May 24, 2012
Follow-Up Letter

Dear [Prospective Employer]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to come in this evening and meet with you regarding the position – and with the CEO himself no less! It was definitely an honor to come back for the 3rd interview, and I was very eager to impress the head of a multinational corporation just like I had done with your other hiring managers in the first two interviews.

I would also like to thank your lovely receptionist for hospitably offering me coffee and a preemptive apology for the wait, and then vanishing from the office, possibly through a fire escape, laundry chute or inter-dimensional portal in the breakroom.

It would be rude of me to forget to thank you for giving me so much time alone in the conference room to prepare for our meeting. I am used to being rushed into an office without time to compose myself, but I think the hour and 10 minutes that I spent in the cozy comfort that is your conference room really helped calm my nerves and let me perfect what I was going to say to you.

I would also like to thank you for not interrupting me during my relaxing wait to tell me how long you were going to keep me waiting. That magazine article about your company on the wall only got better and better after 8 reads, and it would have been a shame to derail my meticulous process of memorizing every goddamn word of it.

I do owe you an apology for leaving so abruptly. Normally I like to wait 5 hours after an appointment’s start time before I take off, but the 2 people behind me in the waiting room were getting antsy, and as a team player, I am the type of person that looks out for my future coworkers (even if they are not likely to be hired, based on the profanity they displayed when I told them I hadn’t been seen yet – so rude!).

Anyways, your time is obviously more important than mine, and likely everyone else’s, so I won’t drag this email out any longer. I just want to tell you how eager I am to come on down for a 4th interview! Perhaps we can hold the meeting in the bathroom, where I can be interviewed by a soap dispenser. Or perhaps you’d like to lock me in a broom closet for a couple hours to measure my lack of self-respect. Or maybe you’d like me to come in and fight some dogs in the underground parking structure to illustrate just how desperate I am for a job.

I can assure you, sir, that I am very desperate, and will be happy to jump through as many of these hoops as you can dream up. I promise you that if, after a few dozen more interviews, I am hired, I will show you just how much of a doormat I am.

2:09pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayM3SYAd
April 20, 2010
The Fish Faced Lovers

Behind the series of fences and walls that pushed back against the threats of the wasteland, both biters and elements alike, lay immaculately preserved architecture and the buzz of industry and agriculture. As they escorted her through the large compound, she noted gardens, a communal well, even what appeared to be an outdoor classroom comprised of a dozen or so children kneeling before short desks. On their desks were books and paper, but the studious manner she associated with the rectories and cloisters back home was offset by the maces and hatchets that leaned up against the desks. There was a field of ranger recruits running though combat drills, the meaty thud of blunt weapons on decaying flesh punctuated by the occasional bark of a rifle when one of the instructors had to intervene on behalf of a recruit that failed to dispatch one of the starving biters. There was even a small bazaar where the hum of capitalism lived on in an otherwise broken country, like the steady heartbeat of a coma patient.

They passed through a courtyard, dozens of guards, and into the biggest building in the entire settlement, a southwestern adobe-style affair whose simple beauty was only marred by the snipers on the roof. Once inside, she marveled at the opulence inside. Had she been old enough to remember the prosperity the world enjoyed before The Turn, the decorations and furniture would have been fairly unremarkable, but these days, even a basket of fruit on a table not cobbled together out of road signs was a mark of elegance.

“Welcome.”

She hadn’t noticed the man seated at the desk to her right. Regarding this strange unassuming fellow, clothed in a matching ensemble of pants and a jacket that she associated with formal occasions from a time her mother told her about, a time she only saw in photos, she felt a cognitive dissonance that rendered her speechless. Could this actually be the man that ran the show around here? Her people spoke of a legend, singlehandedly responsible for organizing the most grizzled of survivors and channeling their rage into a scalpel-like instrument of war, bent on reclaiming the earth and carving out the undead cancer that had overtaken it. Surely this was his assistant. A bean-counter, or a diplomatic liason to act as intermediary between guests and the man himself.

He introduced himself simply as [placeholder name]. No title. They danced and sparred for a minute, her queries about the workings of the compound, their association with the new capital, and their reasons for bringing her in to meet him all deftly parried away by pleasantries and smooth talk. If his assurances were to be taken at face value, there was nothing to be worried about.  They were safe within these walls, time was on their side, and soon, everything would be restored to the way things were before everything fell apart. So she took a different approach, and looked for something to turn into small talk. Her eyes scanned the walls, found a canvas painting above the desk, and remained there, attempting to make sense of the image. He smiled, turned to stare at it with her, and after a few moments, asked her if she’d like to hear the story behind it.

