OH WAIT!
First I have an almost funny story. So I was finishing up a run on Monday and I had just turned on to my street and I hear some redneck woman sitting on her front lawn because presumably her house was too full of Stupid and Bud Light Lime so she had to air it out for a few hours before she choked on her own failure fumes.
She yells out to me, "Hey! Nice shorts!" in this way that's like, "haha! I bet you don't even realize how ridiculous you look!"
And I wish I could calmly sit down and explain to people like this that I've been hearing these comments for over six years. Am I embarrassed by exercising while your lower back fat is slowly eating you alive? Am I embarrassed by the fact that my life has been solidly progressing while yours has been in a miserable downward spiral since you graduated high school? Am I embarrassed by the fact that you are saying the same kinds of things that small children who need to be kept on leashes say to me? No. Not really. Yes, my shorts are short. But is that really as ridiculous as your complete and total ignorance of the world around you? All I'm saying is that I get way more satisfaction from the fact that you're mocking an action that could keep you from drinking yourself to sleep at night and walking around in a bitter, pathetic stupor all the time than the brief joy you might get from seeing a person wearing short shorts. You're like a child with a crap filled diaper squealing in delight while watching a dog licking its own butt.
Did I just compare myself to a dog licking its own butt? Yes. But at least I'm the clean one in that scenario!
Wait...where was I?
Oh yeah. So she made that comment and then I ran to the end of the street and I didn't say anything because they aren't worth a response. But, it didn't end there because before the run started I had already planned on doing a second smaller loop. So that meant I had to run down to the end of my street again and run back, again.
And I decided there was no way this person was keeping me from doing what I planned. So I run down to the end of my street and she's calling out to me, "Wooo! heyy!! Wooooo! Yeah!" She's trying to wolf-whistle but she can't really do it so she's just sort of vocalizing it. It was weird. The loop was really short so I come back to my street about five minutes later and I prepare myself for it and I'm thinking about giving her the finger but I'm not hearing anything. I look over to the yard and see a police cruiser parked right in front of the house. The woman and the other people in the yard are totally silent.
YES! VICTORY FOR ME! I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with me. But at the time it seemed so perfect and just. Simply a wonderful moment. I hope it was something ridiculous, too. Like one of her little children found a dead squirrel and stuck a cherry bomb in it and the neighbors called the cops. Or that they were just arrested by an entire South American nation for whatever reason a nation could want to arrest them. "Yeah, Bolivia wants you in jail. That's right, the whole country. They can't stand it anymore, they want to put you in a pit filled with spiders, cover you with maple syrup and see what happens. There's no law that says they can do it, BUT there's no law that says they can't NOT do it. So, get in the car."
______________________________________________________________________
Anyway, this guy at work was asking me about my stand-up today and wanted me to talk about it and I didn't really have anything to say. I'm not sure how to describe it really. It's kind of absurd, I guess. Just telling stories of things I find funny and I try to add little flourishes where I can. Like, that story you might have just read seemed pretty typical for me. Whatever you would call that, that's probably what I do. Probably a little less righteously angry.
But what I really discovered while taking to this guy are the two reasons I could never talk comedy or jokes with him. And those reasons are 1. He's older than me, and 2. He's a funnier person than I am. I've never been the kind of person who can deliberately make someone older than me laugh in a conversation. On a stage, maybe. There's enough of an atmosphere and the environment is conducive enough and I've prepared. But I've never been good at talking with people older than me. Can't be witty around them. I don't know why. I've been told many a time that I look young for my age so maybe that has something to do with it. I just kind of automatically assume that lesser, listening role. If someone is younger than me though. I'll talk their ear off. I'll riff and go on and off and everywhere. I'll carry on like I'm the king of the world. But if the person is older than me and they can sense it and I can sense it, it's done. They'll stone-face me every time. Don't know why. I've given up trying. The good news is that I am almost guaranteed to get progressively funnier as I get older.
The other reason is that he's simply a funnier person than me. Conversation-wise, at least. One thing I've learned is that there's a big difference between being a funny person and being funny on stage. Being funny on stage takes a certain amount of preparation and writing and...craziness. I don't know. You kinda have to be able to talk to yourself. Which I did all the time as a kid. I was a weird kid. These other funny people obviously grew up socializing with other children (a sure downfall for any aspiring comedian). So some of the funniest off-the-cuff story-tellers I know can't do squat on a stage. They fall apart. I don't know why. Maybe they need to feed off reactions. It's a different dynamic somehow. But this guy is like that. Anything will send him on a pretty funny story/rant. He's got the confidence. And I'm not stealing the confidence from him anytime soon. So I already know that anything I say is just not going to stick. It's kinda the same thing with my dad. He's older than me (duh.) and he likes to joke around. He's a funny guy. So my weird little story things aren't going to hold his attention...
I could try the MRATHA poem. That's funny to anyone...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Mighty Bucket of Pants
In case you haven't noticed, I created this character, Slim Pickens. If it hasn't been made clear already, the whole idea behind him is based off the lettering I saw on a carton of almond milk I received for my birthday.
Here's a little mini-story I wrote just now in my brain.
A group of children are sitting around a lunch table. One says, "Did you guys know that God is dead?"
"You're not supposed to say God is dead!" says another.
Slim Pickens bursts out of a dolphin-shaped pinata hanging above the table and says, "Children! Use your high fructose corn syrup rich beverages to drown out this evil Mighty Bucket of Pants chasing me across time and space! Ahhh!"
A bucket of pants emerges from the shredded remains of the pinata and growls menacingly.
Slim Pickens steps back, horrified. "If you don't cover me in Mountain Dew, we're all gonna be butt deep in molten denim!"
Slim Pickens grabs a soda from a child, heaves it at the bucket of pants then launches himself onto the soon-to-be-exploderated trans-dimensional bucket-demon. He yells, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!" and a blinding flash of light fills the room.
Slim Pickens, the bucket, and the pinata have all disappeared. A child gently vomits up his chocolate milk.
___________________________________________________________________________
Here's a little mini-story I wrote just now in my brain.
A group of children are sitting around a lunch table. One says, "Did you guys know that God is dead?"
"You're not supposed to say God is dead!" says another.
Slim Pickens bursts out of a dolphin-shaped pinata hanging above the table and says, "Children! Use your high fructose corn syrup rich beverages to drown out this evil Mighty Bucket of Pants chasing me across time and space! Ahhh!"
A bucket of pants emerges from the shredded remains of the pinata and growls menacingly.
Slim Pickens steps back, horrified. "If you don't cover me in Mountain Dew, we're all gonna be butt deep in molten denim!"
Slim Pickens grabs a soda from a child, heaves it at the bucket of pants then launches himself onto the soon-to-be-exploderated trans-dimensional bucket-demon. He yells, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!" and a blinding flash of light fills the room.
Slim Pickens, the bucket, and the pinata have all disappeared. A child gently vomits up his chocolate milk.
___________________________________________________________________________
Triumphs Again!
And we triumphed once so we will triumph again
under the eyes of of the silver-suited moon men.
No matter which slides or ladders we take,
we can only go up to the land of melted birthday cake.
Ducks on fire and chimps on parade,
red hot wire in the afternoon shade.
By the breezy willow trees we will make merry and rejoice
the coming of the dogs in red hats, the many-buttoned sailors, the clouds of rainbow steam from misty archipelagos, and the xylophone man with the gold-threaded voice.
In times to come and later days,
the little giraffes will sing our praise
from modest leaves on which they prance,
strange, obscure, in a lost expanse.
Weirdness. Wonderful weirdness. Wonderful lonely stews of bubbling nonsense
diligently marching to the beat of a drunken pile of laundry.
Only a lack of hats and haircuts will keep us warm
as we press on to a spot, a bubble, a place, a refuge, a tree that grows in and out and all around.
Wrangling the strange in a strange wrangle-dangle
and finding the points and the lines and the angles
maybe we'll make something honest and good
like a wild west wrestler, fig-newton Jesus would.
under the eyes of of the silver-suited moon men.
No matter which slides or ladders we take,
we can only go up to the land of melted birthday cake.
Ducks on fire and chimps on parade,
red hot wire in the afternoon shade.
By the breezy willow trees we will make merry and rejoice
the coming of the dogs in red hats, the many-buttoned sailors, the clouds of rainbow steam from misty archipelagos, and the xylophone man with the gold-threaded voice.
In times to come and later days,
the little giraffes will sing our praise
from modest leaves on which they prance,
strange, obscure, in a lost expanse.
Weirdness. Wonderful weirdness. Wonderful lonely stews of bubbling nonsense
diligently marching to the beat of a drunken pile of laundry.
