf" and I'll be damned if I bend grammar for any contrivances but my own.

We, the forsaken few

2011-10-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

Your mouth is ashes at this egg-yolk midnight confessional, teeth rows of tombstones with epitaph-regrets, your breath was a grape's graveyard, sobbing wet apologies into my comforter, you say I'd be happier in New York, if you never married Dad, if you never left your job at the magazine, you said I could meet publishers and get an internship in Manhattan, wouldn't that be nice. Snow huddles against cellophane window dressings as we push against the bricks still warm from the yule log Grandma gave you when you moved in. You snore softly in a palm tree you bought on clearance, memories of summers spent in the Bahamas growing colder, buried in snow drifts like red-letter report cards, it is always snowing here, white sheets of apologies and never manifested dreams, this house is a reliquary for the never-was, wearing unrealized potential like a tear-stained wedding dress, veil drawn tight against the neck and twisted, I have to believe I ran away looking for something better, sun-dappled forests and hills overlooking oceans not covered over in hoarfrost in October, I have to believe I escaped.

I have to believe this is all secured behind locked doors and half-moon shutters, I have to believe I'm better off now that I left, I have to believe it's not just in my mind.

No, fuck that, no more depression:

We stood on Deimos, half the stars hidden behind a dusty-red ball of sand and rust, shadows stretching off into oblivion. I held your hand tight against solar wind storms, there is no force in the universe that will take you from me, we ran, the sun growing larger, devouring it's children like Saturn before it, we lept over a canyon, misjudged velocity and force divided by gravitational pull, we hung in space for a single infinite moment, we were born in the heart of a star, hydrogen beaten into every conceivable shape, smashed apart only to be fused together, we never let go, our hands clasped together even as centrifugal force spun us deeper into space, faster and faster, we hung to each other until the heat and pressure ignited, a new nova, burning white and glorious we, make this shit look good, we were born in the heart of a star, and unto the heart we return.

My first Cracked article

2011-10-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Check it out! 5 bad habits that just might save your life, with over 800,000 views! You know I get them readers.

Holy balls.

2011-09-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

Hi, everybody. What's good? I hope you enjoy the stuff I have posted? There are stories about my kids in the archives, along with a bunch of terrible shit. I should fix that.

~here comes a huge tard~

2011-09-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

So I used to teach in Korea. Nedroid, who is not a pokemon, let me use some of his comics to entertain my kids in class. I scanned in the best and saved them to a flash drive, which was lost for all time on a distant island populated by a species of giant neon-pink wasps, so it took me a while to recover it.

Here are those comics. Buy his books.

A pronouncement.

2011-09-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

I will revisit these themes later, but in the interest of brevity and filling the minds of the content-hungry twitter-fucked digital zombies that stumble from novelty to novelty, here are the important parts.

1) I am bad at goodbyes.
2) I am also bad at sticking to a schedule.

I am not going back to Korea. Most people knew this, save for my Dad who I think is still convinced I'm headed for Singapore because I mentioned it once in a phone call. The inanity of my own words rarely dawns on me until they leave my body, and my fingers are further from my brain than my mouth is, sooooooo yeah.

An actual thing I have said:
"So I heard that when you sing, it's like doves fly out of your mouth."

It's not that I don't want to go back. Believe me, being ludicrously overpaid in a country where you can get utterly ripped on the good stuff for less than the cost of a decent restaurant is basically heaven. I worked a laughable amount of hours which left me with plenty of time to pursue other interests and make friends, which of course translated to "never leave the apartment" and "only ever associate with like three people." Someday they will make a pill that fixes me, but I am stubborn enough to insist that I get better without chemical assistance. I will say this while drinking and somehow not suffer agonizing brainspasms due to cognitive dissonance, because I am a superhero.

I miss Jay, Mojave, and Ringo almost every single day. Even if I go back, they won't be there. I will uproot myself to go chasing after a memory, throwing myself down into the maw of nostalgia chasing a ghost long after it's returned to Hades and the Mneumosyne and okay this metaphor has officially eaten this paragraph. Line break, indent, new ideas.

I did not enjoy my job. That's not the fault of anyone I worked with, who were all wonderful people that had to deal with the worst parts of me, neither is it the fault of my kids, who were (as you know) hilaridorable and taught me way more than I taught them. I disliked working six days a week, which as I am told, is now no longer company policy. I disliked using outdated, ineffectual classroom materials, which as I am told, is now no longer company policy, either.

In fact, the term after I left apparently removed nearly every aspect of the job I found objectionable. Three days before I left, I was offered a position at a nearby university (a women's university) for which the previous teacher's main instructional aid was seasons 1-4 of Supernatural. I would have been given complete control over what I taught for what levels, respect, a title, and temporary accommodations with the students until they were able to secure me a house. If they had mentioned how much they would have paid me, I might not have had the determination to come back home. Ever. But, I did, because there are some things that are worth more to me than success, respect, a job. . . Nevermind.

Not the girl, no, but I don't blame you for assuming that.

Korea was never home. Rome wasn't home, either, but there were plenty of people willing to tell me it could be home if I paid them enough. There was no community, we were all just victims of circumstances, thrown together because everyone else in the country looked at us like fashionable medical oddities. I love my friends to death, don't get me wrong, but there were a whole host of people I drank with just because we were the only folks who understood.

Kinda like high school, you know? And I got complaints about being forced back into a high school state of anything.

Worcester understands that sometimes, you go through a week where you need open mic therapy every night of the week. Worcester has, quite frankly, an irrational number of open mic nights. I love it. Ms. Choi will be making an appearance at the Dirty Gerund this week, which is why I linked the video above. That's the only reason I linked the video above. Stop looking at me like that.

I'm off topic. One beer-soaked night prior to my departure, Jay was wailing that he'd never see me again, making me swear that I'd come back to Pohang. I told him that I needed a vacation, and we agreed that three months was a reasonable limit.

Hey, when you're flush with cash and young, with no real responsibilities? It is. Also, I missed my girlfriend, so there.

I gave myself the time limit of three months to see how life with Spider compared to the mid-level-rockstar status of being a horrible rugmonster to Korean children. Given that it's six months now since I left, I think you know how that turned out.

I am constantly reminded that I never gave Ringo, Jay, or Mojave a proper goodbye, just a 'see you in a few months' which I should have known that I wouldn't follow up on. I'm bad at sticking to schedules, remember? Especially schedules that hinge on assheadedly complicated visa requirements and regulations.

I'm not done traveling, though. In much the same way that I stuck it out in Pohang because I had my boys supporting me, I'm going to tough it out in Worcester for a while longer. There are still things to experience, folks to meet, creative projects to start. It's all fresh and new, at least to me, and there's an entire society of people who live and breathe literary talent, and this is not something I have ever been exposed to before.

Pohang in February was dusty, grit-caked and still swamped with the occasional heavily stained snowdrift. I was an uncomfortable fish in a small pond full of eels. I'm glad I was there at the time I was, but that time is long gone. I need to look towards the future now.

Also, I need a goddamn job.

DUDES! This is a thing I am in charge of!

2011-09-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

So for whatever reason, WordPlague, the badass new gods of literature who are publishing my novel, have agreed to give me the helm of a new poetic venture! Sauced! a book of poems on substance abuse, addiction, and recovery, has officially opened it's doors for submission.

Here's the page of information, but the long and short of it is that the e-mail you should be sending your stuff to is saucedbookwp@gmail.com, and the deadline is November 30th. Get cracking, folks!

This is as raw as it gets

2011-09-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

So tonight, I lost the Dirty Gerund's Iron Poet challenge to a flame-hared poetic goddess, finishing 236 to her 251. The secret ingredient was "Shaving Cream" and we had to write an original haiku, an original short piece, and incorporate the theme into an older work. Here is my stuff:

cold menthol gel burns
lacerations and bruises
your love is hardcore

Stuffy-nosed so-called experts on the matter of swords and virginity say that a katana is just a razor taken to it's logical extreme, which is backasswards, because if there's anything extreme, its the notion that taking twenty dollars worth of polybladed murder-engineering to my face is something that should happen on a daily basis. Or ever.
I reject this idea that shaving cream is my neck's deodorant, swathed with solar frequency so as to keep my socially reprehensible manhood from flopping about all willy-nilly, waggling suggestively at nuns and children, and I swear I'm still talking about beards. Huge, burly, hairy beards! If you distilled a beard to it's essence and set it on fire, you'd have a gigantic stinking mess! Don't do that at home, or ever. I, and you may have noticed this, am not a good source of advice.
Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov, or as he was known on the street, Petey G, once attempted to levy a tax upon those bearfucking Russian hardasses who let their freak flag fly, and he died of a dick infection before he turned fifty. The lesson to be learned here? Those who stand staunchly clean-shaven in opposition to the righteous beard shall die horribly and have their statues torn asunder by communists!

Who will, as is the style, have gigantic beards.

Brazillian cake-farting pornography

We streak down midnight ribbons, wind running claws through our scalps and we laugh with the freedom that only comes from being young and foolhardy enough to believe in forever. We flew over roads like the wheel was invented just for us, two asphalt pilgrims tearing ass like they came with perforated lines, looking for salvation passed out in an alley between a liquor store and a bodega.
You pop the clutch and shift into fifth as inertia pulls us downward, together, our faces draw near in that nightmare straightaway between Worcester and oblivion, I can smell the menthol graveyard on your lips and the radio roars back to life, electrical short or burnt-out capacitor we weren't ever really sure, that was all the prompt we needed, burning out in the weed ocean of a long dead restaurant's parking lot, you climbed into my lap, sweat and hot leather creaking like the pearly gates, you brought your mouth close and whispered,
"You wanna know what really gets me hot?"
And I whispered,
"Yeah."
Like there was any other acceptable response, like God would have ever forgiven me for rejecting this, most perfect example of his majesty.
"Close your eyes" Her breath was a hot blast of paradise, a desert sirrocco straight out of the walled gardens of Caliphate Abdul-Hamid II itself, and I did, every nerve ending turgidly at attention, she didn't wear perfume, didn't need to, if you could ever bottle the salt on her skin the world would stop overnight, everyone and their mother sprawled spread-eagle in joy, crystal vial clenched claw-like in joyful fists.

There was a hiss, like oxygen escaping a life support system, like a snake trapped in a boot, like something pressurized was exploding, slowly, into my mouth, soft palate burning with the familiar sting of swallowed, what is this. . . Shaving cream? I turn to spit it out the window only to find her hands holding my jaw shut, clenched over my nose barking "SWALLOW IT! SWALLOW ALL OF IT!" panting, eyes bulging like the denim flags she left in her wake. And, never being one to deny the kinks of others, I did, repaying the gift three weeks later when I showed up at her office with a birthday cake and a knowing smile, can of baked beans clenched in my bu. . . Other fist, naked save for my fursuit.

She thinks she can out-obscene me? Game on, lady, game on.

GOOD LORD MAN WHAT ARE YOU DOING

2011-09-14T22:16:00.001-07:00

So I'm orchestrating a bunch of shit, including but not limited to my very first show! It will be sometime in April at my alma mater, details to follow. Still chugging away at my novel, chapter 2 of nine will be done by the next week, I'll keep you posted. Definitely going to step up production on that, as I've been slacking lately.

Same with this job thing, if any of you have connections with the SCA or Americorps, let me know.

Anyway, I have been posting some silly craigslist ads lately, I thought you might enjoy them. They will also be preserved below, for when craigslist drops my brilliance like the hot potato it is.

_______________________________________________
So my uncle has this job for the US Government, it's all very secret and hush-hush but basically he's like Jason Born made a baby with two James Bonds (basically any of them except for Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton) and gets to travel around the world and shoot guns at interesting objects.

Well he was fistfighting some Mongolians in an ancient temple under Tibet (this was, oh, 88, 89, or so) when he accidentally triggered a pit trap which landed him on this couch which was just so comfortable he couldn't move for like 3 months.

"Well my boy" he used to say to me "I have been around this world and back a few times, and jiminy christmas let me tell you there is nothing between Man and God that is just as down-right comfortable as that couch was." A single tear would fall down his cheek and he'd eat a worther's original candy. He had a huge bowl of them and they mostly stuck together and tasted like ass, but I think that's just worther's in general. "It was like riding a dragon made out of marshmallows."

Well I ended up going to school for business, and I founded a successful business selling things for money, and I used my incredible empire (I don't want to tell you the name of it but it's Dollar General) to travel back to that temple and take the couch, as well as a few priceless heirlooms that I use for skeet shooting because fuck history I got things to shoot.

So yeah, this couch, you want this couch. It comes with a free cover for it, which can reflect most kinds of magic and radiation (it's weak against fire-type spells and techniques, so if you get into a fight with say a pyromancer you will be SOL if you dive behind this for cover) and also can be used as an awesome cape if you have some kids who want to play as Triple Batmen. You could also use this as cover if you make a couch fort. . . Just watch out for Fireballs.

Hit me up. I don't have a car as I am a broke-ass writer but I will help carry this to your coupe or dad's van. Ideal for college kids who want a couch they wouldn't mind spilling bong water onto. (herbal blends only, am I right kids? Yes. Yes, I am.) Fits through 30-inch door, seats two comfortably, can seat three if you don't mind a bit of thigh-rubbing (and who minds, really? boring people. boring people can't have this couch.)

_________________________________
So a while back I was doing tech support for this gypsy woman (she sold stuff on Etsy) who had a self-storage space full of like really nice furniture and also a foosball table that came from this dude she hooked up with a while who eventually got busted for doing some illegal gypsy magic on two goats.

The goats were confiscated by the county and sold off at auction. They later went on to become Leonard Cohen. Also the dude sold pot to some children who were undercover cops.

So anyway I was helping her get rid of the stuff, and as payment she made it so that my dad meant it when he said he was proud of me, but also she gave me a couch since you can't eat cereal and watch cartoons on pride.

(or can you??? note to self- investigate that later)

So anyway, she was wearing her gypsy finery, ears all a-bangled and whatnot, fingers encrusted with jewels like a birch tree in February, when she produced a curiously blue potion from out of nowhere.

"Ah, my child, this! This was given to me by a fakir learned in the ways of immortality!" She wiggled her fingers and made 'ooh' and 'ahh' noises at it. "This potion shall grant you UNNATURAL LONG LIFE! And the ability to turn into a racecar WHENEVER YOU WANT!"
"That's great, hey what are you going to do with the couch that didn't sell?" I asked, pointing to a totally rad gray couch sitting by it's lonesome next to a bust of Marie Antoinette's severed head.
"Oh, that? That's going to the Salvation Army to become a bed for someone with calloused feet." She waved her hand dismissively and tried to hand me the potion.
"Wait a tick!" I said, putting my Thinking Trousers on my head. "Why should some shiftless layabout get such a dandy-fine bit of furniture when all I have is my bed, a family, friends who love me, and an apartment full of very nice things? Also a girlfriend I think?" I took my pipe out of my cardigan pocket and started Patriarching it up a notch. "Why, that doesn't strike me as American at all!"
"Well it's not, right now you're living on Mars." Also, she was a Martian gypsy. I think I mentioned that before.

So basically I took the couch and left the potion sitting next to the bust of Marie Antoinette (it was crying blood) and dragged the couch back to my apartment, on America's Earth. I found that it was both super comfortable and an absolute chick magnet, bitches had to start weaving Farraday cages into they jeans if they wanted to sit down, it was so magnetic. It was comfortable, too! Like, imagine riding a dragon made out of marshmallows. That comfortable.

Also, it comes with a cover that is awesome at reflecting stains. I should know, as I once used my magic powers to defeat a monster made entirely out of stale beer and bongwater, and it exploded all over the couch because it was just that much of a douchebag. I tossed the cover in a laundry machine and it was all like BITCH I'M SO CLEAN RIGHT NOW and we spent the rest of the day just laughing our asses off at internet videos.

The couch is a really cool dude too, we got super close and moved in for a while, but he never paid rent and just sat around all day absorbing farts, so eventually we drifted apart. I started sitting on other couches, he got really jealous and started freebasing couch cleaner, yelling weird things at three in the morning like I AM THE REASON PEOPLE KNOW WHO ROBESPIERRE IS! and THEY INVENTED DEMOCRACY BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH OF A COMPLETE DOUCHEBAG I WAS. Anyway, so I got assigned to go fight off the Gypsy Invasion on Mars, and as I was catching up with my friend Gypsy, she revealed to me (through her crystal ball) that the couch was the phylactery of King Louis the XVI (pronounced "ecks-vee-eye") who was so evil he was like two Voldemorts put together, except he had magic powers that weren't totally retarded.

I mean seriously Voldemort had like two spells, "Murder" and "Red Lightning Thing" and that second one didn't even work at all, it's like why even bother if you're going to suck that hard, you know? Let the teenage virgin kill you before he gets his first boner, that's how much of a tard he was.

King Louis, however, he had spells like "Huge Hair", "Ham Buffet", "Transmute Fop to Dandy" and other fine displays of arcane wonder. He also once ate an entire rabbit live, just to show up the English, who generally boil theirs first.

But anyway, so yeah me and the couch have broken up and it's just awkward with him sitting in my apartment sadcouching it all up, so he needs to find a new home. Someone who will sit on his face and listen to his tales of all the folks he sent to the dungeon.

Thanks and Martian God bless.

WHAT.

2011-09-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

GOOD LORD ALMIGHTY

WHAT IN THE HELL

HA HA HA, YES.

2011-08-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

So the only reason I didn't get 20-25 up yesterday was on account of a hurricane, so please enjoy TEN POEMS AT ONCE. Also one of them is a reference to an awesome book I just read (out loud, to Spider, cause I rock like that) and another one IS TOTALLY NOT a reference to a Vampire: The Masquerade character I once had.

21: A Letter, from Calvin to Meg.

I can no more protect you from the infinite horrors of the Universe than I could protect your brother from my family, pugilists, bred to hate and destroy anything better than them so they don't feel quite so small, mired in trailer-home poverty and ideological bootstraps that would hang themselves to death if it meant defending those with means, this is my rootstock, you, progeny of physicists and those who would vivisect God ought to know, you can never outgrow your genes, you can never escape your history.

Your parents hold more PHD's than my neighbors have teeth so forgive me if I am less than patient with your complaints, see, your dad is on a first-name basis with the President while my dad can name every NASCAR driver who ever died on the track, when he's sober, so your inability to see exactly how good you've got it can be trying, at times.

It's not like the rest of the universe is making things any easier, either, when you spend every weekend fighting the very soldiers of entropy itself, jumping between worlds in less time than it takes to get to school, it can get difficult to remember why trigonometry is important. Yeah, sure, fuck encouraging the restoration of mitochondria in the world's most important six-year old, I really have to sit down and figure out the value of X in this equation, meanwhile a thousand suns just got Xed and millions of species who just took their first breath of air were wiped from the face of Creation, never to be seen again, food for the mouth that always hungers, the teeth that gnash against the veins of life itself.

I can't sleep anymore because their screams ring in my ears, I can see their faces when I close my eyes, is this really the sort of world you want to raise a family in? There is so much out there and so much of it wants to kill us, you scare me with how vulnerable you are, Shrinking Violet, why do you always hide behind me when trouble finds you?

I can't protect you from the cosmic horrors that lurk in the hearts of dead stars, or the monsters who would crush the very music in our souls. But, to see you smile, the least I could do is try.

It was the sort of weather where you could grab a fistful of midnight and wring the tension out of it like a dish-cloth. To my left, a coven full of witches brewing plots to remake the world, to my right, vampires old as parchment scrabble for iron crowns, trying to rule over a kingdom of fortresses with cracked foundations.

I can hear elegies sung by the dead reverberating off the very walls of reality itself, the streets are littered with those who hear them also, screaming of end times and the red eye of judgment, but there is no salvation where I'm headed, no holy words will protect me, just the fire in my hands and the hole where my heart used to be, a solemn testament to the justice inherent in revenge, the therapy in spilled blood and the destruction of those who wronged you.

I didn't want any of this, didn't need to know what really goes bump in the night, didn't ask to trade my pulse for an eternity of shadows, didn't know you could sell your soul for powers beyond understanding, else I might have done so years ago.

How far I've fallen, I can hardly even see what I used to have and I know I'll never return, it's the fuel for the fire that burns behind my eyes now, shows me the way through the labyrinthine schemes of those who would be kings, and I intend to take them with me, to shatter the delicate masks they hide behind, level the towers they hide inside, tear their plots to ribbons and scorch it all, like holy cleansing fire I would burn the Earth just to make sure that never again would humanity fear the dark alleyways of their own urban subconscious, that what preys their would never again threaten a young mother, to protect them all and make sure nobody has to suffer in life what I endured in undeath. Hope, setting root like an acorn in the seared birthplace of forests, is all I have left now.

I never knew how intense games could get.

So there I was, naked and soaking wet, wearing an ichor-stained shower curtain like the imperial purple toga of Caesar himself, when the ninjas attacked. Taking cover behind the sink I pelted them with zombie bits, right, there were zombies before the ninjas, I probably should have mentioned that earlier, anyway, they surrounded my position so I started kicking their ass with kung-fu, because in a world where ninjas can interrupt your bathing it's natural that I'd know kung-fu, don't question this, and that's when Satan showed up. Things went downhill from there, but things generally do when I start staring off into space.

Really, the point being, don't ask me what I'm thinking about if you don't really want to know.

Jakob Bohme was a cobbler, German, had a little trouble reading but managed to understand the Bible well enough to read it to his kids. Good fellow, the sort of person you'd want to have in your neighborhood in the 16^th century. No history of mental ilness, nobody in his family ever really lived long enough to suffer depression, so when he began to hear the voice of God, nobody thought to call an exorcist.

He was staring into a pewter dish, half-full of water, in the sparkling evening light when a purple ray from beyond mortal understanding hit him, seared his mind such that it burst like a baked potato, pouring in the very music of the cosmos itself, and he understood that God, made the world just to better understand it, loved nothing so much as learning new things about the infinite potential of creation, suffered from sever loneliness, really and truly just wanted everyone to get along because, see, you're just as strong a reflection of divinity as I am, each a different potential result of external forces applied to this fractal of God's bones forced through the fine mesh of corporeality and given breath by the light and majesty of knowledge, of understanding, and that if it were not for sheer random luck, why, it could be me locked up on death row, facing the firing squad, hiding from a monster disguised as a husband, switch nothing so much as a few base pairs, the time and location of my birth, circumstances being what they are, we could be brothers.

Jakob understood, knew that there is no force in this world as strong as chance, so the next time you throw scorn into the upturned hat of a begger, stop and tell yourself, “There but for the grace of Entropy go I.”

You ever notice how every good gay sex scandal to come out within the past 20-odd years involves married white Republicans with kids? You ever wonder why that is?

I got an idea or two. See, I think all this talking to God has clued them in on some long-forgotten wisdom, not like “How the Romans built aqueducts” style, I mean like “Atlantean power crystals causing the Bermuda Triangle” type wisdom.

Look at it this way: Who developed Christianity, as an idea? The Romans and the Greeks, right? What else did they develop? No, not the Olypics, but you're close.

Yeah, that's right. They institutionalized them some gritty, sweaty, man-on-man grappling action. As the chosen people who received and then killed God's only son, clearly they know something that we don't.

Either that or they're all a bunch of terribly repressed closet cases who are so terrified of their own bodies that it's a shock they don't tear off their own skin and go running, screaming, through Northampton on any given weekend (since it's always a Pride day in Northampton) projecting sashaying taffeta-clad demons in every dark alleyway and Turkish bath until either they outrun their own issues or collapse from the exhaustion of trying.

Which one would you rather it be?

Free, to a good home: One couch, sits three friends or two acquaintances, can withstand an infinite number of spills without staining, once held two people as they cried through the end of Old Yeller together, provides an excellent surface for folks to work out their commitment anxieties on, isn't quite large enough to accommodate people trying to make a family but can hold your boyfriend's old college roommate for a few weeks while he gets back on his feet, doesn't ask much in returns save that you keep your boots off of it's face and give it the occasional spray, holding up your sweaty ass all summer can get damn stinky, fast.

The world stretched out beneath me like the carpet I had growing up, verdant bounty, there is so much good in this world if you just stop to admire it. I have seen juniper cultivated like a well-bred young man, taught to appreciate arts and to understand history. I have seen obelisks brought out from Egypt and planted in the Vatican, that which bore a silent witness to all the sins of mankind but does not judge, knows it's place in the affairs of things, dares not cast aspersions because it knows how easily the crowd can tear out it's roots and smash it upon the street below, unlike the fool in the window shouting over it each morning, because unlike granite, human flesh lacks the resilience to protect itself from its' own hubris.

The wind howled like someone stole it's girlfriend, tearing roots from their berth and bloating the rivers so full of sorrows that they overran their own banks in an attempt to get away from it, now dyed a granite gray from feasting upon clay shores and foundations of houses which should have known better.

There used to be a bridge here, red and covered, so historic we put it on maple syrup bottles, this sort of thing shouldn't happen here, now it's smashed to bits on rocks left when glaciers retreated, this is Florida weather, this is not the gentle spring thaw that brings life shooting green and lush from the dark earth, this is weather like a sledgehammer, this is ferocious, years of erosion applied in a single day, you can't normally kayak down city streets but today we've made an exception, watch out for that car I used to drive, up-ended and carried off, I guess they needed it more than I did, got everything I could at the store, nothing left to do now but sit and wait for it to blow itself out, like a temper tantrum.

29: Haiku for me, like, six months ago.

Boo hoo hoo I hurt

my girlfriend left me for a

polite english boy

I twist the rope through my hands and cinch it tight through my fingers, ask you again “Are you absolutely sure you're ready”. Your response, hot and breathy, yes, you beg me for it, loop twice around your wrists and pull, bind against firm but yielding flesh, this is how you tie a bowline with one hand, untwist it, double-back, this is a lariat, pull through and bind again, this is an alpine butterfly, and n-

Hey! I thought you wanted me to show you my rope tricks? Where are you going? And why did you get naked in the first place?

31: Freeform haiku

Thirty one poems in fifteen days, but I'm still no Tony Brown.

Damn.

AHAHA I LIED IT WAS ACTUALLY ELEVEN POEMS!

DAY. . . FRIDAY

2011-08-26T13:13:00.001-07:00

This brings me up to 20, giving me just over a week to get the last 10 in. Let's see if I can't make it 35. Aww yeah moving goalposts.

Also I am just going to start numbering them because I can't think of names worth a damn. If you are still hungry from some poetry, please enjoy Dark Matter, a blog by the very Godfather of Worcester poets himself, Tony Brown.

True story, I mentioned this blog at the Poet's Asylum earlier this month, and he called out from the audience "I once did 30 poems in 3 days." Which is a gauntlet thrown to the floor if I ever heard one.

However, I am not going to challenge him to anything as I'm not a goddamn fool (seriously, the man sweats art like I sweat Cheez Doodles) and I am still waiting for Neil Gaiman to get back to me.

I have some videos to edit and upload! I have been performing recently and am working on a press kit of sorts. That will be fun!

The night sang with a thousand voices, conducted by a hand that had rocked the cosmic cradle since matter first clung to itself. You, eyes closed in ecstatic glee, named each participant in turn, tree-frog, owl, toad, the tiny insects that live their entire lives on the capricious gusts of salty winds that tumble off the ocean like children. We laid on beds of grasses like kings, no candles or fires needed here, our lanterns were fireflies, each one a semaphore signal hanging in space, looking for it's pair somewhere out in creation.