About two years before The Turn, he was in love. People took this thing called marriage fairly seriously back then, and it wasn’t long before he had proposed to her, and they were what was called “engaged”. He took his fiancee to a strange land of extravagance and hedonism called Las Vegas for her birthday, and during their stay there, they went to an aquarium, where they saw a strange breed of fish that had a peculiar mating ritual, where the male and female swam quickly up to one another and opened their mouths as wide as they could go, and held their open maws an inch away from each other, hovering, as if to kiss, or strike, or vomit. The fish would hover for uncomfortable lengths of time, as if in a Mexican standoff, then suddenly go back to swimming around one another in a mystifying dance that we as humans will never fully comprehend. The couple then assimilated it into the repertoire of those adorable, unique, inside-jokey mannerisms that only couples understand and take part in. They surprised each other with it over the course of their relationship, but it was never truly surprise, as the instant one would feint a kiss, only to, at the last minute, pop their lips open into a goofy fish-faced pucker, the other would mirror it instantly,  a reflex as quick as blinking.

And that lasted until she left him.

A year later, however, she came back, at first under platonic pretenses. In no time at all, though, they realized the spark was still there. And on their first date, they went to an art gallery in Pasadena. He described it as a laid-back grassroots hippie affair, with a potluck and $3 glasses of wine, and a myriad of fascinating art up on the walls of the semi-outdoor maze of tables and exhibits. And there, in the most neglected corner of the gallery, they came upon a vivid watercolor rendering of a pair of human heads. The man and woman had their mouths open, lunging at each other. The man’s head was superimposed over a basic outline of a fish, their mouths the syncing point. The small plaque above the 8x10 canvas read, “The Fish Faced Lovers”.  After their eyes had drifted over the various pieces strewn about the wall, both of their gazes came to rest on this particular painting, and their jaws dropped. Mouths agape, they slowly turned to each other. To an onlooker, they just looked like they were mirroring the painting. And they were. Nobody on the face of the planet but them could possibly understand just how much that was true. They were in love again.

And then everything fell apart, as things tend to do.

She absorbed the weight of this final statement. He wasn’t exactly old looking, but it was still a bit of a surprise that he was a pre-Turner. “I’m amazed you were able to hold onto the painting. With everything that’s happened since then,“ she remarked.

He smiled. “It’s not the same painting, actually.”

He went on to explain that the painting was, in fact, a reproduction. On one of his journeys that brought the tribe through the wreckage of Los Angeles area (rough territory – crawling with Biters and small pockets of feral Breathers) he stopped in Pasadena and hunted down the gallery, knowing full well that even if it had still been standing, it was pointless. Surely the gallery must have rotated its lineup regularly. Surely it wouldn’t still be there. But nothing about this decision was based in realistic thought. He found the remains of the gallery, and dug through heaps of neglected and weathered art for hours. Nothing. Having come up short in his goose chase, he decided he’d simply recreate it. And so he taught himself to stretch canvas, and found a relatively untouched art supply store (art naturally dropped about 30 rungs on the ladder in terms of priority to the looters of post-infection America), where he snagged a few vials of concentrated watercolor dye. After a few flawed attempts, he made something better than the faded memory of that painting. It looked like he remembered her, in colors less gaudy than the purples and oranges the original artist had bestowed on the canvas. There was so much time spent on the contours of her face compared to his. So much adoration, she felt almost embarrassed to stare at this image of this woman, as if by doing so, she was seeing into this man’s most private of thoughts.

She was silent for a long time. They both were. When the silence felt it had reached a natural and respectful conclusion, she asked him what she had been wondering through most of his story.

“Did she… did she make it through The Turn?”

He turned to her and remained silent for a few moments, seemingly weighing the merits of telling her or not. At that moment, Kestrelynn appeared in the doorway, her gear and cowboy hat now replaced by comfortable city clothes, and upon noting her presence, the man finally spoke.

“I don’t know. It’s irrelevant now. She’s dead to me either way.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he just stared. Waiting to see if she’d be bold enough to press for more detail, perhaps? She remained silent.

“You’ve already met my protégé.” he said, nodding to the doorway, to which Kestrelynn responded with a tiny smirk. Her arms were crossed, and the knuckles of her right hand rose and fell against her bicep in a wave, suggesting an eagerness to pick up where they had left off in their argument with [girl’s name]’s jaw.

“She’ll set you up with a place to stay downstairs. You’ll have your own quarters, of course. We know how to treat ‘royalty’ around here,” he said, with a touch of amusement at the end.

She turned as the door was shutting behind her. His back was already to them, a statue again, contemplating the painting on the wall in silence…

2:12am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayVvTWD
(Notes: 1)
  
April 17, 2010
Why I Fail At Online Dating

Her:

Hi! I see you like sushi. My favorite is spicy tuna handrolls. What’s yours?

