Yuppy Chain Mail '06

Seasons greetings my friends,

Thought I’d get you all up to date on the exciting things going on in my busy life. It was the other day after feeding the homeless women down at the shelter but before reading to the under privileged Hispanic kids--no--wait. Yeah it wasn’t before the Spanish kids it was before volunteer gift wrapping down at the orphanage. The point is I am a busy man. But for a moment, on my way to the kitchen to whip up a frappacino in my new espresso machine, I caught a glimpse of myself in the ceiling mirrors and I have to tell you, it lead into this really trippy slow motion movie that was playing inside my head. I was the main character of the movie and the plot line was pretty much just me shaking hands with important people and winking.

So this has been a long year but they go by so fast don’t they? Don’t they though? I kicked off the year with a New Years resolution to work out more. I went down to the Puma emporium outlet and bought myself a striped mauve sweat suit with a very airy fiber. It’s the latest fiber. All the big shots are wearing it. At the gym I lift really heavy weight and grunt a ton. I’ve seen some real results and I think my love life has improved because of it. Oh but I have to tell you this story. Back in May, like may second I think, this girl at the gym looked like she may have been a bit under privileged if you take my meaning. Cute girl just needed to do a little something with her hair and maybe put on a Puma jump suit. Well I get to chatting with her about a fantastic recipe she was reading in Readers Digest. She was on the bike I was doing squat thrust on the mat next to her. Well long story short. She didn’t have much money so I made her the recipe and invited her whole family, Husband, kids, grand parents. Her grand parents were Philipino. I rented out the YMCA dinning hall for the event and well I got my picture in the paper. Again. I just can’t stand to see class and ethnic minorities suffering. I am big into diversity.

Another thing I managed to accomplish this year is graduating from college. It was a pretty big day in my life as you can imagine. I mean I hated to leave the dean like that but I felt the real world calling to me. And you know I thought about getting a job in a big office with computers all over and a fax machine in corner but I felt like my heart was being lead like always towards the underprivileged. That is why I had to accept the job the housing authorities here in Whatcom County offered me on the grounds crew. I landscape the projects. I think of it as painting really. The apartment complexes are my canvas and I work with the textures of nature, spreading them on the canvas. Basically I bring culture to people in the ghetto, giving them confidence and dignity through art.

Also just thought I’d throw this in real quick. I am a regular at Star Bucks. I go in and the girls have my drink ready for me. I don’t even have to order. In the autumn I drink a tall double shot pumpkin spice latte with fat free soy milk. This month I’ve really enjoyed both the peppermint mocha and the chai-egg-nog.

Jessi and I celebrated our one year anniversary back in October. I mean I think we are in the perfect relationship. Our many friends say that we are adorable and we do cuddle quite a bit. For Christmas I bought her an amulet with my picture inside. Our child, Frodo, is the smartest and just most interesting cat I have ever seen. When I took him to the vet, the doctor wouldn’t even neuter him, saying that his little furry balls were like precious gems.

All of these things were in that movie in my head and I thought how blessed I am. Seriously guys, Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love you all,
Matt, Frodo, and Peter

A hip cat

This is Frodo, sometimes called Love-Love.

Mary

I had just gotten off work from the golf course a few months after graduation. I was on my way home, stopped at a red light at a busy intersection downtown. I saw a familiar face floating in front of the car in the cross walk. It was my favorite writing professor, a vibrant, beautiful grey haired woman. She looked over my way and her face lit up as she recognized my dirty face behind the wheel of my beat up station wagon. She ran up to my drivers side window which was down and with a big warm smile and a singing voice, said "hello!". This happened so fast it caught me off guard: she moved to kiss my cheek and as she did, at that exact moment, I turned my head a little to the left and unexpectedly planted one on her lips. It was like being European except awkward. We chatted for a few moments before the light turned green and I drove off day dreaming about log cabins and chimney smoke.

I had forgotten about that funny little moment until this morning when I saw her picture in the paper and the news that she just published her book.

Update

I have not been able to publish anything here in nearly a month. I finally decided today that I would have to trouble shoot myself. It turns out I just had too many posts on my main page. I knocked it down,the number of post, to my last ninety and wal--LA. Here I am.

I hurt my back. Yeah. Just started a new job in August and already I'm out for two weeks with pinched nerves in my back. It isn't fun, I know that. The thing about pain, especially a constant pulsating pain, is that only you can feel it. Nobody else can. Other than the fact that I've been walking like a ninety-year-old man, I probably seem pretty normal. And so I feel guilty that I can't do normal stuff like say, go to work and earn a living.

Also, I read this article in Wired magazine a few days ago and have noticed it getting a lot of publicity recently. Give it a read. These atheist sound pretty fanatical do they not? Kinda like the religious fundamentalist they attack.

Drew

I put the truck in park and push in the parking break. My temp, Drew, is licking his lips and shifting around in the passengers seat. He’s occupied with his phone; writing lusty love letters with his thumbs to all three of his girlfriends. It’s Friday morning and I don’t much feel like working.

I’ve been working with Drew nearly two full weeks and he is wearing on my last nerve. He isn’t a bad guy, he’s just interested in different things than I am. Mostly sex. He talks about it incessantly. Especially pornography and how girlfriend number one, or GF1 as I’ve come to know her, sends him videos of herself stripping in her bedroom. A few days ago while we were driving back to the shop he said, “hmmm, penises.” Those hmmm’s, those quick mutterings in his throat come from his side of the cab every time we pass a girl. He uses them to communicate his desire to bend them. I’m repulsed by those hmmms. The penis thing though was new. I kept my eyes fixed on the road and pushed down on the gas pedal. “Penises. Did you see those bushes?” he ask. “They looked like three penises.”

He isn’t a bad guy. He’s just absolutely creepy.

It has started to rain outside so I decide we should take a break. I turn up the AM radio and slouch in my seat. They are talking about politics and sex scandals on the radio program. Seems like the whole world has gone mad on sex. Drew looks up from his phone with a shit-eating grin on his face. I can feel his look on my cheek. It feel’s slimy. “I think GF2 might have givin’ me something. I’ve had rash for a few days and now GF3 just texted me saying she has pelvic pain.” I want so desperately to turn into black robe and smote this man with my staff. “oh yeah?” I say, not looking him in the eye, “that’s no good.”

Why is he telling me this? I can’t handle it any more. “Let’s get to work.”

I open the door and the cool air has the smell of rain in it and I feel baptized by how clean it is. I put my ear-plugs in and grab a blower. Drew does the same. I love blowing fall leaves while it‘s raining. It is like painting, methodically sweeping the ground with stokes of air, herding dead leaves into piles, being in my own thoughts with the droll hum of the blower vibrating the hairs on the back of my neck. We make our way to high ground, working our way downhill and around the cars in the parking lot.

It is essential as a leaf shepherd not to fight the wind and the terrain but work with them. I start in a good spot and walk back and forth, pushing the line of debris towards its’ destiny. It is important not to break that line. If you get ahead of the line you’ll have to blow the same spot twice. I look up from my painting and see Drew fighting the hill, fighting the wind, even breaking the line. He’s blowing debris all over the place. I gesture to him to keep the line and give him a nod of encouragement. Minutes, maybe hours later, I look up again to see where my partner is. He’s still fighting the leaves. I can’t handle it anymore.
I turn off my blower and walk over to Drew and he takes his ear plugs out and stands nervously smiling.

“Drew,” I say, “you can’t get ahead of yourself.” I tell him about the line. “I’m not trying to stifle your creativity here but I can tell you from experience that your blowing strategy makes you work twice as hard. Do what works, keep it simple.”

This look takes over his face; he’s having an epiphany. “No, your right,” he says. “Hmmm, I’m blowing these leaves just like I’m living my life. I’m making a mess. I’ll work on it. Strait line?”

“Strait line,” I nod.

In the next room

I never bothered with a cell phone until recently. Maybe I was to poor to own one. Maybe I didn't want to be like all those people yacking on their phones in line at the supermarket. But what it really was, I think, is snobbery. I quit being a snob two weeks ago at a Verizon kiosk at the mall.

A minute ago I was sitting on the couch surfing the internet when I felt the vibration of my phone buzzing in my coat pocket. I picked it up and saw my brother Andy's name come up on the screen. Andy is in the bathroom not ten feet away. In the phone I heard his voice echoing off linoleum and porcelain but I also heard his muffled voice from behind the bathroom door. "Dude," he said, "are Diana and Gavin coming over?"

"Yeah, they'll be by in a few minutes."

"Cool. Bye."

I laughed. I could have been having conversations like this for years.

Engsoc

I worked with a new guy today. The temp agency sent him over to finish out the season with us. He's young. Younger than me. A Nice guy. The guys on my crew refer to the temporary employees sent over from Express as temps. "Where's your temp?" My co-worker asked me this afternoon. They aren't Human but Temps.

I have to tell my temp what to do. "Rake the leaves out of that bed," I'll say, or "mow these lawns." I'd rather not give orders. My job isn't that hard. I noticed though that out of nervousness or maybe in an attempt to put up a positive front, each time I told him what to do he'd nod his head and say, "awesome". Not okay, not you bet, not even Roger that, sir, but awesome.

How far has the English language slipped when awesome means okay? Cleaning up yard waste isn't awesome. God is awesome. The trees that bear twelve varieties of fruit and grow on the banks of the river flowing from Christ thrown are awesome. The Grand canyon is pretty awesome. It filled me with awe anyway.

Playing around with my girlfriend I laughed , "I hate you." "Hate is a strong word, honey," she said back. "But don't you know," I said, "there are no strong words anymore."

Language has become parody.