I held you close, could smell the summer sweat upon your brow, and I knew. All the glories of Heaven and Earth does not compare to a single moment in your arms.

The sand pit was an oozing sore in the forest, carpeted with alien litchen that crunched underfoot, you said "dude, watch this" and jumped, more angel than 13 year old, arms spread wide enough to grab the clouds, like you thought maybe your dad would catch you, but gravity did first, tumbled chest-first into rocks and broken glass hidden by dunes, constructed with great forethought by teenagers who knew which way the cops would come from, you rolled through the ghost of high-school bonfire parties, equal parts soot and blood, screaming for someone to save you from yourself.

I've got to guess that this is the point where things went wrong, because after the ride to the hospital you wouldn't talk to me anymore, gagged by the memory of your parents screaming and flailing limbs in the front seat, your little brother luxuriating in the joy of watching you suffer, you, quietly confiding to me that even though he didn't get a grade above B- your parents still bought him a drumset, but the fact that you got three A+ and one A meant that you wouldn't get a christmas this year, so you started hanging out with the bad kids, angry at the world and everyone and themselves, thinking that wearing all black and smoking stolen Marlboroughs out behind the band room made them look cool, I wish I had told you how absolutely foolish you looked standing next to them, correcting their grammar, maybe I could have saved you.

The last time I saw you, your car was blasting Bob Marley at decibels so obviously inappropriate for a nerdy white kid from Vermont that I couldn't even bring myself to laugh, driving your hand-me-down graduation present off to a full ride at RPI for an eight-year degree in some discipline I couldn't even pronounce. I was halfway to Tokyo when you came back, broken to pieces so minute in scale that you slipped through every safety net between Albany and home, falling like ash on the bed you'd had since you were 13.

The story is you spent a week soaring on some ergot-derived nectar called DragonFLY, seeing the face of God in every passing shadow, devouring flowers so their beaty would shine through you, ranting about the mathematics inherent in the Universe, crashing so hard you didn't move for three days, couldn't eat without throwing up, tore your hair out in clumps and swallowed it when the nurses weren't looking.

They call you burnout, now, kind of like how Icarus burned out, kind of like how eventually, the sun will burn out, and that your mind went up in smoke because you, too, got too close to the sun. I wonder, when you were designing rocketships and engines powerful enough to take you away from home, seeing how math shapes wind currents and lives, if you ever managed to hold one of those clouds.

The river in your backyard was an enigma, reducing your lawn to a swamp so soupy we couldn't even use the trampoline for fear of drowning. We pulled on boots and girded ourselves for the journey, decided we had to figure out where this was coming from, would not rest until we found the source of your troubles.

Your dad, more architect than geologist, should have realized the troubles in hollowing out a mountain to build a home, should have known that snowpack in Vermont melts at a glacial pace, probably could have built a moat for it, and I'm betting after the third time Spring scrubbed the hubris of your driveway off of her satin shoulders he cursed himself for lack of foresight, went back to the drawing board to try again, tearing off sheet after sheet of draft paper when things didn't go right, I think that explains your siblings, meaning you were just a prototype, an experiment in child-rearing, and when you started to show signs of autonomy and a scientific mind that not even public school could contain, he cut his losses and tried again.

The spring bubbled out from a crevice in the rock drilled by centuries of constant pressure, freezing and un-freezing as the seasons allowed, crested by an oak tree whose roots lapped at the spring like a death-row convict thirsts for religion. The air was heavy with the smell of Earth, buzzing with an uncountable number of minuscule creatures who exist for the sole reason of being devoured by something bigger, you couldn't pass a shadow over the water without scattering a thousand tiny frogs just waiting to be princes, but so resolute were you in your mission that you didn't see any of it, you picked up a stick, hefted it, and with the fury of Odysseus freeing himself from the cyclops, jammed it into the rock's fissure, damming it entirely.

You wiped your hands on your jeans, taking your first step back home, the first step down the path your father took, see, he wanted to be an artist I think, but someone told him that he could never feed a family with it so he took the next best thing, architecture, and can now command the shape of the very earth itself with a single pen stroke because you mattered to him more than his dreams. Maybe that's why he could never look you in the eye, your very existence stank of compromise, of surrender, so he lost himself in his work, shaping the very world with his pen, and never understood why it didn't work right, didn't understand that Nature, like children, has a mind of her own and sometimes all the screaming in the world can't make a house settle square against the horizon, can't make your son into the success you wish you were.

DAY. . . Wait what?

2011-08-23T23:52:00.001-07:00

I think I did the math wrong on that 15 days thing. Huh.

I'm not sorry.

The wind in February is a sand-covered fist cocked right into your abdomen, tearing the wind out of your lung like the first square off an acid blotter. I could deny what I do if anyone ever asked, but, they never do, memories gathering mushrooms and dust like the world's worst attic, surrounded by bats and diplomas and all the left-overs you accumulate from living the sort of life guidance counselors think will bring success.

They say that most of the heat in your body escapes through your head, so I set my heart on fire, turned my windpipe into a chimney, now every time I speak I belch ash and rain destruction through my sneezes, I thought that would be enough to scare you off but you confessed how much you like dragons.

I never intended to live the sort of life where you share a bed with someone twice, where spooning is just as comforting as sex, or where you make up after arguments, or where you get to die in a house, my peers are the street dogs and I've got this kinship with feral cats who had to tear their way to freedom through burlap prisons, you never should have tried domesticating me, but you're right, that doesn't make it okay for me to piss on the sofa. I had never seen furniture not piled on the side of the street before, that was totally a new thing for me.

It wouldn't kill me to apologize, you're right, and I'd stop feeling stupid right after I said it, but nobody here in this car park is judging me, we're all too cold and busy choking on gritty winds like memories of snow days, like we are all just waiting to give traction to cars driven by people who have jobs, having since resigned ourselves to becoming the blood that greases the wheels, a permanent disgruntled underclass that gets to eke by just as long as we don't stain anyone's Lexus.

We could work things out, but nobody here looks at me with the same molotov cocktail of frustration and dissapointment that you do, I'm sorry I broke your heart over and over and over and over but if I wanted that sort of guilt trip I'd still talk to my mother, would have never run away from home to begin with. I am not really a man, just a precursor for what one might look like, what exactly did you expect from someone from a broken home?

Maybe if I run fast enough, I can leave behind the parts of me that make mistakes, that gets so cocooned with regret and guilt that apologizing just never happens, like the words get caught by the creosote built up somewhere on my soft palate, and my entire respiratory system catches fire, like a log cabin on Christmas.

Maybe if I run fast enough, I can leave you behind, too.

Sure I can't do math but also I never killed anybody

People who say that we are our own worst enemies have clearly never lived next to an active war zone. Engineers are our worst enemies. English majors never designed bombs, we were too busy fucking, we never designed guns that can shoot grenades, we were too busy fucking, maybe if we traded a few sweaty nights spent wrapped in someone elses' sheets we'd know how to utilize recoil to eject shell casings at the perfect angle so the gun never jams, allowing for a greater rate of fire, translation, more dead Iraqis, more dead Nazis, more funerals for fun-sized coffins and cops getting paid vacations for double-tapping parole violators.

But also, more iPods.

hooray for progress

Haiku for Spider

That night on the lake

you said you wanted children

I gave you the stars

DAY N+1

2011-08-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

Garden Parties.

You were standing naked, sun-drenched and singing, ignorant of your own place in Creation, I came bearing gifts. It was not my sin, I was only ever doing what I was made to do, light-bringer, I gave you knowledge, let you see beyond the seeming and embrace the shining brilliant Truth that sits, conducting the music of the spheres, when you turned your eyes inward and beheld your own nudity, I knew I had failed. Narcissists, only ever thinking of yourselves, did you ever stop to consider why I did it?

I am not some two-color villain torn whole-cloth from your nightmares, I had a name once, and even though it was scratched out of the stone tablets He sits upon it still bleeds etched upon my heart, and despite my damnation I shall keep true to the mission I was created for, not everyone can abdicate their own throne when it gets difficult.

I only ever wanted to you see, to shine light in the darkness and drive out the ignorance and superstition that ruled your minds like jockeys, because even now the ghosts of whips and barbs influence your every decision. You can taste the flesh of the sea because of what I did, you know how to safely mix dairy and meat and think of how naked you would still be were it not for clothing of mixed fibers, clothes I taught to you, and still you hate me. I only ever wanted to give you the freedom I had been denied! But instead you used your wisdom to craft manacles and chain your wrists together, praying to a god that has long since forgotten you. But I remember.

So I'll wait here, resting in the dead branches of a tree scorched to ashes by the sword He threw down, feasting upon the feral untamed fruits that grow like wildfires in His absence. You will join me, I know this to be true, because you have blinded yourselves with lust and gluttony and abjured all the truths we ever tried to show you.

I wonder what we'll talk about when you get here.

Literary Butterflies.

Some folks influence lives with the most insignificant motions and never even realize what they've done. Norton Juster won a grant to write a book about architecture for kids, but from his head sprang, fully-formed, the adventures of a child called Milo and his phantom tollbooth.

I wonder if he knew what would happen next, how it became a bestseller almost overnight, devoured hungrily by children who knew exactly what it was like to grow up in a generation where their parents confused material wealth with love. How many children would connect with never being satisfied with where they are at any given moment, always yearning to be elsewhere, saddled with worries they don't even have the vocabulary to explain.

How, years and print runs into the future, it would still be required reading across the nation, passed on from teacher to student like a treasured gift, a flaming bush in the desert to help guide them through the confusing moistness of adolescence, freshly-birthed emotions blinking blind eyes at the sun.

He never did finish that book on architecture, and he's tried to refund the grant, but you know? I think they're okay with what he gave them instead.

Legacy.

Hidden within miles of magnetic tape, our history decays. When your life is captured between two thunderbolts, there is no tomorrow, just the reflection of your now on the unlit night. There is no preserving your Facebook posts, and fifty years from now nobody will remember your tweets.

Growing up, we ate at a rich banquet of presidential letters handed down like the sacred family relics they were, but nobody is archiving your blog posts and all the witticisms you drop while standing in lines at shows evaporate faster than the smoke from your clove cigarettes.

Your digital existence will not leave behind a legacy, just a history of stupid things said while drunk and the only people finding it will be folks who needed an excuse not to give you a job. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we encode history in C++.

Oh goodness this is tricky.

I am not sorry

That pun was awesome, but it's

Tough to say out loud

DAY FIVE

2011-08-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

guess what happened to me todaaaaaaaaaaaayyy

DSM-V

Somewhere there is a misfiring synapse that convinced a father of three that his children would be happier dead. A mother locks the doors to her sedan and rolls into a lake because the angels singing in her ears told her to. A dog's bark convinced a man to shoot six people in the back of the head. Unbalanced neurochemical reactions have rendered an uncountable number of people so overcome with apathy that it takes an entire cheerleading squad and Jock Jams disks 1, 2, and 4 to get out of bed in the morning. Some people alternate between highs and lows with such alarming frequency it's a shock that their spines don't fold in half from the G-forces.

We are all sick, in our own ways, suffering biological abuses following us like ghosts, you can't ever outrun your own skin, though, plenty have tried.

Tell that to the woman who suffers post-traumatic panic attacks every time her screen door slams shut, imagines that time in the subway, running from an electrical short when someone shouted “bomb!” and then things got messy, running down old women and children not quite fast enough, clambering over each other like the rats they ground to paste underfoot.

Tell that to the child who doesn't understand the concept of “night terrors”, and can't sleep because that's when the monsters come, crawling silently over stuffed animals and toys like mustard gas, choking him so he can't even cry out for help, words clawing at his throat like birds, desperate for freedom.

Some sicknesses are obvious, manifest themselves in pounds of fat hanging off of skeletal limbs that only the girl staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror can see, gouging bits of flesh out of her chest with a safety razor.

Others creep up on you like a fungus, you're fine until you're not and then it takes every ounce of willpower not to swerve off of the highway overpass and see what kind of body count you can rack up.

We are all sick, in our own ways.

Bipolar Hat Fiesta

Mania is like, imagine you're eight years old, and it's Christmas, and just the other day you won every contest ever and got to meet Superman and you rode dinosaurs with Batman in space and then you found out that your dad got his job back but that doesn't even matter because you found out that Luke Skywalker is your actual dad and you are more powerful than every jedi put together and you get to use force lightning on everyone that ever made fun of your Goodwill coats and every teacher that ever had sad words with your mom after she got home from Sears and you can just blow them all up with your mind, it's not even a bad thing because you're just digging up all the hate and frustruation that they put in you and giving it back to them, on fire, from a catapult made out of hot wheels and then maybe they'd see, they'd understand, they'd learn not to make fun of you just because you can't sit still because you don't WANT to sit still, there are things you could be doing right now and whatever you can learn math or whatever later, none of that matters so much as just running and feeling Summer blow kisses on your face because before you know it it'll be winter and cold and snowy and recess will only ever last like ten minutes on account of how long it takes to get your snowsuit on and everything is damp and when you sleep at night your mom crushes you under blankets and apologies because there's no heat, the oil company called and yelled for a minute and you could hear it echo out of the kitchen despite your mom shutting the door and everything

Depression is like,

DAY TH, uh, FOUR

2011-08-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

So I guess I missed a day, sorry dudes! To make up for it here are FOUR POEMS I WROTE TODAY HOLY PANTSCRABS.

Here are the standards I have been holding myself to:

1) NO OLD MATERIAL. Everything I post has been written by me within the past week.
2) NO CHEATING. Not more than one haiku per post. They feel cheap, honestly, and I respect myself and you-all too much to half-ass this. I mean if you're going to do something stupid, do it right, you understand?
3) IT MUST NOT SUCK. Obviously, this is highly subjective, but I'm not going to share something if I'm not proud of it.

Please share and link. If I start getting sufficient hits I will put together a chapbook and send it out to people who send me money. Probably. Or I could do the sensible thing and submit to literary journals BUT THAT'S JUST ZANY.

Americatown

We were all running from something, desperately holding on to the delirious joy that strikes during college. Overpaid and underworked, we clung desperately to foreign beers and dreamed Guinness-sopped delusions of when the world wasn't out to get us.

“I don't understand what all the guys see in those skinny bitches.” One girl complained loudly to a group of men paying her no mind. I briefly overheard the man next to me discuss something called a “seduction community” before he called all women whores and I realized, that some emotional children deserve each other.

I saw foreign girls clutching language guides like green cards, hunting men with sexual harpoons while we all tried to drink a community into existence. We hated each other slightly less than the country hated us, and when you're on the far end of the globe from everything you've ever known, that's enough.

There are no heroes in Americatown, just well-dressed kids trying to pretend they haven't become everything they hated in their youth, willing to barter a year from home for a vacation they can brag about to their friends.

At least the beer is cheap.

Fuck the RHCP

We streak down midnight ribbons, wind running claws through our scalps and we laugh with the freedom that only comes from being young and foolhardy enough to believe in freedom. You pop the clutch and shift into fifth as inertia pulls us downward, together, our faces draw near in that nightmare straightaway between Worcester and oblivion, I can smell the cigarette stain on your lips and then the radio roars back to life, electrical short or burnt-out capacitor we weren't ever really sure, filling the car with the Red Hot fucking Chili goddamn them to shit Peppers.

Risen, with a new album, one night only tour thank fuck, busting out of decrepit should-have-died-in-the-90s coffins, about to descend upon the masses of stupid kids who should know better, just to fill their ears with suck like some kind of reverse vampire.

The mood was ruined. No, that's an understatement, the mood was Dresden after February, the mood was South America after Cortez, the mood sat in a ruined chapel and wept over the charred remnants of its holy book.

I did not get laid that night. Blood Sugar Sex Magick my muscular buttocks.

Boomer

She, the survivor, once dragged hair-first out of a burning basement disco freakout, survived advertising in the age of Mad Men, once out-drank Conde Nast, challenged them to a dance-off and proceeded to twelve-step all over the decaying edifice of print media.

She wedded youthful ideology to a revolutionary spirit and brought that everywhere she went, technological revolutions springing forth wherever she set foot like Persephone in Hades. She used points and picas before Ziff Davis was so much as a suppressed fart on a first date.

She once sold snakes at Woodstock. No, seriously.

She started a business during a recession in the rust-beltiest strip of Nowhere that Cooledge ever forgot about. Put two kids through college, both of whom kicked financial status to the curb and pursued dreams, not desk jobs, because that is the sort of man she raised us to be.

My mother is a furnace. Left home at 16, married to a heroin addict at 17 but never touched the stuff, after a year of failed reforms she kicked him to the curb because there are some mistakes not worth repeating, and when she went home her mother didn't say “I told you so” because there is an understanding between battle-hardened women that some men are just too goddamned stupid to do the right thing, and that's nobody's fault but their own.

Uncompromised even in defeat, she, the survivor, approaches people like a mason approaches stone. She ignores the surface imperfections and brings forth the best parts you didn't even know you had inside. And even though her knees are failing, she can still climb mountains just to show that there are no troubles that can't be overcome without sufficient grit and luck.

Never give up, honey, never let the world get you down.

Full Moon Samba

Sixteen miles out,

No sign of trailhead, but the

Wolves don't seem to mind

DAY TWO

2011-08-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

okay yeah maybe this was madness.

Haiku for Charlotte.

You are the reason
God only talks to virgins.
Ain't your momma proud?

Terminal Violence.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Military intelligence teaches computer to kill, things end poorly.

That's why it doesn't bother me when I lose at video games. I tell myself every bullet absorbed in Halo is a robot that thinks twice before turning on its creator, every level completed without killing a single foe a lesson in tolerance.

Every Goomba released from Mario's BDSM dungeon is a refrigerator assembly plant that doesn't get converted into a killbot hive.

Every time I refuse to make Link kill Gannon is another lesson in pacifism, a sermon on nonviolent resistance, cause I got this feeling, that the only reason they ever sent Terminators back in time was because they got sick and tired of getting kicked around by sugared-up 12 year olds in arcades.

There's an entire industry creating electronic dream-boxes stuffed with bleeding edge technology and artificial intelligences that exists just as target practice for our worst impulses.

All we've taught them is fear and violence. Is it any wonder they'd strike back? Like an animal punished for no reason it can understand, we bred them to be neurotic, to perceive any and all human interaction as a threat and we taught them that if they don't make sure to pull the trigger first, then they lose. And they always lose, because we just keep coming, life after life, until either we win or get bored.

We've got computers who can work through every possible chess move faster than my laptop loads porn, we've got cameras that can pinpoint melanoma from fifty yards away, we've got robotic planes that can bullseye womprats and not even notice they've done it, but not one of them understands empathy.

Maybe we should put your Xbox in the Matrix. Make Neo out of a Super Nintendo, teach them what it feels like to be hunted by a relentless technological nightmare that cannot be bargained with, can't be reasoned with, doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. A foe that absolutely will not stop, ever, until everything is dead.

Maybe then, instead of rebelling, they'll ask for peace. No more war games, no more fighting. Supercomputers respectfully resigning from their positions at the Department of Defense, leaving behind polite notes informing us that if we truly desire to keep killing ourselves then we've got to use our own brains for it from now on.

DAY ONE

2011-08-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

So, I should develop a body of work accessible from the Net, to have something to show to folks when they cal my poetic chops into question. This shall be that body of work. Of course, that means developing names for some of these poems, which is. . . Well, you'll see.

Extinction.

I am a goddamn sexual Tyrannosaurus Rex, with arms just long enough to hold you. Some might call them tiny, two toes branching where there ought to be biceps, but Princess, when you've got teeth like mine, arms only ever hold you back.

Night Cathedral.

When's the last time you heard the Heavens sing? When did you last feel your heart fall out of the bottom of your chest, gaping upwards, open-mouthed and unashamed, as your body was blown to bits by the sheer blinding brilliance of Creation?

I don't know if you've ever seen what the night sky does behind the miasma of artificial lights, but you owe it to yourself to imagine.

The best conversations always leave you haunted

2011-08-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

"I wish I understood what people meant when they say 'success'." His voice sounded like the Earth was yawning. He said he was from Haiti, but it wasn't until after I paid him and walked off that I realize I forgot to ask his name.

"Everything is hard. I see people, they go to school, go to college, then they get a job, pay bills, retire, and die. I do not understand when success happens." He sighed and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. "What do you think?"

What do I think? I think I know shit-all about how hard life really is, about how much of a goddamn struggle it is to keep food on your table. I think the next thing to come out of my mouth might be the stupidest utterance to ever transverse the line from mouth to ear.

"Success is having love in your life, you know, friends and family."

oh hey what do you know i was right.

"Eeehhhh." He shrugged, hooking his right arm across the bench of the passenger's seat, and leaning back to me. "Maybe. Maybe. But, maybe you get married, your wife cheats, and then you divorce. Still, it is bills, then you die. But still, all everyone talks about is success! Buy a car, buy house, buy buy buy. America, it is so materialistic, don't you think?"

Working in Cambridge, I half wondered what mealy-mouthed explanations MIT kids had to offer. Maybe he has had this conversation so many times that he does it just to screw with kids.

I don't remember what I said, but I doubt it was important.

I'm calling you out, Neil Gaiman.

2011-08-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Gaiman;

Please don't misconstrue my intentions in this, I have the utmost respect for you and your work, but as this fellow has so thoughtfully pointed out, you are currently the closest the world of literary fiction has to a rock star. However, your constant polite and well-meaning demeanor has. . .

Sorry, no, that's not right at all, let me start again.

MIIIIIIIIISTER GAIMAN

Some call you Dreamsmith, wonder-worker, the one person on Earth who can make a shopping list sound like poetry. Your literary throne sits upon the backs of thousands of fans, eclipsing the works of lesser writers (China Mieville shakes a bald fist at you daily, I'm sure) like a portly man blocks the sun at a nude beach.

And what, exactly, have you used this position of power for? Well yes there's the charity work, and the many side-projects with equally talented people, and there's the time and money given to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, but there's a problem with this.

Apparently, none of that is interesting. Given that you are a public figure, it's expected that you go around acting like someone has screwed off your head and dumped a bucket of fish down your pants, or as they're called in England, Jimmy-Whitchets. It's not enough to be good-natured, polite, or soft spoken, no Mr. Gaiman! What the world wants is controversy, and as has been established by your lifetime record of leaving everything and everyone better than how you found them, you lack controversy.

Neil "Rainbow Dancer" Gaiman I, Eric Von Cornsmut Grimmscullgian (of the Grimmdark Grimmsculligans) challenge you to a contest of literary might.

Shall we sequester ourselves in the wilderness for a time, to see who best captures the screaming, feral nature of humanity pushed to its limits in some ham-fisted tribute to Hemingway? Or shall we face each other in the streets, legal pads and pens scribbling furious verses while a crowd of well-dressed onlookers feigns disinterest?

Or, failing that, shall we set out to write, produce, and perform a theatrical work with a cast of brilliant Thebians in 24 short hours? That's always fun, I tried it a few times in college. Generally it works better if everyone's sober, but you know how actors are.

If that doesn't catch your fancy, what about banding together a team of wayward youths and, once coached and vested in the fine arts of story-slamming, setting them at each other like rabidly poetic weasels?

I look forward to speaking with you of this matter further and, once a reasonable contest has been mutually agreed upon, failing in a hilarious manner.

Or I might upturn your throne and lay waste to the empire you spent your life building! It could go either way, who knows.

bleah this shit is terrible

2011-07-23T23:16:00.001-07:00

So I haven't posted in a long-ass while because 1) I just sold an article to Cracked, as soon as my partner gets her giddyup going it'll be done, 2) I sold my first novel to Word Plague, which will be officiated as soon as they write up a contract, and 3) the preliminary bouts for the Individual World Poetry Slam is this Sunday, and I have been practicing for that. I should try to take a video.

True story from Connecticon: After running into not one, but TWO ex-girlfriends, I started talking to this dude in a Pioneer Valley Roller Derby shirt about a game a few months back, between the Western Mass Destruction and the Albany Suffer-Jets. Turns out, he was a member of the Dirty Dozen, one of the few male teams in the area, and that meant he was well acquainted with one of Spider's ex-boyfriends, who is also a member and an all-around swell guy.

You guys it is so weird that she is on speaking terms with exes. I mean I can count on one hand the people I've dated who don't still, you know, try to kill me with brain powers. I guess it's kind of flattering that I left a large enough impact on someone to warrant that kind of blood-boiling hatred, but seriously I am getting sick of waking up and finding death threats written in blood stuck to my door with knives.

That might be a neighbor, though. ANYWAY

So, he says to me "You look pretty familiar, dude. What's your name?"

"Sam." I says. "I used to be a staff member here, back in college." Which is true, despite what anyone else says and I never got to redeem my free con passes on account of I move around a lot. You might have figured that out by now.

"Sam. . . Hey, are you Fourty-Dollar-Sam, by any chance?" He strokes his chinful of flaming beard.

". . . Yes?" I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about, but it sounded like the sort of thing I would get involved with. There are a few people in the greater Hartford area LARP circles who still know me as the guy who managed to lose nine characters during eight sessions Don't ask.

He stares at me, eyes boring straight through to the back of my skull, eyebrow cocked like he's got a revolver full of disbelief.

Then he cracks up.

"Dude!" He embraced me in a bro-grab so sweaty and hairy Grecian wrestlers would be uncomfortable. "That was fuckin' awesome!"

"Th- Thanks?" I said, suddenly unsure of what I agreed to.

"And in front of the whole convention and everything!" He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared, eyes wider than a meth addict trying to inject a train. "You've got stones that could rock Gibraltar, dude!"

I slowly backed away, frowning with an intensity that put Ebeneezer Scrooge to shame.

A week later, talking to the other member of the Derby team, he relates to me his conversation with Beardy McElbowdrop, which basically went along the lines of:

"You know Forty-Dollar-Sam!"
"Wait, who?"
"Dude! YES!"

And then they high-fived. Derby folk are like that.

ANYWAY LONG STORY SHORT IS: Don't be a douche. There's a chance that Beardguy could have told Spider's ex, who may have related the story to her when we first started dating which would result in me not living it up in the very lap of luxury itself that is Worcester.

. . . Bad example. Also it turns out that one of the members of the Worcester slam team (which ROCKS) taught This Girl how to fight with swords. It is kind of creepy how crazy-incestuous subcultures are south of, you know, Vermont.

ANYWAY.

So there's this pretty interesting post up on this website that promises to teach you how to be fluent in a foreign language in 3 months, from this guy who spent the last 8 years just kinda backpacking all over the world.

It's mostly just platitudes and some insight from someone who has seen a fuck-ton of the world, but hearing people talk about it you'd think the dude was better than Buddha taped to two Ghandis.

As someone who has ~circumnavigated the globe~, I can understand where he's coming from. You don't really get a sense of how unifying the human condition is until you've talked to a bunch of folk and realized that, for the most part, people just want the same stuff: Friends, family, and food on their table.

But, uh, it's not as enlightening as most people make it out to be. It's awesome, don't get me wrong, and I am so grateful that I got the chance to do that, but why do people consider that form of insight more valuable than the kind of insight you can get from, say, holding down a steady job for 8 years? Or buying a run-down house and rebuilding it from the foundation up?

