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.

Brokeback

I am not a homophobe. I'm just not gay. If you're gay, fine. Be gay. I'm straight. That's my business. I don't think sexuality is an intellectual pursuit. I don't think there is anything progressive about embracing homosexuality.

I keep thinking that this gay craze is going to end; that sooner or later culture will settle down and recognize that there are space probes and space stations racing above our heads--that private lives will be kept private and public lives will reflect public relations--not of a sexual nature but of community. To my alarm the craze doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

I went and saw Brokeback Mountain the other night just out of curiosity--to see what all the buzz was about. I thought with all the hype surrounding The academy Awards, there might be one big gay Hollywood conspiracy. Hollywooders trying to pedal their ideals on the rest of us. After seeing the movie, I am sure of it. But what a wonderful movie! It really was a great movie. Acting, scenery, music...the emotion. It has been reeling in my mind all week.

This got me thinking about the power of cinematic language. A couple weeks ago I saw another movie, At The End of A Spear, about a group of missionaries who bring the gospel to one of the most violent tribes the world has ever known and how it changes them into a more peaceful people. A great story but an awful movie. The way it was put together was just not comparable with mainstream Hollywood movies especially when it came to the cutting. It seems to me that Christians do not speak the visual language of film effectively enough to connect with culture at large.

It is not my intent to put Christianity opposite of Homosexuality they are not even comparable being different kinds of things. What I'm trying to say is that there are things that are important and that do matter in society. Strong families, education, hard work and fair wages, cleaning up our environment and striving for better living conditions. We should be excited about advancing scientifically and technologically, continuing in the great debates with philosophers and theologians of times past. In short, we should aspire to gain knowledge and understanding so that we may increase our happiness. I believe Christianity, unlike any other world view allows these things to flower naturally.

So, I am not gay. I am not a cowboy. But for a couple hours I understood, at least in part, what it was like to be a gay cowboy. I wish that non-Christians could experience the freedom and joy that comes with Christianity if only for a few hours.

If your gay your gay. Straight, your strait. I just hope you are more than just one of these (comparably insignificant) things.

file.coffehouse__1

She mentions the year 2079 and what life will be like. In 2079 we will have optic and auditory implants that blur the line between simulated and actual reality. In 2079 scanners will scan environments down to the molecular level meaning perfectly rendered virtual spaces. In 2079 we will be able to have coffee on different continents and feel as if we were right across the table from each other. In 2079...

I scan the room with my eyes, ripping the information of the coffee house to memory, onto my biological hard drive. The walls are off white and have the texture of Madrid, illuminated by the rhombus shaped patches of gold light pouring in from the morning sun breaking through the windows. She is gazing out the window talking and dreaming. A silhouette outlined in divine light. I note the pale green shirt she’s wearing under a heavy black yarn sweater with wooden buttons and how the lacy patterned neck line seems to blend into her pale skin. She turns and looks at me with her sweet blue eyes bursting with yellow at the centers and says, in 2079...

There is a man behind us on the couch drinking coffee and reading a paper. I can’t see him but I know he is there. There is a stereo on a table near us in the corner, the sound system for the café. It has 24 switches on it. Two rows of 12. On our table our glass plates are stacked on top of each other. All that remains of our lunch are a few morsels of eggs fallen from her egg bagel sandwich, a few bread crumbs from my turkey sandwich, and a crinkled bag of uneaten Cheetos. In front of both of us are two bowl shaped coffee cups--black with smallish half circle handles. Her cup is half full of Chai Tea. Mine--black coffee: half empty. In 2079...

I take in the café. I breathe it in and I taste coffee and cigarettes and turkey on the back of my tongue. I find it difficult to conceive of such a distant future being wholly absorbed by a quiet coffee house on a rosy January morning in 2006. I record.


In 2079...I, an old man with many wonderful and fruitful years behind me, will trot down the hall, past the den, and the study, to the holodeck. Computer, I’ll say, run file .coffehouse__1 and leaning back under a pile of blankets on my lap, I’ll rock in my chair with a smile on my face and she'll smile back.

"Ramblings from a Disenchanted Idealists"

Life, the financial part of it anyway, thus far in my short existence, has been a matter of acquiring and paying off debt. Debt is often spoken about as a weight, as if balls and chains are fastened to the debtor’s ankles, a cross borne on the his back, a weight on his shoulders, a necklace of iron around his neck. I think of debt, in our times at least, as an omnipresent force, like gravity pulling us down (gravity is more complex than that, but this is a rant). Mr. T comes to mind as an illustration of this first analogy. The man’s neck and shoulder muscles suffered as a result of his love for bling. With each luxury item he bought the heavier the weight--the greater the strain. Those that will charge a plasma screen television on their credit card to impress their friends at a Super Bowl party are an example of taking on a needless and reckless financial burden. Those people I do not feel sorry for.