Only a lack of hats and haircuts will keep us warm
as we press on to a spot, a bubble, a place, a refuge, a tree that grows in and out and all around.
Wrangling the strange in a strange wrangle-dangle
and finding the points and the lines and the angles
maybe we'll make something honest and good
like a wild west wrestler, fig-newton Jesus would.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Wallowing in Frivolity
One thing I was thinking about today on my run was how easy it is to think about things that bother me. That idea bothered me though. That's not good. That's not how you should live your life. I've started trying to do this thing where I focus on the positive. Positive thinking. If you can find the positive and fuel yourself on positive energy, nothing can stop you. They might as well hand you the heavyweight championship belt right now. It will save you the trouble of having to positive think yourself to being six inches taller and one hundred fifty pounds heavier. I truly believe that with the power of positive thinking I could train a squirrel to go into a pregnant woman's uterus and remove the umbilical chord that is strangling her baby to death. Nothing could stop me. I could heat up a boiling pot of water and touch it and be like, "I don't think this is very hot at all."
The problem with positive thinking is that I'm not very good at it. Or rather, I'm not very compatible with it. Getting back to earlier today, when I was running I saw some billowy clouds off in the distance. You know when the clouds get all big and billowy and they kinda look like this magical kingdom in the sky that has free bicycles and lots of really great places to buy fresh produce? That, to me, is like positive thinking. You can see it and identify it but it's this ephemeral thing that's off in the distance. You can't touch it or experience it in any other way. It's this thing that I watch and understand but can't feeling any connection to, like how I feel about volunteer work.
And the problem with things that bother me is that I can squeeze 'em and stretch 'em and roll them into a ball and throw them against the window and watch them slowly ooze down to the floor. They're amazing. You can spend hours just messing around with the things that bother you. You can share it with friends. Negative thinking is like holding a severed old man's foot. You can't believe how disgusting it is yet it fits so well in your hand. And the more you squeeze it and bash it against pianos and stuff, the more nastiness comes out. It's a vicious cycle of fantastical grossness and the whole time you're like, "I can't believe how gross this old man foot is! Ohhhhhhhh! I'm still holding it! The curve of the arch fits so well in my palm! I turn it upside down and orange stuff comes out! What is that?! It's got layers in the back here that just keep peeling off like an onion. It smells like and feels like cold possum-barbecue meat marinated in pond scum!"
So, I guess what I'm wishing for is that at some point in the land of severed old man feet and rotting fruit, I find a communicator wrist-watch that controls a giant robot in the land of the clouds that I can fly away in and go to a place with lots of orange juice and colorful clothing in the sun.
The problem with positive thinking is that I'm not very good at it. Or rather, I'm not very compatible with it. Getting back to earlier today, when I was running I saw some billowy clouds off in the distance. You know when the clouds get all big and billowy and they kinda look like this magical kingdom in the sky that has free bicycles and lots of really great places to buy fresh produce? That, to me, is like positive thinking. You can see it and identify it but it's this ephemeral thing that's off in the distance. You can't touch it or experience it in any other way. It's this thing that I watch and understand but can't feeling any connection to, like how I feel about volunteer work.
And the problem with things that bother me is that I can squeeze 'em and stretch 'em and roll them into a ball and throw them against the window and watch them slowly ooze down to the floor. They're amazing. You can spend hours just messing around with the things that bother you. You can share it with friends. Negative thinking is like holding a severed old man's foot. You can't believe how disgusting it is yet it fits so well in your hand. And the more you squeeze it and bash it against pianos and stuff, the more nastiness comes out. It's a vicious cycle of fantastical grossness and the whole time you're like, "I can't believe how gross this old man foot is! Ohhhhhhhh! I'm still holding it! The curve of the arch fits so well in my palm! I turn it upside down and orange stuff comes out! What is that?! It's got layers in the back here that just keep peeling off like an onion. It smells like and feels like cold possum-barbecue meat marinated in pond scum!"
So, I guess what I'm wishing for is that at some point in the land of severed old man feet and rotting fruit, I find a communicator wrist-watch that controls a giant robot in the land of the clouds that I can fly away in and go to a place with lots of orange juice and colorful clothing in the sun.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Elves in June
So yesterday, I started my day like most days.
I woke up and said to myself, "Andy...would you punch one hundred terminal illness clowns in the face to be able to sleep in today and do absolutely nothing?"
And what came out was a faint muffled whir. But that's because my head was buried in the pillow. What I was trying to scream was, "YEEEEESSSSS!!!"
So then I got up, ran 3 miles, ate breakfast, went to work.
About half an hour after I get there, I'm on the playground. I stand up and something deep within my lower left abdomen said, "Oh ho ho ho, I heard what you said about those clowns. Get ready for, MODERATE TO SEVERE ABDOMINAL PAIN!"
It was bad. I was hobbling around. My face went pale. I had trouble breathing and/or shouting at kids to stop running in the mulch. But going home would've meant missing out on a whole day's worth of money! Sweet sweet paycheck! So I try to tough it out but after a couple of hours of me dragging my butt around from activity to snack to free time to activity again, I knew I was done for the day.
SIDE NOTE: STILL TOTALLY CRUSHED EVERYONE IN BUMPER POOL!
So I leave before lunch and get home and see my sister and say, "I'M GONNA DIE! GET PEPTO-BISMOL!" So right away, without question, she gets in her car and goes to get some Pepto. I lay out on the couch and start looking up Pepto-Bismol and realize it's probably not going to help me at all. I also look up possible explanations for lower left abdominal pain and the third possibility on the first website was ectopic pregnancy.
My sister gets back and I yell, "Erin! Nevermind the pepto! I need laxatives! Also, I'm ectopic pregnant!"
Which is a pretty remarkable sentence to create at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday but she sighs and goes "...how many?" She was actually going to turn around and get me laxatives. And pretty much ignored the ectopic pregnancy part.
But anyway, I go downstairs to put on sick-day pants and almost make it to my closet when I decide that it's much more important for me to just lay on my bed with no pants on. I stay like that for about five, ten, one hundred minutes, put on pants and crawl back upstairs to find that my sister...is gone.
So I call her and I'm like, "YOU LEFT ME!?!"
And she's like, "I wanted to go running!" (in 90 degree heat in the middle of the day) "I yelled to you when I left" (to which I am sure she got no response from me).
Before this happened my sister was looking pretty good. Then she left someone who could barely walk to go run in heat advisory conditions only 30 minutes after eating breakfast. What was her excuse to leave, "Well, I yelled something at you in your room and didn't hear anything so I figured it was okay to go."
Having been abandoned by my only sibling, I decided it was time to get serious and call my mom. We talk, she suggests I don't get laxatives (I'm pretty certain at this point that there is something in me that needs to be out of me) and drink coffee instead. Well, I can't stand coffee so I make hot chocolate and drink that.
And the sad thing is--it totally worked. Within 10 minutes, I felt my body temperature rise, I hunched over one knee really tight, and I felt things shift around. I sat up and the pain was completely gone. Nothing came out. It just shifted.
So I'm relieved. But my first concern is-- I need to come up with a way better story than this for work tomorrow. I took over half the day off and when they ask what happened when I went home, I'm gonna have to say, 'Well! I drank some hot chocolate and then my tum-tum felt all better! Guess I just needed some hot chocolate!'
And they should rightly fire me on the spot. This isn't Santa's workshop. I'm not elf--fueled by christmas cheer, candy canes, and delicious hot cocoa. My crippling pain was the result of shortage of hot chocolate in my system. That makes me just barely better than a doll that cries and pees.
So I made up a story about my mighty bowel movement that was as black as night and thick as the horn of the bull rhinoceros. The pipes trembled under its density and the foundation of the house shifted three inches to the left. The local news ran a story about a sudden change in the migratory patterns of some birds. Some would say that's unrelated: I THINK NOT!
I bring a story like that back the next day and nobody's gonna be doubting my integrity. Even little kids aren't taken seriously when they are in want of hot chocolate. But NOBODY questions the seriousness of a for-real-deal Number Two.
That's life. That's the modern working world we live in. I'm sorry for the poop story but that's what it had to be if I wanted to survive. So no, I'm not sorry. Blame yourselves!
Also, my sister later came home and I told her that I was going to die but out of sheer spite of her neglect I willed my hate into life-fuel and raged the pain away.
I woke up and said to myself, "Andy...would you punch one hundred terminal illness clowns in the face to be able to sleep in today and do absolutely nothing?"
And what came out was a faint muffled whir. But that's because my head was buried in the pillow. What I was trying to scream was, "YEEEEESSSSS!!!"