Me:

Yeah, those’re good. I mean, sure, universally, those are gonna be pretty good. Show me a sushi joint that fucks up a spicy tuna hand roll, and i’ll show you a sushi joint that’s been in business for one generation, with dudes in the kitchen that worked at Denny’s before that. The STHR (from here on out we’re abbreviating) is a staple that will never do you wrong. You can always count on STHR. STHR won’t leave you for your best friend. STHR won’t slip anything in your drink. STHR is someone you’d be comfortable leaving your kids alone with. STHR will have your back when you get jumped in the Target parking lot. STHR doesn’t spit. It swallows.

But you don’t order spicy tuna handrolls just willy-nilly. No, going to a well-run sushi joint with expert chefs and ordering a STHR is like going to a $50 per plate Italian restaurant and ordering the pizza they reserve for children.

You see, the problem is, you’re not gonna be able to judge the strength of the chefs on it. The spicier it is, the more you can mask mediocre fish. So when you go to get sushi, save the handroll ‘til halfway through, maybe even before the end. Every type of sushi has its place in the rotation, and unless you can put away a gang of sushi, you have to choose wisely. So start with the simplest thing you can. Just some salmon or tuna sashimi.  I recommend salmon. Salmon is a good yardstick by which to measure a place. Salmon is like a magician doing the classic “ambitious card” routine, or a kid with a ukulele on YouTube covering Creep in a post-Amanda Palmer Black Cab Session world. Salmon is like a girl belting out Amazing Grace.  It’s not an original choice, it’s just a way of saying “ok y’all know the song, so you don’t have to pay attention to the song itself. You’re paying attention to HOW I sing it”, and a bad singer singing that song is as obvious as two day old refrozen fish, whereas a lovely singer is like a slice of salmon that came off a twitching fish pulled from a river 30 seconds prior to being filleted.

Now you’ve seen  if that place can make just a simple cut of raw fish (nigiri or sashimi) taste good. If it does, go hog wild. Order exotic sashimi. If it doesn’t, start ordering up stuff like spicy tuna rolls, because they’re obviously not skilled enough to make you anything that doesn’t have a bunch of spice masking the flavor. Get yourself some tempura shrimp and ignore the little part of you that is embarrassed to be so unadventurous. Or really slum it and get a california roll with the fake “krab”. If you wanna be all cultured and eat the good shit, go all out, but don’t do it at a half-assed place. Mediocre sushi is already leaps and bounds beyond fast food or anything like that, so just eat simple and cheap if the place sucks, and you’ll still be happy.

Her:

Wow that’s a novel lol

Me:

I should probably not answer messages on here really really drunk anymore.

No reply

11:38pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayVaak3
(Notes: 1)
  
December 21, 2009
“omg read and repost its true lol”

At many times in the course of human evolution, mankind has clung to innumerable and varied irrational beliefs, sometimes contradictory ones, purely for the comfort that they offered, and for the ugly but unarguably alluring reward of seeing other human beings screwed over for not playing by the rules. Whether borne from an erroneous analyzation of causal effects, or simply propagated by urban myth, many supertitions managed to survive until today, and of course, new ones have arisen.

Contemporary superstition is generally harmless (as opposed to ancient beliefs that often resulted in innocent women being used as firewood or family pets being drowned). Whether it’s a baseball team believing its team is doomed to failure simply because of an incedent with a goat 60 years ago, or smokers turning over the first cigarette in their pack, designating it as the “Lucky”, modern superstition is usually playful, innoccuous, and vague in its reward/punishment system.

This of course leads me to the newest form of superstition, even though, yes, it is simply the evolution of a slightly older form. The Chain Letter. The snail-mail chain letter is probably an invention of the later part of this century anyway, and its newest incarnation couldn’t have come around before the internet itself, so basically, i’m talking about the newest, most versatile, and in my humble opinion, most ridiculous false heuristic since the belief that walking under a ladder was some ill shit. This is Black Cat v3.0, and it’s not crossing your path, it’s curling up in your inbox and pumping out kittens.

And it seems my fellow human beings refuse to get it spayed because they’re afraid it will affect their love life. Oh, you’ve seen ‘em. The bulletin that offers you the mate of your wettest dreams if you would just copy and repost some prosaic swill about a “real” couple who found each other against all odds. The sob-story about a missing child, and the thousands of dollars that will be generated, 25 cents at a time if you just resend it to 20 more people who send it to 20 more people ad infinitum. The surveys that threaten to consign you to 50 years of bitter masturbation, ugly, unwashed and unwanted, just because you failed to aid in the reproductive cycle of a useless digital organism.