Debt as a force is something else. No matter how hard I try to get out of debt, I can’t get out of it. My strategy thus far has been to live a minimalist life style. I enjoy food and electricity and cable internet and sewage. The only way to stop from paying for those things would be to become a starved monk in the wilderness. These things will not put you in debt as much as they are required to live a healthy life. I have tried to avoid debt by not buying toys.

This is a strategy of simple living--of working for what you require. I am rethinking this strategy. Every time I pay off a debt and I mean within hours or even minutes, I manage to get in more debt. It is like living a debt free life is in violation of natural law. Whether it be a medical accident or a car accident, a blown car part or a parking ticket, debt pushes down on me. I don’t have a car and yet the justice system demands that I buy car insurance just incase something happens. It hasn’t happened yet, but pay for it anyway! No, my strategy of simplicity seems to be an inadequate response to the craziness of a bureaucratic, materialistic, market manic, civilization. Living like a poor yet happy college student is no longer an option for me. There is but one option left other than dropping out and that is playing the game. I am confronted with playing the game and that gives me nightmares.

But playing the game has rules built into it to insure that one does not violate the law of debt: higher taxes, the cost of maintaining a youthful and business friendly appearance, a mailing address, etc. People with high paying jobs, middle class Americans, are in extraordinary debt. And for what? A vision of the future?

We are naked when we come into this world and naked when we leave it. Dust to dust.

I imagine myself walking barefoot through a wood on a carpet of moss in a weightless white robe and a staff with a glowing orb mounted on the top. I’m eating wild raspberries from my leather fanny pack. How light I feel!

In my night mares I am stumbling over a charred landscape under the weight of an enormously huge and clumsy backpack. Inside is a three to four bedroom house, two bathrooms, a fancy espresso maker and a house full of furniture, a car, a job at Wal-Mart and a blue vest with my nametag on it hanging in the break room, insurance, bills, taxes, and the implications and responsibility of living in a nanobot techno future.

Get a damn job, you hippy, you might say, and you’d be right. I only wish there was away to get a head with out giving The Man a rim job...that the stucture of society were more like a rocket ship to heaven and less like the gravity field of a brown dwarf pushing a major portion of it's citizens into debtor's prision.

Art

My brother Andy, has started a geo cities web site and put his art work on it. He is very talented. I've added this site to my sidebar so you can check in to see if he has posted anything new.

New Blog post are coming. I can feel them gurgling in my stomach. It won't be long now till I pass them.

Word of the Day:

Frack: 1.. An edgy word used on Battlestar Galactica to avoid the dreaded bleep. 2. Identical to our earthling F word except that the Capricain version is spelled with an "ra" instead of a "U". Used in sentences such as: What the Frack is up with the Cylons, they look just like us humans now? Frack this mother fracking viper! We must repopulate the human species...want to Frack? I'm a fracking sensitive yet power obsessed female president, if you frack with me, I'll frack the frack out of your fracking frack--you won't even know what fracked you, fracker.

Mr. Bell

I sat down at my computer desk this morning with a cup of coffee and a breakfast cookie and an intention of doing a Bible Study before heading off to work. Instead, I checked emails and news sites, then decided that listening to my favorite radio program, Coast to Coast AM, sounded more fun than Bible stories. I went to the Coast website and was excited to see that Machio Kaku, a brilliant scientist, was the guest last night. The joy lasted momentarily though: I saw the announcement that Art Bell’s wife, Ramona had died.

I was shocked. I don’t know these people, but in a way I do. Art Bell has kept me company many many nights—nights when I didn’t feel so great and my life wasn’t going so hot. Countless nights I went to bed early, cozy under the sheets, listening to Art talk about science and the paranormal. He had pulled me through hard times-- kept my mind busy when it might otherwise suffered from idleness.

I listened, almost in tears myself; to this man I respect so deeply, share about his sorrows and shock in losing his soul mate. He said slowly, fighting back the tears that he had seriously considered ending his own life to join his departed wife; his life seemed meaningless without her and if not for his five cats, he might have ended it or would end it.

Art Bell’s voice is like a warm star in the night. He has been an influence and comfort in my own life and countless others. I wish him all the best and would encourage all of you to check out his thought provoking radio program as well as offer your prayers, that he might find comfort in such difficult times.

If Humans Had a Weather Machine

Man #1: How about this weather?

Man#2: F#!@ing George Bush!

The New Morality

Nurse: Doctor, what is wrong? You are breathing heavily and persperating. You look terrified. You came through that door in such a hurry. Now your stacking heavy boxes of medical equipment against it. Why? What’s wrong, doctor?

Doctor: The horror! The horror!

Nurse: Doctor, your trembling. Is something the matter?