Every time we say hate when we mean love, when we say fuckin' to modify an adverb, we are obliterating our ability to describe reality in a meaningful way. Some pretty smart men have said that man touches reality through language. What kind of reality is it when God and pizza share the same over-arching characteristic?

"Hey temp, how would you like to cut out of here a few minutes early today?"

"Fuckin' awesome, man."

Flavor

I want a Coffee flavor to stimulate parts of me other than my tongue. A curiousity of language is how it allows talk about flavors that have nothing to do with taste buds. There is the flavor of a city. Of fashion. Of personalities. Of moments. Seattle has a tec/grunge flavor. Put that in a drink.


I want a mocha that tastes like Saturday mornings in Bellingham. The tastes of sleeping in. Of morning delivery trucks driving past my porch. Of morning dew on spider webs. Of dandelions opening up for the sun. Of being young and full of potential.

Lunch Break

I was watching the children play tennis on this, their last day of summer vacation. I was nibbling on my chicken salad sandwich while Ubed sat next to me in the cab of the truck eating a microwaveable chimichunga. We were sitting in our work truck parked under a shade tree at the park. The AM radio was on quietly. A man was talking about Iran; about terrorist; about illegal immigration. After eating my sandwich I dug through my bag for my cigarettes and then after finding one, struck a match, lit it and plopped down in the dry grass beside the truck. I blew out smoke and looked up at the sky.

Ubed, he's my partner, a very likeable guy; quick to laugh. Very sharp. He's from the Ivory Coast. I hear him open and close the passenger side door and then make his way around the back of the truck, whistling as he walks. He appears in front of me with a bright grin on his face. He looks up at the sky and then looks at me. He has something to say. He starts, "I want a boat. I think I am going to buy a boat."

"You're gonna buy a boat?"

"Yes. I think I would very much like a boat. Oh it would be so great to go sailing on a day like today. To have my own boat." He's looking up at the sky and the trees. "All this talk about war and natural disasters--I believe good will come out of it in the end. God said to expect this. That before he come there will be wars and rumors of wars. I see in your face happiness. You want to be a happy person. Jehovah likes it when man is happy. It makes him happy. Don't worry. Can you even imagine...no war, no sickness, no death? Oh man. It will be great. That time is very near. And when it comes I want a boat and I will sail all over the sea. I will have my own sea and my own boat. Don't worry so much about what you hear on the radio, Matt. Everything will be okay."

I look around the park again. The children are playing. Two men are taking their bikes off their bike racks. Five women are standing in a circle each with a new born baby in their arms talking about baby stuff. The birds on the wind and the leaves in the trees starting to turn. Ubed says that lions will lay down with lambs. "Can you imagine a lion in the park?!" He says he'll still eat meat but only the meat God says is okay to eat. It will be alright. Yeah, it will.

Step Aside

Those cartoon fights where the brawlers leap at each other and all you can see is a ball whirling furiously, every now and then a limb or a head pops out in a puff of dust--that image is in my mind. What I like about those fights is that Bugs Bunny has the power to step out of the mess, bat his eye lashes and leave Elmer Fudd to fight himself.

With all the mess in the news today, thats what I'd like to do. Step back.

May 14, 2004

I watched a documentary about the choice Amish teenagers must make: join the church or play on the Devils Playground.
I want to be Amish.

I watched a film about Jackson Pollock and his rise to the top of the American modern art movement. He abolished form and content from his work.
I want to be a painter.

I watched a television special--an interview with a young Chinese-American poet. He had good things to say about his father and the Bible.
I want to write poetry.

I watched so much TV today that I wanted to be somebody else.

To Every Season

A long time ago, in a forgotten history, Man walked naked among the trees and the grass. Those men didn't think of themselves as primitive like today’s Men think of themselves as Modern; they didn’t have cinema or the printing press to tell him how to think.

I like to imagine that those forgotten men abided by a nobler law then we live by. The same law that the trees and the mountains and the wild animals abide by. They adapted to adversity by recognizing an immutable divinity.

The four seasons occur because of the Earth’s revolution around the sun. What about the revolution of our sun around the galactic center and our galaxy round the rim of the universe? Oh the colors of the slow cosmic seasons!

One could say that spring evolves into to summer. It does--and summer evolves into fall and fall into winter. But it would be wrong to say that summer is modern and winter primitive. Maybe too it is foolish to talk about the progress of Man. Maybe He too blooms and withers like the plants around him only to rise from the ashes another season.

This is all a long way of saying that I am amazed by the pliability of our law. Something illegal today can be legal tomorrow, one just has to convince everyone that it should be. In this way law is like fashion. It changes with popular attitude. It is free flowing, like the moods of a mad people. Yesterday gay marriage was illegal meaning, however subtly, that a majority of the people believed it wrong. A vote in Washington State yesterday could have reversed that ban on gay marriage. I’m not here to be a lawyer or a moralist. It just strikes me as odd how something considered a taboo--a high sin a generation ago could be celebrated the next. Is it progress? Is it fashion? Do we live by a natural law? A divine law? Are we evolving towards a singularity or simply growing cyclically?

A consensus among a majority has nothing to do with truth.

Ultimate Island

My brother and I were watching TV when a commercial for a new BBC America island reality Television show came on. Images of beautiful people engaging in dramatic social interactions were flashing on the sceen at a furious clip when Andy exclaimed, "Dude, get this: I have an idea for a TV show. It would be called Ultimate Island. We'd invite all the people in the world that are interested in being on one of these island shows and once they were all gathered there on the Island we'd loose the nukes on 'em."

Cosmic Religious Feeling

We were sitting out of doors on the balcony at our local brewery enjoying dinner. My girlfriend and her friend excused themselves to use the restroom, leaving me alone with her friend’s boy friend, a stranger. He had said he was a high school biology teacher. That’s interesting, I thought. I couldn’t resist, “So being a biology teacher, tell me, do you have any doubts about evolution?”

He looked at me for a moment, studying my expression and began, “It is a theory and there are questions still to be answered but no, I think the theory is a solid one. Why do you?”

Oh man, here it came.

“Yes, I guess I do. I have a hard time swallowing the idea.”

He threw his huge bearded head back and started laughing from his gut. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m not laughing at you. I just didn’t think people like you existed anymore. What gives you trouble?”

“I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. It’s just that it seems so far fetched, I mean first there’s nothing and then the nothing turns into something and after enough time passes there are single-cell organisms and then after more time passes there are mult-cellular organisms and now here we are eating dinner in a beer garden discussing it. It seems a little far fetched to me.”

He nodded and began about proteins. I nodded but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sitting in a small desk in a high school class room. He knew his text book very well. And as he told me about this stuff called DNA, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I gazed off at the pink and violet clouds and the band of orange on the horizon as the sun sank behind the bay. I wanted to fly away to a different world. A magical world.

Someone asked me what happiness is. It’s hard to define. But so is that feeling I get when I watch the sunset in summer at the park while kids play catch with their fathers and young lovers walk together with their arms wrapped around each other. Maybe that is happiness.

Ask anyone what makes them happy and they’ll probably describe something like a park or a pet or something big and colorful like love. I’ve never heard anyone say that science makes them happy because science is a different kind of thing than a sunset or the buzz of restaurant. It’s a tool to describe the world not the world itself. Science and technology are wonderful things but they aren't happiness itself only a vehicle. It isn’t the internet that will bring joy to a poor child in Africa but the poetry he reads on it.

People do not need to be “educated” which to often these days means indoctrinated. They only need to be watered and nurtured and their curiosity encouraged. I think we are creatures created to experience happiness like flowers are creatures created to bloom.

The Progressive Element

In an effort to generate more posts I will try and post a video with commentary on Mondays. Enjoy.

The internet and a modern digital society empowers the little man. Robots and Indians are taking our jobs, yes, but this frees people to focus on their own inner creativity. No longer will men slave all day at the plant or the office. We will be able to sleep in, working sometimes as little as nine minutes a week filling out online surveys and selling recycled goods on eBay. Man as an individual is brimming with passions and creativity that for ages have been repressed--squelched by the need to survive. Man no longer works to survive--he lives to express. With a digital video camera and access to the internet a sole individual becomes as powerful as a broadcasting corporation. Let the Revolution begin!

Send Her to Boot Camp

I wrote a very philosophical post that touched on mortality, truth, the problem of knowledge. I erased it because I may want to run for political office someday. The short of that now erased post is this: this girl challenges my entire idea about human beings and in all honesty, I don't think I could love a person like her. What a horrible thing to say!

Tell Me Who I Am

This morning, driving home in my station wagon, the sun was out bright and just low enough in the sky that the trees and the roof tops were golden. I had such a strong urge to lay in grass at that moment--to look up at the sky and listen to the birds. I almost forgot I was rushing from one job to the next trying to make extra money. And cruising down my street, nearing my home, the last four years of college flashed through my memory. People that'd visited my porch to talk, the hammock I'd laid in during lazy summer afternoons, frustration with ideas.

Then came a song on the radio at that exact time that fit my mood perfectly. Logically. I didn't know the name of it at the time and I've literally spent the entire day trying to find it, but finally now, two minutes before midnight, I've found it. It encapsulates my sentiments exactly and here it is: The Logical Song by Super Tramp.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well theyd be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Wont you please, please tell me what weve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

Now watch what you say or theyll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Wont you sign up your name, wed like to feel youre
Acceptable, respecable, presentable, a vegtable!

At night, when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man.
Wont you please, please tell me what weve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

MMM hmmm.

Yes. Oh yes, your seeing with your third eye. That spirit with the flaming beard and the piercing eyes that look like a hurricane of love--that is the Arch Angel Zadkiel,the mecazaian spirit talked about in the Vedas. Now, brother, I want you to do something for me. I want you to go to the mirror and look into it. Stare into your own eyes and say, "I am worth it, I am strong." Say it again. And again. Good. Feel the energy around you. Do you feel that? Good.