Now, the reason i haven’t spoken up sooner is that i understand - these things are pretty much harmless. They only take up a tiny, almost imaginary space in some server somewhere, and even then only for a limited time, after which that space will be recycled to make room for another banner ad that tries to lure you into predicting which purse some halfwitted blond chihuahua of a celebrity will pick. So where’s the harm? Why NOT post it, JUST IN CASE it comes true?

There is the simple answer: Most of your friends don’t want to read that garbage. If they’re skeptic people, they probably groan and lose a little respect for you. If they’re superstitious people, they’re probably angry that you have now committed THEM to passing it along. Then there’s the more complicated answer. A chain is not self-sustaining. It requires outside input of some sort, in this case, our help. Some chains need to be preserved, such as our ecosystem, or keeping Firefly on the air. Some, like AIDS and other venereal diseases, while absolutely hilarious in the right context, are better off being broken. And these ridiculous chains obviously fall into the latter.

Don’t get me wrong, the format itself is not flawed. Make some great chains and stop forwarding the bad ones. Weed out the ones that prey upon the gullible. Weed out the sappy stories about dying kids that don’t exist. And for the love of everything that is good in this world, let’s kill all those inane forwards where you have to scroll down while making a wish and then at the end it comes true if you repost it in the next 8 minutes.

There’s so much more i could say about why this should be done, but the fact of the matter is, i can’t prove that this will be a step forward in human evolution. I can’t quantify how much getting rid of outdated thinking like this will, in a roundabout way, make our species less susceptible to manipulation by advertising and organized religion. But i think it’s a good start.

Now post a comment within the next 10 minutes or the rest of your life will be spent watching Uwe Boll’s entire filmography over and over.

3:08am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayHT-uQ
December 21, 2009
Premature Evacuation

Suddenly at work i’m struck by this horribly depressing thought, which was borne from an only slightly depressing thought i had regarding the relationship i have with my cat. As much as i love my cat, her death would be something i could move on from in a relatively short period of time, without much psychological scarring, albeit maybe a little guilt depending on the circumstances. And i’ve thought about this on numerous occasions: going out of town and returning to find a window open and her gone, or worse, to find her in the parking lot with the cartoony tire mark painted across her body, and her eyes reduced to X’s.

And as shitty as that is, something even more depressing hit me. I’d never thought of it the other way, where i die, and the cat is the one at home waiting for me to walk in the door. The police don’t get a chance to explain to her that i’m not coming back, because, well, she’s a fuckin’ cat. She doesn’t get to “deal with it” like a human. For her i’d just walk out the door and never come back. And say what you will about our pets, some might not give a shit, but you know some do. Mine in particular gets all fucked up when i go out of town. She stops grooming herself and throws up on the carpet. And it’s not just because I’m some food source to her, because she’s getting fed with or without me. No, she genuinely wants my presence, and i can’t imagine how weird it would be for a relatively dumb animal to suddenly have what is basically its mother taken away from it. It’s not grief or mourning the way we think of it, but it’s definitely loss, stress, and confusion. She might not “love” me in the sense that humans do to each other (or convince themselves they do to each other, depending on your perspective), but she is definitely attached to me.

Which THEN got me to thinking about friends that died in motorcycle accidents, or acquaintances shot overseas, or killed in natural disasters. Human life is pretty fragile, hypothetically. I say hypothetically because somehow, we do a pretty good job of hedging our bets in this random game of chance to where, at 28 years old, i am still completely intact and relatively undamaged. This, despite having hung off balconies of 30 story buildings, driven drunk repeatedly, and done some generally ridiculous jackass kinda shit. So far, I’ve been lucky, but then, so have most people i know. That being said, if you ever give it much thought, life can be taken away from you at pretty much a second’s notice. Think of 9-11, think of the hurricane, think of any obituary you can read in the daily newspaper that isn’t the cause of old age or disease. I think of pinky mice, sightless, sleepy, and mewling, oblivious to the snake coiling up to strike inches from it. Your life can be snatched away from you in an instant, and you might not even see it coming.

I guess what freaks me out about mortality is not the being dead part, because I’m pretty at peace with the idea that once I’m gone, i’m not really in a position to give a shit, so who cares? Plus, i had a pretty damn good run. What freaks me out is the interruption of what i expected to be a cohesive timeline. My lack of a written will. My cat sitting up on a windowsill watching the stairs and waiting for me to finally come home. Emails piling up in my inbox from old friends who aren’t going to get the news. My family or housemate having to go through my shit and figure out what to keep, what to trash. 

I guess when it comes down to it, i just want the opportunity to plan for death. As long as i don’t get hit by a cement mixer or mauled by a bear out in the woods, i’m good to go. Plant a bomb in my brain and tell me I have a week before it blows, i’m fine. Just let me put some shit in order.