So then I got up, ran 3 miles, ate breakfast, went to work.
About half an hour after I get there, I'm on the playground. I stand up and something deep within my lower left abdomen said, "Oh ho ho ho, I heard what you said about those clowns. Get ready for, MODERATE TO SEVERE ABDOMINAL PAIN!"
It was bad. I was hobbling around. My face went pale. I had trouble breathing and/or shouting at kids to stop running in the mulch. But going home would've meant missing out on a whole day's worth of money! Sweet sweet paycheck! So I try to tough it out but after a couple of hours of me dragging my butt around from activity to snack to free time to activity again, I knew I was done for the day.
SIDE NOTE: STILL TOTALLY CRUSHED EVERYONE IN BUMPER POOL!
So I leave before lunch and get home and see my sister and say, "I'M GONNA DIE! GET PEPTO-BISMOL!" So right away, without question, she gets in her car and goes to get some Pepto. I lay out on the couch and start looking up Pepto-Bismol and realize it's probably not going to help me at all. I also look up possible explanations for lower left abdominal pain and the third possibility on the first website was ectopic pregnancy.
My sister gets back and I yell, "Erin! Nevermind the pepto! I need laxatives! Also, I'm ectopic pregnant!"
Which is a pretty remarkable sentence to create at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday but she sighs and goes "...how many?" She was actually going to turn around and get me laxatives. And pretty much ignored the ectopic pregnancy part.
But anyway, I go downstairs to put on sick-day pants and almost make it to my closet when I decide that it's much more important for me to just lay on my bed with no pants on. I stay like that for about five, ten, one hundred minutes, put on pants and crawl back upstairs to find that my sister...is gone.
So I call her and I'm like, "YOU LEFT ME!?!"
And she's like, "I wanted to go running!" (in 90 degree heat in the middle of the day) "I yelled to you when I left" (to which I am sure she got no response from me).
Before this happened my sister was looking pretty good. Then she left someone who could barely walk to go run in heat advisory conditions only 30 minutes after eating breakfast. What was her excuse to leave, "Well, I yelled something at you in your room and didn't hear anything so I figured it was okay to go."
Having been abandoned by my only sibling, I decided it was time to get serious and call my mom. We talk, she suggests I don't get laxatives (I'm pretty certain at this point that there is something in me that needs to be out of me) and drink coffee instead. Well, I can't stand coffee so I make hot chocolate and drink that.
And the sad thing is--it totally worked. Within 10 minutes, I felt my body temperature rise, I hunched over one knee really tight, and I felt things shift around. I sat up and the pain was completely gone. Nothing came out. It just shifted.
So I'm relieved. But my first concern is-- I need to come up with a way better story than this for work tomorrow. I took over half the day off and when they ask what happened when I went home, I'm gonna have to say, 'Well! I drank some hot chocolate and then my tum-tum felt all better! Guess I just needed some hot chocolate!'
And they should rightly fire me on the spot. This isn't Santa's workshop. I'm not elf--fueled by christmas cheer, candy canes, and delicious hot cocoa. My crippling pain was the result of shortage of hot chocolate in my system. That makes me just barely better than a doll that cries and pees.
So I made up a story about my mighty bowel movement that was as black as night and thick as the horn of the bull rhinoceros. The pipes trembled under its density and the foundation of the house shifted three inches to the left. The local news ran a story about a sudden change in the migratory patterns of some birds. Some would say that's unrelated: I THINK NOT!
I bring a story like that back the next day and nobody's gonna be doubting my integrity. Even little kids aren't taken seriously when they are in want of hot chocolate. But NOBODY questions the seriousness of a for-real-deal Number Two.
That's life. That's the modern working world we live in. I'm sorry for the poop story but that's what it had to be if I wanted to survive. So no, I'm not sorry. Blame yourselves!
Also, my sister later came home and I told her that I was going to die but out of sheer spite of her neglect I willed my hate into life-fuel and raged the pain away.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Blue On Line
One thing I like about kids is that they are almost never inhibited by their enthusiasm. Kids aren't afraid to be excited even if it's about the dumbest thing.
Today at my job I was standing outside a bathroom while the kids change from their pool clothes back to their normal clothes. I'm supposed to stand there because in case anything happens, it becomes my job to rush in and become some sort of bathroom superhero. I think it's one of those role things. Where my presence assumes safety. I'm not good in bathrooms. I don't enjoy talking to people in bathrooms even in no stress situations. If something happens in there, chances are I'm gonna start screaming too. I'll probably run away...for help of course. But when you run fourteen miles a day and eat mostly peanut-butter, the flight side of your fight-or-flight response is pretty dominant.
If they gave me a plunger, I'd be a lot more confident. It's a scenario-appropriate symbol of power.
So anyway, a bunch of boys are changing in a bathroom and I want no part of it but from outside I hear the kids running the hand-dryer and I'm about to yell at them until I realize that they're using it to dry their swim trunks. And then I hear one of the kids say, "Kyle! You're a mental-genius!"
And he completely meant it and no one made fun of him. It struck me because my capacity to sincerely make that statement has been mocked out of me. First of all, how many adults can sincerely use the word "genius" in a complementary way? Not many. The crushing waves of sarcasm has beaten that out of them. How many could call someone a "mental genius"? And mean it.
And I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. Obviously an adult wouldn't say that because it's redundant but beyond that, it was a genuine, unique compliment.
I remember the moment that expression of amazement was lost. I was in this field trip to...a field. It was basically a field. I forget the details but I remember looking over this field and going, "Wow! It must be over an ACRE!" Because, I didn't what an acre was. I still don't know. But an older kid behind me went, "Duh! Of course it's over an acre!" And I was done. My sincerity had just been gobbled up like a raw chicken carcass over a pit of gators.
And while I don't think the world would be a better place if everyone just walked around being fascinated all the time, that would get annoying really fast, it was nice to hear something completely free of cynicism.
...I can't imagine any scenario where I could even call anyone a regular genius with the same enthusiasm that that kid had.
...if someone...built an...oreo cheesecake...that could be lived in for an indefinite amount of time...and got free cable...maybe I could call that person a genius. And they dropped it out of a helicopter onto a target of my face on my birthday. Maybe. I'd still probably be a little too self-conscious.
Little kids show the things that have died inside you...
Today at my job I was standing outside a bathroom while the kids change from their pool clothes back to their normal clothes. I'm supposed to stand there because in case anything happens, it becomes my job to rush in and become some sort of bathroom superhero. I think it's one of those role things. Where my presence assumes safety. I'm not good in bathrooms. I don't enjoy talking to people in bathrooms even in no stress situations. If something happens in there, chances are I'm gonna start screaming too. I'll probably run away...for help of course. But when you run fourteen miles a day and eat mostly peanut-butter, the flight side of your fight-or-flight response is pretty dominant.
If they gave me a plunger, I'd be a lot more confident. It's a scenario-appropriate symbol of power.
So anyway, a bunch of boys are changing in a bathroom and I want no part of it but from outside I hear the kids running the hand-dryer and I'm about to yell at them until I realize that they're using it to dry their swim trunks. And then I hear one of the kids say, "Kyle! You're a mental-genius!"
And he completely meant it and no one made fun of him. It struck me because my capacity to sincerely make that statement has been mocked out of me. First of all, how many adults can sincerely use the word "genius" in a complementary way? Not many. The crushing waves of sarcasm has beaten that out of them. How many could call someone a "mental genius"? And mean it.
And I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. Obviously an adult wouldn't say that because it's redundant but beyond that, it was a genuine, unique compliment.
I remember the moment that expression of amazement was lost. I was in this field trip to...a field. It was basically a field. I forget the details but I remember looking over this field and going, "Wow! It must be over an ACRE!" Because, I didn't what an acre was. I still don't know. But an older kid behind me went, "Duh! Of course it's over an acre!" And I was done. My sincerity had just been gobbled up like a raw chicken carcass over a pit of gators.
And while I don't think the world would be a better place if everyone just walked around being fascinated all the time, that would get annoying really fast, it was nice to hear something completely free of cynicism.
...I can't imagine any scenario where I could even call anyone a regular genius with the same enthusiasm that that kid had.
...if someone...built an...oreo cheesecake...that could be lived in for an indefinite amount of time...and got free cable...maybe I could call that person a genius. And they dropped it out of a helicopter onto a target of my face on my birthday. Maybe. I'd still probably be a little too self-conscious.
Little kids show the things that have died inside you...
Monday, June 18, 2012
BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!