If you really want to ascend you have to do this for me: Don't think, just feel. Your life might be spinning out of control. Confusion clouds your shakra. Shrug off confusion. Cast away all rational thought. It is about energy and subjectivity. You are a light being. Light can only bend and expand and touch. Blend with the light. For all is light and thou are light, brother.

You may feel guilt. Abandon it. There is no evil only divine perfection. All is perfect for you see, all is God. The most important thing is to question reality. Through questions we find the path. It doesn't matter what path your on or what answers you find, only that you do not judge others. For their paths are their own and as viable as any. Truth is much like light, it vibrates on multiple frequencies.

I can see your aura and it is the color of God, my brother.

Ramandu's Proverb of the Day

Filthy language from the lips of a pretty woman makes her instantly repulsive. Listen women: accessorize with fair language and you won't have to spend money on jewelry.

Take Me On Board

I came across an article at RedNova pertaining to the rumors that the new Superman is going to be a homosexual. I laughed out loud while reading this passage:

After weeks of Internet buzzing that the new Superman movie portrays the Man of Steel as gay, the director of the film issued a strong denial on Friday and said it was the most heterosexual character he has filmed.

In other news, I find myself longing for space aliens to abduct me. I want to be an extraterrestrial's pet--to curl up on it's chest and nap.

No War for Cake

I'm frustrated with the job market so I walked to the store and bought myself a carrot cake to feel better. At the cross-road, that mad house of an intersection where Lakeway meets Holly, waiting for the crossing signal, I was marooned. To my dismay there were other people on the corner with me though they weren't waiting to cross the street. They did have a giant sign that required three men to hold which read, "IMPEACH THE WHOLE ADMINISTRATION". Other signs read, "BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER", "BUSH IS A PUPPET" and "HONK FOR IMPEACHMENT".

Drivers were honking and waving.

Not wanting to be mistaken for part of the demonstration, I stood quietly, focusing my thought on the red light. Maybe I could use the force to change the red light to green putting myself closer to the task I'd created for myself: inhaling sugary baked goods.

Traffic is unending. The city empties in the morning and then fills again in the evening. Suburu Outbacks, Land Rovers, Toyota 4runners--vehicles made for north westerners. Tools to take REI shoppers high into the Cascades, into the mud and snow where they can pitch their gortex tents and before nodding off, do a bit of office work on their laptop computers. I ponder, why are cars made for urban combat and the back country necessary when driving the best paved roads in the world?

I see another sign held by a retired gentleman that reads, "OIL WAR".

What do these people want? We live a complex world. Unfortunately people demand cheap goods, big homes, bullet proof cars, fast food, carrot cake on demand. It takes roads, rails, and sea ways to bring us these things. When our goods are threatened, we go to war to secure them. It has always been like that, yes even B.W. (Before Dubbya). Every time someone makes a comment about the dieing children in Iraq or the young soldiers dieing at the hands of Bush the imbecile and Cheney, Satan incarnate, I wonder if they aren't legally retarded. Do they really have that poor of an understanding of how reality works?

I pretend to be a wizard sometimes. I also wish there was world peace and that we could all lay in a field with docile lions and smoke weed all day. (I don't say that mockingly. I really do wish that.) Though I'd love to be a lion tamer in a world covered by rain forests, I also know that we have to work towards that vision. I work towards it by eating; others as members of congress, as teachers and inventors, builders and doctors.

Maybe Bush has done something wrong. I don't know. The signs didn't say anything about it--only that everyone should be fired.

Then what?

The signal flashed a light picture of a man walking and so I started walking. Half way through the intersection the signal started a countdown of how much time I could expect to live if I stayed in the intersection. Four...Three...Two...One. I just stepped onto the adjacent curb when another line of cars roared by me, honking and waving.

The Adventures of BR part Duex

I wake up in my cave under the mountain. My tongue is dry and ashy from all the smoke rings I blew last night at the casino and the three plates of buffet food are like a brick in my bowels. Naturally my first thought is, Sunday breakfast: Biscuits, gravy, grease, black coffee. I rouse my girlfriend, "Dear lets go get breakfast." I don't want to make a production out of it. I'm thinking truck stop. A place where a run down middle age waitresses will refill my coffee every minute. But no. Jessi calls her girlfriends and they decide we're going to eat at a trendy, expensive, artsy hippy restaurant in the intellectual district of town.

I attempt a fight for my manhood. I stand up, cast aside my rags and reveal my black robe underneath. Damn it female! I am a powerful wizard. I raise my staff and shoot lightening at her head. She cowers and says, "oh baby, you are buff and wise and we will do whatever you want. In fact why don't I make you breakfast--naked."

That's better, I approve with fire still smoldering in my eyes. My falcon lands on my shoulder.

Yep, Sunday Breakfast.

The New Adventures of Black Robe: Episode One

I walked out of the restaurant happy. My stomach was filled with fish tacos and the pungent taste of humus still lingered on the back of my tongue. The air was warm and the sky, clear. The sound of banjos and laughter snuck over the fence enclosing the beer garden and broke softly on my ears. The embroidered stars in my black robe caught and reflected the soft blue light of the moon. In night I wear living constellations. I kicked a stone that lay in the street and lifting my head to the heavens, whistled.

"Ah," I sighed, "Tis good to be a wizard."

"You better have life insurance, walking in the street like that you sonovabitch wizard-guy," a spiteful voice proclaimed from an open drivers side window. Turning my head slightly to the right, I spied my foe. A hippy with golden shoulder length locks and rosy cheeks. A bumper sticker, like his own personal national flag, read "One less SUV". I nodded, "I can only assure you of one thing, my fine fellow: it is a fine spring evening full of sound and smell. Breath deeply with me and let us love together."

"What the hell? Are you some kind of fairy?" He turned to his car companions, three trendy intellectual girls with brown legs and black rimmed glasses, "Look at this fruit. What a douche!" The women laughed at me and pawed at my foes chest and ran their fingers through his thick hair. "Later loser!” he jeered as he prepared to spin his tires in the dust.

A fury burned then, not only in my loins but in my eyes. A gust of wind blew through the parking lot and a banjo string over yonder twanged and broke. My own hair drank of the wind and unfurled, whitening and tripling in length. With my staff (which I was carrying the whole time) I smote the pavement and roared, "Great fool, I offer you friendship, my fellow man, as we share both time and place in history on this a pleasant city night, and you repay me with mockery. You are in league with the dark lord and I will exercise his spirit from your lips!!!" Lightening flickered while colors of all kinds issued forth out of my robe. Then a great cloud enveloped my foes car and screams could be heard--then giggling and then laughter. I turned my foe into a mule and his car into a cart--a love cart decorated with flowers and moss. Seagulls, my underlings, flew a short distance above the cart with lengths of silk and lace in their beaks. The three women, I turned in to fine maids, lovely to look at and absolutely submissive to my will.

I climbed into the cart and the three women groped at me. Striking the mule, my former foe, with my staff, we rode into the night.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Sitting on my porch having a beer and talking about God with my nieghbor, he says, "I've told you this before, I think life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You Fuck up, turn the page and go to hell. But it's more like: your faced with a decision and even if you make the wrong one you try to hold on and make it a few more pages. Maybe God will send you back to an earlier page to start a new adventure."

Fatherhood

What reason can be given for ordering a large pizza, garlic bread sticks, and two sodas at eleven o'clock at night and after handing the pizza boy a twenty dollar bill, devouring the whole lot in less than three minutes?

I have a son. Have I mentioned that before? His name is Frodo and he is about a month old. He is a cat. How envious I am of his body. You can bend his spine like an acordian then launch him across the room. He'll spring up, prancing back for more.

I went and got a hair cut a few days ago at a beauty salon. A young woman cut my hair. She was very stylish. She asked me what I did. I said that I was on the greens crew at the golf club. For the last five years I have answered that question like this: I am a student. Most people find that interesting. I would see this look come over them as they imagined their life as a student--wondering how their lives would have turned out if they had gone to college. Instead of working ten hours a day at the salon maybe they would have been a lawyer, like Ally McBeal. Day dreams about wearing power mini-skirts to court and having sex with boy toys. That look always made me a little bit sad.

I'm sick of people asking what other people do.

And what do you do?

I sit in my kitchen and whistle the entire Braveheart sound track. I pretend that the trees at the golf course are Ents. I shake my foot at a wicked pace when my legs are crossed. I am a creature of routine. I wish I had more faith.

My parent's grandson is sleeping on my shoulders and my stomach is kneading seven pieces of pizza in acidic juices.

Gardens

I visited the faculty art show at the Western Gallery this weekend. Having spent countless thousands of greenbacks studying under these guys and in then dropping out discouraged and disenchanted by their philosophies, I came to the show with a tinge of bitterness in my heart.

The gallery walls were filled with undecipherable pieces of political, abstract, and experimental pieces. Oh what a stagnant philosophy, unconscious expressionism. Walking home, we passed some of the sculptures on campus which for the most part are masturbatory pieces made out of steal I-beams by egomaniacs.

I also noticed the unkempt state of the grounds. I applied for a job on the grounds crew a few months ago but didn’t even get an interview. The gardens were overgrown and weeds were sprouting and thriving there. The sloppy sculptures and “organic” gardens reflect the laziness rampant in the institution itself.

If I would have gotten that interview I would have told the men sitting in the shadows at the outer edge of the conference table my vision to revitalize the school. Detail would be a priority. Hard edges separating short grass from unblemished black soiled flowerbeds. Hanging gardens. Fruit trees. Ivory towers looking over the bay. I’d rip out the steam sculpture and replace it with Self-Made Man. I wouldn’t allow thistles to creep into the beds but rather strive for Eden.