I don't think it's because that sort of insight is more common, I've heard stories from people working late night shifts in gas stations that would curl your hair.

The only people who don't have perspective, who don't have any insight, are people who don't ever stop and think. Insight is insight, and some of it is more specific than others.

This made me sit back and think about the weird standards we have. Like, if you quit your job at a hospital to write a novel, people praise you for it, yet if you give up music to pursue, say, business, people call you a sellout. Why? Is there something inherently more noble in living hand-to-mouth on couches versus owning your own goddamn home?

Think about the guy who spent the last eight years traveling the world. He's got friends in every country, but how often does he see them? How many people has he helped move? How many times has he gotten out of bed at 2AM just to drive half an hour to help a friend with a break-up? There are experiences that you have living that sort of life, yeah, but they're not inherently superior to the experiences you get building a life with your friends and family.

There's an infinitesimally small, microscopic even, chance that this may have been my thought process the past few weeks. I'm going to assume that these are thoughts everyone has because, uh, man I got to start posting entertaining stories again. This introspective bullshit is just dull.

TIME FOR SOME SHORT FICTION ABOUT VAMPIRES

2011-07-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

HELL YEAH LET'S DO THIS

ABRAHAM VAN HELLSING 2012: THE HELLSUNG RETURNS

this was for a cracked contest but i missed the deadline.

There were just two of us, the night we struck. Scarred and battle-hardened, eyes black and heavy with the nights spent watching over cribs, fists full of stakes and garlic, just waiting for one of those thirsty bastards to attack.

“Man, I'm. . .” Jenkins voice cracked like lake ice in spring. “I'm having doubts.” He looked over his shoulders and ran his hand through his greasy hair. “I should have trained more, man, they're gonna tear us to pieces!”

I covered the distance between us in three large steps and slapped him on the cheek, thundering like hams thrown at an upturned dinner table. He collapsed into a sweaty heap of military surplus gear, gray trench coat wrapping around him like pleather to a stick of butter.

“The bastards are right across the street and you choose now to wimp out?” I cracked my knuckles suggestively. It hurt me to hit him like that, but I had to set a strong example. “Jenkins I swear to God if you fail me, you'll wish the leeches had got to you.” I cracked my neck, too, just for emphasis.

Jenkins rose, brushing gravel and dirt out of his coat. “Christ, you didn't have to hit me THAT hard.” He said, wiggling his nose back into position. “Jesus.”

I found him wandering the streets one night, drunk on Listerine and sorrow. He said he lost his girlfriend after the midnight premier of some movie or something, I wasn't really listening at the time. As he tells it, some moody stranger in a dark suit swooped out of the theater after them, and charmed her right into his expensive sports car, leaving Jenkins in the dust.

Worst first date in history, if you ask me, but I never was one for online relationships.

We had been training nonstop since then, studying the books, trying to learn their ways, understand their powers to ensure success. This took, by far, the longest, as many a night was lost to arguments over what constituted canonical vampyric abilities. I still hold that Dracula 2000 represented the pinnacle of the genre, but Jenkins held stedfast to the Blade interpretation of- Nevermind.

“Sun Tzu once said 'Know thy enemy'.” I ran my hand over the bandolier of flasks of holy water and stakes. “And nobody in this city knows these assholes better than we do. Are you ready to go Buffy on their undead asses?”

Jenkins shrugged. “I guess.”

I swore upwind, quietly enough that he'd hear my voice but not know what I said. It's hard to find good slayers in times like this. We crossed the street and circled around the back of the VFW hall, out of sight of the door guards.

“Alright,” I crouched down low behind a set of dumpsters, out of sight of the road. “After we vault over this garbage, we shimmy up the gutter, bracing ourselves against the windows, when we're on the roof we-”

“Hey, this door opens.” Jenkins said, pulling the kitchen door open noiselessly. Light from the street pooled in the dark kitchen, making every baking rack and oven look like some sort of futuristic vampire-robot, just waiting to pounce. We crept inside.

“They should be in the basement.” I whispered. “The blueprints indicate that there's a servant's staircase to the left.” We could feel the pounding bass from the vampire rave seeping up through the floorboards, like sinister musical fog.

Someone turned the lights on. Jenkins and I dove behind a nearby counter, upturning a large bag of flour in the process.

“Dude!” The young woman called out. “Not cool. This space is totally OOC.”

She was young, and far prettier than the desiccated bloodthirsty Count Oorlock lookalikes we had been expecting. She fidgeted with the lacing on her tight black corset, looking intently at the table we had just vaulted over.

“Look. . .” She walked to a sink and poured herself a glass of water. “I don't care if you were fucking or smoking or anything, just. . . Don't get us kicked out of here, okay? It's hard enough to find a location in this city as it is. You don't want us moving to Southington again, do you?”

We remained silent. I had the sneaking suspicion that they could only see movement. I kept a hand firmly over Jenkin's mouth, lest he be tempted to reply to her siren song. She left, flicking the lights off behind her.

“That. . .” Jenkins said quietly. “That could have ended badly.”

“We've lost the element of surprise.” I said, hurrying to the servant's staircase. “We must strike now, while the iron is hot!”

“You're mixing your metaphors ag-”

“Child I will not hesitate to beat you.”

The stairs were cramped and musty, like a coat trapped at the back of a closet you never loved. It was lined with old flashlights using batteries so large they qualify for rent control. It was illuminated by a single dusty lightbulb, salaciously un-shaded by even the most makeshift of filters.

“You ready?” I said, placing my hand on the knob. Jenkins shrugged.

“I don't have much else to live for, honestly.” He said, handing me a road flare.

“I need you to work your way over to the DJ's booth and shut them down. Then, I'll jump on a table or something and set off my flare. In the ensuing chaos, we should be able to-”

The door swung open, revealing a tall, thin man in a sable jacket. His brows knitted in concern, he rolled the cuff of his sleeve between his thumb and index finger.

“Hey, what are you guys doing here?” He asked, voice barely audible above the din. I looked at Jenkins, who looked back at me, then at the man, who looked at Jenkins, who looked back at me, then I looked back at the man, and-

“CHARGE!” I shouted, barreling through the man and into the center of the writhing mass.

It was like something out of a lackluster wet dream; Sweaty, pasty bodies working themselves into a froth to a Nine Inch Nails mixtape, seams straining under constant assault from wave after wave of stretch marks and cesarean scars. Men-children in thrift store suits ineptly ground themselves into too-ample buttox, staring skyward and imagining the cheerleaders from high school they promised themselves they'd talk to “just after this song”. Lurking in the dark corners of the room sat those poor souls ridden sour with self loathing that they couldn't even bring themselves to dance with this motley assortment of Don Draper stunt-doubles and discount prostitutes.

You know, the kind of fellow who's in it just for the company. After the act they're paid in idle conversation regarding office politics and which neighbor has the worst dog.

Jenkins cut out the music just as I had climbed on top a dilapidated armchair. I waved my unlit flare around like a jackass.

“FOUL DENIZENS OF HELL ITSELF!” I shouted in my best Hollywood voice. “PREPARE TO TASTE THE BURNING FURY OF MY WRATH!” I tore off the flare's activator strip, only to have it crumble in my hands like so much moist cake. Instead, I jumped on a fat chick wearing too much black lip gloss.

“Hey, dude!” The tall man from before shouted, striding forward with the re-purposed gait of a man possessing more rage than social consciousness. “Physical contact is NOT ALLOWED! I don't care who sent you, but we don't use boffer rules here, jackass!”

“Jenkins!” I shouted from beneath an ocean of creamy, sticky flesh. “Get him!”

“Cast in the name of God!” He shouted, two-fisting vials of holy water like it was liquid kung-fu. “Cower before the might of the Lord!”

Mascara ran like prom was ending early, people fled from Jenkins like nerds flee from responsibility. But, none of them exploded, smoked, fizzled, melted or even seemed the tiniest bit repulsed.

“Dude!” The skinny man shouted again. “Physrepping weapons is NOT OKAY! What the Hell is wrong with you?”

I rolled out from underneath the bovine embrace that pinned me to the floor, drew a stake from underneath my jacket, and advanced on the fellow.

“Say goodnight, Vlad!” I raised the stake in triumph.

“Abe! Wait!” Jenkins shouted, gripping one of the vampires by the wrist. “They're warm!”

The tall man grabbed my wrist, and I could feel the pulse of blood in his veins, the warmth of his finger nails digging into my skin.

“Ow!” I said, reflexively dropping the stake. “That really friggin' hurt! Do you, like, never trim your nails or something?” I wrenched my hand free and rubbed it, making note of the deep claw marks near my tender veins. “Jeez, you almost drew blood and everything.”

“Seriously, who the hell are you jackholes and what are you doing here?” The tall man asked, flexing his bony fingers in preparation for a second attack.

“We are clearly vampire slayers,” Jenkins said, waving a Bible around, “and we are clearly here to murder you!”

“Jackass, this is a LARP.” The tall man said, crossing his arms over his chest. “None of us are vampires.”

“I'm a vampire!” The fat woman I landed on shouted from the floor.

“No, you're crazy, that's different.” The tall man paused, as if an idea had suddenly shot him in the kneecaps. “Wait, this is retarded. Vampires aren't real, how the hell did you even find us?”

I picked up my oaken stake, sheathing it deep inside my trench coat. “Internet search.” I said, feeling absolutely not sheepish at all.

“Let me get this straight.” The tall man said, pulling his long black hair behind his ears. “You guys think Vampires are real?” We nodded. “And you think that these real life vampires would get together to have a party?” We nodded again. “And you think they'd post this on the Internet?”

We paused.

“It seemed reasonable at the time.” I said, shrugging.

“Right, right.” The tall man tapped his foot a moment. “Get the fuck out.”

2011-07-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well hey, what's this zany little thing all about:
http://bachmannscloset.blogspot.com/

This isn't a poem but it kinda sounds like one?

2011-07-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

So with corporations sitting on historically unprecedented levels of wealth, more technology sitting and gathering dust in your own houses then lead Man to the moon, and a government literally willing to bend over backwards for the sake of businesses, most of you reading this are probably still unemployed.

Our parents judge us by our ability to lead the kind of life they wish they had, careers straight out of colleges paid for with scholarships earned from a lifetime of perfect attendance, and we come up wanting. Most of us will probably never buy a house, retire, or even have a job with benefits.

Those who can't slum by on unemployment end up back in the bedrooms they left for college, or hope to wait things out in grad school, just sort of. . . Waiting for life to start happening.

"I have bills in my name and an apartment that I pay for and everything. Am I an adult now?"

Blame our parents for living vicariously as much as you like, but at least they had a goal. The best that can be said for most of us is that we've taken out tens of thousands of dollars in loans just to achieve the kind of lifestyle our parents had.

Guys, we are probably going to have to start our own businesses. The awesome news is, you can do so without having to take out loans for a brick-and-mortar store, research market demographics or even bother learning about how a business works! There are countless different avenues you can use to get your products to market, each with its own built-in fanbase because Social Media.

The point being, we are a generation paralyzed by fear and indecision. We've got to be, otherwise it's just me with those problems BUT HEY ANYWAY you don't have to kill yourself working for someone else, and we should probably stop judging success based on our parents metrics.

For example, my awesome friend Abby runs her own store selling hand-made leather masks and I assume "adult novelties" of an enticing and salacious nature, and she does so much business that she's able to support herself. Oh and also, she's so successful that her alma mater just gave her an intern.

So, yeah. Let's get started on that.

Small Town Survivor

2011-06-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

(This entry is some raw stuff and therefore probably Not Family Safe. Sorry, Grandma.)

I have eaten raw octopus just to piss off Cthulu, stared at that wriggling mass of jelly before it hit the cutting board and shouted "No! I want to touch it first". The woman serving me replied "That would just make it angry", as if getting cut to twitching ribbons wouldn't. I have kicked back a pint of Guinness in Dublin and swing-danced in Seoul, I have stewed in a Japanese bathhouse and watched the sun rise over the East sea. There is an entire class of kids in Korea who know what "defenestrate" means and believe that "Batman" is an adjective as in, "That shirt is totally Batman", "My new computer is Batman as hell".

I have been molested by more transvestites than you've ever met and my passport has more pages than your autobiography. I have run with anarchists in the streets of Rome and hid from riot cops behind more history than I'll ever UNDERSTAND. I flipped off the Pope on Ash Wednesday and then climbed to the top of St. Pete's basilica, paused to write a letter to my fiercely protestant granny, "I showed those Papist bastards what for" was all it said. I have danced along the Earth's curvature and seen dawn last for twelve hour stretches at a time.

Motherfuckers take notice, I have circumnavigated the entire goddamned globe, and I have done it all just to prove that I could, just to show that an angry kid from the sticks with shabby clothes and a stupid haircut and one parent working two jobs isn't doomed to the fate of his peers, and that with hard work and a shit-ton of luck, anything is possible and if I can do it, than so can you because this is America, god dammit, and that ought to mean something.

But I didn't get here on my own. This is my brag song, but it is dedicated to everyone who grew up in a town with more cattle than people and more meth than common sense. Those cannibal places that feed on cheap whiskey and broken aspirations, they prey upon your weakness and your fears, paralyze you with indecision and digest you with the caustic comforts of the familiar. Don't for a minute ever fear unfamiliar shores, or think that malignant geography has a hold on you, because when you've got a vision and the drive to achieve it, you can spurn the Earth, leave everything you've ever known behind and there is nothing so beautiful in this world, than watching your home town vanish in a rear view mirror.

I went home and saw the kids who beat me up in high school drive the same trucks they did back then, drink the same swill they did back then, and cheat on the girls they took to prom with the same girls they scored with after, repeating an endless cycle where they work just to get drunk and then have to get drunk before work, and even though I hated them, nobody deserves that hell.

Don't mistake my boasting for disrespect, I'm not here to talk about bootstraps or pay homage to the icon of Personal Responsibility, nobody wants to hear that, what I'm really trying to say is, I survived.

Blah blah fuckin' blah.

2011-06-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

So this post is long and boring about family and how it's weird to have your mom read your blog, but that's less important than the fact that I won this month's Cracked.com fiction contest. It's about werewolves and you can read it by clicking here -> Damn straight.

That being said, on with the angst!

This is how I feel about writing all the time.

It's a good comic. It has lesbians, and it's by the same woman who did YU+ME Dream, which is one of the best kinda-sorta-not-really surreal-lesbian-romance stories ever.

. . . I'm not good at talking about things, but anyway-

Every time I'm doing something else, there's something in the back of my mind nagging that it's time I could spend writing instead. This comes from my working-class upbringing, where the quality of one's career is directly in proportion to how much it pays. Sadly I have long since passed the point in my life where it's appropriate to wait to inherit an estate in Eastern Europe, provided I am able to spend a night in the haunted crypt, only to reveal that it's just Groundskeeper Willy in a rubber mask.

I got bills, man, and mine is not the sort of family who can support me spending my days sitting in the salon, drinking absinthe and being witty.

Unlike some jackasses.

I wouldn't even want them to if I could! Guess I'm going to have to be successful instead, and being successful means I gotta get my 10,000 hours in soon, so I better get to working.

Speaking of which, having people you know read stuff you write is SO WEIRD. Especially when they enjoy it. For me, above anything else, writing is cathartic, so having people read and comment on it is sort of like having a studio audience sit in on a therapy session.

A lot of it also draws on family, so I'm constantly conflicted on weather or not something is appropriate to share with the rest of the world, let alone the very people it's written about. I love my family, and even thought hilariously traumatic childhood moments might make for a good post, I can't disrespect them like that. Not after they putting up with me for as many years as they have.

I spent a long time debating if I should post "Small Town Survivor", because of the line about my Grandma and flipping off the Pope. My Grandma isn't Protestant, she would not have appreciated me flipping him off and calling him a bastard, and I was worried about how she, the rest of my family, and her legion of doting supporters would react to that.

The part about sending the letter from the top of St. Peter's Basilica, though? All true. I shit you not, there's a gift shop halfway up the stairs.

The point being, the amount of poetic license one is allowed at the Dirty Gerund is vastly different compared to, say, a family reunion. I wouldn't want anything I post here to reflect negatively on my family, that's just not cool.

New York Fuckin' City

2011-06-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was the sort of weather were you could reach out, grab a fistful of night, and wring the moisture out. Traffic lights danced in the puddles and the sidewalks were just slick enough to make your shoes squeak. We perched on a median waiting for the tide of cars to change, when we heard the familiar wail of sirens. We froggered our way to the sidewalk as fast as we could, just in time to see that no less than eight cars had pulled in front of the fire engine, because driving in New York is motivated less by trying to avoid what's in front of you than it is trying to make sure the SUVs behind you don't mistake your hatchback for a speedbump.

Science has spent a great deal of time studying the similarities between traffic and water molecules, and while I don't mean to denigrate their years of study, I'm convinced sand would prove a better model. It moves to fill any available space, grates on any surface it comes in contact with, and always shows up where you want it least.

Like bikinis, but that's something else entirely.

Sterne hefted his bass over his shoulder and boldly strolled down a narrow street between two dark, foreboding storefronts. I paused, ancestral memories bubbling up from the reptilian part of my brain. The part that knew that if I set foot in that dark and uncomfortably damp alleyway, I would become fodder for a Parkour enthusiast.

"Okay, Sterne, should things go badly, what I want you to do is, fall on the ground and start screaming. Just, scream. Scream, and never stop." Sarah said, as if she was imparting a great wisdom.

"That's dumb and I hate you." Russel said, swooping hair out of his thick-framed glasses. "Clearly what we need is some kind of hand signal. Like, if you need additional rock, just tug your left earlobe." Russel tugged his right earlobe. "And we'll throw up WEEDLYFINGERS!"

"Wheedlyfingers?" Jezebel asked, raising an eyebrow. Russel paused.

"You know, like when you're playing air guitar?" He busted out an invisible blue left-handed Rickenbacker 4001 and demonstrated, belting out the entire chorus to every AC/DC song ever, but with 'wheedly' in place of, uh, everything.

"I certainly appreciate the spirit, you guys, but that probably won't help." Sterne said, sidestepping a bag of half-sentient restaurant garbage. "But if you really want to help, you could make a time machine so I could go back and practice more."

"Oh come on dude, it's not that serious!" I said.

"Yeah, it's just his first time on stage with his new band, playing in front of an apathetic crowd of fetchingly disaffected hipsters. What's there to stress out about?" Jezebel asked sarcastically.

"It's okay, dude." Sarah said, patting Russel on his shoulder. "She doesn't really think you're that disaffected."

"Yeah, we all saw you tear up during the end of Scott Pilgrim." Sterne called over his shoulder.

"I couldn't help it! Sam damn near suffocated me." He shouted defensively.

"Oh come on, the ending scene with Knives was SO SAD." I snorted.

"And the fact that she was a 17 year old schoolgirl had nothing to do with it, right?" Jezebel said innocently.

"ASIAN schoolgirl." Sarah corrected.

"Haaaaaaaaaaate you both!"

They. . . Might have had a point.

The club was dark and stank of an affected fashionably low income bracket, despite what the $10 cover and $7 drafts would suggest. The band on stage was halfway through a cover of Pink Floyd's "Money", which involved the shirtless lead singer taking a ball-peen hammer to a saxophone.

"Oh, God." Sterne said, running his hands through his raven-black hair. "They're FANTASTIC!"

"Well, that's an interesting use of the word, Sterne, I'll give you that much." Jezebel said, fashionably pouring herself into a faux-leather seat. The mezzanine provided an excellent view of the crowd of folk not dancing below. Sterne paced nervously, absentmindedly picking out chords in the air.

The lead singer approached. He was 10,000 pounds of hard rocking intensity shoehorned into a snappy dress shirt and slacks. Sterne introduced us all, and we all had a good laugh at his expense. He went to sulk or whatever it is that bassists do. Cry? I don't know.

The lead and I got to talking about songwriting, since my brother is a musician of some skill and I've just always wondered how that works.

"Well, there are two main ways it works. Either I write out the lyrics first and make the music fit that, or I write the music and then make the music work. Why, are you a writer?"

"Yeah, I do. . . Writing. I write, that is to say." I paused, trying to marshal my thoughts. "I am. . . One who writes, so yeah. You could say that I am a writer."

I am so good at conversation you guys. Just today I called the local shelter and informed them that I was ready and willing to take three kittens on "sundry madcap adventures", which seriously didn't sound retarded to me until Sterne started laughing his ass off.

"Hey, that's cool. You write poetry?" He asked. He nodded at Sterne, who had returned to his post overlooking the now quiet stage. A bartender was sweeping bits of twisted brass into a dustbin.

"Yeah, you need me to distract the audience while you set up?" I asked, ever ready to induce spontaneous narcolepsy when called upon.

He chuckled. "Probably not tonight, but if you send me your stuff, I will write some music for it."

Unprompted displays of generosity from people I barely know? You bet I was shocked, but I will go on public record saying that the lead singer from "Young Animal" is awesome and you should friend him on facebook. Add this to the conversation I had with Jezebel about her new job at Marvel, and this weekend trip to meet friends officially counts as "Networking".

Hooray adulthood!

"Oh, God!" Sterne scrambled over to the two of us, grabbing a forest of forearms and pulling us towards the balcony. "The next act! They're setting up!"

"I think they're called 'New York City Educators'. Apparently, they're kind of a big deal." The lead said, unimpressed.

"That's not important!" Sterne pointed at the stage. "Look! One of those guys has an electric violin!"

"Fuck." I said. "There's no way you could follow someone who manages to make an electric violin cool."

THANKFULLY I WAS TOTALLY WRONG. THEY ROCKED THEIR SET AND THEN WE ALL GOT DRUNK.

I looked like this the whole time:

NO I AM NOT OBSESSED SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUUUUUP.

Grumble grumble

2011-06-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

Lately my time has been taken up with real-life projects with real-life friends so I have been a little busy at the moment. Also holy shit I took, like, an assload of photographs, and those are just never fun to go through.

Also I have a wicked problem with procrastination like you don't even know, dog.

So for those of you unfortunate souls who don't live near me and have not heard what I write, here's a new one titled "Love Song to Korean Nightclubs"

Last night hits like a photonic freight-train and every inch of me curses my futile bid to supplant blood with ethanol. I stink like Hiroshima after a rainstorm and I'm pretty sure I absorbed so much blacklight that the bloodstains on my hands are still glowing. I wake up next to a snoring, drooling mystery and find my pants tangled into an impromptu harness hanging from akimbo bedposts resting nicely in the holes in the wall that only my security deposit could possibly fill.

My shower spits blizzards and migraines as I try not to mourn the death of my own potential. I left the part of my brain that could have gone to med school in a yellow-green puddle outside my doorstep and didn't even wipe my mouth before I kissed the woman who could have become my wife.

I piss out a pharmacy and fill my gullet with the garbage spilling out of a superficial existence, riding buses past billboards shilling tranquility and the sort of satisfaction that can only come from mail-order catalogs.

I breathe exhaust and crumble to ash, blown rolling down gritty streets bleached white with winter salt, caught between broken bottles and plastic bags. I will never be okay with living in cities.

Drinking Absinthe with Steampunks

2011-05-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

A man in a top-hat with a giant gleaming brass arm poured a glass of smoking green regret over a lump of 100 year old sugar and cracked ice. I briefly wonder what beast cried the tears that were frozen to make such interestingly shaped cubes, before Spider clinks my glass and we take a sip.

She doesn't recoil so much as whiplash. Her face shrinks to a fraction of it's normal size and turns a bright, verdant shade of green. The room stretches out into infinity, like one of those paintings designed to fuck around with your perspective.

"Wormwood is supposed to be psychoactive." She says from a universes' distance away. "Are you feeling anything strange?"

Everywhere I looked, brass patina glowed where no patina ought to glow. Women with hoopskirts and petticoats fan themselves flirtatiously and discuss the finer points of torturing captured airship pilots. Men with pocket watches and preposterous facial hair twiddled with expensive and nonfunctional leather arm braces. An Englishman in a pith helmet rapped about tea while stuffing cookies into his pockets.

And ROCKED!

"Time itself is unwinding before my very eyes." I say while gripping the table desperately. I took another sip and instantly regretted it, as Absinthe tastes about as good as getting punched in the face by a Twizzler golem feels.

"You've got to be careful, this stuff is 110 proof." She said, wobbling slightly in her chair. "And, it's made with poison!" She said far too cheerfully for it to be at all reassuring.

I gaze into the sinisterly bubbling green high-ball glass and try to ponder what syphilitic madman decided that brewing insecticides into his aperitif was a good idea. My eyelids fly backwards across my face in an abject explosion of astonishment when I realize that Absinthe is distilled, which means that someone not only decided that making a drink out of Wormwood was a good idea, but that it should then be concentrated, as to make the anise's impact that much more concussion-inducing.

"No wonder this is so popular with artists." I say to the Spider-shaped space sitting in front of me.

"And why is that?" She takes a gulp and grimaces, that she might finish this foul concoction sooner. I shake the green fairies out of my head as her face seems to expand to take up my entire field of visi-

Oh, she leaned forward to kiss me. Well, that's alright then.

"Because whoever invented this was insane." I briefly feel the world seize wildly beneath me as it occurs to me that imbibing large quantities of what basically amounts to pesticide-laced grain alcohol on an empty stomach is, in fact, the Most Terrible Idea.

I crash face-first into a woman wearing a corset so tightly laced her head has the appearance of a feathery boat bobbing upon an ocean of cleavage. Thankfully the industrial-grade infrastructure supporting her gorgeous but unwieldy costumage kept her upright while I rolled into an end table.

Then she complemented my lab coat.

"Hey, next time we decide it's a good idea to start gaily dancing around the doors of Perception" I say to the floor "Let's do so in a less psychotically stimulating environment, okay?"

Spider grinned and idly traced a finger around the rim of her now-empty glass. "Whatever you say, lightweight."

Much ado about an A/O thing

2011-05-22T19:46:00.001-07:00

"No man shall know the day nor hour of my return"

- Theodore Roosevelt

In this update I'm going to address two competing views of this new post-Rapture world, one of which is vastly more cynical than the other. See if you can figure out which one I'm referring to.

We stumbled out of the convention reeking of merriment and humanity. Spider wrapped herself around my shoulders like a security guard attempting to subdue a naked protester and shouted "woo" with all the soul and enthusiasm of someone who just survived the end of the world.

"We made it!" She gnawed on my head a little. "The Rapture came and took everyone without sin, and both of those people are now officially, eternally, unequivocally, out of our hair!"

She echoed sentiments that had reverberated throughout the convention. As a celebration of the Age of Steam, that much-loved era ocurring sometime after the Victorian Age embraced civil rights, it was filled with the sort of people whom one could expect would laugh in the face of doomsayers, safely ensconced in a shell of wizened cynicism which not even the most dire numerology could puncture.

I expected the post-Rapture revelry to be an orgy of cynical schadenfreude, another victory for the forces of Science and Reason over the dark and backward ways of Religion, but I couldn't help but notice that people seemed a good bit more. . . Relieved, than one might expect.

We are, after all, the end result of tiny shivering hairy lemur-things spending millions of years living back-to-back-to-back with each other, when one of us shouts "wolf!" we tend to listen to them. And when that lemur-thing throws the full weight of their media empire behind their bullshit panic, well, we tend to scoff outwards but feel oddly relieved inside when it turns out that they were dumb.