Is that weird? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with being more disturbed and saddened by the idea that no one is going to know to pick up my suit at the dry cleaners, and the little old lady is eventually going to take it to Salvation Army, than the idea that i’m never going to know the joy of having a child graduate from high school? Probably, but whatever.

Last night i watched about 40 minutes of some movie called Blood Diamond because my housemate had it on and i was eating dinner. Leonardo DiCaprio goes into this camp to save someone or something and does that cliche thing where he takes this guard out from behind, covering his mouth and slitting his throat all ninja style. Shit like that depresses me. I always frame it in my head, not as “Oh, wow, the protagonist sure is sneaky and badass”, but rather “What a shitty deal. You’re born to parents who have love and high hopes for you, you learn, develop, and after 30 years of effort and growth, you get knifed by Leonardo DiCaprio and you don’t even have time to comprehend what’s going on”. It’s like the poor fucker’s life was a novel of heartache, pain and joy, and somewhere in the middle, he’s assigned to a watch post, and having this internal monologue where he ruminates on his long lost little brother, Motumbo, taken away by rebel forces when they were children, and you’re really getting into it, and then halfway through a sentence about their mother’s noble sacrifices, it cuts off and just goes “Ack! *gurgle*” and the book is over. All the other pages are blank. Raw fuckin’ deal.

And that’s it i guess. Hands down, the thing about going out unexpectedly that i can’t fathom is how frustrating it is to

3:05am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayHT-AP
December 21, 2009
Your Mom

Ladies and gentlemen. I believe that through a combination of chance and traditional logic techniques such as those employed by the ancient Greek philosophers of yore, I have discovered that which has eluded scientists, philosophers, and clergypersons of all religious denominations for millennia. I have stumbled upon a truth that encompasses all others, and explains the origins of life, and even hints at the existence of other dimensions.

True enlightenment can be achieved by simply following a series of deductions made based upon 2 concrete facts. These are both facts that all of us already know to be true, so it shouldn’t take much work. It only requires that you, dear reader, start with these two basic truths.

I: Your mom is hella old.

II: Everyone’s had a piece of your mom.

Naturally, this leads us to: Your Mom = God, or an approximation thereof.

Explanation:

Let us begin with the simple fact that Your Mom is really fucking old. Like, we’re talking OLD. Like, a cop pulled her over and asked for her ID and she gave him a rock. Her Social Security number was 1. Or at least, it would have been, if there was a concept like that. There wasn’t though. You need society first.

Now at some point, which at first remains unclear (but we’ll get there later), there were lots of people. It’s easier for me to say God created them than to explain what really happened, and since a lot of people are really into the idea that God created humanity, I don’t have to do much explanation of how this works, so I’ll use it as shorthand. “God” created people. And dinosaurs. And kangaroos, and unfortunately, manatees. And “he” created all these things for one reason.

To fuck your mom.

Basically, the only reason people exist, the only reason the animal kingdom exists, hell, the only reason any other concept that is not singularity itself exists, is a big sloppy gangbang with your mom at the center of it. Though my proof is shaky, my instinct tells me that this act of creation was without a creator. It can’t have been your mom, that’s for sure, because that would imply there was a time before that where she wasn’t getting boned. And we know that simply isn’t possible.

But it’s not just your mom I’m talking about. Because even as you, one person, are reading this right now, many will read it over time. Hell, even I’m going to reread this. When I say your mom… I’m talking about Your Mom. A conceptual idea that has nothing to do with the owner of the vagina you fell out of so many years ago. When I say everyone’s banging Your Mom, and that this is the way it’s always been, you realize that she is… yes… everyone’s mom.

At this point, the sharper ones among you might be paralyzed… minds awhirl with the amazing new concepts. Realizations that not only have you fucked Your Mom, but that she, in fact, ALSO fucked Your Mom. Maybe you’re wondering what would be begat by such a union. A parallel you in another reality? Maybe even… your mom? To which I say, slow down now. We’ll get there. Your Mom likes it when you take it slow. Trust me.

First and foremost, we need to enter a new era. One in which people don’t get offended when you start bagging on their moms (or, our mom’s, in a way). Once you accept that Your Mom’s been fucked by you, the rest of your family, your ancestors, the Prime Minister of China, China itself, pterodactyls, Jon Bon Jovi, Socrates, and many many more, the idea becomes a bit ludicrous, and therefore, impossible to get mad about. Your mom isn’t just a MILF. She’s a MWLF, where the W stands for a global (universal, even) We.

From there, it’s not too hard to transition it into something rather beautiful. Perhaps this cosmic gangbang is a metaphor for creation itself, both the creation of life as a whole, and even the individual act of passing on genes. The drive within us all to reproduce, and spread our seed, well, that drive might not be too different than the drive in us to spread our seed all over your mom’s face and hair. She is the personification of the very verb “create”. When life begets new life, when matter coalesces from parts into something more complex and whole, that’s your mom. Every time a little white swimmer burrows its way through the soft wall of an unformed egg (in those rare instances it doesn’t just end up all over her chin), that’s your mom.

