Haiku

lunar eclipse: coy
moon blushes, baiting the
werewolf population

Pushing "Play"

I paused my writing, not because I don’t love and adore both of my followers, but because I had been swept away in a whirlwind of adventures and I had forgotten that I had started a blog in the first place. Please forgive me, although, I am sure it will happen again.

Updates on the workings of the world:

1. In Malaysia, everyone drives a scooter.

2. In Spain, wine is cheap and abundant; however, Sin Gluten food is only located in the supermarkets far from the resort.

3. In Gibraltar, seriously, beware of the monkeys.

4. The Big Sur Half Marathon, 13.1 miles, is much more pain and agony that it sounds like.

Updates on myself:

1. I have surrendered to the side-effects and have abruptly stopped all intentional intake of wheat, gluten, buckwheat, oats, milk, butter, eggs and cheese. (this leaves me with a diet of mostly cardboard and corn tortillas)

2. I will deploy in May 2011

3. I am still stunning and handsome. Evidence below,

sprinting to the finish line of the Big Sur Half Marathon 14 November 2010 for a time of 2hr 24 min 9 sec


Updates on my 2010 New Year’s Resolution:

Resolution 1: Publish a Short Story in a Literary Magazine. Status - Incomplete, will recycle for 2011

Resolution 2: Get a Full-Time (real) Job. Status - Incomplete, no longer relevant with looming deployment

Resolution 3: Take Down Christmas Lights. Status- Absence of proof is not proof of absence; therefore, I declare this a SUCCESS!

Resolution 4a: Army Physical Fitness Test score of 275. Status – Failure

Resolution 4b: Capture all Xbox 360 Achievement points for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Status- In progress.

1.5 out of 4.5, I declare 2010 a failure and am calling for a mulligan

Dining Out with Uncle Sam

I am dining downtown at a restaurant with cloth napkins, I raise a glass of crafted beer to toast Uncle Sam for taking me out.
“Thank you for giving back
some
of that money you took
from me
last year”

I just received my tax refund, and (I’m “Spilling while I’m sipping” because I’ve got Money to Blow…) as a true American patriot I am immediately donating the money to the suffering economy via large corporate retailers and restaurants who’s failure would have a significantly moderate impact on my daily affairs.
(I also paid my fiancée for my half of the last two months rent but that is not as glamorous as the previous and I just spent the last 12 hours at the gate of a construction site checking in people who bring home more bacon than I do so I am hording all the glamour points I can counterfeit because they don’t grow on the trees in my backyard.)

Here is the breakdown-
I have a car: +2 Glamour Points
But it is a 1996 Subaru Outback station wagon: -1 GP
with a tape deck: -1 GP
I have a tattoo: +1 GP
of a 1984 book quote: -1 GP
I have a job: +1 GP
as a rent-a-cop: -34 GP

Total = -33 Glamour Points

Feeling Good about Failure

The day started with a bang. A bang about the size of an M-150 firecracker smuggled across the Colorado-Wyoming border. So to be more specific, the day started with a largely insignificant and mostly unsatisfying bang. My buddy and I set out to change that.

An M-150 firecracker is a small cylinder with hardened light gray stuff and powdery dark gray stuff packed inside. A green fuse runs in from the top. I don’t know how much these things cost, I didn’t ask, but I do know that if a person runs a saw blade down the side of the cardboard cylinder, the different color stuffs can be segregated. The light gray stuff does not catch on fire, but if a person was to crush it up then add small amounts of water it can be reshaped, molded to fit the size of a small pill bottle spray painted black. The dark grey stuff is the moneymaker. It is packed in a smaller cylinder that encases the bottom of the green fuse. This is the sound and the fury.

We dissect seven firecrackers with wavering precision. Light gray matter spills onto the kitchen table, the kitchen floor, onto my jeans.
If my fiancée was here …

With Scotch tape, four inner cylinders are fastened together and a Dremel tool is used to drill a hole in the top of the pill bottle for the fuse. By definition, this is an Improvised Explosive Device.

I get the video camera

The fuse sparks up and we start to run for cover behind my car. Glorious yellow orange sparks illuminate a small section of the parking lot behind my apartment building. In my mind, I am adding this to my resume as an example of creativity, resourcefulness, self-motivation.

The fuse burns for less an half a second then fizzles out. No fireball, no explosion. We wait behind my car for three minutes before walking up and hesitantly kicking it over.

We try the fuse again but nothing happens. I unlock the dumpster and we throw it away.

Witness to only the realization of my ineptitude as a terrorist, and that is surprisingly more satisfying than the alternative.

Getting to know you (me)

“…my precise demographic-middle/lower class, MTV-watching, video-game-playing, Doritos-eating, action hero wannabe.”



- Paul Rieckhoff Chasing Ghosts pg 9

Papier-Mâché Kisses

I've picked up my flashlight and returned to Colorado to build my dreams at $8.75/hour as a security guard. To supplement my part-time hours, I will manufacture Valentine’s Day Greeting Cards. I’ll name the company Paper Cuts or Papier-Mâché Kisses

Card #1
Your love
is a smog cloud
with a stranglehold
on my heart

Happy Valentine’s Day

Card #4
having you in my life
feels like wearing wet socks

Happy Valentine’s Day

Card #7
Happy Valentine’s Day
I love you
more than my fling on the side

Card #8
Sex
with you
is more satisfying
than touching myself
to your Facebook pictures

Missed Connection

Today is Monday, so at 7:30 pm I am gliding across the local outdoor swimming pool in a variation of breaststroke where the head and ears are kept out of the water. My chin juts out, plowing across the blue expanse and I flutter along behind it.
A girl two lanes down is wearing earrings that shine how only fake diamonds can in an overhead light. She is on a kickboard. We trade glances. Hers, a soft, possibly longing, optical embrace that is either asking the two of us to frolic like sea anemone in the deep end, to let our toes touch or asking why someone overweight by Army standards is wearing a Speedo with yellow smiley faces. Mine is either gasping for breath or suave. Favoring the latter, I dive under the lane lines and we meet in the middle. She doesn’t hesitate to grab my hand with hers. Her hands are a topographical map, I circle the scenic lookout point where we will pack a picnic and unfold a romance.