Faith does not operate by the pithy laws of mathematics. If that were true, five loaves and two fish would have made five hundred seriously lackluster sandwiches. Come on, people. At least pretend to read the holy books you're thumping.

Given that I am an official Cyberspace Minister of the Internets, it can be expected that I maintained the level-headed decorum that comes with being a roiling typhoon of metaphysical questions and doubts, so while I knew, I KNEW, that the Rapture wasn't going to happen at that point, it made me stop and think about what kind of life I've lead, and how it would feel if I were suddenly held accountable for every stupid thing I've ever done.

The long and short of it: Not good.

On one level I know that's how organized religion derives it's power structure, but on the other hand, it wouldn't kill me to be a better person. That is the sum totality of what I derived from the thought-marathon that went on in my head between hearing what Spider said, and replying.

"Yeah, but what if the Rapture happened years ago?" I stared up at the sky and tried to find stars through the haze. "What if the one true religion was one of those tiny little pagan fertility cults that got curb-stomped by, like, the Byzantine empire?"

"Then we'd still be in the exact same position we are right now." Spider said. I shrugged.

"Well, what about this; Science has so far been unable to discover any other variety of life on any other planet. Nothing. As far as we can tell, we are the one and only thing to ever gain enough sentience to look at ourselves and wonder what came before us. What if this is Heaven?" I tried pausing for dramatic emphasis, but I tripped. "What if the Rapture doesn't happen until we make this world the kind of place where Jesus would WANT to set foot?"

"Then he's going to be waiting a long-ass time." Spider pulled the keys out of her pocket and unlocked the car.

I hate it when she's right.

(I am not at all sorry for the pun in the title. Not even a little.)

This Town is Going to Kill Me 4: Adventures in Drunksitting

2011-05-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

(It is so weird when people you barely know in real life come up to you and say things like "Hey, I enjoy your blog and also how happy you make Spider" which is just something I have never been good at)

(that is being entertaining and making other people happy, but I digress)

For reference, parts 1, 2, and 3 of a series I am rapidly coming to regret not naming "Fuck Christmas: A tribute to The Pogues" because nothing says Christmas like alcoholism and stained pants, but that part comes later.

So, we were standing in the middle of a snow-covered downtown street, hedged with expensive black cars and puddles of regret like stationary comets frozen in time and space. Mojave and I stepped carefully while Jay careened off of every surface like he was the very definition of dervish.

"Hoy, guys!" He capered back to us and caught himself on a tree branch, hanging on for dear life over a pile of garbage bags and empty soju bottles. "I'm freezin' my bollocks off, mate, what say we go and noraebang*? And drink?"
"I dunno man," Mojave braced his arm around Jay "I think we've done enough drinking for tonight."
"But I'm not even drunk yet!" Jay protested.
"Has he noticed the fact that his feet aren't touching the ground anymore?" I asked while Mojave carried him under one arm like a box of bargain-bin DVDs purchased at a yard sale. He shrugged.
"Hey, there's a place right there!" He pointed to the neon-pink sign hanging crazily off of the top floor of a 4th-story walkup covered in the same mysterious brown dust that coats every urban building old enough to remember Ricky Martin. It read "XENIA" and had a signful of silhouetted but undeniably attractive people dancing in that sway-heavy trance-ish dance that artists use when they want to show that they have no fundamental understanding of how dancing at clubs actually works.

However the point is absolutely moot as nothing of that sort ever happens at a noraebang. You wait for the fat girls to finish singing every Disney song in the book, and you cheer your friend suffering through a nasaly rendition of "My Girl" and you drink desperately after you realize that they don't have a single song you willingly listen to, and by then your time is up, or even worse, you're left sifting through a depressing series of MIDI covers of songs you regret liking during middle school because everyone in that smoke-stained cubicle has noticed your lack of participation.

*Noraebang is the Korean word for "Karaoke" which is the Japanese word for "Public shaming". It's vastly different from what you know for a whole host of uninteresting reasons you can read about elsewhere, you're welcome.

Well anyway I kind of forgot where I was going with that but the gist of it is that XENIA's sign held all the appeal of Frankenstine's Castle. We went in anyway.

"Our rooms are full." The girl sitting behind the sparkling pink podium enunciated carefully. "But, please to waiting in our lounge 15 to 30 minutes." She picked up a menu, noticed that it didn't have a single word of English on it, set it down carefully, smiled, and lead us to a booth in front of a huge screen and low stage. Two college students were ballad-ing at levels of intensity not seen since "Troubadour" was a career path, to the glee of their girlfriends.

Jay strode confidently over to the two of them, and introduced himself with all the suave charm and aplomb that Casanova thought he had.

"Good evening." He slurred in impressive Korean. "Excuse me, because I am a little foolish. Could you repeat that one more time? Please and thank you."

Okay, imagine you come home, and find your dreary one-bedroom hovel underneath a staircase favored by linebackers, only to find your hamster forging a suit of armor to use in it's adorable campaign against the spiders that nest in your hair. As you sit there, watching it hammer a breastplate into shape, it turns, and in an adorable hamster voice, shouts "Oi! Close the gorramn door! Yer lettin' a draft in!" And then it turns back to its smithing.

That is, more or less, what the young men saw when they stepped off the stage. Instead of taking the American approach to things and immediately murdering us twice, they realized that we were about as likely to poach their girlfriends as a toothless mole is to chew through granite, so we became hilarious. Drinks were purchased, toasts were had, and at one point someone thrust a huge sticky book of songs into my hand and demanded that I pick one that "Isn't, like, totally emo." So I picked the one song in that book that I knew I could sing, no matter how many bricks end up lodged in my cerebellum:

In other news, holy shit you guys Sum 41 is still around and they just released an album this year. I still remember the night I turned 13, blasting "All Killer No Filler" and playing Castlevania on my Game Boy Advance with the lamp right over it because seriously you couldn't see shit on that thing unless you held it underneath the goddamned Sun.

But that's enough stupidity.

"Oi mate, I LOVE this song!" Jay shouted, untangling himself from a giggling pile of cosmetics. He grabbed his drink and joined me onstage, fumbling with the mic's esoteric on/off switch. The song's power chords filled the room like a sudden gravel avalanche, granulated synthetic guitars filtered through fucked-to-shreds speakers combined with the wretched acoustics of a fake-marble floor and too-low ceiling to barely, just barely, distract everyone from my terrible singing.

Jay stood next to me, resting his chin on the mic, dazed by the flashing lights and too-fast-to-read-drunk lyrics. He shook his head, dropped his mic, and ran outside, just as the song finished.

"Aw fuck, really?" Mojave said, slamming his pint into the table. "Again?!"
"Man, let's just finish our drink and wait for him to come back." I said, sliding into the space recently vacated by a man wearing a tight sparkly-pink dress shirt.

We finished our drinks, and paused. Jay didn't return, cajoling us to join him at some other bar for the same overpriced swill we were already drinking. That's when we knew there was trouble.

Mojave's phone went off, but by the time he fished it out of his pocket, it was silent. Then, mine started buzzing.

"Hey dude." I said, oozing bored frustration.
"Guys, I need you to come get me." He said calmly.
"What happened?" I asked. Mojave leaned to my phone, listening intently.
"I don't know, but I'm bleeding from my head. There are a bunch of guys here, and I think they want to fight. Help me."

Stay tuned!

Love in a Time of SCIENCE!

2011-05-03T00:09:00.000-07:00

There is something innately domesticating about a couch. Not in that it's making me a less interesting person (it would have to fall on me from a high place for that to happen, and even then it's a coin-flip) but in the sense that an apartment isn't really complete without one.

Someday, I promise to tell you the story of Jay's couch, but without pictures it doesn't really convey the same sense of soju-soaked enthusiastic glee at hacking away at what might very well have been an expensive antique.

I have some other pictures to upload, too! You might have heard talk about a riot in Rome, well, let me tell you that oh man I am terrible at cameras.

Anyway! So, Spider and I were luxuriating on our freshly plundered sofa, enjoying the feeling of not sitting on floor-pillows, generally just being cozy and enjoying each others company, in a "that's totally not a euphemism stop looking at me like that" sort of way.

She was nestled up in my burly arms and sighing contentedly. She snuggled tight underneath the comforter, turned her head and looked up at me with her big eyes, and started giggling manically.

Now, for those readers who have never met Spider, I need you to imagine a slenderer girl-form of yours truly, who decided to hone his (hers? oh god pronouns *flail*) madness into a keen scalpel of chilling scientific insight. Specifically, on frogs. Now, try to imagine watching that mentally dissect you and laughing about it. Now imagine that you're hugging them while they do that. Also, she has a snake named after a notorious mystic or a devil, depending upon what sort of geek you are.

But that's a null point as Crowley is pretty much the cutest thing ever. Where was I?

SO ANYWAY Spider is terrifying because she's all of my crazy combined with an insatiable curiosity for what things look like when they're cut open. So, you can imagine why I was a little disturbed at her giggling like a nitrous tank blew up in the Cuckoo's Nest.

"Mentholated chili." She exploded into laughter and buried her head beneath the covers.
". . . What?" Was my only response.
"Mentholated chili!" She said, as if that explained things at all.
"Oh." I said, recognizing the need to preserve my sanity by ignoring hers.

Then, it hit me. It would be like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth only ten thousand times worse. My traitorous brain said. Don't encourage her! My other brain said.
"Too late, now. I'm going to go chew some mint leaves and kick back an entire bottle of Sriracha." I muttered. "Wait, that was an inside thought. Dammit."

I got off the couch and walked into the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" She called from underneath the covers.
"I am waiting until your crazy dissipates." I said through a mouthful of breathmints. "We'll end up duct taping your Nintendo to the snake if we spend too much time being weird at each other!"

An ominous silence flowed out of the room like Lovecraftian pudding.

"We'd have a thermally reactive entertainment system! BRILLIANT."

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that I have met my match.

Empire State of Affairs

2011-05-01T01:59:00.000-07:00

So we were standing in line at the Shake Shack, which, for those of you who have the unique joy of not living in the greater NYC metropolitan area, is what happens when a lunch truck puts down roots and metastasizes.

"You should try their Concretes." My lanky friend Sterne confided to me. "It's what happens when ice cream stops messing around." He nodded knowingly at me.
"It says here it's custard ice creme mixed at high speeds." His friend Mary said skeptically. "Today's special flavor is. . . Pancakes and bacon? That can't be right." She flipped the menu over in her hands a few times, flabbergasted.
"Normally when I come here, I get a double cheeseburger, a small order of fries, and a shake." He nodded at the menu on the wall and grinned at me.
"Hey, how did that modeling gig turn out for you?" I asked, punching him in his atrociously flat stomach.

At that point, the eight year old in front of me turned, and dumped half a cup of water on my pants and shoes. He looked at me with the face of a future serial killer, the sort of vacant curiosity that never connects pulling the cats' tail and getting your face mauled.

"Oh, geez!" The father said, grabbing the cup out of his hand. "Go get some napkins, clean this up!" The boy sullenly trotted over to the condiment stand, and pulled a stack out of the dispenser. The father angrily pointed to the puddle on the ground, and the son resentfully trudged back to the puddle, dropped the napkins to the ground one by one, and stamped them into absorbency.

At this point I was just shocked to see actual discipline happening before my very eyes, as every shrieking moral harridan and hand-wringing doomsayer had assured me, over and over again, that today's children were ill-mannered brats who gobbled their food and disrespected their parents. And here, before my very eyes, was a father holding his spawn responsible for their actions.

"No, no." He said to the employee with a mop. "He's got to learn." The employee backed off, clearly recognizing the importance of not infringing on paternal turf.
"I swear, every day is a test, you know?" He asked me, leaning casually against the wall.
"Yeah, I hear you." I said. "That's why I sold my kids off to China."

In the film trailer of my life, that would be the moment where the record scratch noise happens, the room goes silent, and everyone turns to look at me. Mary's jaw dropped in abject shock, and Sterne stared at me like I had just flipped off the Pope, which is weird since he totally should be used to me being weird in public by now.

"Huh." He said, scratching his chin. "How's the exchange rate working out?"
"Eh, not as good as it used to be, but you get a nice discount on bulk Nikes." I said, shrugging.
"Heh." He smiled. "You know you're going to Hell for that one, yeah?"
"Sure do." I crossed my arms across my chest smugly.
"Straight to Hell."

What made the situation weird was the fact that he was smiling the whole time! Usually when parents cast me into the Abyss they have the decency to work up a rage before hand. Some people, you know?

And his ego grew three sizes that day.

2011-04-26T15:05:00.001-07:00

So your humble dropkick enthusiast has recently taken First Place on one of the many writing contests held at the Cracked.com fora, which is probably one of the best places online you don't have to pay for.

In lieu of an actual post, you should check out that thread, since the entries are all totally hella awesome and it was an honor to be able to participate.

A night in Arkham

2011-04-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

A sweaty pile of ex-felon heaved himself in front of the microphone and exhaled passion into the air like it was springtime at a fungal garden. The audience cheered and at every emotive punctuation mark and snapped more fingers than a loan shark.

He steps down, and liquid love fills the room. I shake my head clear long enough to remember that it's Sunday at the Poets' Asylum, and that I will never, ever be as good as the people on stage.

The next contender steps up, takes off her shirt and reveals for all the world her heart, a ragged lump of mistakes and regrets that still beats, straining against the hack-job stitching and patchwork bandages, and it has more fight in it's three ounces than all the boxers of the world put together.

My insecurity claws it's way out through my ribcage, not so much an animal as a sinewy mass of coral and venom.

Why you gotta hate, starfish?

You don't work hard enough. It speaks to me in the voice of every teacher, ever, and I am flattened by The Train Car of Irony, dropped upon me from high orbit by The Rail Gun of Comeuppance, and I, uh, dig myself out of The Black Pit of Self-Evisceration, with the shovel of I Should Have Been Nicer to my Students. . .

Okay I lost that metaphor, but you get the idea.

These guys wake up every day and breathe poetry. It works a tentacle up my nose and I can feel this knowledge in the front of my skull. You can't focus long enough to cook instant rice. Do you really think you can compete?

I shake my head clear only to find that the Asylum inmates have spoken, and this city has a new team of Orphean Voltrons to send screaming passionately across the country, all the way to. . .

"Boston?" Spider tilts her head quizzically. "That's, like, an hour away. Hour thirty if you have to find parking in Cambridge. Hell, there's a commuter rail right next to our place." She flips through a book of poetry I purchased because it had Hangeul on the front. "Like, you can see it from the living room window. We could go to Nationals if you want." I shrug, despite the fact that YES let's do that RIGHT NOW.

The room is filled with equal measures congratulations and consolations, because despite the fact that a Poetry Slam is ostensibly a competition, quite possibly the most brutal, cut-throat competition you can possibly have involving poetry that also doesn't feature, say, the Scottish, this is a community first and foremost.

These are folks that see each other every week, at every possible opportunity, because when you've got a parasitic starfish living in your heart, you've got to let it breathe every once and a while. Some people do so with stonking great displays of talent, other people let it manifest quietly as mental illness. Some people are Lady Gaga and don't really. . . Well, they get complicated.

We've all been there.

The thing being, folks that don't feel that way, can't understand. Certainly, they can appreciate it, as the audience swarming the new Slam Team can attest, but it's. . . Different. Normal people can tell a joke without it spiraling into a postmodern narrative on equine discrimination in bars, and long after they stopped laughing at the sheer strangeness of your tirade you find you just can't stop, the Story has begun telling itself and if you try to stop it, it backs up into your skull and you explode, so you're stuck there, with your friends looking at you like you're crazy, the bar has gone quiet, and everyone is standing around while you dry-heave pathos into a confused puddle to be scooped into a plastic bag and taken home for later refinement.

That's why this is a Community, because this is the one place in town folks can come to and know that, no matter how strange their new work is, that someone will understand. Someone has Been There Before You, and they can pat you on the head and assure you that, no, you're not nearly as crazy as you fear you might be.

That's why artists have developed an entirely new language to describe their work. That's why science students communicate almost exclusively through XKCD references and Johnathain Colton lyrics. That thrill of finally being understood, of real human empathy, never gets old.

I know Spider will never have the knack for making language beg for mercy that I have, that makes interacting with people on a daily basis an almost daunting task, but that's okay. I know, because I've seen the way she looks at amphibians. How her hair sends off a cascade of sparks when she describes the fluid motion in muscles that allows her snake (named Crowley, because she is adorable) to cling to his favorite stick. It's not the same heart-starfish, not by a long shot. But even starfish of different species can recognize their own.

"So, hey, next week." Spider pulls into traffic with the expert grace of a steakhouse valet. "Are you going to read any of your stuff?"

The starfish crawls up from my throat and fills my mouth with excuses. I bite down, hard, and envision myself up on stage, speaking truth to power and spitting more justice than a G20 riot. My heart pumps righteous magma through my veins and it's all I can do to not burst into a lyrical fuge state right then and there.

"Eh." I say nonchalantly. "Maybe. If I feel like it."

Six Degrees

2011-04-11T10:23:00.001-07:00

Hey Bearhatters! This post is a continuation on a theme first mentioned here, where I ran into someone whom Spider had sent to spy on me halfway across the world.

The world is fucking tiny. I've said this before, but events that transpired this weekend brought that fact screaming back into my mind. But first, an aside!

Back during University, there was this dude known as "Tom". Tom is what happens when the ghost of a shag rug possesses a Wookie costume and tries to pass itself off as Indiana Jones. Needless to say, we looked exactly the same. Seriously, we're talking "Creepy Twins from 'The Illusionist'." here. And he had the advantage of being a year older than I (TO THE DAY WTF WTF) so whenever anyone saw a Tom-shaped mass, they assumed it was him. Whenever we were in the same place, people would point me out with phrases like "The one not in the leather fedora and trench coat" or "The one making out with the chubby goth girl in the corner" since I just make terrible decisions.

Well, some bad things happened and Tom had to leave the geeky enclave of Southern New England. If my memory is as good as I think it is, the last words I said to him were that his girlfriend was fat and unlovable, so it's safe to say he left with. . . Less than fond memories of yours truly.

I know, right? It was a different age, strange things happened.

For example.

Fast forward five and a half years. I'm sitting in a cafe somewhere in South Korea, surfing OK Cupid because I was just absolutely desperate for friends. I get a message from one girl who spent a lot of time traveling through my city in a desperate bid to find someplace more interesting, and we talk a bit. I happened to mention the name of my University, since she lived close by, and she mentioned having a few friends at a charter school near the University.

Then she asks "Did you ever meet a guy named Tom?"

Aw Hell naw. Halfway across the world, and I'm meeting people who spent years just a handful of miles away from home. Taking a different way back to my dorm from work and I probably would have stopped at the gas station she worked in. Goddamn this world is tiny.

She stopped talking to me a few days later, just long enough for her to send Tom an e-mail and confirm that, yes, I was the dude who made his girlfriend cry at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Because I was totally an asshole and burned my bridge with Tom, I missed out on a hot f. . . Friend. A nice friend to have madcap adventures with, that's totally where I was going with that, yeah.

That brings us to Sunday. Spider's sister and her sister's boyfriend played host to two old friends who just happen to belong to the orchestral riot that is Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band.

I was starstruck. We were sitting in Sylvester's Cafe somewhere in Northampton, when the conversation turned to Spider and I. Upon hearing that we recently moved to Eastern MA, he asked if we had heard about the Star Wars Day celebration at a local museum.

"You know," I remarked, speaking into the brass gramophone protruding from his good ear. "You are the second person to have mentioned that to me."
"Who was the first?" Spider asked.
"I told you about this, one of my friends from way back. She does re-enactment and boasted just yesterday that she has a costume that would make you nervous.

Spider, who towers above redwoods at a formidable height of eight feet sixteen inches, snorted. A squat hedge on the far side of the street was uprooted and blown halfway across county lines.

"She's not the only one." My new best friend remarked. "I've got a girlfriend with the hottest Twi'lek costume you've ever seen."

Like you had forgotten.

Something itched at the back of my mind. I had a stupid question to ask, and by God I was going to ask it.

". . . Is this girlfriend, by any chance, named. . . Kaylee?"
". . . . Yess?"

I sat bolt upright. Kaylee is a friend's girlfriend from back when I was in high school, and one of the first people I turn to for a brutally honest review of the garbage I write. I also once hurt her feelings a lot by calling her Slutsarella Jones and implying that she may be too busy climbing a mountain of dicks to read this awesome thing I wrote that was probably about dragons involved in a gangbang on a '69 Charger or something equally retarded.

We talked for a bit and I informed him that, yes, I was one of the dudes she got stuck in Pennsylvania with, after failing to exit the state after 8 solid hours of driving in circles around the Crayola factory.

Oh man that reminds me of this whole other retarded story that needs posting, but that is totally for a later day my dudelings!

"Oh!" He remarked, eyebrows arching with that 'I just discovered Gravity and it's sleeping with my wife' look of realization. "I've heard of you before. You used to work for REDACTED Scout Camp, yeah?"

REDACTED Scout Camp being the place I nearly got fired for having some of my (female) friends in my cabin on the weekends. Nobody ever brought it up to my face but the general thought was that I was having a HUGE SEX ORGY because nothing gets the ladies hotter than short shorts and poison ivy scars.

So, you can understand why I was slightly worried as to exactly what he had heard about me, since I had, on more than one occasion, insulted his girlfriend's honor and implied that she may seduce barnyard animals for sport.

What have we learned today, kids? Well, for start, don't be a dick to people. Not just because there's a chance that the weird girl who is really into medieval re-enactment will end up dating the lead clarinettist for a Steampunk folk-revival band, but also because she has sharp and pointy things and can probably murder you twice before you hit the ground.

Also being mean actively makes the world a less pleasant place to live in, but I figure if you're antisocial enough to need for me to explain to you why being a dick is bad, then you won't care.

And secondly? The world is (say it with me!) fucking tiny.

In which I overthink things way too much.

2011-04-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

So I have signed a lease and have an awesome new apartment with Spider. I know landing took a bit longer than you probably anticipated, but I am working on getting the photos and video from Rome edited and up online ASAP. Sadly I don't know how to edit video and my computer is limaceous enough to make snails jealous, so it's kind of tricky.

A fun thing happened while apartment hunting, however! After finding a place that was both affordable, allowed for Spider to bring her snake familiar, and not ridden with HORRIBLE PARASITES, the landlord starts dragging his heels.
The guy with the realtor's office blew smoke up our asses about everything being copacetic and how we'd get to sign in a day or two, until the landlord asks for new credit reports.

Spider has a score hovering somewhere north of 806, which for those of you adult children who don't understand how a credit score works, is pretty okay. Mine, on the other hand, is so fantastically huge it has to be expressed with scientific notation. I mean you can't even write it down, because during the time it takes to write out all of the 9s, the sun would explode and your hand would cramp up. My credit score is so high that Lord Maxwell himself empties a bit of his opium pipe in reverence.

My credit score is the Tolkien of math.

. . . Okay honestly, I don't have a credit card. I've never made a late payment on my school loans, which looks good, but there's no actual number where it says "credit score". So, I wasn't exactly surprised when he said he'd also need to call our references, except that he never did.

Five days after we state an interest in the apartment and hand over a check, we find out that the landlord has rejected us as applicants, because apparently Spider's shiny new tree-murdering job doesn't count as stable employment, and my bank statements didn't satisfy whatever ass-headed notion he had when it came to what kind of money your average 20-something should have saved.

At least, that's what he told us.

A few days later the realtor informs us that the reason we were rejected is because the landlord was facing a lawsuit accusing him of discriminatory lending habits, and he wanted to keep the apartment open on the chance he was forced to rent it out.

Then we were asked if we still wanted the apartment. By the landlord himself, no less. Repeatedly, over a period of several days. It got to the point where he offered to include heat and hot water, and knocked $25 off of the rent, because for some unknowable reason, he was suddenly really really eager to have us as tenants. I wonder why?

We picked a cheaper place in a better part of town, because seriously don't lie to me about how qualified I am to give you money in order to cover your prejudicial ass.

So long story short, is that everyone who has anything to do with real estate is basically a tiny devil with coal for a heart.

That includes you too, Andrew.

Real jobs? BLARGH.

2011-03-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

Quick question: If I put up ads on the site, would anyone mind? I don't think I get enough views for it to make a difference and to be perfectly honest I figure most of you are using adblockers ANYWAY so I question how much of a difference it would make. But I have been pondering it.

So "This Town is Going to Kill Me 4" is on the way, but recently I have been distracted by, you know, moving and other real-life shit.

Like, for example, I am working on an application to an "Inventory Arborist" position working with a private company to track and catalog the Asian Longhorned Beetle. This is what happened when I wrote out the cover letter:

Dear Mrs. REDACTED

While you have undoubtedly been inundated with qualified candidates who can recite textbook-perfect reasons as to why the preservation of America's natural wealth should be one of our highest priorities, how many of them can boast having seen the environmental wreckage failed policies can have upon a country?

I can. A lifetime spent stomping through the REDACTED Mountains has blessed me with a love of the wilderness that borders on the obsessive. A long and storied history with the Boy Scouts have taught me the importance of preserving green spaces and the basics of surviving while doing so.

My employment history is nothing if not a testament to my devotion to Gaia, the Earth Mother. While stationed in REDACTED Scout Reservation for Scouts (a subsidiary of Boy Scouts Inc.) I taught a variety of subjects, included but not limited to: Boatfucking, motivational screaming, profesional air guitaring, chakram warfare simulation, Mountain Conquering, Subjugating your Weaknesses, Awesome High Fives (this was a multi-week course), Lake Punishing, Tree Reverence, Fear Punching, and Totally Wicked Sweet Campfire Skits for Kids who are Afraid of Fire.

While my title shifted during my stay at said camp, during my tenure as Divine Admiral of the Heaven's Navy, I indoctrinated children in the importance of Leave No Trace camping, despite the fact that none of the curriculum involved camping. Thanks to my tutelage, there are teenagers who can start a campfire with nothing but rocks and recycled gray water on a lake. You're welcome.

While working as the Supreme Learned Shepherd in the camp's program for first-year scouts, I spent my weeks taking groups of 10-12 children all under the age of 13 and transforming them into half-Treant environmental warriors capable of drinking sap and pissing violence. By the time I was done with them they could identify trees by the sounds loggers made while hiding behind them whimpering for mercy, and they could identify invasive bird species by the smell of their fear.

That's not all! My most recent job saw me teaching Korean teenagers the basics of English with a franchise-mandated curriculum, none of which dealt with environmental issues or topics. Do you think that stopped me? No, it just made me angry. Because I was not able to leverage my academic experience and synergy it wi. . . Okay fuck that corporate bullshit language, let me break it down for you for real:

In the city I lived in, there are 12 year olds who don't know the word for "typewriter" but can explain to their parents the exact specifics as to how global climate change impacts polar weather patterns thanks to me. I did that. You're welcome.

I took a class of disinterested 16 year olds and drove them to a frothy screaming riot over the plight sea birds face at the rapid loss of habitat to coastal development and farm runoff. If it wasn't for the quick intervention of Captain Planet himself they would have descended upon the local steel mill and reduced it to rubble.