Look at the environmentalists and pagans that have long recognized the creator, and even our very planet, as a matronly entity that has no physical form. A caring force that nurtures us all, and represents fertility. So next time you see one of them with a bumper sticker that says something like “The Earth is our Mother. Thank Her in your Actions”, pull up next to them and let them know that you do thank her…

…every night after you wipe your dick off on her pillow.

2:57am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayHTz7P
December 17, 2009
Manatee Insanity

Ok, so my little sister told me this story that was related to her by either the main character or someone who witnessed it, i can’t remember which, but it hardly matters because it was so awesome. So this dude and his buddies are all out getting plastered on some boat over in Florida. Not like, out in the ocean, but y’know, all that wetland stuff where the water’s relatively shallow and stuff. And Dude sees this manatee just kinda chillin’ at the surface of the water, as manatees are prone to do (when they’re not too busy spreading vicious rumors, making eyes at your girl, tattling on you to your boss about how you’re always drunk at work, etc). Of course, being drunk, he tries to get his friends to give him 20 dollars to jump off the boat and onto the manatee. His friends, perhaps not aware of the evils perpetrated by these creatures, showed little interest in forking over twenty bucks. Dude then lowered his asking price to 10 dollars, and after STILL no takers, he lowered it to a desparate 5. People were still pretty disinterested, and the inevitable happened. Dude then told his friends to just dare him, and he would jump onto the manatees back. There is a point at which you might as well just fuckin’ do it instead of begging your friends to dare you to do it, and Dude had reached that point. Without further ado, he vaulted the railing, and plunged feet first towards the creature floating alongside their vessel. Now, hindsight is often 20/20, and one can assume fom the outcome of this stunt that Dude regretted his attempt at the manatee rodeo. You see, this was no ordinary manatee, and by ordinary, i mean “alive”. This particular manatee had been dead for days, and had spent the entirety of those days working through a process known as “decay”. So Dude was quite surprised to find that scant seconds after leaping through the air in a semi-courageous display of belligerence, he found himself up to his armpits in the festering corpse of a sea-cow. Luckily for him, a life-preserver was unecessary, as he now had his very own organic version, wrapped snugly around his torso. I can only imagine the rest. Either i wasn’t told the rest, or i was laughing too hard for it to register. Did he paddle back to shore, using the dead manatee for flotation? Did he flail around enough to tear it apart? Did he puke? Undoubtedly. One has to assume he forfeited the contents of his own stomach in addition to dispersing that of his target’s. So many questions remain unanswered for me.

3:38am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlqzayH7vvY
December 12, 2009
my favorite books

This is shamelessly copied to this blog from Facebook, but I promise everything here was written by me. It was originally one of those “copy and repost” sorts of deals, much like the old MySpace surveys everyone filled out about what color underwear they were wearing at the time, and who the last cute guy they texted was. The point of this, however, was to write a short review of the 25 most influential books you’ve read in your life.

So I set my own standards for what makes the cut. They don’t have to hold up to the test of time. They can suck big floppy donkey dick once you take off the rose colored glasses and look at them with whatever pretentious new perspective on literature you’ve achieved in your oh-so-mature old age. It doesn’t matter. Just as long as it hit you hard when you read it and made an impression on you. Not an impression like a little thumbprint on a pane of 8th story window glass. I’m talking about an impression like the bottom of Godzilla’s foot makes on screaming japanese people. The impression a deer makes on the grill of your SUV in the middle of night in the middle of nowhere. The impression Chris Brown’s teeth made on… yikes… too much?

Here’s mine…


Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) – Perhaps my #1, if I were to take part in such a futile exercise. It’s hard sci-fi about children being bred to fight our wars for us in the future, and about one child in particular who is earmarked by the galactic military to become humanity’s savior. It’s a very heartfelt and personal look at him and his friends, though, not just some grandiose military tale. This book blew my mind at age 12, and still holds up. I plan on making this required reading for my kids before they hit 10.

House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski) – A review doesn’t really do this justice. I don’t know how to explain what it’s about. Sometimes a book is so well crafted I just feel mentally retarded and inadequate after reading it. This book is at the top of that pile.

Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk) – Forget the movie for a moment, even though so much of the dialogue/narration is taken straight out of the book. Forget the hype, too, and the phenomenon that this thing became. Forget the fact that this was probably the last really good thing Palahniuk wrote. At one point, this was just a book, and I was young, and this novel was the freshest, most iconoclastic, irreverent kick to the teeth I had ever read. And as dumb as it was to box bare-knuckle every Friday night in Theo’s kitchen, surrounded by jagged edges on the stove and low-hanging cupboards, I’m tougher for it, and it wouldn’t have happened without that book.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson) – So I owe a lot of who I am to this book, some good, some bad. I’ll just stick with the good. I may not have been around for the decaying final years of the revolution, but reading this book, it’s easy to see why it all fizzled and the forces of good just didn’t have the steam to fully realize their dreams. Dr. Thompson’s prose and musings are as lyrical and sharp as can be, though, turning a hazy account of a binge in Vegas accompanied by social satire into a very enjoyable read.

A Massive Swelling (Cintra Wilson) – Her novels are pretty solid, but Cintra Wilson’s strength is in her short rants about pop culture or politics. This collection of essays about celebrities is pretty much one of the funniest things a human being ever put on paper. I don’t think it’s likely, but I have this hope that one of the people she verbally savages has read it at some point, and been too busy laughing at her merciless wit to cry tears of shame for what they’ve become.

Watership Down (Richard Adams) – It may not sound possible for an adult to write an entire novel for adults (though I think mature kids are the ideal audience) that consists of a pack of rabbits going from one place to another, and make it a work of genius and social commentary. It doesn’t sound like it’s possible, but it is.

The Hobbit (JRR Tolkein) - Yeah sure, now you have the LOTR movies, but back in my day, you got made fun of for liking this kinda shit. The Hobbit was probably what turned my young normal-ish self into a geek, but who knows? Would i have wasted adolescent years playing Magic the Gathering, or wasted a couple post college years playing WoW if i had never touched this? Ok, fine. Probably. Shut up.

Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins) - I really wanted to just write Tom Robbins as his own book, since it’s hard to choose. But this was the one that broke my cherry. This one sent me on a mission to read everything short of the man’s grocery list. It’s crazy. It’s magical. The man does things with metaphor and simile that tickle your brain’s asshole. And not many other writers do the thing where they start with some goofy characters and a faint idea of where the story is headed, but by the end of it, the story is really about art, sex, history, god, drugs, love, death, and pretty much everything else.

American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) - Not for the lighthearted. This book made me feel like a sociopath for about two weeks. There’s nothing like reading a chapter composed of nothing but detailed dismemberment of a prostitute, which ends with his sobbing musings on his deteriorating mental stability, and the regret that he feels about what he’s done, only to turn the page to see the next chapter titled “Killing a Child At The Zoo”.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - I don’t know if i can explain what magical realism is, but i can just hand you this book. Other than the frustrating fact that every male character for like 10 generations in this book is named Jose, this book is awesome.

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) – Despite being his second language, Nabokov’s prose puts native English speakers’ to shame. Despite being written more than 50 years ago, it reads like it’s a story that exists outside of time. And despite being about a pedophile, it’s a beautiful love story. Take that last with a grain of salt. I was, after all, engaged to a woman 9 years my junior, so maybe that last detail will creep the average reader out more than myself.

Snowcrash (Neal Stephenson) – Again, another book that makes me feel like a halfwit. It’s ahead of its time, genius, deeply philosophical as well as scientific, and yet, it’s a vibrant and funny romp through pop-culture and sci-fi style action. I actually got a little teary eyed at one point. It’s that good.


Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (Charles Bukowski) – putting a single Bukowski book on here just feels like a cop-out, and it is. I have favorite poems, but how can you really have a favorite collection of poems? I just put this because it was the first one I was exposed to. This is the book that makes you want to grow up to be an alcoholic.

Watchmen (Alan Moore)– I certainly loved comic books long before I got all pretentious and started calling them graphic novels. But even then, I had no fucking clue what they were capable of. Watchmen is on par with some of the heaviest hitters of this century’s American literature. It is the death of the idealistic hero in the face of Cold War, corporate greed, and the uncertain future of science, and it is simultaneously about the way we tell stories in the comic medium itself.

Icewind Dale Trilogy/ Dark Elf trilogy (RA Salvatore) – These books were my Twilight – my retarded, gratuitous soap-opera-level “guilty pleasure” before I was old enough to realize I should feel guilty liking it. Years later, though, I got to enact my revenge when lo and behold, I spiraled into the depths of World of Warcraft, and found myself slaughtering throngs of night elf hunters named ‘Drizzztt”, “Drizztttt” and “Driiizzzt”. I consider it atonement for my bad taste. Perhaps years from now, countless college age girls will go home for the holiday break, and stumble across the life-size cardboard Edward cutout in their parents’ garage and undergo a similar spiritual cleansing, involving a baseball bat.