Sometimes I ask myself, "Andy, what's the point? The Internet is a giant cacophonous monster of information. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to just contribute to the real world? Wouldn't it be more noble to march on in stoic silence and make personal, intimate connections instead of trying to contribute to this egocentric firestorm of noise?"
And that's when I remind myself that this isn't really about me, you guys. This is about putting out so much information and energy that we change all of reality forever. My tiny blog and tiny rants are a drop in the ocean of the digital age that can bring about a world where anything is possible. We'll all be able to experience and share so much simultaneously that the fantastic will become mundane. You know those brilliant moments where you feel connected to something larger than yourself? That will happen all the time. You'll be living in a constant state of brilliance and fascination. Genius, true genius and fantastical innovation will occur at such a speed that it will surpass our ability to experience it.
And that'll change everything, you know? It might reach the point where if you just think something, it exists. The world will become like the mind of a six-year-old.
Lemme splain, when a six-year-old jumps on a couch and does his signature wrestling move, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!", your mind (which is hopelessly out of sync with the new world order) can't understand it. You hear a noise and a word and it seems like complete nonsense until he jumps on you. But in his mind, it's entirely possible for him to say the words, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!" and he turns into a cathedral or a cathedral falls out of a hole in the sky and crushes you.
But with the Internet, there won't be a difference between having an idea and the manifestation of that idea. Things will just happen the second they are thought of. Then be discarded. So it will all be new all the time everywhere at once in every single glorious ever-refreshing moment!
CATHEDRALS WILL RAIN FROM THE SKY WHILE SWIRLING PURPLE GEYSERS ERUPT POP-TART CARTS AND ALFREDO SAUCE OCEANS BUBBLE AND BURST AND ENGULF THE MOON WRAPPED IN CHRISTMAS LIGHTS THAT SHARE AN OUTLET WITH GOD'S BEARD TRIMMER!
That's...uh...why I'm writing stuff...
And that's when I remind myself that this isn't really about me, you guys. This is about putting out so much information and energy that we change all of reality forever. My tiny blog and tiny rants are a drop in the ocean of the digital age that can bring about a world where anything is possible. We'll all be able to experience and share so much simultaneously that the fantastic will become mundane. You know those brilliant moments where you feel connected to something larger than yourself? That will happen all the time. You'll be living in a constant state of brilliance and fascination. Genius, true genius and fantastical innovation will occur at such a speed that it will surpass our ability to experience it.
And that'll change everything, you know? It might reach the point where if you just think something, it exists. The world will become like the mind of a six-year-old.
Lemme splain, when a six-year-old jumps on a couch and does his signature wrestling move, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!", your mind (which is hopelessly out of sync with the new world order) can't understand it. You hear a noise and a word and it seems like complete nonsense until he jumps on you. But in his mind, it's entirely possible for him to say the words, "BOO-YAH CATHEDRAL!" and he turns into a cathedral or a cathedral falls out of a hole in the sky and crushes you.
But with the Internet, there won't be a difference between having an idea and the manifestation of that idea. Things will just happen the second they are thought of. Then be discarded. So it will all be new all the time everywhere at once in every single glorious ever-refreshing moment!
CATHEDRALS WILL RAIN FROM THE SKY WHILE SWIRLING PURPLE GEYSERS ERUPT POP-TART CARTS AND ALFREDO SAUCE OCEANS BUBBLE AND BURST AND ENGULF THE MOON WRAPPED IN CHRISTMAS LIGHTS THAT SHARE AN OUTLET WITH GOD'S BEARD TRIMMER!
That's...uh...why I'm writing stuff...
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Fungusical
SLIM PICKENS GETS HIS HAND STUCK IN A GARBAGE DISPOSAL!
a story to raise awareness on the dangers of garbage disposals
One day Slim Pickens was sitting on the floor of his kitchen stirring up a big ol' pot of stew. But the thing about Slim Pickens's kitchen is that it wasn't a normal kitchen with pots and pans and an oven and stove and a refrigerator with a little thing on the door that gives you water and ice. Slim Pickens didn't see the need for any of that stuff. Especially that fridge water dispenser. The sink gives you the same thing at least eight times as fast. The fridge just piddles it out and you have to stand there and wait for it to finishing peeing into your glass before you can go enjoy a healthy snack of cheese-bagels.
What's a cheese-bagel? You know cheese puffs? Like Cheetos or those giant plastic jars of cheese balls you can buy at Costco? I have a cousin who taught me how to make those. It's pretty similar to meth in that a rusty screen door and RAID insect repellent are key ingredients. Once you know the process you can make styrofoam cheese-doodles in any shape you want. I choose bagels because that's probably the healthiest shape but they dry out your mouth like crazy.
Anyway, Slim Pickens had a kitchen and it only had a sink and a giant, carved, wooden Indian chief statue that would cry tears of blood every once in a while. When I say it only had a sink, I mean only a sink. No counter-top. No cabinet under it where you can put a trash can or drain cleaner. Just piping, a faucet, and a basin coming out of the ground. That's Slim Pickens's kitchen.
He brought the stew over from I-don't-know where. I don't keep up with that sort of thing. But he's stirring it with a magic wand and he keeps stirring it because he notices that the more he stirs, the more this thing starts to smell like a christmas tree. This reddish-brown stew is taking on this fresh, piney aroma and he can't figure out why. He keeps stirring and the smell is getting stronger. It's almost starting to burn his eyes.
He starts feeling like he's up on a mountain top, right at the tree line. Looking into this pot, he feels like he's 11,000 feet up on a snowy slope, piercing the clear blue sky, the air is thin and the wind is harsh and he's got his face right up next to the lone evergreens at this height and he's just millimeters from getting poked in the eye but one of its little spines.
Suddenly, he remembered the dire warning he received from his grandmother on her deathbed. He leaned in close just in time for her to say, with her dying breath, "if you ever smell a stew that smells like christmas trees, it's an eight-inch tall yeti disguised a stew that wants to gnaw off your earlobes."
When Slim Pickens looked into the pot; there it was. It was an adorable, furious, midget-yeti--clenched in its tiny fist was a teeny, tiny midget pine tree. Before Slim Pickens could say, "Balls", the yeti slapped him across the face with the tree and leapt out of the pot.
Slim Pickens stood up fast before the yeti could get a good hold on his earlobes and said, "Teeny-tiny monster-man, you ruined my pot of chili that was I gonna eat to have the strength to build my own custom school-bus. I'm not gonna kill you for myself, I'm gonna kill you: FOR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION!"
Slim Pickens grabbed the hatchet out of the giant, wooden chief's hands and swung at the yeti. But the yeti was too fast and ran up the arm of Slim Pickens.
"Littlest baby-version of yeti, you've got a hold on my arm! Prepare to be...disposaled!"
Slim Pickens cramma-jammed his fist into his garbage disposal and would have turned it on except he lacked the little light-switch thing. So the yeti climbed out of the sink and started gnawing off Slim Pickens's earlobe. With his hand trapped, Slim Pickens realized he needed to act fast. So he said, "Wait yeti! What if we joined forces? Not for good or for safety, but for awesome!"
From that point on, Slim Pickens and the teeny-tiny bite-sized yeti had all of one crazy adventure. It was called...agriculture. They worked on a farm for several years before parting ways. Slim Pickens became an anti-high fructose corn syrup advocate who cheated on his wife while the yeti became a marriage counselor with a crippling addiction to Mountain Dew.
But I guess that's just the way life works out...or something.
a story to raise awareness on the dangers of garbage disposals
One day Slim Pickens was sitting on the floor of his kitchen stirring up a big ol' pot of stew. But the thing about Slim Pickens's kitchen is that it wasn't a normal kitchen with pots and pans and an oven and stove and a refrigerator with a little thing on the door that gives you water and ice. Slim Pickens didn't see the need for any of that stuff. Especially that fridge water dispenser. The sink gives you the same thing at least eight times as fast. The fridge just piddles it out and you have to stand there and wait for it to finishing peeing into your glass before you can go enjoy a healthy snack of cheese-bagels.
What's a cheese-bagel? You know cheese puffs? Like Cheetos or those giant plastic jars of cheese balls you can buy at Costco? I have a cousin who taught me how to make those. It's pretty similar to meth in that a rusty screen door and RAID insect repellent are key ingredients. Once you know the process you can make styrofoam cheese-doodles in any shape you want. I choose bagels because that's probably the healthiest shape but they dry out your mouth like crazy.
Anyway, Slim Pickens had a kitchen and it only had a sink and a giant, carved, wooden Indian chief statue that would cry tears of blood every once in a while. When I say it only had a sink, I mean only a sink. No counter-top. No cabinet under it where you can put a trash can or drain cleaner. Just piping, a faucet, and a basin coming out of the ground. That's Slim Pickens's kitchen.