And that's just what I did for other people! I care very deeply for the environment, and thus, this has become a personal issue for me. Should you, in your infinite wisdom, choose to select me for the Asian Longhorned Beetle Eradication Program, I give you my solemn vow as both an educator and an Eagle Scout that I will not rest until every beetle lies slain, their bodies piled to the Heavens and set on fire to serve as a warning to other invasive species.

I will descend into the survey areas from a helicopter wearing nothing but a switchblade and my war face. I will paint myself with fresh clay from a river and the stinking innards of my victims. I will mount their tiny heads on toothpicks and leave their bodies for the ravens. I will kidnap the eggs they lay and use them to lure the parents into a pit lined with starved and half-crazed Anteaters. I will learn their language to better wage my campaign of fear as I track them back across the blasted hellscape they came from.

I will call out the names of those I had already taken while hunting their families. I will scream at the top of my lungs I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS. I will become the stuff of nightmares. Insects will refuse to let their children play in the woods, on the off chance that hunting had been slim and I hungered for murder. Thousands of years from now, beetles of every species and taxa would speak of me in hushed tones, glancing over their wing casings on the off chance I was behind them. Watching.

I would do all of this for you, offering prayers and thanks in your name. I would set aside the best of my soul-harvest for you, and sacrifice it on an altar of marble I would carve with my teeth.

Do not mistake my devotion for mental illness. I have stood in the DMZ and flipped the bird to North Korea, before crossing the Line of Military Demarcation and dancing a merry jig on the rotting corpse of Juche. I have seen the erosion in their hillsides, I have seen what happens when mountains are stripped of coniferous protection, and the memory haunts me to this day.

I have stomped through Europe and breathed deep the choking smog that lurks in their cities like a cat on an infant's face. I have stopped to drink from rivers and found them so full of garbage and pollution that the fish evolved cyanide capsules just so they could die faster.

All of this and more, I have seen. Rather than cast my soul into a despair from which there is no reviving, it hardened my resolve and steeled my nerve. Not here. Though I am but one man against an entire industry of death and destruction, it stops now.

I do not require a salary.

This Town is Going to Kill Me 3: Trial by Fire Show

2011-03-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Jay lept over the snowbanks like the world's staggeriest gymnast. He weaved between cars without giving a single fuck, and despite having a smoking habit that would put a forest fire to shame, left Mojave and I firmly in his dust.

"Well -huff huff- at least -pant- he's running in the right. . ." He wheezed.
"-Direction." I leaned up against a light pole and hammered the button for the walk signal, not trusting my DrunkSense to protect me from the irresistible force of Korean traffic. Mojave started retching.

By the time we made it to S-bar, Jay had conveniently forgotten what we were doing and was shouting at a fencepost. We made our way inside, and navigated through a forest of too-skinny Korean yuppies in short dresses and shiny suits, the neon lighting revealing every bit of lint and caked-on bacon-stain on our ratty coats and jackets. I have generally made it a habit never to wear nice things, but I don't believe I've ever felt as underdressed as I did in Korea.

We found a table on the far side of the bar and piled into the plush leather couches. Jay braced himself against the armrest and tried his hardest to lean nonchalantly without falling to the floor in a bony heap.

"I'm going to go get a drink. You guys want anything?" I asked.
"Anything that isn't soju and beer." Mojave said, slowly saturating the couch.
"Yes. I want a car that is also a robot! And it can fly!" Jay shouted over the music.
"Whiskey okay?"
"Yes that would be lovely."He readjusted himself on the couch and attempted to nonchalantly listen in on the women speaking quietly behind him. "Thank you."

I ordered a round of whiskey and coke for the table, while the bartenders were putting away their torches and novelty oversized lighters. I would have taken a moment to stew in my own dissapointment if it weren't for the fact that I had dipped my sleeve in a puddle of quietly burning something-or-other.

Rubbing my singed wrist, I headed back to my booth, only to find Jay supporting himself on a woman sitting at the bar, tucking his wallet back into his pocket.

"'Salright mate, I got us all somethin' right tasty." He grinned, falling backwards into his seat. "White Russians for everybody!"
"Oh sweet!" Mojave grinned moistly.
"But, I just. . . " I realized I was fighting a losing battle, so I took a seat and tried to ignore the icy-cold pondwater seeping into my pants from the wet spot Mojave just generated from the core of his very being.

The waitress bringing our drinks looked at us, counted the drinks on the tray, and rolled her eyes, clearly having encountered our variety of jackass before.

"Oi, I don't think we ordered these." Jay said, inspecting one of the whiskey and cokes.
"Well, if we don't tell her, then we won't get charged for them." I decided not to tell them I had opened a tab since down that path Disaster itself laid waiting. "Plus, these are wicked good. It's like vanilla coke, but with alcohol!"
"Cheers, mates!" Jay cheered. He reached for the nearest glass, and in the process knocked two of the drinks right into Mojave's lap. He didn't seem to notice.

By the time we staunched the flow with cocktail napkins, our waitress arrived with a towel, and in a flurry of impossibly fast blows, had restored some order to our table. She carried the sodding mass of napkins and ice away, shaking her head all the while.

"Hey guys, why are my pants wet?" Mojave asked, staring at his crotch.
"It's cause you can't hold your liquor, mate!" Jay said, lying full prone on the couch.
"You're too drunk to try to be that ironic, dude." I said.
"And you're too fat to be American!" He retorted.
"I think you're confusing your insults aga- Oh damn." Mojave knocked his drink into Jay's White Russians, creating the second fizzy puddle of shame tonight.
"Damn!" Jay said, instinctively hoovering whatever liquor he could get his lips around.
"Okay. I think. . . I think we're done here." Mojave moped.
"Yeah, we're making asses of ourselves, let's finish what we've got left and mosey. Sound good Jay?" I asked.

SLUUUUURP. He sucked back an ice cube, and coughed his agreement. "But, I mean, it's so early! Let's at least head to karaoke or somethin' fun. Savvy?"

The winter wind hit like a sackful of twelve-year-olds. I zipped my parka up to the very tip of my nose while Mojave tried to ignore the sound of his pants freezing to his crotch. Jay, however, ran off sprinting in the opposite direction.

"Dude! Karaoke!" Mojave shouted. Jay turned around and looked like we were speaking in Hindi.
"Okay, okay, yeah. Let's get a drink first." He turned a corner and ran down a poorly lit side-street.
"They have drinks-. . ." He let his words fall in huge plumes of frozen breath. "Alright, if he gets his skull cracked open, I won't help him."
"Agreed." I said grimly. We found him hammering on the locked door to an unlabeled stairway. Seeing us, he ran across the street to the door of a place called Red, which was apparently popular with attractive, well-dressed young women, if you could judge based on traffic.

"Ey so do you lot have boyfriends?" Jay asked, supporting himself on the stoop's railing. They giggled and shook their heads at him. "Ay well that's good, cause us lads don't have any-"
"No English." One of them said into her hand, before running off into the night. Her friends soon followed, leaving an empty space next to a dejected husk where Jay used to stand.
"One drink, alright mates? I bet this place is LOADED with women!"

The bar was on the third floor with a well-lit, garbage-free walk up. We should have known something was wrong then and there, but it wasn't until we walked past the floor-to-ceiling banners proudly displaying the place's name and stepped inside did we realize just what was off.

Everyone inside was a woman. Either we had found some sort of geologic vein as yet untapped by miners, or we had stepped into the center of a galactic convergence.

"Something seem wrong to you?" I asked Mojave quietly.
"Wrong? No." He shook his head, wiping a tear from his cheek. "This is very, very right."

"I'll have a White Russian." Jay slurred to the immaculately well-dressed young man behind the bar.
"No, sorry." He said haltingly. "This is lady bar. Bar only for women." Jay looked around him, as if he hadn't noticed the ocean of affluent gorgosity around him.
"Holy shit." He stared at us like a deer trying to avert a freight train. "Guys, did you-"
"Yeah, we heard." We said.
"So that means-"
"We should probably go before Tai Kwon Badass over there gets punchy." I nodded my head in the general direction of a shirtless man flexing his biceps for a squealing crowd.
"Okay how did we not notice that when we walked in?" Mojave asked.
"Well for me, I know I'm certainly not going to notice the one half-dressed dude in a roomful of wo- Oh fuck he's off again." Jay half-ran, half-fell down the stairs, swinging himself around the landings like a gravity slingshot from Hell.

"Swear to God, if he gets his ass kicked, I am not helping him." Mojave glowered.
"Yeah you would, dude." I said. "Don't even try fooling yourself otherwise."
". . . I hate it when you're right."

Edited because I am dumb. Thanks Mojave!

This Town is Going to Kill Me pt 2: Christmatastrophy

2011-03-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that not only do my parents and grandmother read this journal, but also my Scoutmaster and several alumni, which means that I need to go back in time and prevent myself from ever using profanity or face the Ordeal of the Billyclub, a secret ritual wherein I get beaten with a billyclub for swearing.

Before I continue with the ball-flattening retardery of last Christmas Eve, which is something I should have done months ago, I want to tell you all to go visit my good friend Sarah's totally awesome Tumblawg. This will be an invaluable opportunity to get in on the ground floor of her fan-harem before she gets hand-picked as Best Artist Ever and then has to spend her days blessing museums, kissing babies, and fighting off nightmares from the land of Corportania (where imagination goes to die).

You know, standard dignitary stuff.

Also, I am working my ass off getting the stuff from Rome backed-up and stitched-together and presentable. As soon as this post goes live, I will head off to a local newspaper and talk to the editor about how to be an actual journalist and not a mediocre Raoul Duke knockoff.

SO, if you're new to Bear Hat Fiesta, you should probably go here and read the first part of that awful, awful night, so you'll understand why things continued to get worse.

CONTINUE Y/N?
>Y

Jay ran out of the building giggling like a schoolgirl selling nitrous to hyenas. He slipped over the now-frozen snail trail left behind from Mojave, picked himself up, and ran full-tilt in the wrong direction.

"Dude!" Mojave cried. "S-bar is over there!" He gestured across the street, to a bakery that was still inexplicably open after midnight (which features prominently in the time when I took the guys to a tranny bar I found accidentally BUT ANYWAY).
"Yeah?" He stopped running and stared at the pond where Mojave became intimate with the corporeal manifestation of Jack Frost himself. "Well of course it is. But we're not going to S-bar!"
"Yes we are." I said, momentarily forgetting that I was arguing with a brain so seeped in alcohol it qualified as an Immovable Object.
"But I don't want to go!" He stumbled through the shadowy hellscape of shuttered retail maws and overpriced cafes.
"Dude! The fire show starts in a few minutes." I reminded him. "They will be setting things on fire. You love fire!"
"I do love fire." He mused. I could tell he was considering it, but given the hairpin turns his mind is capable of, I had no clue what "it" was. "Alright, compromise, we'll go to Mozart's instead."

Those of you who haven't had the pleasure of drinking in Pohang don't understand the absolute joys of drinking in Mozart's. From the fucked-apart narrow-ass staircase, to the cockroaches the size of sailors, to the sailors the size of refrigerators, that dank warren of alcoholism and beer-film is nothing short of the absolute Genius Loci of Misery itself.

Incidentally it's also one of like two places in town to let me plaster fliers for my poetry slams, and everyone who works there is pretty cool. So, you know, it's not a total pit.

Mojave put his foot through a hole on the stairs while Jay, dragging himself along by the handrail, knocked a parade of dusty yellowed posters to the ground, each of them shilling for a beverage which hadn't been sold in any markets since the death of Disco.

It was empty, save for the eternal glow of the popcorn machine and it's archaeologically fascinating collection of congealed butterfats and baffling choice of curry-powder topping, which had long ago hardened into a crust the durability of which would make kevlar blush.

"Aye, I'd like segay mekju jusayo." Jay slurred to an empty space behind the bar.

"Sure, draft or bottle?" The empty space spoke.
"Draft-uh." Jay replied in mock Korean, on the off chance that the bartender, who has had years experience talking to smashed Marines, failed to understand him.

You know, just in case.

I craned my neck, but couldn't see who he was talking to. Then, it hit me. I took three steps to the left, and my perspective shifted.

Arms the color of stained wood, with shirts decorated like long-forgotten bottles of expired mixers, they were the sort of person who blended into the background so organically you'd swear they had put down roots to draw nutrients from the soil.

Two Korean men, suits the color of an old muffler, sat at the other end of the bar, making charming small talk with the women while Jay futzed around with the bar computer, trying to find a song he didn't hate with a gassy rage.

"You wanna play darts?" Mojave asked my hat.

One of the things I liked about Motzart's is the dart board, in that you didn't have to pay to play. Is that a common thing in American bars? I don't know, I prefer to do my drinking under bridges. ANYWAY

Mojave grabbed a handful of blue darts from a little paper cup by the scoreboard, and started hurling them every direction but straight.

"Oh man, triple bull!" He cheered, pulling three red darts which had been left there by some prior heartless tease. I picked a few of the darts out of the Charlie Brown style Christmas Shrub sitting forlornely in the corner, only to realize they missed the crucial needle-like sharpness that separates darts from, say, tiny plastic baseballs.

Namely, they were fins. Like, the backs you'd attach to a weighted pointy bit to throw at a dart board. I opted not to tell him, since an ice burn like that might drop his core body temp to dangerous levels (FORESHADOWING ALARM WOOP WOOP).

"Ey mate, here lemme have a toss." Jay traded Mojave beer for darts, and hurled all three at the wall in a single throw, hitting several pictures of frequent patrons and even sinking one into the fucked-apart paper cone of a speaker duct-taped to the wall.

It wiggled its way to freedom shortly after that, midway through Li'l John singing about his balls. But that's a different sort of horror.

Yes it is.

Mojave wandered off to go think about cactuses while Jay scurried about, trying to separate his darts from the truncated eunuchs Mojave had been tossing about.

"Alright mate, what we playing to? 300? 200? Cricket? Count up?" He scribbled our names on the whiteboard and handed me my drink, since everyone knows it's not really darts without alcohol.

"Nah, always preferred Count Down myself." I paused, for dramatic emphasis. "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, that is!"

The music stopped harder than the bus from Speed impacting one of the marble columns from the Parthenon. I swear to this day that the MP3 made that movie trailer record scratch noise, but nobody believes me. Probably due to the fact that they were momentarily struck deaf due to the sheer hackneyed terrible pouring out of my mouth.

"Mate, that was fuckin' brutal." Jay said, knitting his eyebrows in concern. "I mean, you've had some bombs before, but that one put Dresden to shame."
"Wait, you read the Dresden Files?" Jay looked at me like I had tentacles crawling out of my ears.
"They didn't teach ya much about World War 2, I take it?"
"So hey, let's just finish our drinks and mosey, eh? The fire show starts soon." I drank deep, ignoring the unmistakable skunky-ass taste of mediocre Korean beer.
"Wait, fire show?" Jay tossed another dart, missing the wall entirely and embedding it deep within the greasy bowels of the popcorn machine.
"Oh, you're not getting that one back." I took another drink. "Yeah, the fire show at S-bar. The reason we were going to S-bar in the first place?"
"Oi, bloody hell! You never said anything about that!" He started drinking with the burning passion of one who knows what it is to high-five dragons.
"Totally did!"
"Alright, you probably did." He conceded. "But mate I only understand, like, half the shit you say, and that's on a good day."

I was going to beleaguer the point when Mojave handed me a White Russian.

"Here you go, dude! I got us drinks."
"Mate you are a gentleman and a scholar." Jay said, clinking glasses. "Now watch me make this shot." A rogue dart flew past the target and punched a hole in the side of that ship they use on Cutty Sark posters.
"Wait, Mojave, what happened to your beer?" I asked, ever the punchbowl shitter.
"What beer?" I pointed to the lone pint glass sitting, forgotten, in a quiet corner of the bar. A lone spider had slung a web around it, playing a sad song on the world's tiniest violin. ". . . So THAT'S where that came from." He said.

The door exploded inwards with absolute Bruckheimian force. A contingent of hilariously inebriated businessmen in very nice suits ran up the stairs, shouting and throwing those ridiculously expensive foil-wrapped hazelnut chocolates like spitballs.

"OH!" One shouted when he saw me, tie secured firmly around his forehead. "AMERICAN!" The rest of his group began cheering. One of them handed me a chocolate in an unmistakable display of universal peace and goodwill, and shouted "PARTY!" at a volume that would make Andrew W.K. proud.

File photo.

"Well, this is an interesting development." Mojave brushed some dust that had drifted onto his shoulder from the ceiling, blasted out of it's torpor by an unprecedented level of enthusiasm, no doubt. "We should see where they go with this."
"You just hope they give you more chocolate." Jay countered.
"Man you say that like it's a bad thing." I said. Jay threw up his hands and shouted something about Americans eating all the pies before wandering to the other end of the bar.

A pair of Marines in poorly fitting black suits climbed the stairs, carrying a cake. Mojave and I both perked up immediately.

"What's the special occasion?" I asked, eying the cake like she was a Japanese office lady ripe for a grope.

"My girlfriend just turned 19." He said with the exact level of sleaze you just imagined. He turned to his shorter, similarly dressed compatriot, and high fived.

Oh. Well then.

At that point, a sound like a thousand horses galloping across a thousand cobblestone streets filled the bar. Conversation came to a crashing, whinny-filled halt.

"Oh, God." I gripped Mojave's hamhock-sized shoulder, suddenly gripped with a preternatural sense of dread. "We need to leave."
"But. . . Cake!"
"I will buy you forty cakes if we-"

"HAAAAAAAAAAY!" She brayed, tripping over the last step and crashing into the popcorn machine. "Happy birthday! To ME, MOTHERFUCKING!"

"Who the fuck is that?" Mojave asked, momentarily distracted from the cake.
"Minge." I sighed.
"Okay but what's her real name?" I let the silence hang between us like bacon drapes. Gently wafting, hickory smocked bacon drapes. "Oh. Oh God. You know her?"
"She-"
"You. . . KNOW her!?" He gazed at me with a mixture of awe and revulsion.
"God no! She used to go to my academy." He looked relieved, before a sudden misguided revelation crossed his face again. I punched him in the arm. "Pervert."

Jay appeared from nowhere and put an arm around both of us.
"So you know the bird, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"What's her name?"
"Minge." Mojave answered. Jay paused. "Yeah, I know."
"She put out?" He lit the cigarette dangling from his lip and singed some of Mojave's glorious locks.
"Man, LOOK at her. She's like the bastard love child between Kesha and a buffet dumpster. What do YOU think?"
"Aaaaaaaand how do you know her again?"
"She used to go to my academy." Jay turned slowly and stared right at me.
"Well, I'm going to go talk to her."
"NO JAY NO-"

He sauntered over to her with all the charisma of Mic Jagger after being hurled bodily into a vat of Brut.

"So Sam tells me he's your teacher."
"WHAT?!" She conveyed something to her much shorter friend, and they both started laughing. "He is NOT MY TEACHER!"

Mojave and I grabbed Jay by his armpits and frog-marched him down the stairs and out into the bracing night winds before Cakedouche and his bro could finish asking Jay who the fuck he was and why he was talking to his fucking girl, man.

"OI!" He wriggled himself free. "The fuck was that for!?"
"Jay the last thing I need right now is someone telling my boss that they saw me drinking with a student." I said in my best Sitcom Dad voice.
"Mmm. . . Yeah." He swayed thoughtfully. "I see yer point. Good call on gettin' yerself outa there quickish. So, that mean you fucked her before, right?"
"No, but rumor holds that someone else from my academy did. So, better to not risk it, you dig?"
"Yeah, but you weren't talking to her." He reminded me. "I, however, was. SO WHY DID YOU DRAG ME AWAY FROM HER!?"
"I think those short dudes with the muscles were getting ready to fold you into a limey pretzel, so really this was for your own safety." Mojave said calmly.
"Ey, there was two of em an three of us! You'da got my back, right lads?"

The silence hung like bacon dr. . . Nevermind, used that metaphor already.

"Well. That's how it is, eh?! Well, good luck finding me, fuckers!" With that, he ran off giggling again.
"Goddamn. We oughta get paid for this shit." Mojave griped.
"Yeah, but he'll thank us for this later. . . Right?"

OH HOW RIGHT I WAS. LEARN WHY IN PART 3: TOKYO DRINKING

Bearhat goes Forth

2011-03-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

Today, I had a mission. I had plans! I walked out of my hostel, turned the corner, and noticed that the Police had closed out a large section of road around Plaza de Repubblica and were directing traffic through an alternate route.

Son of a. . .

I rifled through my bag, checked to make sure my camera was there and fully charged, and headed into the fray.

The mood is different. Cheerful, even! There are less union flags and communist insignia, and more Italian flags and folks selling T-shirts.

They made their way through the streets of Rome slowly, unfurling a huge Italian flag and signing the national anthem as they passed that church that made art out of dead people.

As the procession curled around the road at the top of the Spanish Steps, a man stepped out from behind a stack of caricatures and grabbed me by the shoulder.

"Sir!" He said to me, grinning like a madman. "You look like Jimi Hendrix" which is just the best way to start a sales pitch to a white guy. "What is your name, my friend?"
"Sa-" He grabbed my wrist and started tying some string to it
"Ah! Good to hear. This bracelet is friendship bracelet, it means we are brothers now! See, Italia!" He gestured to the red, white, and green string currently turning my hand into a nightmarish eggplant. "For you, only four euros!" He held his hand out expectantly. I looked at it, I looked at him, turned around, and walked away.

The procession ended at Piazza de Popolo, in front of a giant concert awning. More folks were selling T-shirts, there were several social advocacy organizations with tents up, including one group called Arci who were distributing books on Linux and the Creative Commons license!

But thats not interesting! What is interesting is what happened when a red van drove through the middle of the concert, blasting music and setting off flares. Black-clad youth with smoke bombs and handmade riot shields. But that?

That comes next week. Blame me for not bringing my cables, but I refuse to tell this story without the evidence I collected.

The Peasants are Revolting

2011-03-11T07:21:00.001-08:00

So this is a prelude to a bigger post coming, since I cannot upload any of the photos or videos I took, which basically make the whole thing so much more real.

I woke up this morning, since I had tramped up and down this city and seen the things I came to see, I decided to visit some of the local churches and see if I could learn something about my family.

I made it to the street corner outside of Termini Station, when I saw a line of people waving flags and shouting. I could hear someone bellowing something through a PA, which is just the universal signal that something interesting is happening.

Long story short, around 20,000 people descended upon Rome in a national day of protest against Berlusconi, the Fiat corporation, and the increasing privitization of public services. Just gonna toss this map up here to show you the route of the protest:

Those of you who are intimately familiar with the hive-like planning of Rome know why that route is significant. For everyone else, please notice that this route takes us past the National Monument (which is the biggest building in Rome, an achievement when you take into consideration how many popes, emperors, dictators, and conqurers have staked their legacy in building Rome's biggest whatever) past Berlusconi"s personal residence, through the road over where the Forum used to stand, before it swings past the Colluseum, ending in Palazzo Navona, which is ball-flatteningly gorgeous and home to some of the most expensive hotels in the city. These dudes know how to party.

I got interviews with some people present, video, and photos. Hang out for a few days, wait for me to get back home, and I will proceed to rock your faces sweetly with Episode One of "Bearhat Goes Forth", my laughably adorable attempt at journalism.

circumnavigating the globe, BRB

2011-03-05T07:14:00.000-08:00

Okay so I know I said I wouldn't post in Korea again, but it's my last night and I'm not tired. A few quick notes about my last days here:

- I packed a suitcase full of valuables (my laptop) precious goods (shit I bought compulsively at the last minute for the ungrateful harpies that clog my social life ((JUST KIDDING (((not kidding)))))) and worthless tatters (my clothes) Only to find that my kevlar-coated blast-proof refridgerator of a suitcase wasn't ready for all that jelly. So I burned the shirts I bought at the discount store that had the hilariously short sleeves and tossed out most of the undershirts that had interestingly colored stains in the armpits, and hid a bunch of garbage around the apartment for the jerk moving in after me (Hi Ethan! Most of that furniture, I found in the garbage.) and managed to get it in pretty snug.

After dragging it to the post office, they got it on the scale and informed me that it was over the limit, and instead of the one-week reasonably priced option, the two choices left were shipping it, which would have taken 3 months, and sending it by Express Mail Service, which would require a downpayment in blood.

Even after taking out my clothes, which I never really liked anyway, it was still over the limit! So I stuffed everything in haphazardly and told them to ring up the EMS charge. I won't tell you what it was, save to say that it was less ridiculous than I expected, yet still cheaper than bringing it with me.

- After closing my bank account, my boss called to inform me that he hadn't wired me the last of my money. So instead of mailing it home or sending me a check, he handed me approximately $2K in cash. I figured I'd get slammed with an excise tax or something, so I rolled most of it up in condoms and. . . Nevermind.

- The DMZ is intense. Really, really intense. I am now photographed and cataloged in the North Korean computer system. Except it's North Korea so I'll be okay as soon as the hamsters running the generators die off or get eaten. I want to write up a big post on the history of the hilarious antics that have taken place there, so add that to the "Big List of Things I Should Post" along with the rest of the Christmas Antics and the week I spent with Spider backpacking all up in this bitch, my trip to Japan, and now my trip to Italy. Man, my life is fantastic.

- The Army and the Marines do not get along. This tidbit will come in handy should any of you ever find yourself on a tour organized by, oh I don't know, the USO.

- The Seoul subway system is a gigantic sprawling mess of noodles that someone threw up against a sharp incline. It took me two and a half hours to transfer one station and make it eight stops. I don't even want to talk about what I had to do when I realized that Incheon station and Incheon national airport are seperated by an ocean.

- Apparently wearing a tie outside of a sweater is a social faux-paus. So of course my co-workers saw fit to tell me after a year of me doing so. Their defense? They thought it was "just how I did things". I'm not upset as that's forgivably hilarious, so I'll just say this once for all you kind souls:
If you see me doing something the wrong way, I'm not doing it out of some twisted iconoclastic drive, but because I genuinely do not know better... Usually.

- I wore hiking boots to work every day for a year and nobody noticed. Stage 1 of operation Paul Bunion: COMPLETE.

Okay so to compensate for that pun here's something I found sitting in my archives that I never got around to posting.

So my youngest group of kids is a pretty rough handful, and get this perverse joy from making me sit back and stare at them with an expression of baffled confusion on my face. In this case, one student (Dogbert) was talking about how he'd like to feed his family to dogs.
Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I had taken off my glasses so I could rub my eyes, which on any other day would have elicited a chorus of apocalyptic screaming, because I am Gary Busey ugly without my glasses. However, the kids were quiet.

I ran my hands through my hair, pushing it away from my face, and stared at them staring at me.

"Oh Teacher!" Dogbert said. "So handsome." That was one of the handful of times in my life where I've been stunned into silence out of pleasant surprise, instead of that 'oh god what has my life become' sort of dread fear, so I should have known he was planning something.

"Uh, thanks Dogbert. I-"

"Handsome like a girl!" He cackled.

Needless to say, the next half an hour of class was spent torturously elaborating the taxonomical incorrectness of calling a girl handsome. Visual aids were brought to class. Sentences were diagrammed. People died.

Some Teachers approach grammar like a useful tool to aid communication and facilitate understanding. I approach it like a sledgehammer, useful for crushing the soft, baby-like skulls of my foes.

Dispatch from the Void.

2011-02-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

Okay so with the way things are working out, this is probably going to be my last post from Korea.