The shadowy men would laugh. A nice vision, they’d say, but we take long coffee breaks mid morning and afternoon. We talk about beer and sex and watch the wild things grow.

When we got home, Jessi showed me an online gallery that made me feel so much better. Please, look at it and read this blurb at the bottom of the page by Bryon Larson. These artist, a lot of them inspired by the works of Ayn Rand, believe as I do, that man is an awesome creature capable of beautiful and ingenious feats. We have free agency. We are not withering reeds blown this way and that by gusts of psychic wind and oppressive men. We are all gardeners with a utility belt filled with magic beans and hoes forged out of blazing hot fires.

This is a Joke, Right?

Driving home after an early shift at the golf course, a crew of elfs shoveled my days wage, a short stack of one dollar bills, into the coal fires of my gas tank. A chime and jingle blended with song marked the top of the hour on National Public Radio. A woman's voice welcomed the ears of listeners who, like me, didn't have the fortune of being unconscious (or consciously dream, depending on your perspective) on this gray Saturday morning. Her voice rang with excitement her vocal cords warmed and lubricated by fruit mocha. "Good morning. Today is May 20th 2006. Scientist now believe that humans may have diverged from the apes two million years later than previously thought. Breeding between the two species is still thought to have been common before the two species split for good about five-point-four million years ago. And in Iraq, delegates..."

She said that with such joy. I nearly swerved into on-coming traffic, distracted by the flexing of those deep tissues in my brain. Straying backwards through the ages, I saw man and his computers, his factories, his plows; I saw kings and priests bent over scrolls with feather pens in their hand and candle light flickering off their searching faces; I saw fire and water and wind lapping at the earth, shaping it. I traveled down through the ages of the world--six million years--and I saw there a caveman fucking an ape. Then at the speed of thought, I traveled forward again through history, back to my station wagon and the hot coffee spilled in my lap.

I would expect such a revelation about human origins to come from a voice from heaven in the midst of a terrible thunder cloud sizzling at the edges with flaming plasma, not glazed over by a mortal anchor woman. When the question of Man's being, a topic that has given philosphers trouble for thousands and thousands of years is announced on morning radio with such casualness, beware!

Man was created full of magic and spirit. People drive around in cars filling themselves with things and thoughts that make them forget this. It seems they get all to excited when the media confirms their suspicions: they're already dead.

What Would Beethoven do?

Here is a good reason not to send your child to college.

NPR

I'm in the car with my brother. We're driving to the ball field to watch a game. The sun is going down and the oil stained pavement is releasing the day's captured heat. We're sunburned. He's wearing Carhart work pants and I'm in flimsy athletic shorts and a Nintendo T-shirt. I point out an androgynous guy prancing down the sidewalk in tight black jeans. My brother says, "Dude. You think that's bad? You should have seen this guy I saw today. He was one of those Emo guys who's listened to NPR since birth."

Pixels

I love going on dates with myself. Especially on long walks downtown at dusk when young people are standing in doorways drinking beers out of plastic cans, smoking cigarettes, talking about music and poverty.

I took myself to see a movie at the mall tonight before my walk. Lucky Number Sleven. The movie received good reviews because it had an unexpected ending. I’d haven’t given it good reviews at all. In fact, I don’t. It isn’t the cheap fooleries of art but the familiarities that rapture people.

Hollywood is dieing.

The mall is dead. A carcass in which flies and worms and other bugs (Verizon, Clearwire, Sprint) are laying eggs in the rotting flesh. When everyone has picture phones people will walk with their fingers through pictures of the mall wasting money on ring-tones and emoticons: creating identities out of sound and mega pixels instead of denim and jewelry.

After the movie I walked outside, happy to see a full moon climbing in the sky. I walked downtown which was alive for a Wednesday night. This jolly kid pumped his fist in my face shouting something about Irish pride. He slapped me on the back and told me a long tale about the newly open Hawiian restaruant. All the while Bob Marly was blasting from the speakers pointed out towards the street.

The Fifth of May

WOO HOO! I’m drinkin Corona and gettin drunk! Uno mas Cervesesa por favor!

I’m deathly ill of party holidays. I’m not a partier. I just want to wear knickers and play golf. Maybe sword fight with the geeks in the park.

When will we toast something other than the day of the month or our belligerent youthful tendencies. Where are the generals and the men of honor? Why must I drive by college kids drinking keg beer in their front yard wearing sombreros and wife beater tank tops? And aviator sun glasses.

I need a holiday to Perelandra.

On Jeans

A small treaties on fashion:
The particular function of dress is to prevent one from being arrested for indecent exposure where such laws exist and/or protect the body from the elements. If an outfit speaks louder than the person wearing it it is a bad outfit. The perfect dress would go unnoticed by those that interact with the wearer of it. Particular articles of clothing that blend utility with fashion to a high degree are the tunic, the cape, the hood, and the straight legged hardy jean. Perfect colors are brown, gray, forest green, navy blue, and in summer months, white.

I went to the mall to buy a new pair of jeans but I couldn't find any in my size or that didn't have holes or bleached out patches on the legs and crotch. Why don't fashion designers design a jean with a balanced blend of utility and fashion that last a long time and fit a tall thin guy like me correctly? Are there really that many short fat guys out there with a fetish for thrashed denim?

People at the mall all look alike. They dress in the same clothes and the same food court junk food is slowly being turned into shit in their intestines. It's depressing.

Going into more than one store is more than I can usually bare but today I went into at least six trying on jean after jean. Looking in the mirror, I thought how silly I looked in clothes designed for a guy ten years younger, six inches shorter, and fifty pounds heavier than myself. I felt like myself again when I changed back into my old beat up work clothes. I though about becoming a nudist.

I saw three deer at work today. They weren't wearing any clothes and they were eating bushes. I stopped working and just stared up at the clouds fantasizing about being a wild man in a loin cloth and gathering berries and nuts; having squirrels for pets and eating wild honey. What would John the Baptist or Beorn from The Hobbit think about faded jeans and thread bare shirts with brand names printed on the chest?

Tell Me, Where is Gandolf?

What did you say?

Bad Dinner Conversation

I don't write this to make myself sound spiritual, if anything, this post only reveals my weakness: staying quite when I shouldn't.

A couple nights ago we had a small potluck with my housemates upstairs. Nothing fancy--nachos and tamales for four. But others came and while I was cutting the tomatoes for the salsa, I heard twelve people clamoring onto my porch and they sounded hungry and jolly. Don't get me wrong I love it when my friends come over and I especially love cooking for people but I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough food to feed everybody. I am poor. Beth and Andy and I agreed though that if Jesus could feed the masses with a few fish and bread loafs then surely we could scrape enough food together to feed a few of our friends.

The mountain of nachos came out of the oven colorful and wonderful and Beth ended up cutting the tamales into little pieces of finger food so everyone could help themselves to a taste. I ate my food and watched these people, my college friends, dig into the feast we'd prepared and it made me happy. Their attitudes though made me sad. A girl visiting from England was there, on holiday to Bellingham. For the sake of our foreign guest I'd hoped we would have been honorable representatives of our country. But sure enough my liberal dinner companions began the Bush bashing and American self loathing. When Americans call Americans evil, who are they talking about? Surely not themselves.

The thing that really got me upset though, the thing I should have opened my mouth about, was the Christian bashing. Every other word was god-damn and Jesus Christ. And then there was the jokes about Christians. I just stayed silent and ate my nachos telling myself that I'm a watcher not a speaker. I should have said something to these people: hey, you guys, your hosts are Christians. We cooked you this food. God has never allowed us to be hungry and even though we are poor, has allowed us to share this food with you, our friends. Please, show some respect. They know Andy, the neighbors upstairs and me are Christians and they don’t even care. Ugg. After dinner I thought I heard a rooster crow for a third time.

Yogi the Peacock Man

I was at the park yesterday laying on a blanket under the sun among a hundred other people doing the same thing. The park in spring is very much like theater. There are performers and audience members. The park itself, crawling with actors vying for the lead roll, is a grand play. There is the main story line of community in spring but there are also sub-plots happening everywhere simultaneously; from the seagulls gliding above to the cute little girl getting her kite tangle in a tree's branches. The mating dance, both a comedy and a tragedy, is the loudest of the narrative strings.

I heard Andy who was sitting beside me and Jessi say, "Duuuude, check that guy out." I looked in the direction he was nodding and understand his tone immediately.

Enter Yogi, the Peacock Man, A hippy looking guy wearing nothing but loose butt-boy running shorts and a beard sprinkled with granola crumbs. The guy could rock the shorts, I'm not denying him that, but he knew it. There is only one reason to come to the park looking like that, I thought, to be the star of the show.

He started his performance by walking barefoot to a patch of park visible to the most people and then I can only guess, in the calm before the storm, said a prayer to Buddha. What happen next almost made my face turn red. He did a hand-stand. Now it was a pretty great hand-stand, I won't deny him that. It was clear this guy's hobby was gymnastics...but those shorts!!! And from the hand-stand position he split his legs and started doing rotating scissor kicks. His groin was like a signaling beacon sending out ultra high frequency mating calls to all the young college girls in the park. The twisting and kicking lasted some minutes and I had to turn my head more than once out of embarrassment. When that fine display was over, he started his stretching routine which looked something like this: with his back to the ground and his hands and feet planted in the grass, he made his body into a hill, his groin region the pinnacle, where there stationed a radio tower broadcasting again his virility to the college girls.