He brought the stew over from I-don't-know where. I don't keep up with that sort of thing. But he's stirring it with a magic wand and he keeps stirring it because he notices that the more he stirs, the more this thing starts to smell like a christmas tree. This reddish-brown stew is taking on this fresh, piney aroma and he can't figure out why. He keeps stirring and the smell is getting stronger. It's almost starting to burn his eyes.
He starts feeling like he's up on a mountain top, right at the tree line. Looking into this pot, he feels like he's 11,000 feet up on a snowy slope, piercing the clear blue sky, the air is thin and the wind is harsh and he's got his face right up next to the lone evergreens at this height and he's just millimeters from getting poked in the eye but one of its little spines.
Suddenly, he remembered the dire warning he received from his grandmother on her deathbed. He leaned in close just in time for her to say, with her dying breath, "if you ever smell a stew that smells like christmas trees, it's an eight-inch tall yeti disguised a stew that wants to gnaw off your earlobes."
When Slim Pickens looked into the pot; there it was. It was an adorable, furious, midget-yeti--clenched in its tiny fist was a teeny, tiny midget pine tree. Before Slim Pickens could say, "Balls", the yeti slapped him across the face with the tree and leapt out of the pot.
Slim Pickens stood up fast before the yeti could get a good hold on his earlobes and said, "Teeny-tiny monster-man, you ruined my pot of chili that was I gonna eat to have the strength to build my own custom school-bus. I'm not gonna kill you for myself, I'm gonna kill you: FOR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION!"
Slim Pickens grabbed the hatchet out of the giant, wooden chief's hands and swung at the yeti. But the yeti was too fast and ran up the arm of Slim Pickens.
"Littlest baby-version of yeti, you've got a hold on my arm! Prepare to be...disposaled!"
Slim Pickens cramma-jammed his fist into his garbage disposal and would have turned it on except he lacked the little light-switch thing. So the yeti climbed out of the sink and started gnawing off Slim Pickens's earlobe. With his hand trapped, Slim Pickens realized he needed to act fast. So he said, "Wait yeti! What if we joined forces? Not for good or for safety, but for awesome!"
From that point on, Slim Pickens and the teeny-tiny bite-sized yeti had all of one crazy adventure. It was called...agriculture. They worked on a farm for several years before parting ways. Slim Pickens became an anti-high fructose corn syrup advocate who cheated on his wife while the yeti became a marriage counselor with a crippling addiction to Mountain Dew.
But I guess that's just the way life works out...or something.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
What Fades Away
In the future we will be faster and lighter.
In the future we will not worry about the things that fall away because they will clear the view.
We will understand the price of sacrifice and the weight that makes bones strong.
In the future we will be harder and sharper.
We will not be stainless steel. We will pass through moments and time like walls of colored smoke and be tinted in a thousand electric hues.
We will feel the stiff headwinds but affirm that the firmly planted feet of solid matter will never bend to angry air.
We will reignite the neurons sparked in the holy frenzy of blinding overstimulated honesty.
In the future we will not fly in flying cars.
In the future we will not be wired and "on-the-go".
We will stretch our roots and crumble concrete slabs if need be to soak in the soil of the land of the sun.
In the future we will live in tiny boxes filled with treasure and good food and clean carpet.
We will have well-worn edges.
We will shatter the crystal clear walls when crystal clear walls need shattering!
In the future we will blow-up the world.
In the future we will be the first to see alien invasions and the first to solve all our problems with dynamite including world hunger.
That is to say, we will discover the nutritional value of dynamite.
In the future we will glow a soft glow. We will make friends with disappointment. We will learn its quirks and invite it over for food and drink on weekends and tell it it doesn't have to try so hard.
In the future we will be ghosts with bicycle helmets and tubs of Hamburger Helper to fill the Lincoln Memorial. No one can stop "Mom's Hungry Phantom Monument Gang!"
In the future we will be falling. We will all fall.
But the clouds have never seemed so real and so close.
________________________________________________________________
Future! Future! 1, 2, 3!
Hope you don't take a dump on me!
Future! Future! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Hope my dreams don't turn out right.
...because I had that dream where all my teeth fall out again. And also I really wanted to make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich but there were all theses frogs that kept turning into bugs on my kitchen floor and I was like, "gross" and then I had to pee but I couldn't pee but then I woke up and I actually had to pee...
So I hope that part doesn't happen so much all the time.
In the future we will not worry about the things that fall away because they will clear the view.
We will understand the price of sacrifice and the weight that makes bones strong.
In the future we will be harder and sharper.
We will not be stainless steel. We will pass through moments and time like walls of colored smoke and be tinted in a thousand electric hues.
We will feel the stiff headwinds but affirm that the firmly planted feet of solid matter will never bend to angry air.
We will reignite the neurons sparked in the holy frenzy of blinding overstimulated honesty.
In the future we will not fly in flying cars.
In the future we will not be wired and "on-the-go".
We will stretch our roots and crumble concrete slabs if need be to soak in the soil of the land of the sun.
In the future we will live in tiny boxes filled with treasure and good food and clean carpet.
We will have well-worn edges.
We will shatter the crystal clear walls when crystal clear walls need shattering!
In the future we will blow-up the world.
In the future we will be the first to see alien invasions and the first to solve all our problems with dynamite including world hunger.
That is to say, we will discover the nutritional value of dynamite.
In the future we will glow a soft glow. We will make friends with disappointment. We will learn its quirks and invite it over for food and drink on weekends and tell it it doesn't have to try so hard.
In the future we will be ghosts with bicycle helmets and tubs of Hamburger Helper to fill the Lincoln Memorial. No one can stop "Mom's Hungry Phantom Monument Gang!"
In the future we will be falling. We will all fall.
But the clouds have never seemed so real and so close.
________________________________________________________________
Future! Future! 1, 2, 3!
Hope you don't take a dump on me!
Future! Future! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Hope my dreams don't turn out right.
...because I had that dream where all my teeth fall out again. And also I really wanted to make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich but there were all theses frogs that kept turning into bugs on my kitchen floor and I was like, "gross" and then I had to pee but I couldn't pee but then I woke up and I actually had to pee...
So I hope that part doesn't happen so much all the time.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Porch View
I felt good today. I got a good amount of sleep. I know almost all the kids' names.
But the main reason I think I felt good is because the guy's bathroom was...broken for some reason today so whenever a kid had to go to the bathroom (which is all the time) they had to be escorted to the pool locker room which is right by the building I work in. And, I'll try to say this in the least creepiest way possible, walking with a kid to the bathroom and then waiting outside that bathroom is a really easy job. But strangely rewarding. You've provided supervision for this person that can not be trusted to walk to a bathroom in an adjacent building alone. The nice thing I guess is that it's barely a job at all but while you're doing it, it's the only thing you have to worry about.
Normally you have to watch dozens of kids who get into a pack mentality that builds into a frenzy of misdirected self-expression and hurt feelings. But when you escort a kid to the bathroom, that's just one kid you have to worry about. He's not trying to cause any trouble either. His bladder is weak; it takes all the control he can muster to get to a designated pee location on time. Basically, mediocre, uneventful supervision is the best kind of supervision.
It makes me wish I could wake up and be some sort of giant woolly mammoth creature. I would still go to my job and lead a normal life, but my occupation would just be to carry children insignificant distances on my back. I'd be well-liked. I'd be performing a wholesome public service. And I wouldn't have to do much else because I'm giant and I no longer possess opposable thumbs. It'd be a pretty sweet deal. I could carry kids to the playground. Or to the big field by the parking lot. I wouldn't have to worry about watching them or keeping them safe because I'd run too big a risk of crushing them or seeing a stray dog and chasing after it. And they could just pay me in bags of spinach and Rolds Gold pretzels. Yeah man, being a large mammoth creature would be awesome.
Oh! And it would also be cool if I had a third eye that could see twenty seconds into the future! No! Wait, I would have VCR vision. So when the kids get hurt I could replay it in my head. But only if they get hurt in a hilarious way. To re-watch a child's pain under any other circumstances would break my mammoth-creature code of ethics.
Also at night I would sneak in and break the toilets. And they'd be like, "We know it was you, giant mammoth creature" But they can't prove nothing on me!
I'm an untouchable king of the tundra!