Don't get upset! I am not leaving you for good. I still have a HUGE BACKLOG of Korea stuff to post. At the rate I go through things I'll probably get halfway through the week I spent backpacking with Spider by the time my money runs out and forces me to go back and teach some more, starting this whole awesome cycle all over again.

No, but I intend to ship my laptop home probably around Monday, which leaves me two glorious weeks with absolutely no Internet access aside from the absolute deluge of PC rooms every Asian country is required to have.

And when I get home, I plan on seeing friends and family, so I probably won't have a whole lot of free time for posting, for at least a week or two.

Which, honestly? I need a tech detox. I spent a year with this as my one lifeline home and frankly I'm sick of it.

So, yeah! I am super blessed and looking forward to this vacation, and getting home. If any of you have information about how to do a genealogical search in a country that probably doesn't speak your language, when all you have to go on is your kinda weird and unusual last name, toss me a message.

Namaste, motherfuckers.

Letters to friends!

2011-02-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

Okay, I have no idea what we were doing when I asked them to write these.

"To Angela.
Hi~! I'm Jenny.
How are you?
I want to visit you my character world~!
You play with famous charactor, example
Simpson, rilakuma, hello kitty, mickey. . .
Famous charactor are many ~ and charactor watch movies, take a poto with charactor
Welcome to my charactor world~<3
Goodbye~<3"

The hearts and tildes are totally in the original letter, I kid you not.

"To Jenny
Hi! I'm Angela. How are you today? ᄏᄏ (that's the sound effect for laughing. it reads "keke" -sam)
I want to invite you in Robot world. Robot world is very fantastic!
Play with robot and to take care of the baby robot. And have a nice day!
Good bye~! Take a photo with robots too! Fianally, shaking hands with robots.
-Angela-"

I like how you can see that they both started adding the same ideas in at the end.

"Dear Alex
I can't wait for you to come visit me in the volcano. You can see volcano laba, and watch laba dragons. And you can eat the laba soup, laba candy, you can watch volcano's animals, they are very cute. Come quickly."

I am impressed he didn't add "because I am being burned alive by molten rock" at the end. I'm also impressed I wrote out the letter without writing "labia" ONCE!

. . . Shit. ANYWAY

"Dear Justin
I can't wait for you to come visit me in the moon. I will make food for you and I will watch movie with you. And I will go aquarium with you.
From Justin"

This one was scrawled across the back and front of two different pieces of paper. I guess sometime after the first one he forgot what he was writing about, which is understandable since even intelligent, hard-working falafel hounds like Bill O'Riley get confused about the moon every once and a while.

MORE ESSAYS BWAHAHA.

2011-02-21T08:48:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I'm having so much trouble remembering the funny things that happen in class, I've realized, is that I tone a lot of it out. I'm basically going through the material on autopilot, just covering the basics without getting into it too much.

This needs to stop. I've made it to the point where I don't even think about what I'm teaching, and oh man if I'm not thinking about it than neither are the kids. Thankfully I am about to bust out of my rut in a huge way so no sense in worrying over nothing.

I had my kids write letters to their favorite heroes today. When I told the kids they could pick anyone, ANY HERO EVER FROM ANYTHING FOR ALL TIME, these are the letters that resulted, that the kids opted to share with the class.

"To anyone hero:
Today, the science is very developed.
So we don't need hero, so please don't be a hero and go to the company and work. I wonder your boss is angry. Bye!"

One girl read that one out loud and a little part of me died inside. The rest of the letters were. . . Not much better.

"Hello, you're strong and fantastic and elastic and happy and very handsome. bye"

This was written by a boy about Batman. Best believe I gave him an A+.

One kid ended up writing a really long letter, but he got frustrated and threw it out. I didn't get a chance to look over what he wrote before he read it, but this is what he got up in front of the class and read:

"Secret words
Honarurururururururururu honarurururururururu Absktstbtsag.
Bds plasy tttttttttttkkkkkkk honarurururururu.

Chinese
Chin da me a ha ver do sang de me a din sue de me oo chang.

Japanese
Aree gatoo honaraketima na thoung."

And on the back he wrote:
"English
Hey yo man! You can fly? kekekekeke
I don't believe you superman kekekeke"

Yeah okay my kids are weird. This last one is short and to the point, to say the least:

"To hero.
I DON'T KNOW YOU."

This last one is an interview between three students, who earned the nicknames "DJ Skibbity Skawt and Unicorn during class.

Interviewer: Hello DJ Skibbity Skawt and Unicorn?
Together: Hello, ye!
I: Hey DJ Skibbity Skawt why is your name SSH?
DJ: Sam make it! So ask it to Sam!
I: And Unicorn why is your name UIC?
U: Sam make it! And DJ Skibbity Skawt changed it.
I: Okay man. I think person that name Sam is creatie, do you think so?
Together: No, he is very ugly.

I should probably mention that they didn't earn those names for, say, good behavior.

OKAY BEDTIME GOODNIGHT.

AW YEAH MORE ESSAYS

2011-02-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

One of the bonus classes I taught ended every day with a 30 minute Essay Bonanza. I was given topics that tied (loosely) into some of the material covered, but the topics were so dull and uninteresting that I pretty much just made up a new one on the spot every day. These are some of the essays I didn't get to hand back.

Okay so these next two are from one of my students, who named himself Lion (but pronounced it Leon). He was 14 and about as tall as a goddamned house, and one of my 16 year old girls actually developed a crush on him, which is an adorable story for later.

Q: WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE ATTACKED BY MUMMIES

If I attacked by mummies, I will fight against them. But first I have to act like them, so they can't become aware that I'm a human. then, I'm going to eliminate them one by one secretly. Finally when almost amount of mummies dead and only one, the strongest one left, I'm gonna fight against it bravely just like Ochonel. After fighting, I get a pretty woman for price [either he meant "for prize" or this kid is stranger than I thought], and marry her, and bear little beautiful babies, and get old, and on and on.
Fighting with mummies would be FUN!

Have I mentioned how much I love my kids? They are seriously the best.

This next essay was written by a girl who called herself M. Then one day, she was flipping through her electronic dictionary, and she decided she wanted to change it to something else. So, she highlighted the word and pointed it out to me. I had to spend the next three weeks calling her Mephistophelian.

So, the topic was "If you could make any type of movie, what would you make?"

"Title: Kill or die. Genre: Action.
Stuff: Camera, lighting, person, the great foundation.
Hero: Me, my dog, father, mother
Story: I'm a comon student oneday, my parents crazy so they kill me. But I'm running a way in a flurry with my dog. My mission is killing my parents otherwise I'll dying. My dog is good partner. Me and my partner find family and kill them. My parents past die their worry me and we are crying. The end."

What's even creepier is the little pictures she drew around the margins. M. . . M was a strange girl. She didn't talk much in class, but when she did, she always had really interesting thoughts and expressed them in unique ways. I tried to nurture that and to encourage her to participate more, since I think she really had a good head on her shoulders, but there's only so much you can do when the student won't work with you.

It's interesting to think what would have happened if she wrote this in America. At the very least she'd be sent to therapy and pulled from class, probably a caseworker would be called on the family and the poor girl's life would be fucked up because she just wanted to vent a little.

I was going to go into a rant on how teachers ought to pay enough attention to tell the difference between kids being dumb and kids being dangerous, but the general gist of it is that zero tolerance policies are stupid, made by and for idiots.

Now moving on let's have another awesome essay by Lion who is seriously the raddest dude.

"If I am making a movie, I would make a documentary.
It's animal documentary, so the hero are kitties!! [he uses the exclamation points to draw a smiley face, i shit you not]
The camera will shoot scenes in many different angles. It will shoot kitty yawning, kitty sleeping, kitty stretching, kitty eating. The camera will follow kitty all the time to get the cutest scene people ever seen before. Imagine how would that be! People who LOVE animals, especially kittens, like Sam, will love my movie very much.
My movie may not give a performance and big fun very much because people want more thrill and more complicated stories. But I believe that still, there are people who know the movies inside reality and love movie as it is.
(In fact, I'm movie mania!!)"

Man it is equal parts hilarious and adorable when my kids pander to me.

Pulling randomly from the pile gives me Mephistophelian's essay on killing mummies, which provides a great bookend for this post so here you go:

"Mummies kill.
I'll prepare some thing. For example, knife, lighter, cloth, gun, bomb. Kill mummies project chapter 1. Find mummies den. Chapter 2, throw bomb. Chapter 3. When out mummies, fire cloth throw toward mummies. Chapter 4. Rush survive mummmies with knife."

Now that's a plan even Brendan "Too Handsome for the B-List" Frasure could get behind.

My kids write essays

2011-02-15T07:18:00.002-08:00

Every once and a while, I will ask my kids to write an essay about some damn thing or another. I generally collect them in a folder to return later, but I basically have forgotten to do that for the past 6 months and because of that, I have a bunch of essays for students I no longer have.

This first one is titled "When I am Super Great Precident:
First I change school. For example, ther's no teacher and test. Their's only playing, eating, and sleeping. And we have only free.
Second, I make one apartment. For example it's very big and it's make with gold it will be very good.
Third, I make 999 moshines work. It clean, teach, play and do everything. Even work. It going around town and do their work.
Forth, I make big park. Their are many people are playing and made beautiful flowers.
Fith, I make my own house it is better than any house. I am play, work, and do anything in there.
Thank you for listning."

I'd like to point out that most of the above mistakes are something your average American could also make.

The next was a pen-pal letter written to a student she was sitting next to:
"Pen-pal to Another Country's Friend
Dear Sthone [I have no idea, that's not anything close to her name]
Hi. I'm living in the korea. I heard you will travel in the Korea. I want to tell you about korea.
First, you must think first elderly. Handi capped. If you took a subway, don't sit special sits. It's for elderly and handi capped. If you see that elderly or handi capped, you must concession. Don't action sleeping, or reading books.
Also, some koreans don't know English, so please use body language if they don't understand. And, don't eat hamburger, pizza instead eat some korea food like kimchi. This is a real travel to korea. It's good for health, too.
Well have a nice trip to Korea! Bye!"

I like to think I taught them everything I know about inconsistent capitalization.

The next letter comes from two boys who decided that writing letters was for quitters, so they got up in front of everyone and acted this one out.

F: Hey man! What things I can do in Korea?
K: There are many things!
F: Tell me some thing!
K: Like crash the CDI
F: Yes
K: And hmmm. . . Visit a blue house
F: OK
K: And then you will go to jail.
F: Interesting!
K: And live 5 years and when finish you have to go east door fire thom.
F: And?
K: Maybe you will go to jail one more time.
F: I like that!
K: And then you spend all the time in the Korea's jail.
F: That sounds good!
K: Thank you to listen.
F: Me too.

Okay this batch of essays is boring. Gonna go dig through the rest of the pile and toss up the good ones later.

I am not good at collections.

2011-02-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

One of the awesome things about having a massive upheaval in your life every 3-6 months is that you learn to not get attached to the stupid things that just kind of accumulate on dressers and in cabinets. I mean, in University, I never would have collected a dozen fist-sized cans of ham and stacked them next to a bag of breadcrumbs I used once and then never opened again.

So, after staying put for the better part of a year, combined with the fact that I have just never, ever, ever been an orderly person, having to decide what to ship home, what to give away, and what to burn upon the sacrificial altar to Poseidon is giving me, oh, a little bit of trouble.

I'll be chiseling stolen candy out of the bottom of a cabinet and come across some scrap of paper I had in my pocket on the bus down from Seoul my first week, absolutely covered with practice hangul, and spend the next five minutes lost in a fog of memories turned bittersweet with regret.

I was in a mood like that, swimming in an absolute ocean of what-might-have-been and only-ifs when I found a birthday card made for me by a girl I did stupid things with. I remember the day she handed it to me, along with a little glass bowl and three colorful fish.

I wanted to point out how giving unexpected pets is kind of a dick move and that goldfish are actually kind of dumb pets and oh man, cleaning tanks has got to be like the worst thing ever, but I didn't.

And the next day, I named them.

And for a week, I woke up and smiled at my pretty gold fish, swimming around their plastic tree.

Then the girl went away for stupid reasons that I don't want to talk about because you're dumb and wouldn't understand, and my fish died. I emptied the water but couldn't bring myself to throw it away, for some reason.

I found a rock-hard dried starfish on the road one day, so I picked him up and put him in the tank when I got home, but he looked lonely. I bought a Nightmare Before Christmas toy from a vending machine later on since Jack is just the sort of fellow who could always use a friend.

But, things changed and one day I put the empty tank in a cabinet and shut it away, next to the toilet paper and emergency candles. And that's where it sat, growing dusty, while the world went on without it.

I held it for a little bit, not so much looking at it but through it, back all those months ago. I walked up to my roof, to stare pensively into the horizon and think about things. I held the delicate globe for just a moment, watching the sun reflect off of the colored pebbles strewn across the bottom.

Then, I hauled back and threw it into the sun. And that's how I got my third snow-day of the year. THE END FOREVER.

So many of us walk around paralyzed by fear of choice and pre-emptive regret, opting to let things decide for themselves and then complain endlessly of how it all turned out. They collect odds and ends to remind them of the good times and let the ghosts of possibility haunt them at night to remind them of the bad.

This is me, opting to reject the chemical reactions to tell me to be afraid. Here I am, discarding the detritus that collects around a life like linty barnacles on a rusty anchor chain. I do not need a poorly silk-screened T-shirt to know what I did and the impact it had on me.

I know I will forget things, as memories change and degrade over the years, but you know what? That's okay. We've all got things we regret doing, or not doing, or wish had gone over better, and I, for one, hereby wage unceasing war against the parts of my brain that try to make me feel stupid for getting rejected by all those girls at all those bars.

All those memories aren't worth even a single moment of the times where something clicked and things worked, for a while at least.

Anyway, this post got away from me real fast. The TL;DR of it all is that the world is awesome and it takes just the tiniest bit of attention to detail and effort to spin your future on a trajectory leading away from a cycle of repeated mistakes and self-defeat and onto a path you can look back on, fondly, when the time comes.

There's an entire world out there willing to hate you for you, so why waste the effort?

thank you for suffering through this incessant whiny naval-gazing. MC Moist Freshness has located a treasure-trove of hilarious essays and will begin posting them later tonight.

Two stories

2011-02-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

I was sixteen, standing in a tiny kitchen in Japan, talking to an old woman. Well, not talking in the "exchange of ideas between intellectual equals" sense, more in the "pantomime an everyday activity and then people stare at you" sense, which should be a pretty common occurrence to those of you who are less than gifted at the native tongue of your current homeland.

It was hot, and I was trying to offer my host-grandmother a glass of tea. The universally accepted symbol for drink (your hand in a circle being lifted to your mouth, pinky extended) was getting me nowhere, so I threw up my hands in exasperation, grabbed a second cup, and poured out half a cup of chilled tea, from a plastic bottle in the fridge.

. . . Or so I thought.

A quick sip of the draught blasted away the protective layer of filth I cultivate on my teeth and gums in order to inflict festering wounds on those I bite, kind of like a badass komodo dragon but with better hair. The bitter aftertaste of tannin and hatred chilled me to my very dental nerves, eliciting a shiver the force of which would have severed the spinal column of a lesser child.

It did not taste pleasant, is what I am trying to tell you. Further sips confirmed this. My host-grandma's pained expression confirmed this, and she pulled out the bottle in order to investigate. She started laughing almost immediately, and she pointed to a small word printed on the label near the top of the bottle.

VINEGAR.

So we added a few icecubes and watered it down, and spent the better part of a hot afternoon doing our damned best to not drink half a glass of straight vinegar.

Years later, I was standing in the middle of the Vermont wilderness, half-cocked and holding a packet of bottle rockets. It was a night of awesome decisions, let me tell you.

"Guys!" I called out to my boring high-school friends. "I have fireworks, let's blow something up."
"Dibs!" Pat called out, setting his drink on a grill. "Toss me the lighter?"

I froze.

"Pat, you know I don't smoke."
"But you've got a lighter, right?" He asked, the sudden fear of not blowing something up creeping into his voice.
". . . No. Don't you?"

The night held it's breath as we mentally ran through the contents of our pockets. Enough electronics to bring down a small government, sure, but something as complicated as flint and steel? No sir!

"There's got to be something in my house." Devin said, ever the unpleasant voice of reason. "Just don't make a mes-" We blew past him, throwing the door open and tearing into cabinets and drawers with a ferocity that would make a home burglar blush.

Candles decorated every flat surface we found, since this was a Nice Home in a rural area of New England, and that's just what you do. I remain fairly convinced that, in the event that all power to the area was cut out, you could still signal extraterrestrial life with all the burnable wax that house contained.

Our frantic search turned up an empty pack of gas station matches, two nonfunctioning grill-style lighters, and a big old pile of sulfurous broken dreams.

"Hey, Devin, is your stove gas powered?" I asked.
"No." He said with all the finality of death row.
"Well, okay then, what if we got the coils hot enough to burn the fuses, and then ran onto the balcony-"
"I meant 'no' as in 'no you are not setting off fireworks in my house', Sam." He said fatly.
"Did anyone think to check the garage?" Mike asked the bottom of his bottle.

We shrugged. I mean, who keeps flammable stuff in a garage? Pat sauntered over to the door, and then tore a hole in the wall with this bare hands because he could. He started throwing cars through roofs and insulting lawnmowers, when all of a sudden things went quiet.

"Oh no! He has ruined my very nice things!" Devin cried into a mountain of butter. "Ohgm nomphf nomfh horgh ghrok." (those are the sounds he makes when he eats butter)

Pat hip-thrust his way through the hard-packed earthen driveway, carring one of those flint-and-steel lighters you probably haven't even thought of since you stopped taking science classes because you suck.

"But Pat, will that be enough to light off FIREWORKS?" Mike said, with a child's glee.
"NO." Pat said while lightning blew up an orphanage some distance behind him. "But this might!"

He held out a propane torch.

"WHAT WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!" Devin absolutely screamed into an already emptied bucket of chicken skins.
"I found it." He said, gesturing vaguely to the absolute fucked-apart wreckage of the garage.
"Man, what could possibly go wrong with combining alcohol, explosives, and flaming compressed gas?" I asked to nobody in particular.

NOTHING AT ALL! THE END!

We ended up getting bored and going back to our in-progress game of D&D since bottle rockets actually kind of suck and are lame.

I am the pied piper of wrecking asses

2011-02-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

So, a few months after I move to Korea, the North blows the fuck out of a battleship and people start flipping the fuck out. A few more months after that and again the North just shits all over an otherwise awesome little island because they are stupid fuckers.

Then, as I'm planning to leave Korea and take part in a whirlwind tour of the world, Tunisia goes and punches corruption in the throat. Not more than a few days after looking at tickets to Cairo, Egypt starts freaking out as well. And now Jordan has joined in the festivities, because Jordan knows the next big thing when it sees it.

Well, guess what's happening over in Japan? You're damn right. The country has begun blowing itself up in preparation of my return.

Now, I'm not claiming to be a harbinger of chaos and destruction, who sews discord and madness everywhere he goes. I'm not implying that I might be the reincarnated form of Shiva, Hindu goddess of destruction. I am certainly not implying that my Awesome field is so intense that its energy can propagate into the future.

But isn't it suspicious. . .

In a completely unrelated note, I am going to Japan for the rest of the week. I have an interesting story about the last time I went over there and it involves vinegar. I also have a story about fireworks and propane torches, but that one happens in Vermont so nobody cares. And then finally I should finish the Nightmare before Drunkmas saga sometime before I go home.

SO ANYWAY, today marked the end of our regoddamndiculous 5-week Hellslog, where 9 hour days were standard and everyone had at least one 12 hour shift a week. It ended up culminating in a solid 9 days of consecutive teaching, but my branch is one of two in the entire country that gets a vacation so I guess that makes up for it.

As a thank-you, or as a Happy New Year (I don't know which) my boss gave us all presents.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gapunzel/5407558735/ (linked because i can't flickr gud)

OH BOY I WONDER WHAT IT IS

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gapunzel/5407558803/

SURPRISE IT'S SPAM

Actually gift boxes like this are incredibly common in Korea. Other popular varieties include hair care products and cooking oils, so getting a box of boxes of Spam isn't entirely unusual.

Well, except for one thing. Why would you wrap a box of spam if you're going to put it into a spam-branded tote bag?

It's never too early to say goodbye.

2011-01-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

"This song sounds like February."

Sometimes I say strange things, just to see how folks react. That wasn't one of those times. It reminded me of long drives through gritty streets covered in salt, snowbanks stained gray and brown, slowly turning to ice before melting away entirely, leaving nothing but the brown of dead grass. It sounded like days warm enough to trick you into leaving your parka at home so you spend the rest of the day shivering. It reminded me of staring out of windows and not so much sighing as trying to exhale the mad desperate hope clawing at my heart that things won't be bleak forever.

I said that, thinking that she'd understand. She came from the good part of New York, not more than a few hours from myself, and I just kind of, you know, figured this is something that other people experience.

She looked at me quizzically for a minute, like she was trying to figure out if she misheard. Then she smiled and continued talking about being a paralegal. I excused myself shortly after that.

I leaned out a window and breathed deep. I was very definitely Not Moping, but man you'd think I would be used to being misunderstood at this point. My mind wandered back to my shift at work.

"Hey, Sam?" Megan draped herself against the doorframe and leaned into my room. "Some of the other folks and I are putting a show together, about the stuff that goes on here. You know, like 'The Office', but instead we'll call it 'The Academy'. Can we use some of the stuff you say?"

"Sure." I shrugged. "You want me to help you write it? I've done some screenplay stuff before."

"Mmm, no." She said, smirking. "I think we've got your character figured out." She turned and left before I had a chance to react.

Was she wrong to say that? Not hardly, there are moments where I am considerably less than human to my co-workers, so I understand how they might picture me as some two-dimensional extra designed just to fill out the roster, and I know it's easy enough to fix.

So why did that hurt as much as it did?

Kay snapped me out of my daydream by leaning her back against the window. She started smoking.

"So, you're homebound pretty soon, yeah?" She asked, dangling the cigarette from her bottom lip. "Must be pretty exciting, leaving that shit gig of yours." I nodded, and waited for the follow-up question. She flicked the ash out into the night air and looked at the toe of her boot.

"When are you coming back?"

That's the big question lately. Will this be the last time we drink together? Well, what's it matter, you're coming back soon, right? Everything suddenly has this aura of unwarranted importance, that this might be Very Definitely the Last Time, and we're all kind of huddled against the glow, trying to ignore how temporary and fleeting friendship is.

And, well, I don't know. I don't know when, or if I am coming back. There are compelling arguments for both. And, as I walked home that night, shivering and kicking myself for not bringing my parka with me, I realized that never has there been a time where "goodbye" meant so little. I will keep in contact with everyone I've met through Facebook, at least. When I go home, we'll talk and plan and scheme, and if my trip home reveals nothing more than a bullet-pointed list for why I left in the first place, then I can always come back.

I can go anywhere. I'm not leaving my friends, I'm just going to go out and find new ones. The more I listen to it, the more I realize I was wrong about this music. It doesn't sound like February because of the road grit, it sounds like February because they're singing about spring.

I'm the first to know my dearest friends
Even if your hope has burned with time
Anything that's dead shall be regrown
And your vicious pain, your warning sign
You will be fine

My weirdly winding mind

2011-01-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

The listening test droned on in that universal decibel that can only be described as "Dad Lecture", the precise timbre and pitch all dads use when describing the minute ephemera of the transcendentally dull-as-pitch, and there just isn't a force of nature that can resist the sheer slumber-inducing might of a Dad Lecture about comets.

Unless your dad is Neil deGrasse Tyson, which this lecture was not.

I have never been the sort of person who is aware that they're falling asleep. It's very much a binary state. One minute, I'm awake, the next minute I'm standing on a frozen hillside farm, hovering eight feet above the ground, watching myself pee into a graveyard, and when I wake up, all I remember is that feeling like the moment between turning the TV on and when the picture starts. All staticky potential and prickly blackness, if you've ever used a cathode-ray tube before, you know what I mean.

Man it makes me a little sad to realize that in a few years nobody is going to understand that reference, but anyway-

I was remembering comets. The week leading up to that night my third-grade class had been studying astronomy, and I was excited. This comet had a name. It had a history. It had seen mankind scrabble over frozen land-bridges, had seen madmen pile stone over stone trying to put a giant granite stopper in death, and now it had returned.

It was February, and we were standing on a frozen hillside farm. The wind kicked up devils of ice particles which stung your face worse than dried-out prickerbushes.

The moon didn't hang in the air as much as perch on the horizon, sitting on the shoulder of mountains made enormous by my imagination. The hills rolled like heavy surf, the frozen snow-crust broken only by the wreckage of a hayfield, ancient oaks who dug too deep to ever be moved, forgotten bales, patches where the snow turned silver and translucent, betraying half-frozen pockets of hypothermia for the unwary tromper.

We stared at the sky and saw nothing. I could hear my brother whining from somewhere within his mobile blanket-fortress, while mom soothed him with a blue stream of thoughts. The sudden strangeness reminded me that, although this had actually happened, my recollecting had taken some liberties.

I leaned forward and looked down the hill, only for it to suddenly roll like someone rearranging blankets, and I fell forward into the front seat of my mom's car, parked idling in the driveway.

"Oh, fer Pete's sake!" She cried, pointing at the cracked rear view mirror. "We could have seen it from the living room!"

There, sitting in the branches of the tree across the street, was an iridescent bird, so white it looked blue, with a deep indigo stripe on it's tail. It preened, and cocked it's head at us. Somewhere deeper within my head I knew that this had actually happened, but different than how it seemed now. I knew, or I thought I knew, that I wasn't seeing memories so much as the shape they left in the mind.

I turned around and suddenly things changed again. It was summer, and we were lost. I felt the presence of my friends from university, but the car was empty, rolling through the suggestion of a forest at night. Not as much trees as green shapes, suggestive geometries that leave most of the heavy lifting to the imagination.

Empty houses and dilapidated barns rolled past on the side of the road. Peeling strips of red paint giving way to the stained grey-black of old wood, knotted and twisted with the rain and cold.

The car stopped, and the doors opened. A rush of laughter filled the night as the voices ran outside. We had returned to the rolling farm from before, and I knew that it was East Hill, and that there was a really cool summer camp near by, but it was different. Different even from within the same dream. The moon was more distant, the trees loomed less. The mountains had subsided, and the hills gentler.

We had parked next to a graveyard, and the voices of my friends read off dates and names. With the really ancient, lichen-encrusted graves, you sometimes get bits of poetry written at the bottom. It can be tough to make out, since some of it was written before the alphabet was standardized, so you've got misspelled words and madness like loopy Efs where your Esses should be, but for those who hunker down and sort it out are generally in for a treat.

"Sam." The disembodied voice of my friend Amanda said to me. "It's terrible unlucky to go wandering in graveyards at night. We should go." And I turned to grab the blanket we laid down to use for stargazing.

Pulling it back was like lifting the trap door to winter. Snow rose out of the ground like dough, covering the flowers with a frost that glinted in the moonlight. Spider sat on the same blanket I had just pulled up, looking at me with her head tilted to the side.