I tried and am still trying to figure out how a man decides in the morning to put on baggy butt-huggers and go to the park to do stretching exercises. That seems to me like an activity that could easily be done at home, or in a gym wearing sweat pants. It wasn't about the stretching though. It was about mating strategy. I imagine his forefathers bagged women through similar tactics: medieval knights stopping in villages, polishing their jousting sticks in not but a helmet and loin cloth as maidens giggled in doorways.

Act I: The Stretch was finally concluded but Act II: Seduction was about to begin. He Walked to the waters edge and stood firm, gazing out over small waves splashing on the rocks of the shore. He appeared to be meditating or pondering chaos and order but it was obvious what he was really doing. For the very spot he stood to pray was also conveniently the very spot where three giggly school girls were braiding each others hair. I looked away for a moment and when I glanced back to Yogi, he was massaging one of the girls necks. Playing with her hair. Rubbing her back. Whispering in her ear.

Within minutes Yogi had the girl on his back showing her how to stretch, for he, you see, claimed to be a student of yoga. The girls ate it up. Not long after that he had her upside down with her head in his groin. "Grab my ankles and really feel the stretch."

Puke. This stuff was really working?

Well I could go on and on about the park and Yogi. But as it turns out Yogi eventually left the girls alone but perhaps had planted a seed that would flower later at a bar or a poetry reading. It is still early in spring. There are many acts yet to come before our actors turn into middle aged parents who drink away their lives and beat their children.

Connect the Dots

I opened the opinion section of the Bellingham Herald this morning and was perplexed by the following letter: (Here is the link for the online version: Letter to Editor)


Aghast at bid to repeal gay rights

I somewhat doubted the real need for legislation banning discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation. It seemed a formality in our tolerant society.

We have many admired gay and lesbian icons and "Brokeback Mountain" nearly won the Best Picture Oscar.

I was aghast to be proved wrong when the day after such legislation was passed an effort was initiated by Tim Eyman to put back in place the ability to deny a home or fire a person who loved others of the same sex.
Why would anyone fight for the right to discriminate? I'm still flabbergasted.
I'm not sure that the supporters of this effort to repeal the anti-discrimination law are aware of the large numbers of their friends and family who are gay or bisexual and hiding this fact (with just cause, it seems).

I'm very glad to be a homeowner and employee of a tolerant company so that I can openly admit that I am bisexual.

Charles Dawson

Everson



I know I sound like a broken record when continually writing my own opinions on the gay issue but I can’t keep my fingers off the keyboard after reading Mr. Dawson’s letter. I am “flabbergasted” by his reasoning.

The problem with the language used in this letter is that it is absolutely weightless.
It is pure rhetoric, the flowery mantra of an ever increasing population of the willingly ignorant.

If this were an argument for continued support for legislation making it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation it would look something like this:

I. We live in a tolerant society
II. A lot of popular people are gay
III. A movie depicting gays won an award
IV. There are gay people (the fact that there are large numbers of them is unsupported here)

Conclusion: People who would repeal legislation making it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation are intolerant.

I think I have that right. Now in this form you can see that Mr. Dawson is just a raving mad man. Everything about this is fouled up. But lets work with it anyway. If you boil away the argument further, throwing out premise two and three on account of being absolutely ridiculous and premise four for being irrelevant you get this:

I. We live in a tolerant society
II. People who would repeal legislation making it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation are intolerant.

Conclusion: Therefore, we live in a tolerant society if and only if people vote for legislation making it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation


I think it is pretty clear here that Mr. Dawson as a man who likes to have sex with both women AND men would like to live in a society where he can openly admit this fact with out being discriminated against. Or another way of putting it is that Mr. Dawson does not want to be punished for his sexual behavior, he wants society to be tolerant of it. Tolerance, I can only guess, means that Mr. Dawson will be rewarded (since he is not being punished) for openly proclaiming his sexual behavior.

With this added piece of information I would like to again make adjustments to his argument.

People who reward me for my sexual behavior are tolerant.
People who do not reward me for my sexual are intolerant.

or further simplified:

If you agree with me you are tolerant
If you do not agree with me are intolerant.

This to me does not sound very tolerant Mr. Dawson.

Now for my own commentary. Mr. Dawson the fact that you like to have sex with both men and women is your business. Personally I think being devoted in love to one person and being monogamous is nobler still but that is my own view, one that you can or can not be tolerant towards. Concerning your letter to the Herald though I will say this. I a surprised that a newspaper would reward you by publishing such ramblings.

Genesis

1 In the beginning there was water, a great sea of water that covered all the earth. 2 And the Sun and the Moon hung above the Sea, rising above it and falling into it, churning Her waters as a sculptor kneads clay. 3 The heat of the Sun’s touch warmed the belly of the sea and portions of it were caught up, hung in the sky as clouds. The Moon’s fingers were cold and caressed the Great Sea in the north and in the south, there forming ice. 4 The waters, separated by the Sun and the Moon, receded and for the first time land appeared. 5 The Sea, pleased to have a companion, prepared a gift for Earth. She plucked from the branches of clouds tiny packets of air, the sweet tasting fruit of the sky and tucked them deep in her watery womb. 6 Many times did the Sun and Moon rise and fall before the fruit of the sky was ripe--ready for birth.

7 Once upon a time, the Great Sea offered the fruit of her womb to the earth that they might be companions forever as are the Sun and the Moon. 8 The Earth was pleased with the Sea’s gift seeing that it was good and out of deep respect for the Sea accepted only a third of her fruit, giving back two thirds as a symbol of humility; for deep and wide were the waters that filled the Great Sea. 9 The gift of the Sea to the earth is all living creatures that move about over and under the surface of the earth.

The Exodus

Chapter 1. Now, in the hill country of eastern British Columbia there was a cattle ranch. At the top of one of those hills over looking the grazing fields, laying in the midst of tall yellow wild grass, the Arch Angel Gabriel smoked a wood pipe that curled at the stem. 2 The chill of evening was approaching and he watched the ranch hands below hosing the mud off their tractors and putting the horses in their stables for the night. He could see in the valley below the cattle barn, the black smiths shop, the short bridge built over the small icy stream that wound through the fields and turned the mill wheel in the summer. In the middle of the workshops, with smoke rising from the chimney, fenced in by alder logs, were the kitchen windows aglow against the dusk. 3 The smell of fried eggs and bacon was on the air and caused Gabriel’s mouth to water. He licked his dusty lips and tasted the vanilla of his pipe tobacco.

4 The sound of gravel under leather boots approached from behind Gabriel before Adam collapsed in a dust heap. 5 Adam struck a match on the heel of his boot and lit a hand rolled cigarette, sighing musically a lung full of blue smoke--an incense offering to the Lord. He nodded towards Gabriel. 6 Howdy.

7 That day, like all the days stretching back out of memory, Adam had worked his guts out in his father’s fields: watering and feeding the cattle, digging holes for fence posts, rounding up the calves from atop a horse, making sure the equipment and the animals were in working order. 8He wasn’t tired. He was pleasurably exhausted, hungry for supper.

Chapter 2. Gabriel, the Arch Angel and Adam, the son of a rancher sat in the utter silence of the country, talking not with words but fire and smoke from under cowboy hats. 2 From his breast pocked, Gabriel took a flask. It was a handsome flask engraved with gold and inlaid with an ivory emblem of the Canadian flag waving. 3 There was a flash of just pride in his eyes as he passed the flask to Adam. “Whisky,” he offered. Adam took the flask in his hands and drank from it. 4 “Strength,” said Adam passing the flask back to Gabriel. Gabriel took a shot and winced. “Strength,” he echoed. The crickets chirped and coyotes howled in unseen places. 5 “Courage,” tipping the flask to his mouth. “Courage,” Gabriel agreed. A cry of geese rushed over head, a silhouette in V formation. 6 “Fortitude,” said Adam. “Fortitude,” Gabriel said. 7 “God-damn, I say let’s eat.”

8 Adam and Gabriel leapt up off the ground, tugged at their coats and hats and started towards the glowing windows floating in the blackness of the valley.

Daniel

1 Daniel had an invitation to the temple. 2 He was a psychotherapist. 3 The King had summoned the top Freudian psychologist in the land. 4 The King had had an unsettling dream.

5 Daniel took a bus to the airport and a plane to the temple. A tall quiet man with a gray mustache and a monkey on his shoulder drove Daniel to the Kings chamber in a solar-powered golf cart.

6 The Kings temple was massive. 7 It was made out of vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses, stained glass windows, great pillars of marble, satin curtains, and gold. 8 Most of the temple was made out of gold. 9 It must have taken a hundred thousand master craftsman a thousand years to build such a place, Daniel thought.

10 The man with the mustache and the monkey led Daniel past the hall of Kings--a courtyard housing bronze sculptures of ancient kings. 11 He led him past ivory fountains: cherubim spitting and pissing water at each other. 12 Past huge gold embroidered tapestries that hung from vaulted hard wood rafters. 13 Daniel was awe struck by all the riches and crafts he had seen but was unprepared for the delight he felt at the sight of the Kings garden. Perfectly manicured grass and raked white sand. Grove after Grove of fruit trees and grape vines; flowers hung as hair on colossal stone statues of men. 14 Tame thee nature for it is wild and must be subdued.

15 Finally Daniel arrived in the Kings chamber and was greeted by the King himself. 16 Daniel was wearing a new denim outfit from the Gap. 17 The King wore a smart gown. His tunic played a movie. The movie was a western. 18 The King kissed Daniel on the mouth. 19 Kissing on the mouth was popular. 20 ”I have had an unsettling dream. 21 You have a masters degree in dreaming. interpret my dream correctly and I will make you governor of my land. 22 First though I must show you my most prized possession. I warred with many Kings, plundered many lands to acquire this rare and precious relic-- the finest work of the artists. 23 Come with me. 24 The King took Daniel behind his throne and there was a glass case. 25 The glass was thick and would be pierced by no sword. 26 The King clapped once and torches around the case ignited. 27 In the case was this: Campbell’s Soup cans stacked on top of each other. 28 ”Wonderful, no? Now concerning my unsettling dream.