But the main reason I think I felt good is because the guy's bathroom was...broken for some reason today so whenever a kid had to go to the bathroom (which is all the time) they had to be escorted to the pool locker room which is right by the building I work in. And, I'll try to say this in the least creepiest way possible, walking with a kid to the bathroom and then waiting outside that bathroom is a really easy job. But strangely rewarding. You've provided supervision for this person that can not be trusted to walk to a bathroom in an adjacent building alone. The nice thing I guess is that it's barely a job at all but while you're doing it, it's the only thing you have to worry about.
Normally you have to watch dozens of kids who get into a pack mentality that builds into a frenzy of misdirected self-expression and hurt feelings. But when you escort a kid to the bathroom, that's just one kid you have to worry about. He's not trying to cause any trouble either. His bladder is weak; it takes all the control he can muster to get to a designated pee location on time. Basically, mediocre, uneventful supervision is the best kind of supervision.
It makes me wish I could wake up and be some sort of giant woolly mammoth creature. I would still go to my job and lead a normal life, but my occupation would just be to carry children insignificant distances on my back. I'd be well-liked. I'd be performing a wholesome public service. And I wouldn't have to do much else because I'm giant and I no longer possess opposable thumbs. It'd be a pretty sweet deal. I could carry kids to the playground. Or to the big field by the parking lot. I wouldn't have to worry about watching them or keeping them safe because I'd run too big a risk of crushing them or seeing a stray dog and chasing after it. And they could just pay me in bags of spinach and Rolds Gold pretzels. Yeah man, being a large mammoth creature would be awesome.
Oh! And it would also be cool if I had a third eye that could see twenty seconds into the future! No! Wait, I would have VCR vision. So when the kids get hurt I could replay it in my head. But only if they get hurt in a hilarious way. To re-watch a child's pain under any other circumstances would break my mammoth-creature code of ethics.
Also at night I would sneak in and break the toilets. And they'd be like, "We know it was you, giant mammoth creature" But they can't prove nothing on me!
I'm an untouchable king of the tundra!
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Funnerson
I feel like I don't have fun anymore. Which, shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has had a job before. But I've never had a job. So it's a new feeling to me. It's especially odd because I work at a place where children are taken to have fun...more or less. It's not supposed to be an enriching environment. It's just a safe place where they have a lower chance of hurting themselves than if they were turned loose on the streets or left at home to drink all the chemicals under the kitchen sink. Here they can chuck foam balls at each other and...chuck foam balls at bowling pins. Chucking foam at stuff! It's great.
And I was in that program when I was a kid and it was a good time. But, it's not the same when you work there. You can't just insulate yourself or feel any sort of bonding or friendship. That's the fun part.
Instead, I feel like...well, first of all, I don't feel anymore like an adult. I just feel like this kid that's too old for the program and put in a place of responsibility for some reason. And, the only reason it works is because everyone in the building has agreed and accepted my place of responsibility. But, in reality, it's just bigger kids watching smaller kids. My co-workers aren't adults. What are we then?
Well, I feel like I've become this huge, human-shaped sponge. And I just kind of have to soak in all the stuff the kids don't want to deal with. Most of my job is being this outlet or repository for the injustices these tiny children perceive in the world (which is usually limited to the gymnasium in the community center). So like, if at any point the kids are having fun, none of that is transferred to me. But if a kid gets hit in the face with a ball, or someone calls someone a name, or those kids that fall down for no reason fall down. That is channeled directly to me with the expectation that I will fix it somehow. And the funny thing is that I don't actually have to do anything. That's the thing I can't quite get my head around. These kids come to me with ridiculous problems that don't really affect them in any meaningful way and they tell me about it and look up at me with expectant eyes and...instead of addressing the problem at all...I just say, "Okay. (fill in remaining response with complete nonsense)." Seriously, I can say anything. A kid will be like, "He is singing a song too loudly." And I can say, "I'll make him do a million push-ups or he'll be eaten by Bengal tigers!" And...the problem will stop.
It doesn't actually matter. But, if my response doesn't matter, why do they keep coming to me?!
Anyway, I guess I could start making it fun. But, for now, I have moments where I don't hear the screaming of children. Also, I get to play bumper pool during free time. Or times I get to sit down.
OH and lunch!
That's like...my fun. And I understand that I'm not there to have fun. It's not about me. But this blog is about me. So I can complain here at least. But yeah, that's my current understanding of my job. Honestly, it's still a good job and I know I haven't gotten used to it yet.
Also I did a track workout today. That was fun.
25 minute warm-up
4 minutes rest
1600 meters- 4:55
5 minutes rest
8x400 meters- 70 seconds each with a very easy 200 meter jog in between (probably around 70 seconds for the jog).
28 minute cool down.
All in all though, it feels good.
And I was in that program when I was a kid and it was a good time. But, it's not the same when you work there. You can't just insulate yourself or feel any sort of bonding or friendship. That's the fun part.
Instead, I feel like...well, first of all, I don't feel anymore like an adult. I just feel like this kid that's too old for the program and put in a place of responsibility for some reason. And, the only reason it works is because everyone in the building has agreed and accepted my place of responsibility. But, in reality, it's just bigger kids watching smaller kids. My co-workers aren't adults. What are we then?
Well, I feel like I've become this huge, human-shaped sponge. And I just kind of have to soak in all the stuff the kids don't want to deal with. Most of my job is being this outlet or repository for the injustices these tiny children perceive in the world (which is usually limited to the gymnasium in the community center). So like, if at any point the kids are having fun, none of that is transferred to me. But if a kid gets hit in the face with a ball, or someone calls someone a name, or those kids that fall down for no reason fall down. That is channeled directly to me with the expectation that I will fix it somehow. And the funny thing is that I don't actually have to do anything. That's the thing I can't quite get my head around. These kids come to me with ridiculous problems that don't really affect them in any meaningful way and they tell me about it and look up at me with expectant eyes and...instead of addressing the problem at all...I just say, "Okay. (fill in remaining response with complete nonsense)." Seriously, I can say anything. A kid will be like, "He is singing a song too loudly." And I can say, "I'll make him do a million push-ups or he'll be eaten by Bengal tigers!" And...the problem will stop.
It doesn't actually matter. But, if my response doesn't matter, why do they keep coming to me?!
Anyway, I guess I could start making it fun. But, for now, I have moments where I don't hear the screaming of children. Also, I get to play bumper pool during free time. Or times I get to sit down.
OH and lunch!
That's like...my fun. And I understand that I'm not there to have fun. It's not about me. But this blog is about me. So I can complain here at least. But yeah, that's my current understanding of my job. Honestly, it's still a good job and I know I haven't gotten used to it yet.
Also I did a track workout today. That was fun.
25 minute warm-up
4 minutes rest
1600 meters- 4:55
5 minutes rest
8x400 meters- 70 seconds each with a very easy 200 meter jog in between (probably around 70 seconds for the jog).
28 minute cool down.
All in all though, it feels good.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Straightest of Poop
Poem to Explosions
I was running in the heat through thirteen miles of country paradise,
rolling hills and green meadows and fresh summer air.
With the sun beating down and the wind in my face
reminding me of every uncomfortable step.
I saw a pile of chocolate chip pancakes
stacked to the ceiling and oozing
with chocolately chipities melting in pools of
maples upon maples of syrups.
I fired up a 3.75 horsepower pressure-washer
to blast clean the grime and scum
from rock and wood
and make the backyard shimmer and shine.
And on top of the hill overlooking this tiny valley city
I shouted out, "Where are the giant fighting robots!?
Where are the explosions and implosions and destructions
and the whistling of shells falling like rain?"
Fields of flames and hot breakfasts on fire!
Burning sugar and molten sweetness,
splattering blasts of sputtering batter
because explosions are happening for no reason!
With wide-eyed wonder and bowels clenched tight
I was running in the heat through thirteen miles of country paradise,
rolling hills and green meadows and fresh summer air.
With the sun beating down and the wind in my face
reminding me of every uncomfortable step.
I saw a pile of chocolate chip pancakes
stacked to the ceiling and oozing
with chocolately chipities melting in pools of
maples upon maples of syrups.
I fired up a 3.75 horsepower pressure-washer
to blast clean the grime and scum
from rock and wood
and make the backyard shimmer and shine.
And on top of the hill overlooking this tiny valley city
I shouted out, "Where are the giant fighting robots!?
Where are the explosions and implosions and destructions
and the whistling of shells falling like rain?"
Fields of flames and hot breakfasts on fire!
Burning sugar and molten sweetness,
splattering blasts of sputtering batter
because explosions are happening for no reason!
With wide-eyed wonder and bowels clenched tight
I watched waves of unnecessary explosions explosions explosions
and dire struggles for the fate of humanity
while hauling out rocks from the garden.