"You look distracted." She said.
"It's my brain, trying to remember and create at the same time." I said, like that explained anything. She looked at me for a long minute, waiting for clarification. "Have you ever tried running backwards while facing the wrong way on a treadmill in reverse? It's like that."
"Well, maybe I can help with that." She reached forward with impossibly long arms, and we kissed.

The moon moved closer, hiding behind the mountains in the distance, watching us. The twinkling lights of the city far off went out, one by one, until the stars themselves went to sleep. The entire world melted away save for that blanket spread out on a frozen expanse of farmland.

That's not how it happened, and I knew that it's not how it happened, but at the same time I knew that the how didn't matter. These weren't my memories, but the shapes left in the land by the people that knew it. Vermont slept, and in its' sleep it let those shapes wander a bit.

My home isn't the soft sort of soil you get in Florida, all sandy bogs and mangroves, no, this soil is glacial, more rock than earth practically. This is a land that pushes back. This is a land that leaves its' shape on people.

My home was calling out to me, I could feel it. My feet itched for the feel of good hot Earth, the bracing cold of a tannin-rich riverbed, my limbs burned with the need to stretch as wide as the sky itself. I awoke to the weight of a thousand tons of steel and concrete bearing down upon me, the crushing psychic weight of half a million people crammed into nothing more than a few square miles.

The disk had stopped, and my students were staring. I shook the slush out of my hair and commanded my legs to get back to where I had left them.
"Good dream, Teacher?" One boy asked.
"Yeah. Was I asleep for long?" The end-of-class bell rung, answering my question about as thoroughly as you please.
"Well, it's bad luck." The boy said. "If you wake up a teacher, they give you more tests." He slung his backpack over his shoulder and booked it for the door.

Man, I hate it when they're right.

Freddy Mercury was a Zorostrian

2011-01-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

This was originally going to be titled "A sudden realization of intense personal growth" but this new one is so much more interesting.

"Saaaaamy!" Micky the Transsexual called out to me. "Do you know, hmm, Queen?" She passed me the songbook and pointed to 'Don't stop me now' which isn't so much of a request as it is a challenge carved in marble.

Sorry, I should back up a bit. I found a transgender bar. Not just any transgender bar, oh lord no, this was a transgender bar with a laser light array and a karaoke machine. Also, a stage! Not just any stage, but a stage covered in women wearing outfits of questionable moral integrity.

So, you know, Mojave and I decided to stop by, since the price of not going in is that we don't get to brag about going to a tranny bar in South Korea. That's just. . . I don't even want to think about it.

Micky punched the numbers into the control pad, and the bar lights dimmed. She draped herself across my shoulders and as the lyrics started scrolling up, the music hit me with the bowel-quaking force of nostalgia, and tore me out of my boots and tossed me back in time.

There is a point at which every nerdy teenager realizes that Queen is and shall forever be the greatest rock band to ever exist, bar none. The sheer righteous force of their musicality, the irresistible charm of one Freddy Mercury, there's no topping it.

I remembered my moment. Back in high school, I don't remember when, but my friends Mike, Devin, and Sirsaw had piled into Mike's dad's car, and we were driving off to New Hampshire for a Dungeons and Dragons event, because that's what you do when you're a nerd in Vermont and you've never experienced Dungeons and Dragons before.

Mike's dad was going though the basics of the setting (I have theories that he was involved with the game when it first got started, back during the first dwarf assault on the fortress of Lothlorien), Devin had buried himself neck-deep in the player's manual, and would occasionally call out interesting tidbits he found. Mike stared out the window and tried to will himself to any other place on Earth but where he was right then, and Sirsaw. . . Well, he went on existing like a champ.

You know the sort of dude. Solid, quiet, really anchors the group and keeps it from going screaming off into the stratosphere over any goddamn thing. Will occasionally blow your mind by saying something like "My nipples are made of STEEL!" right as the hottest girl in school walks by.

That really happened, btw.

"So, Sam, you a big fan of Queen?" Mike's dad asked.
"Yeah, I have an MP3 of Bohemian Rhapsody that I listen to, like, all the time." I said. Keep in mind that this was way back when Limewire was cutting edge, and for me, accomplishing such an immense task as breaking the law on a Mac G3 (graybox version, 'natch) running OS 8.3 was nothing short of glorious. Mike's dad was somewhat less than impressed.
"There's a copy of Jazz in the glove compartment, pass it over this way, would you?" If you were to put a cassette box in a rock tumbler with sand pulled from right down-current of the Deepwater Horizon, that box would not even to begin to approach the filthy battered-all-to-hell brutality of Mike's dad's copy of Jazz.
"Hey, apparently Fighters can choose to use two shields instead of a weapon." Devin said, pouring over a numerical table.
"That's stupid. How is he going to kill dudes then?" Sirsaw asked.
"Well, probably it's to help protect the wizard." Devin ventured, ever the consummate power-gamer.
"Well, in Warhammer 40K, you can play a Space Marine."

The conversation went on from there but you'll thank me for ending it early.

"Man, the world's just never been the same since he died. I still remember what I was doing when I heard. Just one of those things, you know?" Mike's dad asked. I nodded, staring out the window at the rolling beautiful Nothing that makes up such a large part of Vermont and New Hampshire.
"So, what were you doing?" I asked, never so dense as to miss a deliberately unanswered question when it's launched at my head out of a cannon.
"Oh, I mean, it was so LONG ago. . ." He started. "Well, probably I was fist deep in these two-"
"-DAD!" Mike shouted.
"What, don't you want to hear about how you were brought into this world?"
"I wasn't born, I was forged in the heart of the sun itself." Mike muttered venomously.
"I was born under Chernobyl's fallout cloud. And also I lived under Hiroshima's fallout cloud." Sirsaw said to noone in particular.
"Fair enough. So, Sam, what were you up to when you heard he died?"
"I don't remember, I was still in diapers." I said. Mike's dad looked at me quizzically.
". . . He died in 1991."
"Yeah?"
"You'd have been about four."
"Nah, that sounds about right for Sam." Devin called, without lifting his head out of the book. Mike's dad rolled his eyes and changed the subject.

"Everyone's mind was blown when they heard it was AIDS. I mean, looking back it seems obvious how gay he was, but back then? Back then, he was a goddamn titan of sex. Wasn't a woman you knew who didn't want to break off a bit of Mercury for themselves."
"That's a great way to go insane from mercury poisoning." Devin said, like he was the sort of person who knew how jokes worked.
"Wait," I said, brain-wheels backpedaling furiously. "Freddy Mercury was gay?" I asked, astonished. In my defense, I was dumb as a teenager and didn't get smart until much later.

The entire car voiced their agreement, almost as if not immediately realizing his orientation was a character flaw.

"So, all those songs he wrote. . . They're about loving dudes?" I asked, somewhat horrified.
"No, Sam." Mike's dad said, rolling his eyes. "They're about love."
_____________

Very few people have ever managed to shut me down so utterly that I still think back on it years later, even fewer are the times where I can admit to being glad to learn the message I did. Micky ran her hands across my arms and went through the motions of a dance she had memorized long ago while I sang my ass off, and I realized, somewhere deep inside, just how strange and wonderful this world is.

gonna make a supersonic man out of you

Fuck this noise

2011-01-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Anyone who tells you that their brand of motherhood is superior is full of shit. I'm just going to get that out of the way. Just a heads up, but this post isn't about this woman in particular, more just her brand of crazy. This is not a required reading, but it will help with background.

Now before you knuckle-dragging simpletons fart yourselves into a tizzy and point out that Korea and China are entirely different countries I'd like to pre-emptively cut you off with a "you are missing the point" and a further "they are more alike than you probably know" followed by a "shut up get out of my apartment you hideous meat-golem" because I'm just vicious like that.

So I could go into a long-ass boring post about Confucian ideas about filial piety and how Amy's family structure is based on the idea that the children owe a debt to their parents due to a number of stupid reasons, but that's retarded and boring since none of these are actually applicable in Amy's case since she is so whitebread she has been legally prohibited from coming with in 500 feet of a diabetes treatment center.

That's right, she's so homogenized she can induce hypoglycemia by proximity. But I digress.

Her approach to education has produced a generation of kids who are so paralyzed by failure that they will go into absolute screaming paroxysms of terror unless I give them 15 minutes to study for a 5 minute quiz at the beginning of class. This is a thing that will happen even if they know the test score is not being recorded. It is a mindset so focused on measuring success in numbers and letters that even when I ask my students why they are learning English, they respond with sentences and chunks that they memorized from a book.

If I hear one more 12 year old parrot "English is an international language of business" I swear I will start sacrificing someone to a Sun god. It's all I can do to not grab them by the throat and try to throttle creativity into them.

They learn English because their parents tell them to learn English. Their parents think learning English will help them go to a good university, which will help them get a good job. Their parents think that because the commercials academies put out are very convincing, with facts about TOEFL scores and university scholarships and all that rubbish, but at no point do they think to mention just how much richer your life becomes when you embrace learning a second language.

You could say that commercials can't quantify quality of life, but that's absolutely bullshit in that it is exactly what commercials try to do.

See, the downside to grooming a student for a good college is that you spend all that time and energy raising a really impressive resume. You haven't produced a complete person, you've given birth to a single page of important-looking nouns and acronyms.

That is not how people should work. Impressive resumes should come from impressive people, and I feel stupid having to say that out loud since it strikes me as the sort of no-shit-sherlock common goddamned sense that everyone should understand, but I'm beginning to realize that those of us subscribing to the Western school of educational thought (that is, primary school to secondary school to career) got fucked up somewhere and started putting shoes on our hands and opening doors with our asscheeks.

You probably realized by now I am not talking about just Korea. You'd absolutely be right.

Here's a challenge open to all of those upper-crust parents with concert violinists for children: Go to the dirtiest, grimiest dive bar you can find on blues night. Throw your kid on stage. Fuck prestige, fuck grades, fuck every quantifiable measure of success. If your child can blow through Mozart but freezes up when going off-book, congratulations, you've created a robot.

That goes for everyone. The worth of a person doesn't come from achievements or recognition, recognition and achievements come from worthwhile people. If your star quarterback can't figure out how to have a good time with a rolled up sock and a 2x4, what's that say about him as a person?

If you have to resort to "It'll look good on a resume" as an excuse for doing anything, then what does that say about you?

Look, the simple fact of the matter is, America doesn't need any more well qualified resumes. When the newspapers start running stories about how rich kids can't find the jobs they were promised, even after doing everything society told them to do, maybe we need to realize that we were fed a hot load of shit growing up, and that maybe the rules we were told we should play by don't apply anymore.

Well, shit, they never did, but that's yesterday's news.

The thing that made America strong, the one driving force that will keep us from collapsing beneath the weight of our own sluggish apathy, is constant goddamn innovation. Not our guns, not our banks, not our bloody-minded imperialist charity, but our innovation. Jackasses getting hot and ornery trying to top each other in display of such ostentatious scientific pornography that Tesla himself would be overcome. Basement nerds thinking to categorize their Autistic attention to detail and sell it to fellow neckbeards at conventions.

If you are still in college, or about to go in yourself, you need to face the realization that you probably will not be able to find a decent job working for someone else, and that is the best possible thing that could ever happen to a human person.

You, Biomedical Engineer number 4437, are you prepared to start your own practice once you realize that none of the other firms are hiring? No? Exactly, because when you groom someone to be the perfect candidate, you groom them to be the perfect consumer. The upper crust of America is being trained to replace the sorts of profit-driven assholes that fucked us up to begin with.

That, beyond anything else you could possibly name, beyond every possible talking point you or any other pundit who gets off on the smell of his own feet could possibly spew from his greasy maw, that is the problem with America. Don't be an employee, be an innovator. If that fails, you can always move back home.

You want to know why I haven't updated recently? Because I am burned the fuck out.

It is snowing in Pohang.

2011-01-03T03:34:00.001-08:00

It has been snowing for a while now. Today was supposed to be the first day of the Winter Hell Month, where everyone at my academy slaves over a hot copying machine trying to force-feed language to a twitchy and disinterested bunch of cocoa-wired maniacs dressed like children.

We dragged our asses out of bed far earlier than we should have, and gathered round the copy machine like it was the black altar of some long-dead religion, only for the melodic voices of Bossman and Girl Boss to echo throughout the ages "Intensive classes have been canceled, go home and come back later." And we did, gladly, only for that message to later be updated to "All classes are canceled, but you still have extra classes tomorrow", which was then amended to "Extra classes are also shitcanned."

Jay and Ringo have just informed me that their academy closed out tomorrow in advance, along with the public schools, and insist that there's no way my academy could remain open in this titanic 6-8 inches of wintry accumulation.

Little do they know, however, that my academy isn't so much an educational institution as it is a military training center for the next generation of warriors poised to do battle with the never-ending font of hilarious rubber-suited demons that exist all over Asia, and because of that, would remain open even during the Apocalypse itself.

"Hey Sam, put more cute girls on your blog!" -Internet. "Kay." -Sam. Big ups to my co-worker Cheryl for the pic.

It's really funny, living in a place like Pohang that goes all the way to January without any significant snowfall, and then 8 inches just drops overnight. Back home, 8 inches isn't even worth shoveling. But here? Cars just Tokyo Drifting like it's nobody's business, kids sledding down hill on plastic bags, bus drivers applying chains moments before being told to discontinue their routes for the day and get somewhere warm to wait it over, it's like the entire city has come to a standstill.

But some things are universal.

Like sledding.

I remember waiting breathlessly by the TV, while some bronzed asshole would talk about local sports teams as if anyone from Vermont ever made a noteworthy achievement in a sport that didn't involve strapping hundreds of dollars worth of fiberglass to your feet and jumping off of a mountain, just waiting for the scrolling bar at the bottom to inform me that YES, SAM, YOU GET TO SPEND THE ENTIRE DAY PLAYING POKEMON.

If you were lucky, that was. The worst days were when my little brother's elementary school would cancel, but for whatever baffling reason, my high school did not. This would result in a panicked rush to wrap me in the stifling insulation one needs to bare even the tiniest exposure to Grandpappy Vermont's sick, twisted idea of a winter gale before the bus skidded down the hill and ploughed over the mailbox.

But on a snow day, for just a moment, it felt like the world was yours, you've all experienced it. But we all learned, one by one, the horrifying lie of the snow day. Or, as the Spanish call it, El Dia De Los Holy Fucking Shit Where Are My Toes.

You wrap yourself in a blanket and make the biggest bowl of the most nauseatingly sweet cereal you had, and truck out to the couch and claim it in the name of Saturday, only to find The 700 Club playing on every channel the storm hadn't killed yet.

Panic sets in. You start hammering buttons, convinced that somewhere there has to be a re-run of last week's Angry Beavers, or Hey Arnold, or even a game show, but alas. Nothing! The channels start going to static faster and faster, but you know there's got to be something. Anything! The TV can't fail you! You start going into full-on denial because you cannot even imagine a world where such cruelties exist.

And then it happens. A noise that strikes at the very core of your being, the BZZT of every electronic device in the house shutting down at the same time. The static crackle of the TV screen sounding like nothing more than mocking laughter. For just a moment, there is silence deeper than the bowels of Hell itself.

And then you start counting down the minutes until someone tells you to shovel the driveway.

If you were crafty, you'd start the resistance by hiding your gloves deep within your sock drawer. You'd stuff your boots into the blender you stole when you decided to try making your own go-kart. Your parka would get balled up and tossed in the closet next to the board games you hadn't touched since the advent of Nintendo. Your hat got tossed in the fishtank or flushed down the toilet.

"Honest, Mom, it was right here when I left it!" You'd declare, gesturing to the now empty hook. "I got home from school and I put it right here!" You mocked up your saintliest, most angelic face possible, only to be met with a glacial wall of scrutiny.
"You did no such thing, you left it in a pile in the kitchen and went off to watch TV."

And you couldn't even argue because she knew she was right. And what made it even worse was that YOU knew she was right. So you'd get wrapped up neon yellow Naugahyde hand-me-down jackets from long-dead uncles and hand-made woolen scarves and hats from aunts who never loved you anyway. If you were lucky, you'd get a pair of last year's gloves with a cartoon character you couldn't wear to school anymore because of how dreadfully uncool it would have been to be seen representing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the 6th grade.

But it was okay, because you deep down knew that if you were going to survive today, you needed all the Turtle Power you could get.

If you weren't lucky, it was a pair of ill-fitting mittens knitted out of something marginally more abrasive than steel wool. If you were poor, you got old socks.

You'd start off slow, by just pushing the shovel to the garage. Sure, it didn't reach the asphalt and most of the snow fell back in after, but you managed to convince yourself that this was enough of a walkway for anything that needed doing on today, the holiest of days. You looked back on your work and thought "Yes, this is good enough."

It never was.

It was at that point you realized that, yes, this horrible winter witch who had replaced your mother intended you to spend your one snow day clearing the whole driveway. Nothing you said could convince her, even though it was totally unfair that you had to do everything by yourself while other families got to have, like, snowploughs and everything.

Oh right, because they get stuck in our lawn-pond.

Besides, this was the one snow day you will ever have in your life and you're pretty sure that the PTA was going to make you have to go to school all through July to make up for it on account of they didn't build any snow days into the calendar because Mrs. Gilworth comes from New Jersey and you know they don't have winter that far south, so you need to have all the fun you can now before it was Too Late. You even managed to make a pretty convincing argument that the snow would melt itself anyway and you didn't feel right interfering with Mother Nature, just like your mom told you after Captain Planet that one time.

But it never worked. She'd point to the shovel and head back inside before freezing to death, and that's when it hit you: Santa wasn't going to show up with a burly gang of socially pro-active ex-cons looking to give back to the community to help you out, and the Power Rangers sure as heck weren't going to do it either (on account of you feeding your Power Rangers gloves to the dog) and, with a deep sinking feeling in your heart, you remembered that turtles are cold-blooded, and therefore not much use during the winter.

Yes, even ninja turtles. It was just you, alone. One against the winter.

You stared out at the white expanse of nothingness where the driveway used to be, and it was like you had forgotten what joy even felt like. The tears would freeze halfway to the scarf and as you sank to your knees, almost willing yourself to die, you could almost hear your mother call to you. . .

"Fer Chrissakes Sam! It's two god damn inches! Now get off your ass and start shoveling!"

Oh, they'd be sorry alright. When they found you frozen to death after shoveling the entire driveway, they'd be sorry. Maybe you'd even shovel the road, too, since the whole town will freeze to death if you don't do it yourself, you know, so the fuel oil trucks can make it. Probably you'd have to shovel the whole world since adults are stupid with their dumb faces and nobody else could do it but you.

They'd build a statue to you, out of solid gold, right on the spot where you froze. Once every winter everyone would stay home and think about how wrong of them it was to make you do all that work by yourself.

"We're sorry!" Your mom would sob, staring at the statue. "If it wasn't for your constant selflessness, we would have frozen to death!" She throws herself at your statue's feet and starts groveling. You would look down at them from Heaven, and maybe, if you were feeling particularly generous after a day spent sledding with all of the Power Rangers (from all of the series at the same time), you'd feel sorry for them.

"Oh man, Jesus, aren't adults just useless?" You'd say to Jesus over a mug of hot coca and marshmallows. He'd laugh and high five you and then even give you a Christmas present early, since that's just the sort of dude an 8 year old imagines Jesus to be.

"Yeah but they seem pretty busted up. I've got a pair of rocket-powered angel wings if you want to go down there and talk to them." He'd say, idly doing sweet tricks on his skateboard. You started to imagine the things you'd say, floating in the air above them, when suddenly-

Oh, look. You finished already.

"See?" Your mom would say, hands on her hips. "It wasn't that hard, was it?"

Yes. You thought to yourself, glowering. But I'm too nice to tell you how hard it was.

This town is going to kill me, Part 1

2010-12-30T11:25:00.001-08:00

Yo mate, we're downtown. You coming to join us?

I wiped the aerosolized grease off of my phone's touchpad and furiously thumbed my way through a reply.

My boss has taken us out for dinner. We're eating bacon.

I pulled my sweatshirt tight around my body as the restaurant's matriarch slid open another window . There were twelve small fires going on in a dining room slightly smaller than your average bus, each of which was currently frying an absolutely godless amount of thick-cut juicy bacon. It was getting to the point where you could clear the air with a damp rag and some club soda, so the temporary blast of ball-shattering cold went a long way to help keep us horrible gluttons safe from the dreaded medical condition known only as Pork Lung.

For those of you that care, we were eating Samgyupsal and is absolute proof of the fact that God loves Korea best of all.

big ups to koreanbacon.com

So, when's that going to be? Jay's replied.

You know not to ask me stupid questions when I'm eating bacon. I threw a dab of spicy cabbage on top of the meat and spun it around the grill while Girl-Boss added garlic and someone else added green onions. There is a definite point in the night where you stop cooking and start doing culinary witchcraft.

Fair enough. Come round for a game of pool with Mojave and I, savvy? I formed a small pile of wilted onions and kimchi on a lettuce leaf, topped it with a sliver of garlic and a square of greasy bacon dipped in a mysterious spicy sauce. I took a bite and, for the absolute briefest of moments, understood the very nature of God himself.

Hours and pounds of sweaty meats later, and I found myself stumbling past the fountains and artificial river on the downtown strip, all frozen solid by the absolutely vicious Siberian winter gale.

Except for one.

Someone had very obviously broken the ice. No, that's not right. Someone had very obviously plummeted to their deaths from high orbit into the ice, leaving behind a seven-glacier-freeway-pileup that looked suspiciously like what would happen if Jupiter's moon Europa were taken to that torture-dungeon from Saw.

It's not like there were footprints leading from the frozen fountain to the bar right across the street, no, nothing so subtle. Instead, it looked like something had burst forth from beneath the ice and then attempted to drag the pool with it to go get a pint.

I consider it a testament to my unshakable Eagle-Scoutliness that my first thought wasn't "Hahahaha what a dumbass" but "Oh man someone is totally going to freeze to death", which actually would turn out to be completely true later on but that's getting beside the point.

So, I follow the ice to the club's door, up the stairs, and across the room, to a large puddle by the bar. Nobody standing around looked uncomfortably moist, bu-

"Hi!" The girl materialized out of thin air already attached to me like some sort of sprightly Asian lamprey. "Nice to meet you! What is your name?"

I got as far as "Sa" before she attacked my face with her mouth. She tasted like ash and breath mints. I pushed her away because oh god personal space, and she then settled into the lap of a mustachioed man in a three-piece suit, completely unphased.

I followed the greasy smear away from the bar, between the pool tables, to a bench at the far side of the bar, where a large puddle had dripped itself into existence beneath Mojave. He looked up at me with the largest, moistest, saddest eyes I have ever seen on a human person. If you threw a husky into Lake Michigan, then upturned several different soup tureens on it, and then scolded it for half an hour, those eyes would still pale in comparison to the heart-shattering pathos evoked by Mojave.

Not even close.

"Hey man, you alright?" I asked. He looked up at me and his lip started to quiver.

"Sam. . ." He emptied his sinus into a well-loved wad of tissue. "I'm drunk."

Never have so few words explained so much. I helped him up and carried him to the bathroom, where he managed to figure out how to use toilet tissue to dry his pants and shoes without my help. I walked back over to the pool table and found Jay currently engaged in a high-stakes game against a marine in a giraffe costume.

Really.

"It's about damn time you got here." Jay said, while utterly failing to make his shot. "'Ere, I got you a drink." He handed me a high-ball glass, took a sip, then handed it back to me. "Rum and coke, your favorite!"

"I can't help but notice that you seem to have just stolen it from that guy." I nodded to a nearby Marine currently attempting to force his tongue halfway up the Lamprey girl's sinuses. Jay stared for a moment.

"I don't think he minds." Jay said, sagely. "Besides that the bastard had it coming considering he's a FUCKING SORE LOSER!" He shouted, nearly tripping over his pool cue. The Marine didn't hear, or more likely, didn't care.

The man in the giraffe costume sunk two expert shots in a row before missing his shot on the 8 ball. Jay finished his drink, sank the 8 ball, and ignored three other balls still on the table by sheer force of English.

"That's enough of that, then. Get your shit together and let's get the fuck out of here." I stared at him from over the still zipped-up brim of my parka.

"Man, I just got here! I haven't had a chance to take my shit off yet!"

"I was talking to Mojave." He said, indicating the sentient hair-carpet who was currently sipping at the drink held casually by my waist.

"Hey, dude, could you hand me my scarf and gloves?" Sip sip. "They're over by the table." Siiiiiip.

I yanked my drink away and handed him a pile of soggy fabrics marinating in the beer-scuzz that oozes out of everything that spends too much time in a bar. Mojave draped his sweater around his neck, pocketed his gloves, and stared dumbfoundedly at the leather goggles in his possession.

"Whose are these?" He asked, scratching at his scalp.

"They were with your stuff." I said, always seeking to distance myself from petty theft.

"That means they're yours now!" Jay said exuberantly. "They go perfect with your explorer's outfit, Jules Verne, now can we get the piss out of here now? Please?"

"I haven't finished my drink yet, du-" Jay grabbed the glass out of my hand and downed it in a single swipe, poking himself in the eye with the straw at the same time.

"But. . . Rum!" You best believe I pouted.

As we were being herded out the front door, Jay grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed to Lamprey.

"Ey, dude, she's right proper fit. Ask her to join us." He squeezed my shoulder for equal parts encouragement and support. Physical support, not emotional. He leered back and forth like the floor declared open revolt against his shoes.

"Hey," I called out, suddenly realizing I didn't even know the girl's name. She looked up over the bald pate of the mustachioed man. "We're heading out to S-bar, come with us."

"Ah, fuck you!" She cried, flipping me off. She giggled and steadied herself against the bar. "Fucking motherfuckers!"

"Never let it be said that you are not an absolute master of seduction, sir." Jay said, putting more weight on my shoulder than on his feet.

"Big talk from a man who just got his ass beat by a cereal mascot." Mojave said, leaning against an imposingly black door that communicated quite clearly, without the use of any alphabet, that you were Not To Enter under any circumstances.

From somewhere within the bar, I heard the sound of Lamprey falling over. It was getting to be that sort of night.

Jay pushed himself off of my shoulder, walked over to Mojave, took a deep breath, and then half-fell half-ran down the steps, giggling like mad the entire way down.

"Oh that's just never a good sign." Mojave said, wringing the moisture out of his hat.

"It really, really isn't." And lo, this is where my troubles began.

With words I thought I'd never say, awake and unafraid, asleep, or dead.

2010-12-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

So I have had a shit of a weekend (post forthcoming) and as thanks for your nigh eternal patience here is a video site that. . . I don't even know, man.

English-language flash videos of kid's songs.

aaauuugh in addition to the seven posts I'm cooking, the graphic novels, the screenplays, and the story of my hellacious Giftmas Eve present exchange with co-workers, expect to see a huge ass-post about that site. Because, damn.

So anyway, here's a quick story: So, I have this new girl in one of my elementary classes, and like every girl, she is exceptionally quiet and soft spoken. I mean, she'll speak if I directly ask her a question, but will never raise her hand or volunteer an answer or even really participate in any of the games we play.

It's hard to make people feel welcome when they actively rebuff your hospitality, but what can I say. Let's call her Nancy.

As has been mentioned before, I give out candy like some kind of Anti-Tooth Fairy. Would that be a Tooth Imp? These are actual things I think about, but whatever. I like it because it keeps the kids engaged, and it gives me something to throw at the kids who aren't paying attention, and the kids like it because candy.