Doctor: I’ve seen the face of evil, nurse. EVIL! Now help me with these boxes, girl!

Nurse: Doctor, your scaring me. What happen in there-- with Mrs. Jones? Was there some sort of complication with the delivery? Tell me, Doctor. For the love of God, your scaring me.

Doctor: I told her to get an abortion--I told her! But no, she didn’t listen to me. Her goddamn morals. To hell with her morality, it has spawned an abomination! God help us!

BAM…BAM

Nurse: Doctor! Tell me. What is on the other side of that door?!

Doctor: The devil! Didn’t you read the Jones report? She was raped by an android and impregnated by silicon nano sperm. The baby she carried for nine months is a goddamn hybrid! The spawn of satan tore her right in two then killed Doctor Larson and Doctor Wizorowitz. Poor Mrs. Jones--split in half!

BAM…BAM

Nurse: Oh, Doctor! The door is giving way!

Doctor: pulling the nurse close, the top three buttons of her blouse popping off.

What has this world come to Nurse? An artificial antichrist on my operating table. Nurse, I’ve always loved you. Kiss my chin and run your hand through my chest hair.

Nurse: Kisses doctor’s chin and strokes his chest hair, the doctors shirt was ripped off by a robotic claw right before he slammed the door shut. Even though the nurse is going to be eaten alive by a robo-baby (which looks like a cross between werewolf and the tin man, if the tin man had daggers for teeth and chain saws for arms) she is unable to resist tilting her head sideways, and worshiping the doctor, and being a helpless female. Her drunk love, turns to panic.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! The door, it is broken! We are going to die!

Doctor: Damn you Mrs. Jones. Damn you to hell! I told you to abort the fetus.

Historical Times

It has rained twenty eight straight days. No sun breaks. No moon. Just clouds and an intolerable wetness. The record for consecutive rainy days in this region is thirty three. The ten day forecast shows no relief in sight. We are living in historically wet times.

In periods such as this, in the Great Northwest, there is little else to do but think and write. Sitting in the door frame of my refrigerator room, I listen to the sound of falling rain, cradle a cup of coffee and study the muddied colors of the pear tree out back.

I watch the delivery drivers park across the alley, unloading boxes on to hand carts, then pushing them up the ramp to the door where they punch in the secret code into the keypad, then disappear into the bowels of the credit union.

I think about a post human future and salvation.

I realize I am whistling Wish You Were Here.

The rotting leaves, the rotting garden, the mold, the moss, the colorless sky, the gray puddles, the water, the wetness, the mud, the cold waterlogged wood under my bare feet, damp, soggy, saturated. Water.

I think I'd like to move, at least off the porch, to go somewhere, do something.

I think I'd like to stay put and be lazy all day.

I think about weather control.

I think about the Fourth of Julys spent at the beach, under the stars, fireworks bursting in air; about bon fires and beer; I think about sunburns and aloe vera.

My Brother

Beside my computer, tacked on the wall with a push pin, is a picture of my brother and I posing as conquering heroes on the lip of the Grand Canyon. His hands are on his hips, facing away from the camera, gazing outward into the desert abyss. I am standing proudly with my chest puffed out and my legs powerfully planted on red rock. Our clothes are strewn in the foreground and we're both wearing boyish smiles.

We drove across a continent to see one of the great testaments of time. Once there, we had our picture taken like other tourists except unlike the others, we were wearing not but our underwear.

Protection

He puts the car in park and turns the radio down. The sound of the windshield wipers scraping across the window is almost as loud as his beating heart. The police cruisers spot light fills the cab of his car with a blinding light, making him feel uneasy--there is stage fright. His heart almost burst with the tap on the window.

"License, registration, and condom ." from the beefcake cop, with his hand on his holster.

"Uh, yes, sir, here are my papers." the trembling boy offered.

"Condom. I need proof of protection."

"I, I, I don't have any on me, sir."

"Step out of the vehicle, and do it slowly. Good, nice and easy. Hands! Hands! Let me see those hands bub. No tricky stuff. Now hands behind your back. You want to tell me why your cruising around town, past all this poonanny on the street, with out proper protection, boy?"

"I, was just running up to the market to pick up some milk for my mom. We ran out at home and she was going to make French toast for dinner. Please officer, I was just going to run up to the store, it is only a few blocks away."

"The grocery store huh, I should hall you away right now. There's a helluva a lot of pun-tang at the grocery store, kid. You want to get aids? What, you got no respect for yourself, walking into to a trap like the grocery store without a condom? Your a real punk, boy."

"Uh, yes, sir. Sorry sir. It's just that well, I’m not the kind of guy that sleeps around sir, I, I am a virgin, I am saving myself for the one I love. My wife."

"Ha, how old are you boy?"

"Sixteen, sir."