I'm bored, America!
You brought me the internet!
The least you owe me is things blowing up,
overloads and meltdowns of energy and information in a diabolical network,
or at least something interesting to read.
and dire struggles for the fate of humanity
while hauling out rocks from the garden.
I'm bored, America!
You brought me the internet!
The least you owe me is things blowing up,
overloads and meltdowns of energy and information in a diabolical network,
or at least something interesting to read.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
It's a Very Dangerous Thing
To do exactly what you want.
_______________________________________________________________
"Life is far too glorious to ever give it up--especially for the cursed and the damned."
Anthony Hopkins- The Wolfman.
That quote means something different to me now than it did my freshman year when I put it on this blog. I used to think it was a great statement about never giving up, especially when times get hard. I think I sympathized with the idea of being downtrodden and a loser and reveling in my own triumphant mess.
Now I think it's more of a cautionary statement about the cursed and the damned. They are what they are because they never stop striving for glory. Because they can't stop striving for glory. That's the curse of living life as a pursuit of greatness. Life becomes a trap.
(For more on the curse of glory, please see just about any song made by Kanye West mentioning fame.)
But that whole selfless-heroism thing has never done anything for me either...
_______________________________________________________________
My little sister got her SAT scores back about a week or two ago. And she soundly crushed me. She beat me by 70 points in her combined Reading and Math score.
But I'm not down about that. Know why?
Cuz #1- I'm about to graduate college anyway so my SAT score has already been completely irrelevant for about three years. I'm just gonna start deliberating lying about it.
"Hey Andy, what'd you get on the SAT?"
"Oh man, the SAT's? All I remember is the night before I got locked in the back of grocery story with some Eastern European super models. We all woke up in bathtubs full of ice and when I finally got to the test I sneezed a duck all over the answer sheet and turned that in five minutes after it started...No I don't remember what I got on my SATs! I don't need to remember things like that anymore! I remember important things like the last time I made out with someone and which beers taste like Fruity Pebbles! This is the real world, homie. School's finished!"
But the other reason, the more important reason, is that my sister received her excellent test taking skills at the cost of valuable survival instincts. All that cognitive processing power was taken from her instinctual food and waste management knowledge.
I'll give you an example.
The other day my sister yells to my mom, "Mom! There's a ton of fruit flies in my room!"
And my mom goes, "How many? Count them!"
And she responds, "...six!"
So my mom goes down to my sister's room and finds a bag of rotting food on her bedroom floor. It's got week old fig newtons, bagels, fruit, granola bars, everything. It's like my sister made plans to go hiking at three in the morning, got all the food ready, was about to bend down and pick up her bag of supplies and then all the blood rushed out of her head, she passed out with her torso half on her bed and slept for thirteen hours like that. Then she woke up and completely forgot about her plans and went about her day.
But anyway, my mom tells her to throw the rotting bag of food away to get rid of the "tons" of fruit flies and goes upstairs. My mom comes down later and sees the bag of food in the downstairs hallway, about two feet from my sister's door. And my sister is in her room on facebook. Which means, something very specific must have happened. My sister picked up the bag of nasty, opened her bedroom door, took all of ONE steps out into the hallway and said, "DONE!", put down the bag and walked back into her room.
I love my sister. She's amazing to me. Here is a person that scored in the 99th percentile in the country on critical reading ability yet she looked at a sack of rotting food surrounded by swarming flies, a universal sign of death and decay if there ever was one, and said, "hmm...if I take this bag...and it move it three feet away from my current location...AND I can no longer see it...I should be okay."
So when I brush my teeth in our bathroom that is infested with fruit flies...I'm gonna remember that test scores aren't everything. Maybe I can't remember pre-calculus level math or answer multiple choice questions about passages from short stories,
but I know what to do with rotting food and my spawn will not die from the typhoid or TB!
Happy Birthday, Leetle Seester!
_______________________________________________________________
"Life is far too glorious to ever give it up--especially for the cursed and the damned."
Anthony Hopkins- The Wolfman.
That quote means something different to me now than it did my freshman year when I put it on this blog. I used to think it was a great statement about never giving up, especially when times get hard. I think I sympathized with the idea of being downtrodden and a loser and reveling in my own triumphant mess.
Now I think it's more of a cautionary statement about the cursed and the damned. They are what they are because they never stop striving for glory. Because they can't stop striving for glory. That's the curse of living life as a pursuit of greatness. Life becomes a trap.
(For more on the curse of glory, please see just about any song made by Kanye West mentioning fame.)
But that whole selfless-heroism thing has never done anything for me either...
_______________________________________________________________
My little sister got her SAT scores back about a week or two ago. And she soundly crushed me. She beat me by 70 points in her combined Reading and Math score.
But I'm not down about that. Know why?
Cuz #1- I'm about to graduate college anyway so my SAT score has already been completely irrelevant for about three years. I'm just gonna start deliberating lying about it.
"Hey Andy, what'd you get on the SAT?"
"Oh man, the SAT's? All I remember is the night before I got locked in the back of grocery story with some Eastern European super models. We all woke up in bathtubs full of ice and when I finally got to the test I sneezed a duck all over the answer sheet and turned that in five minutes after it started...No I don't remember what I got on my SATs! I don't need to remember things like that anymore! I remember important things like the last time I made out with someone and which beers taste like Fruity Pebbles! This is the real world, homie. School's finished!"
But the other reason, the more important reason, is that my sister received her excellent test taking skills at the cost of valuable survival instincts. All that cognitive processing power was taken from her instinctual food and waste management knowledge.
I'll give you an example.
The other day my sister yells to my mom, "Mom! There's a ton of fruit flies in my room!"
And my mom goes, "How many? Count them!"
And she responds, "...six!"
So my mom goes down to my sister's room and finds a bag of rotting food on her bedroom floor. It's got week old fig newtons, bagels, fruit, granola bars, everything. It's like my sister made plans to go hiking at three in the morning, got all the food ready, was about to bend down and pick up her bag of supplies and then all the blood rushed out of her head, she passed out with her torso half on her bed and slept for thirteen hours like that. Then she woke up and completely forgot about her plans and went about her day.
But anyway, my mom tells her to throw the rotting bag of food away to get rid of the "tons" of fruit flies and goes upstairs. My mom comes down later and sees the bag of food in the downstairs hallway, about two feet from my sister's door. And my sister is in her room on facebook. Which means, something very specific must have happened. My sister picked up the bag of nasty, opened her bedroom door, took all of ONE steps out into the hallway and said, "DONE!", put down the bag and walked back into her room.
I love my sister. She's amazing to me. Here is a person that scored in the 99th percentile in the country on critical reading ability yet she looked at a sack of rotting food surrounded by swarming flies, a universal sign of death and decay if there ever was one, and said, "hmm...if I take this bag...and it move it three feet away from my current location...AND I can no longer see it...I should be okay."
So when I brush my teeth in our bathroom that is infested with fruit flies...I'm gonna remember that test scores aren't everything. Maybe I can't remember pre-calculus level math or answer multiple choice questions about passages from short stories,
but I know what to do with rotting food and my spawn will not die from the typhoid or TB!
Happy Birthday, Leetle Seester!
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
On Kids Not Being Funny
I took a job watching children under the impression that they would be...amusing.
Turns out, when you put a bunch of elementary school kids in a gymnasium they really just end up reminding you of feet.
Feet are kinda funny, but they're more unsettling and powerfully awkward.
Ways Kids Are Like Feet-
-they both smell.
-they both should be covered but hippies would prefer they wear nothing at all. We were up at the playground and I saw the mother of a kid not in our program take her boy over to a tree that was not three feet from the playground, yank down his pants, and help him water a tree for all to see. Of course, there really isn't anything technically wrong with it...but still...I-don'--need-ta-see-nunna-dat!
-Young kids have disproportionate bodies. Like, their limbs aren't long enough yet. So their arms and legs kind of remind me of toes. They're always wiggling and gesticulating in weird ways.
-They're constantly on the ground. There are some kids that love to fall down. For no reason at all, they're constantly falling and rolling around on the ground. They can't think of enough excuses to get dirt and whatever is on the floor on them. Kinda like dogs I guess...
-They're very utilitarian. One reason feet are kinda funky is that they're strictly functional. They're just muscle and bone and skin. That's basically what a kid's body is. It's a jumbled, unformed assemblage of limbs designed to move them to their next source of fat and sugar or cling to and climb on whatever is closest to them. That's it.
-Teeth...weird looking. I guess the closest approximation in feet would be messed-up toe nails. They've got baby teeth falling out of them, they've got new teeth coming in at weird angles, to look into a kid's mouth is like staring at my bruised, infected, neglected toe nails.