The Dark Tower series (Stephen King), The Stand (Stephen King) – In my youth, I liked Stephen King. Pretty much all his shit. But even then, I knew The Stand and what existed of the Dark Tower series (the last 4 books only came around recently) were his best works. In retrospect, I was right. They’re the only ones I can still stomach. And I think about them still. In the quiet hours of the night, if I am honest with myself, I can look past the fact that he is a creator of fun but gratuitous and “pop” entertainment for young boys, and know that for whatever reason, I owe probably more of who I am to him than to any other author. Not because he is a great writer, but because he can create a strange terrible world where you don’t REALLY want to be, but some childish, adventurous kid inside you with something to prove thinks it would be awesome to go fight evil.

Nausea (Sartre) - During a year of college where i ingested an extremely unhealthy amount of psychedelics, i took a class called “Existentialism and After”. This combination nearly destroyed me, but after a decade of my brain recovering from the abuse, now it’s just funny. This book was my final challenge in that class, a 15 page challenge, if i remember correctly. I failed miserably, but to this day have a lot of respect for that book.

Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) – There’s a reason this is pretty much considered the most popular sci-fi book of all time. No lightsabers, space battles, or killer aliens, but a whole shitload of philosophical ideas that force you to reevaluate why we’ve chosen to mold society into what it is today. No matter how conservative or traditional your background, after finishing this book you’ll at least see a little appeal in moving to a commune and having copious amounts of sex with multiple partners while you learn to control the world around you with your mind.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers) - The title is pretty apt. Not much really happens in this book, plot-wise. His parents die and he auditions for The Real World. That’s all i remember. And yet, somehow it’s impossible to put down. Also, within the first 10 pages or so, you will probably be converted into one of those snobby assholes that rolls their eyes whenever someone misuses the word “irony”. I was.

Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs) - Heroin makes writers and jazz musicians awesome, but everyone you will ever meet who is into that shit is pretty much guaranteed to be an idiot. What’s that about?

Gun with Occasional Music (Jonathan Lethem), Amnesia Moon (Jonathan Lethem) - Genre bending at its finest. Lethem is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for those pretentious assholes starting to call stuff “Speculative Fiction” instead of Sci-fi. I’m one of those assholes. Are you sensing a pattern here?

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon) - an epic tale told over 50 some odd years, covering comic book heroes, escape artists, and magic, but all within the realm of history and reality. I shudder to write “heartwarming”, but it is. I loathe the fact that I think it’s “life-affirming”, but that’s what it is. Every adjective I have for this book is one that I usually associate with movies where a guy who has cancer in the 1940’s falls in love with a woman who teaches blind kids, but he gets drafted, and there’s lots of letter-writing and crying and running passionately through wheat-fields, and the preview has that one stirring composition that’s in every other preview for a movie that wins Oscars. I can’t help it though. This book just does it to me.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams) - Not much to say. It’s like Monty Python in space. Goofy madcap sci-fi with the trademark British wit.

Welcome to the Monkey House (Kurt Vonnegut) - i know it’s weird to put a short story collection in for Vonnegut, with everything else that guy did, but for some reason this just sticks out the most. When it comes down to it, I really love short stories. To only get a tiny window into a freshly created world, without major plot twists or resolution, is perhaps my favorite format for narrative art in general. It’s like a writer just sharing a short daydream with you. Like you were hanging out with Vonnegut and he stepped outside for one of his unfiltered Pall Malls and when he came back in, said “Hey, you know what I just thought about?”

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(Notes: 3)
  
December 12, 2009
Quit Hoggin’ the Covers

Ok so you’re a multi-millionaire music producer. You own 5 labels, never have to drive yourself anywhere, and live off sushi and gold-plated cocaine. There’s not a single artist in the world that would deny a request from you. They’re puppets at the ends of your strings.

One night, high on imported oxygen, baby adrenaline, and your own reflection, you open your rolodex, which contains the personal phone number of every living musician in the world. It doesn’t matter what time it is. They will answer, and whatever you ask them to do, they will say yes.

You just want them to cover a song. Any song. And you want a whole album of these. Here are my choices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bjork - The Girl from Ipanema (Getz and Gilberto)
Tom Waits - Something i Can Never Have (NIN)
Beth Gibbons (of Portishead) - I Fall To Pieces (Patsy Cline)
Rammstein - Rock Lobster (B-52’s)
Khaela Maricich (of The Blow) - 99 Luftballoons (?)
Cake - Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash)
Beck - Unravel (Bjork)
Grandaddy - I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams)
The Dresden Dolls (my influence can even get bands back together) - Pygmalism (Momus)
Richard Cheese (big stretch, i know) - This Is Hardcore (Pulp)
Regina Spektor - Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt)
The Paper Chase - Monkey Gone to Heaven (Pixies)

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April 11, 2008
My spirit animal

My spirit animal

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