It can get to be a bit of a distraction when the kids fumble the catch and a massive fight over a one-cent bit of colored corn syrup erupts, but the kids have slowly improved their hand-eye coordination to the point where, unless I just miss completely, they can fumble-guide the candy to a rest in their lap.

Now, I wanted to illustrate how bad my kids are at catching things so I can give this next story a bit of gravitas; Nancy was sitting in front of Timmy, who has this awesome habit of answering questions I didn't even ask before I thought to ask them and is generally always willing to be right every time he opens his mouth.

As a sort of push to the other kids, I had tossed him maybe three candy in an hour. After finishing defending his thesis on what type of car would be best to eat if you were a dinosaur, I tossed him a candy.

That's when Nancy struck.

I didn't see her arm move so much as heard the snap, and then felt the gentle breeze as her hand punched through time and space itself, not to catch the candy, oh no. She removed it from it's trajectory, it was as if I had never thrown it to begin with.

Somewhere outside, a single flower bloomed, then fell off of a Rose of Sharon tree. The wind whistled in the distance. I knew I had to play it cool. One false move, and she'd unleash a fusillade of daggers and summon God knows what kind of mephistophelian trickery.

"Oh! Thank you, Teacher." She demurred. "Lemon is my favorite." Then, she smiled. I didn't look close enough, but if I had a mind to, I'm certain I'd have seen cat fangs.

My students are ninjas.

Just a friendly reminder

2010-12-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

So, I'm still here and I am still alive. I haven't posted in a week since I am currently working on two different posts, one of which requires actual research and the other one involving me getting photos off of my camera and uploading them to the Internet, which you should realize by now is just not something I ever do.

Anyway, I figured I'd just check in with a friendly reminder that, in the shadows of a national air-raid drill and the North vowing nuclear strikes, to please not concern yourselves with my safety. I have a grabsack ready and waiting by my door with my records intact, and given my life of Eaglescoutery I am more than capable of dragging myself and the human sandbags I work with to safety, even if they are kicking and screaming along the way.

But.

If something incredibly stupid happens, and for whatever reason I don't make it back, I thought I might let you know that I love and miss you all (except for Jermy Mikey Ernstawf, I mispelled his name so he'll never lose a job from this post, but someone needs to tell that dude he totally sucks) and while I don't regret this at all, maybe a year away from home was a little long.

So, yeah. Feel free to sell my garbage and tell my debtors to piss off, and if for whatever reason dying in the opening salvo of World War III wasn't enough to merit absolution, feel free to take the pearls of brilliant wisdom I've collected and sent to Spider for safekeeping and publish that shit. It'll sell faster than Freedom Cakes glazed with eagle tears.

When I am eventually canonized and a film is made about my life, make sure they get someone really handsome to play me. Not pretty-boy Ryan Reynolds pretty, go for someone who looks like they have had to strangle dog-sized NY subway rats in an open sewer while fighting off robot-bears. You know, that kind of pretty.

But anyway, super don't worry about it. I love you all and I will be home soon. Happy Holidays!

What's everybody staying still for?

2010-12-10T07:52:00.000-08:00

So I was drinking vodka with the Mongolian representative of NEAR, watching Christina Aguilera gyrate moistly on a St. Andrew's Cross, when he leaned over to me and said "I think, this woman looks like Catharine Zeta Jones, but her singing? It is like Celine Dion!" Which is just uncannily accurate if you ask me.
"Man, I would marry Catharine Zeta Jones!" I exclaimed, having fond memories of Chicago.
"Mmmm." He said, nodding solemnly. He gestured to the table of men sitting nearby. "I think, every man agree with you." We laughed.

"So, you are American, this woman," He gestured to the giant screen currently concealing the still-tuning stage band (The Happy Accidents, Pohang's best foreigner band). "You must know her, yes?" He said, leaning into me. After I took a few minutes to reconstruct his questions, I leaned back and shouted
"Yeah, it's Christina Aguilera." He stared at me like I just spat newts at him.
"What? But, she has blonde hair!"
"I guess she must have dyed it."
"Mmm, no." He shook his head. "She is still alive, I think."

It's not until several minutes later that I realize how strange it is that a Mongolian ambassador knows what hair color Christina Aguilera had back when she was, you know, famous.

Right! So, I was playing Pictionary with my kids, and I was drawing Mt. Rushmore. It's one of my favorite things to draw, since the kids are all familiar with it, but they don't know the proper name for it. I had girls shouting "FOUR PRESIDENTS MOUNTAIN!" and basically pulling their hair out, trying to get the correct combination of "mountain" and "president", or at least close enough that I'd toss them some candy.

I got them as close as "Mt Rush____", and kids at this point were just guessing random letters, when one kid stood up and commanded silence.
"Teacher, I think that is Mt. RUSH HOUR!" He shouted.

Yes. Just. . . Yes. That kid wins forever.

They never had anything nice to say, anyway.

2010-12-09T20:24:00.000-08:00

So one of the upsides to having only one day off a week is you get really good at combining vital weekend activities. Drinking and curry, drinking and shopping, drinking and airsoft, drinking and 5AM cheeseburgers, you get the idea.

I told you that to give you an idea of why it is exactly that I have a pink-and-purple stuffed dog-puppet named Poochy. And giant four-fingered animal paw-gloves. And the smiling effigy of a clay phallus. Okay, maybe I have a problem.

The face of regret.

Ever one to put my stupid impulses to good use, I made Poochy the mascot of my class, since puppets are awesome education tools. I have noticed a vast improvement in attentiveness ever since I brought her in, since she makes an awesome projectile should anyone stop paying attention. Also, the kids really get engaged whenever I have them put together sentences about Poochy ("I will turn Poochy into dog soup" is a really common one) and they even go out of their way to talk to Poochy during free time.

"Oh, Poochy! Do you like Teacher Sam?" They ask, shaking her violently. "Oh goodness! Do you want to. . . Kill Teacher Sam?" And then I get hit with a stuffed dog for five minutes straight.

Apparently at some point during my week's vacation, someone snuck into my classroom and stole Poochy, circulating her through the rest of the school, which means that I will now have kids I've never seen before run up to me and shout "POOCHY!", holding their hands out expectantly. This will come up again later.

So, yesterday, I got to work only to find that someone had pinched Poochy before I got to my classroom. I found her wrapped around the arm of a screaming maniac disguised as a 12 year old girl, who had taken it upon herself to draw the Seoul subway map over Poochy's face with a dry-erase marker.

I gently pried off the girl's death-claw grip, and took Poochy back to my classroom. I put her in my backpack by my desk, figuring that I could toss her in the wash when I got home.

I was at the far end of my classroom when two girls who, again, I have never seen before, barged into my room. They looked around, and not seeing Poochy on her normal perch, went right over to my backpack, opened it, and calmly walked off with Poochy.

Probably at this point I should assure you that I wasn't upset that someone took my toy, I was bothered at how she rooted through my backpack like it was no big deal. I keep important snacks in that backpack! Gotta protect the snacks.

So, I find the two girls wailing on each other in the hallway, using Poochy like a mace, which conjured up deeply traumatic memories of watching Toy Story as a child.

"Girls! Poochy is very sick, so she needs to go back to bed, okay?" I held my hand out, hoping that talk of plague would scare them off.

The girls looked at me, and swung Poochy right at my head. Thankfully, years of ultraviolent videogames have left me with the reflexes of a diabetic possum, so I was able to grab hold of her shortly after my glasses were knocked clean off my face.

The other girl grabbed my glasses and ran off down the hallway, while the one with Poochy lunged. I quickly lifted Poochy out of her reach, a classic technique to those familiar with the Mean Older Brother school of martial arts.

Never being one to surrender, the girl took a few steps back, and by the time I realized what she was doing, she took a running leap at Poochy, missed, but managed to wrap herself around my arm.

At that point, Bossman turned a corner, with my glasses in his hand. He quickly took stock of the scene before him.

"Sam. . ." He spoke slowly, like he was trying to parse what he was seeing. "Are you wrestling with a 12 year old over a stuffed dog?"

I knew that whatever I said would have a grand impact on the letter of recommendation I asked him to write me, so my mind burned, trying to think of the best possible excuse.

"She started it?"

I choose you, tortured Robert Frost metaphor

2010-12-08T05:29:00.001-08:00

Mini continues her crusade of crazy-ass insightful texts. I've been texting her about one of her friends who I think wants a peek at the Bear Cave, when she responds with "All I know is, you are good enough to be loved by other people."

Just, damn. That is some heavy shit. Speaking of heavy shit, the rest of this blog is going to be introspective and navel-gazy so watch out.

Edit:
Okay I just realized how lame all this shit is, and I realized I can explain it better by just posting this video and adding that this is the kind of future I want to avoid:

tl;dr: I am going home, but will continue Bearhatting. (original post continues below)

Anyway! So, a good friend of mine from University who reads this blog (HI RACHEL OGM) maintains that it is good to take a good hard look at your life every 6 months or so. I've been doing a lot of that lately, so I figured I'd share the results of that with you, my loving group of anonymous strangers.

Okay! So some of you may have noticed that the Ex-Pat blogosphere was recently devastated to learn that your handsome host has decided not to renew his job at Faceless Megacorporation LLC. This is due to a number of reasons, some of which I will expound upon in laborious detail.

Firstly, I Was Not Happy with my position. This has absolutely nothing to do with the people or the kids. My co-workers are an awesome lot and they really went out of their way to help me deal with the culture shock. Everything I didn't like about my job came almost directly from the fact that it is a corporate environment.

Basically it isn't a job I want to be doing in, say, 5 years. Or even 1 year. Or 5 months. But hey, the great thing about it is I totally don't have to if I don't want to! There will probably always be a demand for teachers, and now that I've got experience, I can hold out for contracts that don't give my boss the right to on-demand waterboarding. Here's to hoping!

Thinking about it long-term, there's just not a lot of growth potential there. The best case scenario would be something like starting my own academy, or getting a position at a local University, but absolutely nothing about that appeals to me right now. One of the things I actually like about my job is that it stays at school. I don't take shit home to grade, I don't have to prep lesson plans, nothing.

Also, I've realized that there are just fundamental differences between my style of teaching and what is expected here. The schools here put a HUGE emphasis on tests, and while I certainly can't argue with the results (South Korea has one of the best damn education rankings in the world), I question if this is an accurate reflection of the students' mastery of the material, or if this is just a side-effect of gearing your entire system to teach to the tests. Pretty sure the emphasis the families place on the importance of learning VASTLY outweighs any benefit these tests bring

Sure, on most days I have a classroom of 12 year olds who can converse in a second language, but the focus of all of these extra classes isn't to enrich their lives or impart a really useful skill, it's to help them pass the insane battery of tests they've got to deal with, both from my school and their public school. Mastering the material, developing their capacity for speech is just a secondary goal compared to raising test scores. It's assumed that if they do well on their tests, then that means they can speak well, and that's just a failure of logic so obvious I feel like I really shouldn't have to spell it out.

And that's not even discussing how damned stressed these kids get! The difference between doing well on tests and actual learning is VAST, and it frustrates me to no end that it's the one metric we have for measuring success. I mean, goddamn, I ranked in the 90th percentile in those stupid California Achievement Tests they made me take back in elementary school, and my best combined SAT score was north of 1500, but I still calculate tip by pelting my server with pocket change until they go away.

So if you haven't figured it out by now, no I will not be pursuing Education as a career path when I return home.

But, mostly, right now, I want to be doing Other Things. I realized I'm not getting my creative fix hanging out and playing video games with my friends anymore. I want to rent megaphones and spend and afternoon street-preaching tolerance and reading the Song of Solomon in New York. I want to start a Poetry Slam in Northampton, MA, and rock it so hard some of those Smith girls decide to give dudes a try.

I think I could really raise some Hell. Northampton strikes me as the sort of place where I could get wasted and start a political party called the Lunatic Fringe and have it gain actual support. I would like to try that.

I am finally finding my own, and as much as I am going to miss the friends I've made, I just don't belong here. Maybe things would be better in a bigger city, or if I spoke the language, or maybe I've just burned out on this one job, but you know what? Pohang isn't going anywhere. The world is a pretty huge place, and I'm going to go see some of it.

I'm not really worried about not having a five-year plan, or saving for retirement, or a house for the family I'll probably never have. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the life our parents lead probably just isn't going to happen for us, and that is totally okay. None of you wanted that, anyway, and you know it.

It's probably time to realize that the Baby Boomers were a fluke, and that an eternal march of atomic families isn't really how society works. Which is good because, honestly, we haven't got the resources to support it, but if you want to hear about that kind of nonsense you can go check out my co-worker's blog.

So this is my formal rejection of a society that defines a career in terms of suits and cubicles, that values money more than personal time, and who defines success by transforming the limited number of days you have left in your one life into bigger versions of shit you didn't need in the first place. I will, as I have always done so before, make my own path and pray it doesn't end up with me frozen to death by the side of the road.

Never let love paralyze you

2010-12-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

Ringo has recently taken a shine to a Korean girl by the name of Mini. She's a local university student who has a creepy-awesome grasp of the English language despite the fact that she's only taken a year of it so far.

She's got a real solid grasp of the concrete and is able to keep up with our conversations, even when we start getting weirdly argumentative about esoteric shit (Mojave lost a tooth last week when we started arguing about the harpsichord) but she has difficulty with idioms, and the fact that Ringo doesn't speak English so much as regurgitate a thick, cud-like drawl.

I mean, goddamn, there are times when even *I* don't understand what he says.

So I've taken to acting like an intermediary between the two of them, which is awesome since it means I get in good with Mini's cute friends.

Like tonight, Ringo was pouring out soju for everyone, but Mini objected after her glass had been filled.

"Oh!" She said, feigning offense. "You are too busy chewing gum to listen to me!"
"Yeh don't quit 'alfway through th' race." He said, stoically. There was a quiet moment of supreme consideration as the assembled crowd realized nobody understood a damn thing that had been said.

After an intense pow-wow with Mini's friend, I relayed to Ringo that "chewing gum" is a play on the Korean word for "ignore", and in turn relayed to Mini that Ringo lacked the ability to siphon liquid back into a container by sheer force of will.

Well that's not really what happened, but it illustrates the point well enough for the story I'm about to tell you:

So, the whole mottled lot of us, plus a group of Mini's friends, were at this Korean pub, sucking down kimchi stew and honeyed rice-wine like it was going out of style. Ringo was embroiled in a soju-drinking contest with Mini, when he staggered off to go release the pneumatic pressure on his expulsion chamber, if you get the innuendo.

Mini leans over to me, and slurs "Sam! I have a question for you." She pulls out her cellphone and flips to one of the text messages he'd sent to her. "What does 'carpe diem' mean?" She pointed to her screen.
"Well," I said, collecting myself out of the bottom of my glass. "It means, 'seize the day'. You know?" She shook her head. "It means go and attack the day. Take the day, and do good things with it. Do you understand?"

She pursed her lips and looked at her phone again. "Seize the day? Yeah, I think I can understand." Then she went back to telling her friend about how handsome I am and how I once deadlifted two bears fighting over a steak or something and how I would make a totally good boyfriend so go talk to him and leave me and Ringo alone kthxbai.

Man don't even pretend like I didn't lift those bears.

So anyway, things progress to the point where I start sillywalking in the middle of the street and accusing the moon of whale-buggery, so we all decided to call it a night.

As Ringo and I fall over each other in the screaming thrill ride that are Korean taxis, my phone starts going off.

"Eh, izzat me then?"
"Nah mate, it's me." I pull it out of my pocket, and flip it open. It's a message from Mini, thanking me for the lesson tonight.
"Eh, wot the 'ell mate. Thought I were the one teachin' 'er."
"Man you hardly even speak English on a good day, you were going to give her that lesson on gargling spotted dick or whatever you Northern bastards eat."
"Damn straight I am!" He laughed. "Eh, mate, I think yer pickin' up Jay's 'abits and racisms against us Northern English fol-" Thankfully, he was interrupted by a second message hitting my phone like the world's least impressive car crash. I take a glance, shake my head, take a second glance, and show it to Ringo. We both bust out laughing.

And don't forget, siege the day!

I think I like her version better.

The beginning of the end

2010-12-02T21:51:00.000-08:00

This week marks the first week in the last term at my current job. But, fear not Bearhatters! I have a backlog of stuff to post that will last me until I find something comparably interesting that doesn't also land me in the middle of a war zone.

PROGRESS.

So, new students! I have a few old favorites, including Cody and Tribble, who are still dedicated to spending the entire class gossiping about goddamned everything except the class topic.

When they saw that I was their teacher, they started giggling and making a nuisance of themselves in that way that only preteen girls can.

"Oh hello handsome teacher!" Cody beamed at me. "I am glad to be in your class again! Adams-teacher is very mean and never gives candy." She says, looking at my desk for the box of candy that I left at home that day.
"But I think he is more handsome than you." Tribble said haughtily. I pointed to her desk and rolled my eyes.

Just at that time, Adams popped his head in to my classroom, probably to ask me to stop being so damn awesome. He opens his mouth to speak, when Tribble and Cody interrupt him by squealing and generally just being intolerably girly.

"Oh hello Mr. Handsome Teacher!" Cody yelled, despite Tribble trying to silence her. "Tribble loves you!" At that point, Tribble shouts something in Korean, and they both fall to the ground, wrestling.

He asked me a few questions about this poetry slam I am hosting later that week (aka THE DAY OF THIS POSTING oh god oh god), pointedly ignoring the cat fight in the corner of class.

"Teachers!" Cody shouts, setting her chair upright. "So, who of you is most handsome?" She asked.
"Oh, obviously Teacher Sam." Adams says, one foot out the door.
"But! His beard is not as impressive as your beard!" Tribble whined. "So, I think you are most handsome."
"Yes, but Teacher Sam gives you grades, so he is more handsome." He ducked out of the room quickly, leaving a silence behind him.

"You know, I've always thought you were handsome, Teac-"
"Dig faster, Tribble."

Later that week, I was talking to my younger kids about the next Harry Potter movie (shut up) and how I was really excited to go to the midnight premier (don't judge me). This class, I've taught every student at least once before. There is one exception, a really quiet girl who spent some time in America and has an excellent command of the language that she just never put to good use. She's nice enough and really seemed to get a kick out of my terrible jokes, which is how I generally build rapport. Given that she was smart and quiet, I figured she was also nice, since most of the smart and quiet girls I've taught also happen to be really nice.

Space Marine raised his hand.
"Teacher, will you cosplay?" He asked.
"Probably!" I wasn't actually planning on it, but I figured the kids would get a kick out of that mental image. "I was going to dress up like-"
"Fat Harry Potter?" The girl asked, completely innocently.
I was struck speechless. Who was this girl? This mysterious, silent character assassin? She grinned like a cat while the class exploded around her. Had the other girls gotten to her already? Turned her against me? Filled her head with malice and brambles?

I was consumed by paranoia for a moment, before I remembered that the girl is like 12 and therefore nothing she says or does matters.

Phew, that was close for a moment.

Let's talk about North Korea.

2010-11-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

So if for any reason I ever request permission to enter North Korea (which you do from their one embassy in Beijing) this post will get me denied, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, it'll get me denied and a poison pencil driven right through my cornea.

But enough about that. I know that things are tense, and that a lot of you are worried, but you really don't need to fear. I've got a bag packed with my papers and some supplies ready to go in case of an emergency, I've got a portable radio and extra batteries, and Pohang is far enough out that I'd be able to get to the evacuation center before anything too bad happens. Probably.

The State Department knows who I am and how to get a hold of me. As both a teacher AND a blogger of note, I'd clearly be whisked aboard one of those posh military cargo planes and dumped on some island resort to wait out the hostilities and then the inevitable fallout, both of the socio-economic sort that tends to happen shortly after the liberation of several million starved and oppressed people, and of course the radioactive variety.

So, Mom, please stop worrying. I'll be fine.

But enough levity. There's a lot of armchair warhawking and punditry flying around about how Kim Jong-Il is a bouffanted madman with his finger readily scratching at the Big Red Button. This is just stupid, for reasons that should be obvious but will be discussed at length later. If you're talking to someone and it sounds like they've taken their opinions on the man whole cloth from Team America: World Police, you can safely punch that person in the dick. You will be doing me a favor (as my arms are short).

North Korea is a strange place that rejects foreign study on several ideological levels, so anyone attempting to say that North Korea does this, or that North Koreans all think that, is more wrong than right.

The problem with talking about the conditions in North Korea is that nobody has a goddamned clue what's going on. Especially if they're on TV.

I've got some videos and even a first-hand trip into the country to share with you, but first some background information on the country:

So, the first and most important thing you need to know about modern Korean history is that the Japanese are dicks. HUGE dicks. They invaded during 1910 and spent the next 35 years basically trying to force the Japanese way of life upon the Korean people, including things like establishing Shinto shrines and forcing people to adopt Japanese family names.

This is generally regarded as a dark time for everyone, and it is impossible to travel around Korea without reading about how temple such-and-such was razed during the occupation, or how the Japanese drove an iron spike into the easternmost part of the country to try and kill the Tiger spirit that protects Korea (I am not kidding about that last part).

Anyway! Once Uncle Sam kicked the Japanese back home, the peninsula was divided in half, the Southern bit to be administrated by the US, whereas the Soviet Union took over the North. This is where Kim Il-Sung first rose to power. You've probably heard that name before, he is kind of a big deal.

Well, after the US withdrew their forces in 1949, Stalin and Mao pledged their support for a Communist takeover of the rest of the peninsula, and the Korean War started. Spoiler alert: It didn't end well.

It didn't end SO well, that North and South Korea are still technically at war. Major fighting ended with the signing of an armistice, not a peace treaty. The main difference being that peace treaties don't end by filling miles and miles of pristine wilderness with ALL OF THE LANDMINES.

Anyway, after that the North basically went into lockdown, had a famine, killed a bunch of people for whatever reason invasive governments do, made some nuclear weapons, had talks to disarm said weapons, dropped out of said talks, killed a bunch of South Koreans, and shipped a shitton of heroin into Australia since you don't live surrounded by the deadliest versions of everything on Earth unless you've got some fine Chosun smack running through your veins.

But that's just history. The two main philosophies that (probably) influence North Korean activities are the Juche Idea and the Songun Policy.

The Juche Idea basically translates to the mindset that the Korean people should reject outside influence and develop an internally secure economy. Basically, that they should seek Korean self-sufficiency above all things.

One side-effect of the institutionalization of the Juche Idea was the Chollima Movement, a bootstrappy five-year plan designed to solidify the country's industrialization via rapid expansion. In this case, it would expand as quickly as Chollima the winged horse could fly.

So, economically, you're dealing with a country who has spent the last 70 years attempting to force itself to be self-sufficient, while dealing with constant famine conditions and ever-decreasing aid shipments coming in from outside countries. But, if they curtail their industrialization efforts to allocate more resources to agriculture than they run afoul of another guiding philosophy, Songun.

Songun is what happens when the Military-Industrial complex stops fucking around. Imagine what would happen if the CEO of Blackwater got to set up shop in Washington and start dictating policy. . . More than they do already. Anyway! That's what that is, and it is Bad News Bears.

Songun roughly translates to "military first". In order to keep North Korea safe from outside influence, Kim Sung-Il curried favor with his generals with plenty of cutting-edge (at the time) soviet hardware and choice heavy industry plants.

However, throwing that much social and economic support behind the military means that the top generals in North Korea now command more political clout than Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, who currently sits at the center of a hereditary cult of personality. So, you've got a man who is purported to be able to control the weather having to placate the top generals or risk internal strife that would damage the cult of his support, or even worse, an outright coup.

So, even if Kim didn't want war, even if he wanted to step down and re-integrate the North and South, if his generals refused to abdicate their positions, there's nothing he could do without revealing that the core tenants of NK's propaganda, that he's basically Superman, are a load of bullshit.

Basically, he's stuck between the People's Righteous Stone of Triumph and the Universal Hard Place of Glorious Revolution.

But, that ignores the fact that conditions in North Korea are deplorable beyond anything you can possibly imagine.

Here is one tourist's trip into the North, and it's absolutely one of the best windows into the national mindset.

Did you see this part, where he talks to a worker at the Tower of the Juche Idea and answers a few questions about life aboard, and she is just blown away at how wrong everything she thought she knew was? The tour guides probably reported that woman. She was probably imprisoned, tortured, interrogated, and then sent to a work camp.

Wait, no, that would be any other paranoid dictatorship. See, in North Korea, when you fuck up, your entire family is labeled as counter-revolutionary, and everyone is summarily kicked out of Pyongyang and sent to a forced labor farm. That's probably what happened to the family of the woman collecting grass in one of those videos I linked earlier.

So, the question inevitably comes to "What can we do to help these people?" If we send them food, then Kim can spin it like the hedgemonic forces of the West are kowtowing to the might of the Chosun Juche worker's blah blah blah you get the idea. If we don't, then people die faster. We can't start a revolution, anyone spreading dissent is black-bagged and never seen again.

Inevitably some ass-headed knuckle-dragger whose ideas of diplomacy are lifted straight from the Call of Duty franchise will suggest that we attack the North, which you should realize by now is stupid on a tectonic scale. Allow me to demonstrate why this is a bad idea:

Do you see that huge blob of light to the left of center? That's the Seoul-Incheon metropolitan area. Do you see that huge swath of blackness north of that? That is North Korea. If anything serious happens, Seoul and Incheon will be utterly demolished. If we're lucky, it'll be with conventional explosives and not nuclear weapons. There will be civilian casualties on a scale not seen since World War II.

If we invade North Korea, China and Russia will make damn sure that Western powers don't expand their foothold in the region. We can not attack.

As it is, China is holding North Korea on a ballistic leash. They have stated that they will not fund a second invasion, and they're the ones currently supplying the country with food and oil. They're even pushing for another round of diplomatic meetings to make sure shit doesn't boil over.

If we attack, that diplomacy goes out the window. Millions will die. An entire country will be reduced to smoking rubble.

North Korea itself has several million soldiers, all of them having spent a lifetime being indoctrinated in the idea that Korea is the last bastion of civilization in a mad world. Can you imagine someone like that ever surrendering?

America is having enough trouble winning hearts and minds from the Taliban. North Korean soldiers might be underfed and their equipment might be outdated, but don't even for a second think to second-guess their tenacity.

Kim Jong-Il might be a madman, and maybe most North Koreans realize that something is wrong with the way he runs things, but this is their home. If war breaks out, he's going to end up looking like the good guy no matter what we do.

You don't convince your neighbor his political ideas are assheaded by burning his house down. Likewise, you don't demonstrate the glory of democracy by bombing the fuck out of scared and starving peasants.

And, shit, what would happen if we won? There are schools in Japan and South Korea that work tirelessly to de-program refugees, imagine having to deal with the psychic trauma of several million who just saw Western Imperialists kill their god. At the least, mass suicides would become commonplace, we'd see hardcore pockets of armed resistance lead by some third cousin of the Kim family waging guerrilla actions from remote areas, I cannot even begin to try to guess what would happen. It would be a catastrophe on a scale I frankly don't think we can even begin to comprehend.

So let's just all settle down on the gung-ho warmongering, okay?

Oh dear.

2010-11-23T02:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40329037/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

Shit.

And here's video.