-Try arguing with a foot. Okay, done? Did you get anywhere in your discussion? No? I figured. Kids are no better. That's why you have to throw crazy logic at them. Mess with them. Make up rules. Take the rules away. Bring the rules back. Speak in tongues. If you want to win an argument with a foot, logic will do you no good. It's just gonna bounce right off your big toe.
-They both turn weird colors. My feet sometimes turn purple or red or all sorts of weird colors due to...poor circulation probably. Point is, if you ever want to see the same thing in a child, watch them try to have Mandatory Pool Fun Time on a cloudy 60 degree day. Haha, bunch a shivering, blue-lipped little hairless apes trying to escape to the land of make-believe beneath towels huddled together for warmth.
-Seriously, they both smell. And when you do catch a whiff, you don't want to know where it came from.
Yeah, so if you're curious what a whole bunch of little kids are like, don't base your assumption off movies or memory or optimistic ideals. Just take off your shoes and socks and stare at the weird phalange'd lumps below your ankles.
The thing about kids though is that eventually they do transform from feet into real people...it's kinda hard to imagine. And I think everyone still has some feet left in them. Watching kids has definitely shown me how much feet I have left...also I have really disgusting feet.
Turns out, when you put a bunch of elementary school kids in a gymnasium they really just end up reminding you of feet.
Feet are kinda funny, but they're more unsettling and powerfully awkward.
Ways Kids Are Like Feet-
-they both smell.
-they both should be covered but hippies would prefer they wear nothing at all. We were up at the playground and I saw the mother of a kid not in our program take her boy over to a tree that was not three feet from the playground, yank down his pants, and help him water a tree for all to see. Of course, there really isn't anything technically wrong with it...but still...I-don'--need-ta-see-nunna-dat!
-Young kids have disproportionate bodies. Like, their limbs aren't long enough yet. So their arms and legs kind of remind me of toes. They're always wiggling and gesticulating in weird ways.
-They're constantly on the ground. There are some kids that love to fall down. For no reason at all, they're constantly falling and rolling around on the ground. They can't think of enough excuses to get dirt and whatever is on the floor on them. Kinda like dogs I guess...
-They're very utilitarian. One reason feet are kinda funky is that they're strictly functional. They're just muscle and bone and skin. That's basically what a kid's body is. It's a jumbled, unformed assemblage of limbs designed to move them to their next source of fat and sugar or cling to and climb on whatever is closest to them. That's it.
-Teeth...weird looking. I guess the closest approximation in feet would be messed-up toe nails. They've got baby teeth falling out of them, they've got new teeth coming in at weird angles, to look into a kid's mouth is like staring at my bruised, infected, neglected toe nails.
-Try arguing with a foot. Okay, done? Did you get anywhere in your discussion? No? I figured. Kids are no better. That's why you have to throw crazy logic at them. Mess with them. Make up rules. Take the rules away. Bring the rules back. Speak in tongues. If you want to win an argument with a foot, logic will do you no good. It's just gonna bounce right off your big toe.
-They both turn weird colors. My feet sometimes turn purple or red or all sorts of weird colors due to...poor circulation probably. Point is, if you ever want to see the same thing in a child, watch them try to have Mandatory Pool Fun Time on a cloudy 60 degree day. Haha, bunch a shivering, blue-lipped little hairless apes trying to escape to the land of make-believe beneath towels huddled together for warmth.
-Seriously, they both smell. And when you do catch a whiff, you don't want to know where it came from.
Yeah, so if you're curious what a whole bunch of little kids are like, don't base your assumption off movies or memory or optimistic ideals. Just take off your shoes and socks and stare at the weird phalange'd lumps below your ankles.
The thing about kids though is that eventually they do transform from feet into real people...it's kinda hard to imagine. And I think everyone still has some feet left in them. Watching kids has definitely shown me how much feet I have left...also I have really disgusting feet.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Went To Wal-Mart
Bought
A) Irish Springs Body Wash
B) Grey t-shirt: "This is What A Cool Grandpa Looks Like"
A) Irish Springs Body Wash
B) Grey t-shirt: "This is What A Cool Grandpa Looks Like"
 |
| Watch Out Grandpas! |
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Growing Out
Something I hope I never understand is lying. Like, my biggest fear is that it is possible to build such an elaborate and complete lie that a person can just live inside of it indefinitely.
My perception of the world will crumble if there exists a lie-caterpillar. It's a hideous, bulbous, many-legged monstrosity that waddles along, just moments from collapsing in a nauseated heap. But if you try to talk to it, it's like, "Yeah! I'm doing great! I've got everything figured out and...and...and yeah! I'm gonna grow wings and fly. They'll be beautiful, elegant wings that sparkle in the sunshine as I dance in the wind. I'll be slim and regal and spend my days living and eating in the flowers of wondrous gardens!"
And all the while they're just surrounding themselves with this thick, mucous like substance that keeps spewing out of their mouths and completely blinding them from the realities of the outside world. They're slowly severing all bonds with truth as they construct this cocoon of delusion.
And when they're finally so completely sealed off you think, "Well, at least I won't have to put up with all that crap anymore--"
ONE WEEK LATER--BOOM! METAMORPHOSIS!!
You wake up one day and he's out on your front lawn, stretching his wings in the morning sun. "Yeah, looks like today was my lucky day! I'd love to hang around and chat but me and about a million of my new buddies are all going to Mexico for the winter. We gotta hit up the mating season! See ya, bro!"
And he leaves you and your friends and you guys all go back to...building tunnels underground that you can huddle together in when the ground freezes over--staving off frostbite by the heat of your own farts.
__________________________________________________________________
I've told, as best I can remember, one deliberate, outright lie in my life. Everyone does that partially obscure the truth thing or leaving out stuff thing but I can recall one social situation where I just completely lied.
It was in eighth grade. My friends were talking about the Weird Al movie, UHF. And they'd asked me if I'd seen it. And I was so determined to prove that I was a true fan of Weird Al that I lied and said that I had seen it.
AND THAT STILL EATS AT ME TODAY! I just can't believe I bothered to say something so stupid and blatantly false. It really does eat at you. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm a dung beetle, pushing his pile of crap along and trying to collect it as he finds it. I can't change who I am or what I've got. That'd be like pushing around a giant inflatable pile of poopy. Yeah, it looks impressive but is there any real satisfaction in carrying around a hollow impression of something?
But maybe lies don't eat at other people. Maybe there are lie-caterpillars.
I don't think there are...
My perception of the world will crumble if there exists a lie-caterpillar. It's a hideous, bulbous, many-legged monstrosity that waddles along, just moments from collapsing in a nauseated heap. But if you try to talk to it, it's like, "Yeah! I'm doing great! I've got everything figured out and...and...and yeah! I'm gonna grow wings and fly. They'll be beautiful, elegant wings that sparkle in the sunshine as I dance in the wind. I'll be slim and regal and spend my days living and eating in the flowers of wondrous gardens!"
And all the while they're just surrounding themselves with this thick, mucous like substance that keeps spewing out of their mouths and completely blinding them from the realities of the outside world. They're slowly severing all bonds with truth as they construct this cocoon of delusion.
And when they're finally so completely sealed off you think, "Well, at least I won't have to put up with all that crap anymore--"
ONE WEEK LATER--BOOM! METAMORPHOSIS!!
You wake up one day and he's out on your front lawn, stretching his wings in the morning sun. "Yeah, looks like today was my lucky day! I'd love to hang around and chat but me and about a million of my new buddies are all going to Mexico for the winter. We gotta hit up the mating season! See ya, bro!"
 |
| Pictured: A HUGE JERK! |
__________________________________________________________________
I've told, as best I can remember, one deliberate, outright lie in my life. Everyone does that partially obscure the truth thing or leaving out stuff thing but I can recall one social situation where I just completely lied.
It was in eighth grade. My friends were talking about the Weird Al movie, UHF. And they'd asked me if I'd seen it. And I was so determined to prove that I was a true fan of Weird Al that I lied and said that I had seen it.
AND THAT STILL EATS AT ME TODAY! I just can't believe I bothered to say something so stupid and blatantly false. It really does eat at you. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm a dung beetle, pushing his pile of crap along and trying to collect it as he finds it. I can't change who I am or what I've got. That'd be like pushing around a giant inflatable pile of poopy. Yeah, it looks impressive but is there any real satisfaction in carrying around a hollow impression of something?
But maybe lies don't eat at other people. Maybe there are lie-caterpillars.
I don't think there are...
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