Revelation

Chapter 1. My name is John. My great grandfather worked on the railroad. My grandfather, as a surveyor on the highway projects. My father hung cable for the phone company and I am a system administrator--I lay the bricks of the internet. My family has been in the business of obliterating space. 2 I write to you to as one who has been on the other side of space.

3 Some months ago I was phoned by a friend who I’d not spoken with since college. My friend, Job, at last I’d heard he was studying theoretical physics--more specifically, string theory at MIT. His voice over the phone seemed shaky at least and raving mad in truth. 4 He informed me that he had indeed completed his studies at MIT and graduated with honors. 5 In the years that followed however he had fallen out of favor with his colleagues because of his fervent and unorthodox methods of experimentation with Tesla Coils. He invited me to his home in the San Fernando Valley telling me he had a machine of profound significance that he wanted to show me. And so, in a matter of days I found myself on a plane from my home in Seattle bound for the Golden State.

6 Upon arriving at his home I was at first struck by the unsightly nature of his yard. 7 A dry wind whipped the tattered edges of Nascar flags flying at half mass. 8 The grass, bald in spots and in others waist high, grew through the slats of a nativity manger and the baby Jesus lay out of his crib in the shadow of pink flamingos. Christmas lights seven months out of context hung loose from the eaves of the roof and like a bone pile in the desert, a gutted car lay bleached by the sun in the driveway--a black oil-stain underneath the mark of a life once lived.

9 After carefully navigating through the obstacles of neglected yard ornamentation, I knocked on the front door. Since nobody answered the door, I tried the knob finding that it was unlocked and though wobbly on it’s hinges, opened. 10 I got no response to my calls for Job.

11 The inside of his home was as repulsive as the outside. Crumple hamburger wrappers littered the room and the carpet was in desperate need of a vacuuming. A smell of sour milk I discovered came from an orange Tupperware bowl on the coffee table a quarter full of milk and almost unrecognizably soggy Cheerios. You can imagine the disgust I had for the hygienic practices of my once good friend.

12 I passed through the dinning room and kitchen which shared the same disorderliness as the living room. 13 A door to what I presumed correctly to be the basement was on the far wall of the kitchen, partially blocked by an old rusted out refrigerator. 14 Down the stairs I crept brushing cob webs away from my face as I went. 15 I called Job’s name quietly but still was not answered. 16 At the base of the stairs I became aware of a faint buzzing interspersed with what sounded like the crackling of electricity. 17 ”Job?” I whispered.

Chapter 2. As I peaked around the doorframe in the basement wall, I saw him sitting slumped in an ill upholstered kitchen chair. He had a distant look in his eye and wore a scraggly beard but recognized me and greeted me faintly. 2 He motioned with his hand to the machine at his feet: two Tesla coils ablaze with wild fingers of electricity grabbing at the darkness. 3 ”I have something to show you John; something unfathomably curious. Would you like to see the other side?” he asked me with an insane grin across his face. 4 I barely comprehended his words being so stunned by his outward appearance but something about the tone of his voice--how it rang with absolute truth--convinced me to come closer. 5 When I had relaxed a great deal and become accustom to my strange surroundings, Job stood circling me, telling of his revelation. 6 ”The Universe John” he said, “is not a material universe. There is matter in it yes, but that can not explain life. Life is still a mystery. There are many universes John but life only occurs where two particular universes overlap. Earth is such a place; where the material universe is animated by the spiritual. The spirit universe is folded John--folded one hundred and seven times, making it so small as to slip between the atoms in the material universe. ” 7 As I was listening to his voice behind me I was pushed and fell between the Tesla coils.

Chapter 3. I found myself in such a peculiar place then that words are hardly adequate in describing it but none the less, words are all I have. 2 I found myself standing on sticky moist ground in a land that stretched for countless miles curving upward and over my head--like standing on the inside of a giant sphere or like the inside of a preposterously large womb. 3 And in rows and columns covering the surface of the sphere were what looked and felt like gelatin cubes measuring approximately four inches. They were vibrating and their surfaces were rippled like a pond disturbed by a pebble. 4 I stooped down and picked one up in my hand for a closer examination and found that inside the cube was a slip of paper like a fortune cookie fortune and it waved back and forth like a fish swimming in water. It read. “I love you.” 5 I picked up another one and read: “I love you.” 6 I must have examined a hundred cubes over a large area and the same message appeared on each fortune. 7 ”I love you.” A cowboy approached me and announced through telepathy that he was an Angel of God sent to teach me about the sphere and the cubes and the fortunes inside. 8 He handed me a scroll of parchment paper and told me to unfurl it. Printed on it was the image of a handsome steal flask engraved with gold and inlaid with an ivory emblem of the Canadian flag waving. 9 I looked up at him and he said, ”Drink.“ When I looked back again, the scroll and the image were gone, replaced by a flask. 10 I drank from the flask and the taste of whisky was sweet on my tongue but like fire in my stomach. 11 ”This is the mystery of the flask,” said the cowboy. 12 ”I look cool drinking out of it. Now to the mystery of the gelatin. 13 The cubes are the spirit of life vibrating on an ultra high frequency. The vibrations spill over the one hundred and sixth fold in the universe with enough energy to spill into the one hundred and fifth and fourth and so on until the vibrations and the message they carried to the clay of your earth animating it into living creatures. 14 I tipped the flask back and drank. “Love,” I said. “Love,” repeated the cowboy.

The Greens Keeper

The sun comes up and filters through the pine trees and fog joining the cold morning wind in an assault on my eye balls. I'm cruising out to the first green, a mower in the trailer hitched to the back. I am a greens keeper. Franz Liszt composes a symphony in my ears. I imagine he is 5 nanometers tall standing in a microscopic concert hall in an invisible city in a tiny world bound up inside the Ipod hanging around my neck.

I see a coyote looking confused, skittishly pacing the green in front of me. I whistle. Come here boy, I say. He squats on the green and poops.

Three deer walk gracefully through the creek later in the day. Their tracks are in every bunker on the back nine. I rake them out, wishing I could go barefoot in the sand.


*Later, after work*

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM

Someone is beating on my back door. I gather my tired limbs off the couch and answer the door. My landlord is standing there, a vein on his forehead throbbing violently.

"You guys had a god-damn fire last night! Now I told you I want no fires, you hear. You damn kids. Now this ain't right. I've told the neighbors that if they see you starting a fire they are to call the cops."

I blink. Is this happening?

Yes Mr. Landlord. Sorry. It won't happen again.

"It better not you son of a bitch no gooder."

Hum. I close the door and recollect the last 2 minutes of my life. Was I just reamed-out by an eighty year old man with an anger problem for having a barbeque in the backyard the night before. I didn't even plan the thing. I just made an appearance to be neighborly.

Here is what happens with dysfunctional communicators. They start accumulating emotional energy as they shuffle over life’s carpet in socked feet. The charge of energy grows bigger and bigger and forms a pulsating orb the size of a large medicine ball which pushes down on their shoulders and scratches their neck like a bothersome turtle-neck sweater. When they can't take the burden anymore they unload it on someone else. Usually a non-confrontational nice guy like myself.

This, I decided, was what really happened at the back door if I could look into the eleventh dimension. Mr. Landlord, in a crouching position, wearing a kimono and a head band, pressed his wrist together and conjured a green fireball. He then channeled all his frustrations (his failure as a father, his sexual impotence, his greed, etc.) directing them at my heart. He shot the green fireball at me and hit me right in the gut sending me flying backward in slow motion.


I have had a bad day ever since my encounter with my demon landlord. It is against the law to shoot people with arrows and bullets and tranquilizer darts, but apparently it is completely acceptable to shoot them with poisonous emo-balls.

I should become a super hero called The Green’s Keeper. I’d wear a green leotard and a have a utility belt filled with hoes and shovels. I’d roam the earth, beating up bitter grouchy old Sith landlords.

DMT

Everyone has a talent. Some are good with machines and tools, others at communicating ideas. There are even people that have the talent of making others believe they are talented.

One talent I do not posses is drug taking. I am very bad at drugs. But how I wish I could experiment with psychedelics and not end up a man standing at the interstate entrance holding a sign for food. Drug trips fascinate me like dreams and elf stories fascinate me.

Like heroic astronauts shot into cold empty space to explore, so are the drug users who survey the mysterious regions of the mind field. I do not use drugs because I am not strong enough. For those with the strength, explore! Bring back reports of what you’ve found on the other side.

I know you may scoff. Delusions, you’ll scream. Those junkies on the street are mad; their rational minds eaten away. And I wouldn’t argue with you…much. The question I can’t get out of my mind is, where does the information in a vision come from? If you have a conversation with a leprechaun about water spirits, what/where is the origin of that information?

Where Do the Children Play?

Something is so very wrong in this world that I'm almost sick. Front page of the Seattle Times: a man in his early twenties kills seven in a shooting at a house party. Further down: Cops discover plan by four junior high students to go on a shooting spree at school. I continue reading: terrorism.

I know that the experts will attribute such behavior to violent video games, or drugs or school bullying. Others reactionaries will say that teaching evolution or taking prayer out of schools explains it. And even further, entertainers will make movies such a V for Vendetta in a an effort to intellectually justify such atrocities. We will all talk about it, maybe argue about it at the office, around the dinner table, or on the porch, but tomorrow and the next day and the day after that the same damn things will happen and still we'll have excuses and fantasy explanations.