A girl two lanes down is wearing earrings with her swim cap. She gives me a strange look, and I realize I’ve been staring. She kicks off the wall, back across the pool. I climb out. It’s raining so I run to the locker room.

Fortune Cookie

"Reaffirm your faith in financial plans. Make a budget" - Peking Noodle Co.

Death by Ambition

For the second day in a row, I have unholstered my ambition, and dove into my New Year's Resolution #4: Achieve a score of 275 on the Army Physical Fitness Test, by going down to the high school pool and used my younger brother’s employee discount. More simply, I have gone swimming. Twice. Swimming fascinates me because it is the only sport that contains both competitive and leisurely aspects while directly in the presence of death by drowning. My grandmother’s water aerobics class is really just an older group of thrill seekers looking for a socially acceptable to get their fix of danger, of life on the edge.

I feel death in my tires muscles as my breaststroke kick wears out mid-length and the tight grip around my lungs as I struggle to break the surface after a dive.
Stroke, kick, breathe; stroke, kick, breathe. I am dancing with death. A misstep puts me at the mercy of the high school kid in the red shorts currently flirting with the polka-dot bikini in lane three. A misstep will kill me. I am gambling, risking my life to improving it.

No pain = no peaches, so they say. I dive in for another lap.

Relocation

I would love to type vivid sentence fragments about an adventure that I am about to embark upon now that I am in the Golden State of California. I would love to let my fingers stray across keys like, “saving manta rays” or “back country snowboarding.” But with a checking account balance of $-145.00, I have moved to California—like the migrant fruit pickers of my heritage—to work, to get my hands dirty, to stretch the patience of my sanity and of my family’s hospitality.

With no interviews offered and no hours assigned with my security company in Colorado, I swallowed my pride and called my dad. “Hey, how are you? Good, good, glad to hear that. Hey I was wondering if …”

Leaving my fiancée and medical bills in Colorado, I moved two suitcases into a bedroom that shares a bathroom with my parents and I will be here for a month. This is not a defeat but a relocation of my downward spiral.

I have promoted myself to Assistant Manager of the Shipping and Receiving Department, it is a smaller department containing two twenty-three year old college dropouts, myself included. There is a sign posted near my desk; it reads “No Exit.”

Resolution 2: Postponed.

P.S. I forgot to pack any shorts.
P.S.S. Now that I work for and commute with my dad, he can use the High Occupancy/Commuter Express traffic lane but he has yet to thank me. I should mention this when he drives me to work tomorrow.

Still Waiting

Last night, I stayed up three hours past my bedtime because I could not put down The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Unquestionably, this is another beaming example of my dedication and perseverance. I should put this on my resume.

I am still waiting for the pictures my fiancée and I had taken at my National Guard battalion Christmas party to arrive so I can mail Christmas cards.

Currently listening to: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog soundtrack.

Monday

To-Do List:

• Purchase Laundry detergent


• Pawn old vacuum


• Pay credit card minimums


• Prepare a hostile takeover of the literary world (or write a series of novels about teenage angst in the form of broom riding, wand wielding vampires going to school in the English countryside) I am not fully committed to either idea


• Physical therapy appointment


• Pick up mail held at the post office over the holiday

Taken today is this pretty picture of metal mixed into the bone structure like an uninvited party guest who beats you at charades:

I am the 40,000 dollar man.

Step 2

Dressed for success in an oversized T-Shirt from a California pizza joint, I submit an application for a desk job in Fort Collins, Colorado I found on Craigslist.com. Responsibilities include answering the phone and working on a computer. I have years of experience with these tasks and I almost feel overqualified. I attach my resume:

Education: 77 credit hours at the University of Northern Colorado, English major, no degree
Recent Work Experience: Part-Time Security Guard, 2.5 years; Part-Time Dishwasher,University of Northern Colorado dining services, 3 months
Military: Private First Class, part-time helicopter mechanic, 1.5 years

I am enlisting myself for a 45-minute commute but I have almost beaten The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion on my Xbox 360 and I will need another productive way to fill my time between National Guard drill weekends until my unit deploys to Afghanistan. I am looking specifically for a job with a desk, and potentially a necktie, because I am still recovering from reconstructive surgery on a clavicle that I broke in a motorcycle accident and because I look dashing in a necktie.

New Year’s Resolution 4: Acquire all possible Xbox 360 achievements for Oblivion.
This will show a high level of perseverance and dedication, two characteristics that employers look for in a candidate. I will start this process promptly.

Obligatory New Year's Resolutions # 1-4

Compelled by standard American operating procedures, I am committing to a list of resolution:


Resolution 1: (Continued resolution from New Years 2009) Publish a short story
As a literary genius, I am obligated to share my stories with the world. The fact that I have been unable to publish anything yet, speaks more about the current trend away from printed materials and less about my abilities as a creative writer. Fact.


Resolutions 2: Find a full time employment.
Motivated by a selfless desire to bolster the national economy and by an empty checking account, I am going to find a full time job.


Resolution 3: Take down the Christmas lights


Resolution 4: (TBD)


I will start tomorrow.