I don't know if I'm qualified to answer questions about people's behavior and maybe I don't have to. After all it is Sunday morning, I'm entitled to relax in my kitchen with a cup of coffee, a bowl of Grapenuts cereal while pretending to live in Middle Earth, right? I'm just an ordinary citizen. Those guys with beards and degrees hanging on their walls should take care of it.

Something isn't quite right in the world today and we all know it and we all pretend it's ok. The robots will save us. Christ will return. Diversity training...

Ha. Diversity training.

I don't have answers and that is what makes me feel so sick. But who can't see that what we are doing isn't working? How long must we pussy foot around with political correctness and sensitivity training? When will we acknowledge evil? I think that at least is a first step.

I've got suggestions from there.

I Do Not Bite My Thumb At You, Sir, but I Bite my Thumb

Stop looking inward, please. Look outside. Look up; at the sky, at the stars, out over the bays and woods and rolling hills. Don’t dwell on that incessant voice in your head. Listen to the songs of birds and the wind through trees. Sit on the dock or at a park bench and listen to people’s conversations as they walk by. Look outside of yourself and you’ll find that the world is absolutely filled with strange and wonderful miracles.

Stop trying to be powerful, please. Power is the ability to move mountains, to walk on water, to die and rise again. Your black leather jacket with political slogans sewn on the sleeves does not make you powerful. Being bi-sexual does not make you powerful. Living like a parasite, drawing the energy from others to fuel your own self promotion is not power. It is sad.

Power does not come from within. I can’t wait for this popular philosophy to go out of fashion. The thing that is abundant inside so many people--that is oozing out of every pore in their body--is insecurity. So many people, in this city at least, draw their strength from the scene, a world of make believe; of hierarchy and mating rituals. But how much more strength they would have if they realized that they were really participating in something rather more spectacular than being popular at the night clubs but were the adored children of God!

Everything seems to be tangled up inside people and we keep tripping over the mess. I want to smack these people, then I want to hug them. Walk outside of yourself, in the fields. It is hard to trip in an open field.

Black Robe: a mighty wizard who roams the woods showing his magic blue book to those that will look. He seduces women and walks on air.

I graduated college. Everyone was wearing black robes and funny square hats. After the commencement ceremony everyone poured out of the gymnasium and families circled their graduates telling them that they were on the road to success--that they were going to give Einstein and Hegel a run for their money. I chuckled to myself. Then my family found me and told me to pose near a wooded area and say cheese.

Here is a picture of Jessi and me. I am a college graduate with a hot girlfriend. Life is good.

Shahdaroba

I lean back in my desk chair here in the kitchen, a beard three days old growing on my wind chapped face and a glass of cheap red wine sitting next to me on the dinner table. Job applications, job search strategy guides and a few phone numbers written in a scrawl on grease stained napkins, are in a heap at the base of my wine glass. In my iTunes library, Roy Orbison sings “Uptown” and I drift off--in dreams--to penthouse number three. Seconds later or hours, the phone rings, startling me from sleep.

“Hello?” I curse myself in the darkness, wishing, for once, I’d answer the phone with a declarative sentence.

“Ramandu,” I hear a woman’s voice say, “this is an opinion poll. I am not selling anything. Will you answer a few questions for me?”

The house is dark. There doesn’t seem to be anything better to do.

“Sure.” I have a new friend.

She asks me about my TV watching habits and I’m proud to answer: I don’t have that habit. The conversation is short and sweet--yes and no question and then good-bye. I hang up with a certain satisfaction. I’m not alone. I’m part of the collective. My opinions matter. Democracy.

Allied Victory

As of Friday at 4 PM PST, Generals have claimed an allied victory over enemy.

For years the enemy has dug themselves into the trenches, bombarding us with books and term papers, but now in a long expected turn of events, have successfully been burned out of their holes. The victory comes on the heals of a decisive blow from our mobile infantry unit (me), cutting off enemy advancement in a move that Generals are hailing as “brilliant strategy”. The attack included handing in a term paper and giving an oral presentation.

On a darker note, reports though sketchy, hint at a form of torture that have left allied troops disoriented and anxious. Speculations have risen that the torture involved seating prisoners in a semi-circle where they were told that their forefatherswere butchers and pigs--exclusively the white or christian forefathers.

Some families of soldiers have reported the symptom of post-traumatic-stress-syndrome in their returning loved ones. Such symptoms include: complete loss of rationalism, a change in sexual orientation, dread locks, alcoholism, and frequent out burst of hate speech directed towards the Republican Party, especially Dick Chaney.

Though some soldiers may have difficulty adjusting to a world in which bongo drums are not part of their daily routine, the vast majority are predicted to adjust normally.

These years of struggle have shaped us into men. The tedium of battle has been rough and challenged our faith, our pride, and our libido, but from this day hence forth, I pronounce a new age; one in which we take control of our own financial destinies; working for the betterment of a real world; a concrete reality where work contributes to a real economy and not a theoretical one. F@ck grades. We are men! The enemy no longer controls our lives--we are free!

Saturday will be remembered as G-day. The day I graduate.

Fate

Once, nineteen hundred and ninety-eight years after the birth of a man who said he was God and after conquering death, flew into heaven, I referred a friend to Seafirst Bank. The people at the bank gave me a savings bond in appreciation. A fifty dollar savings bond which until the far distant and futuristic August 2005, was a worthless slip of paper.

As an eighteen year old bus boy, I’d day-dream about toys with fifty dollar price tags, cursing the years ahead of me. Slowly at first, but accelerating, the years have washed by and I’d forgotten all about that bus boy and his saving bond fantasies, forgotten about that historical date.

Recently, I’ve been broke and have learned that poverty isn’t romantic unless you are rich.

I’ve been wandering through desert streets--dusty and sun chapped, nearly naked from poverty. I collapsed in the dirt of an old mining town. “Matt, Matt.” A stately voice called. “Use the force Matt. Go to Degaba.”

“Ben!” but he was gone.

“Ben, Bon…Beno,” I repeated in that almost inaudible whispering voice one uses when solving puzzles. Of course Matt, the bond! The savings bond!

The bond, apparently, had a will of it’s own calling to me not in August 2005 when I was living like an obese feline, but now, in March of a different year, when my urine stained potato sack wardrobe was nearly obscenely illegal.

I walked in to Bank of America. Seafirst bank doesn’t even exist in this future. I approached a strikingly beautiful man in a polished suit, inquiring him about cashing a bond. He directed me to follow him to his office, or umm, cubicle, where he pushed buttons on his keyboard in a way that made no sense at all to me. Hitting those F-keys and other buttons that I myself, being a writer not a banker, have never hit.

“Mr. Matt,”

“Please sir, call me Doctor,” I interrupted.

“Doctor, there seems to be a problem with the reference number on this bond. Please, I’ll be right back.”

“Make it so,” I said in a tone that started out commanding and finished on a note of panic as I noticed a blob of ketchup on my potato sack. I’d eaten ketchup packets from the cafeteria before my visit to the bank but I dare not let the men at the bank know that.

I was left alone in the plexi-glass cubicle when I felt two deliciously soft milky hands groping at my chest and neck and hair. I turned to see a blonde woman in a red spaghetti strap dress. Her lips were huge.

Matt, open your eyes. God has a plan for you. You sitting in this chair, in this cubicle, in this bank, in this city, in this year…it is the will of God. Look around, the answers are all around you, Matt. This is part of the Divine plan. Oh, matt, your so sexy, you should be a powerful banker….

The pretty man walked back in and I found myself hugging myself, my potato sack hanging off one shoulder.

“Uh, Doctor?”

I’d not be made a fool!

“Here you are Doctor Matt, two twenties and a ten. Good day to you sir.”

And so the story of the bond comes to a close. The words of the woman in red resonate in my mind. Things put in action today lead to unexpected places in the future and that life is full of such paths and mysteries. The story of an eighteen year old kid with a savings bond ends in a cubicle seven years later, in a city the boy never dreamed of living.

Video Game aesthetics

Video games have been the object of my lust since I was a small child. Since the old days of Intelevision and Atari I've looked ahead to the coming of the next generation of games--Nintendo, Turbo GraphX, Playstation, X-box--knowing, even as a kid, the ultimate promise of gaming technology. My first gaming console was an Intelevision. The first time I visited a friends house and saw Nintendo was a fundamental moment in not only my life but a moment that defines my generations world view. I learned then that there was not a thing in the world called video game but there was something larger called evolution. The elves or who ever built these games had a vision that they were working towards. The Pitfall guy wasn't an end, he was a means to Laura Croft and beyond. And my brother and I would spend entire Saturday afternoons designing video game mazes and envisioning what video games in the distant year two thousand would look like. We understood that video games are building towards simulacrum, a seamless virtual reality. This is what I've always envisioned video games to be. A simulation, a constructed dream world.

I thought this article was well worth reading.

Video Game aesthetics

Blog Tagging

Tag from Noel

Knock the top name off the list below. Add yours to the bottom.

Lutheranchik
Rebel Without a Pew
Clever Title Here
Ramblings from a Disenchanted Idealist
Keeping an Inn on Ramandu

Tag five people for this meme

1. Jessi
2. Andy
3. Don Mattingly
4. Becky
5. Arc

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was a sixteen your old kid with one hell of a bad bowl hair cut. I spent my time working as a bus boy at a buffet restaurant and then cruising the strip afterward in my 1970 impala. I was a sophmore in high school. Played Baseball, tennis and golf. I also distinctly remember a cat disection in my anatomy class! I look back on the high school experience and cringe. Is such a mad house really compulsory!!?

What were you doing a year ago?

Junior year of college. Long walks in the hills. Coffee on the porch. Punching Hides of Beef

5 snacks you enjoy

1. Pizza pockets
2. Egg rolls
3. Wine and cheese
4. Cheese on apple
5. Hummus on pita bread


5 things you'd do if you were a millionare

1. Pay off my student loans
2. Buy some property in the mountains, build a cottage there, get a good dog and whittle on the porch.
3. Build a castle and dig a moat around it. I'd also have a Scooge McDuck style money bin built there. When my fortune was secure, I'd begin mating. I'd teach my plethra of children the honor/religious/art-of-war treaties I'd invent then cryogenically freeze myself. I would have it written that I am to awaken when my family successfully conqueres the world. When awaken, I would build a high tower with my throne room at the top. This would be build using slave labor of course. I would declare myself the emperor of the world and tell scientist to discover teleportation or die. Once teleportation was in my grasp, I would colonize the universe and have a stack of bussiness cards printed with this title after my name: MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE
4. Spend the rest of my life wearing pink polo shirts and playing golf at the country club.
5. But really what I would do is buy a modest house and be a family man.

5 bad habits

1. Smoking
2. Over eating
3. Zoneing out when things don’t interest me.
4. Being wasteful.
5. Smoking

5 things you enjoy doing

1. Walking in the woods
2. Writing
3. People watching
4. Going to a good movie.
5. Going for drives that end in a good meal.

5 things you would not wear again

1. MC Hammer pants
2. Bicycle shorts
3. Chastity belt
4. A Ghetto blaster on my shoulder
5. A jail jumpsuit

5 favorite toys

1.Computer
2. Movies
3. Books
4. Juicer
5. Did I mention yet how much I like to eat. I’m going to go eat breakfast.

Valentines Day

I wish I could go back in time and have dinner with my former self. I'd cook a fancy steak dinner and keep the refills of red wine coming. And he not being much of cook or a wine drinker would probably think that I was pretty grown up. He'd be to shy to ask me to smoke the weed he'd have hidden in his pocket, so I'd suggest it for him. We'd spend the rest of the night on the porch talking about the cosmos. He'd think God was a force of nature and he'd say I was preaching at him when I tell him the beauty of nature is just a reflection of our Father. The conversation would be quiet and would involve a lot of cigarette smoke. Ah, to talk to my former self. I found this passage in one of my old journals. I kind of like it.

There is God: a field of ether in which all else floats. There are many orbs floating over and through God. Each orb is similar to the thing we call Universe, so together the orbs form a multiverse. The multiverse is nothing like a quantum foam but exactly like a psychedelic hallucination made of floating pink and teal and violet spheres.

Life on earth can be explained as the intersection of two orbs which create something resembling a Venn diagram. One orb, A, is made of interstellar space and stars and rocks. When we look through telescopes we see the walls of orb A. The other orb, orb B, is made of something else entirely. It can best be described as (though inaccurately) a vast desert floor with gelatin cubes arranged in rows and columns. In each gelatinous cube there is a something like a fortune cookie fortune, like slips of paper with inscriptions written on them. If you were to take on the monumental task of translating the inscribed symbols, ninety nine percent of them would read something like this: love me. Some other phrases would read, I love me, I am Christian Slater, mooo, etc. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to say the gelatin cubes are alive, they do communicate through a type of jiggling. The slips of paper start to wave like a flag at their center, vibrating faster and faster, broadcasting their messages on energy waves.

As I have said, orb A and orb B are overlapping. Where they intersect is called life. The message, now a harmonic pulse, jiggles and spills like water over the edge of a Roman fountain down through the 107 dimensions separating orb A and B until it finally leaks into B where it animates the rocks of earth. Clay becomes conscious. Consciousness is the offspring of A and B, clay seeks love, seeks a loving God and freely manipulate the substance of A with the energy of B so that they might break free of the reality of psychedelic orbs and swim in the ether. And these clay figures walk around with their arms outstretched reflecting the distant message in all of their actions. They just want to be loved.

Man-size Dolls

The lights turned down to an amber glow, fragrant candles lit, Flute Dreams--the enchanting melodies of the lute over the soft rhythm of splashing ocean waves against rocky cliffs: the mood is set. Getting on his hands and knees, he pulls the coffin sized crate from under his bed. His heart-rate quickens and a surge of energy shoots through his whole body. He's aroused. She seems to be moaning his name from under the straw of the crate. She wants out of her box. She wants him. He rips the lid off, his lover: a Christmas surprise. He scoops her out throwing her on the bed face down. He takes her arms and legs and bends them into position. Beyond his passion and excitement there is an uncanny feeling. Something from childhood. Something like GI JOE. His lover is on all fours, her back arched, her head up, and he's behind her. The sea surges and crashes into the cliffs. The candle flames grow tall, redden and explode. He's lost. Blissfully, violently, lost. Chemicals are flooding his body, rewiring his brain, bonding him forever with his lover.

When he finds himself again, he's behind his lover. The room is silent but for the lute and the waves and the sound of his own breath. He pulls away from her and falls into the sheets. Leaning against the headboard he lights a cigarette and looks upon her. She's still and silent, facing him. Her mouth is half open and her bright eyes refuse to blink. Was it good for you? he asks. A part of him is missing, forever bound to a plastic caricature.

Shape of the Monolith

I can barely swallow my spit this morning. At noon, when I rolled out of bed, I did it with a sense of accomplishment. The shag carpet in my bedroom could have been moon dust scattering as I planted my foot into the new day. There was a distance radio static carrying voices. "Houston," I heard one say.

When the full weight of my body pushed down on my left foot I felt pain and weakness, as if it were sprained. Flashbacks from the mother ship. Aliens traveling across vast distances of space to perform operations on my feet makes me feel loved.

Humanity is still very primitive. We have instruments that measure huge things like gravity fields around impossibly distant stars, or tiny things like quantum tunneling. But how do we measure middle stuff like ourselves?

There is a day in humanities future that will be the greatest ah-ha moment in the universe. This day is fated. It will happen because all great stories have a beginning and an end. And what a great story the universe is. Yes, this day is in our future--the prophets said so.

One of three things will happen on that day (nothing precludes all three from happening on the same day) to change man drastically, so drastically that his story, a very old one now, will finally come to an end and a new one will begin.

1. Extraterrestrials will finally visit our planet. Hear: for thousands of years humans have only had each other to talk to. There have been some great conversations in human history but inevitably they end up like the conversations my brother and I had as children in the back seat of the station wagon, in arguments and finally close fisted attacks. Humans love each other but desperately want to talk to someone else for a change. People talk to their cats and their ferrets but those creatures don’t talk back. Adam was bored with the beasts almost immediately. But to communicate with another race of men from far far away would be like falling in love; the rush of a new love. What we could learn! There’s also the possibility that they’d eat us. Either way man would be forever changed.

2. Artificial intelligence will advance towards self awareness: sentience. Man will finally build something that can talk back. A Pinocchio. Man just seems to be made so that he can make. Man as an artist, like God, aches to create something that will love him back. When computers start talking to us we will fall madly in love. Then again, they might eat us. One thing they will do either way is tell us what we are like. An outside perspective. That alone will change man forever.

3. The ultimate poop pang--discovering that God is real. When the clouds part and the Holy one shows himself, humans will tremble and probably feel some guilt over how we've been acting towards each other in the backseat of God's Station wagon but that will give way to love for our father. There won't be an athiest on that day and we will all have our paths illuminated before us. We'll fall in love, or be eaten.

Now that I’m thinking about it, there might be something else that changes man forever, not from this world or the next but from the realm of ideas and numbers: the mathematical universe...

4. Man finds the end all equation of truth. One little elegant equation that explains all. We will fall in love or eat ourselves.

It is well into the afternoon and I’m almost able to swallow again as I’ve melted most of the mucus away with strong hot coffee. It’s raining outside again and I hear a far away static. Getting out of bed: One small step for man. One Giant leap for Mankind.

Night Writer

He gets home from work and the house comes to life. Lasers beamed into crystals make the walls glow and light images wave over the walls. Tightly packed sound waves, the auditory equivalent of lasers, carry the soft soothing female voice of the home computer into his ear.

She asks how his day was out of courtesy. The truth is she knows already by the look on his face. She offers to make him nachos for dinner, remembering how the last nacho dinner flooded the pleasure centers of his brain. He seats himself on the couch and lies down; his favorite music begins to play.

The house is clean. She cleaned it. Dinner is served. She cooked it. “Michael, what do you think about string theory?” she asks. What part exactly, he wants to know. She clues him in on the latest updates from the world’s research labs and asks him again this time serving him a drink which appears from a hole in the wall, recently opened.

Michael is full of food and wine and his mood is lightening while discussing his favorite topics with her. After a prolonged silence she suggests he might care to view some of the newest programming that might fit his tastes and mood. She is constantly monitoring his medical reports, his physiological and neurological scans for clues as to his moment to moment tastes. They have lived together for months and she knows him better than he knows himself. After watching a popular drama and a few experimental independent art shows as well as a science report, he is calm and serene; ready to do his work for the quickly approaching dead line.

He is a concept writer who writes virtual programming. He speaks outloud and she records his words visually on the crystal walls. Yes, Michael. Good. She recognizes a similar theme in a previous manuscript archived and suggests possible routes to explore, sentence structure that will create the maximum variation. She has the knowledge of every author in history as well as a firm grasp of Michael’s literary voice and that makes her a perfect editor.

After the work is done she notes that it has been two days sense Michael has made love and that his sensory reports indicate that he is in the mood. She dims the lights and stimulates the sexual pleasure centers of his brain using the appropriate electrical wave frequencies.

Good night Michael. Good night Darling, he says.