"Your so naive. You, hooligan. There ain't no way you gonna stay a virgin, not in this punanni wasteland. It's everywhere boy. It's scary, it's dangerous. It'll eat you alive. If you worked in my line of work, see what I see everyday… Yep, your a young idealist, boy. There are factors beyond your control or any of our control. You can't control your pecker, boy, and your gonna wrap it up or go to jail. I'm takin you in, smart ass."

"But, sir. No."

"Get in." Opening back door of the cruiser. "Head down."

The adrenalin hits the boys heart and without thinking he bolts--slipping right out of the cops hands, he runs through the rain--hands behind his back. But he is no match for officer Beefcake who is on his heals--who pounces on the boy, body slamming his small frame into the asphalt

"Your in a world of trouble now, son. You young men are so impulsive and reckless, there ain't no way your gonna be able resist the poon. Your ours now, boy. We own you. One Adam Twelve--we have a four five nine, that's right, bolting virgin. I'm gonna need back up."

Dreaming of Unwinter

The rain was coming down heavy outside, beyond the office window. All was silent but for the sound of trees pawing with their pruned-finger branches at the side of our red bricked building, begging to be let in out of the cold; the misery. I looked from the wall clock to the window beaded with rain drops, then to the coat I chose to wear today, a mock leather, spring jacket, without a hood. Dread and laziness took me. Winter, go away.

At the right moment, when the clock told me I’d worked long enough, I rose slowly and put on my pleather coat and dragged myself out of the office, down the stairs, through the hall and finally, through the heavy double doors, into the pouring rain. Damn.

I walked, and walked some more--my eyes down, watching for puddles to avoid. Something happened then and though I hadn’t acknowledged it with my conscious mind, I perceived it none the less. At a molecular level, my body, the cells, started wiggling a bit faster with excitement. Then my sensory districts began to broadcast alerts, yellow, orange, red. My nose sent a message: the air had become more fragrant. My skin sent a message: remember the way spring touches? My sight grew brighter as photons flooded my retinas.

The sun was shining!

I looked up and became a weather man, “this won’t last forever.” And with out a PhD in meteorology, I must admit, it was only a guess. But a smart guess based on observation. The patch of blue sky was tiny and quickly being torn apart by swiftly moving storm clouds. The gap in the gray was like a tornado of still, sweet-smelling June air extending down around only me.

On the horizon, breaking upon the roof tops of homes on a distant hill top, shone a dense rainbow.

I blinked and found I was no longer walking on a city street but was instead walking through a wood with a lawn of moss under my feet. I was clothed differently as well, in deep blue flowing robe made of a strange but soft synthetic material. The rainbow was still beaming but instead of falling on the roofs of track housing, it landed on a great white walled castle, a city powered by the energy of the rainbow. And in the valley beyond the wood, in the shadow of the hill, was farm land. And workers dressed in beautiful green robes tilled and harvested the land. And I could see, walking on thin whispy clouds, men in orange robes, the harvesters of the sky. My eye site was keen, and I could see far, all the way into the distant halls of the city on the hill where men in purple robes governed and wrote in books made of light. And there were women in red robes dancing in the cities parks, painting and playing musical instruments. Still another group of people, outfitted in yellow, were studying the rainbow, channeling it through thin glass cables to all the corners of the city. The people in yellow robes were also the priest and tended the temples and the fires that burned within them. And a white light radiated from the peoples faces and over the valley and from inside the trees.

I was glad that winter was over.

Song and Dance

700 hours:

I walked downtown to Starbucks. I looked like a bag of ass, having just rolled out of bed. My eyes were half open with crusty morning goobers rolling like boulders from the moist corners. Not completely awake, confusion set in as I stood at the ordering counter. The woman behind the register was absolutely high on mocha. She seemed comfortable with her surroundings; the out of focus type all over the walls, the pink and avocado striped pillows resting on the “brew” colored sofa chairs, the cylindrical alter shaped shelves filled with jazz CD‘s, basket sized coffee mugs, and stainless steal thermoses shaped like ancient fertility gods. Am I dreaming?

A chalk board hanging from the menu board announced the special of the day: cinnamon bun latte. A hieroglyph of a cup with steam swirling and curling out of it convinced me that indeed, the special would be good for me. As if I needed further convincing, the words accompanying the picture, written in a cheerfully famine flowing script font, with tiny bubbles for serifs, read: “Pamper yourself“. My mind wandered to a field where the soil was warm pink clouds and stalks of cinnamon grew tall and danced and sang African folk tunes. There was a crop circle in the cinnamon field and in that, a Victorian style iron bathtub filled with bubbles. Candles sticks fluttered above the tub with fairy wings and soft flame for hair. I stripped naked, my cream skin exfoliated by the sugary warm breeze, and dipped my big toe into the bath then my whole leg, finally submerging my whole body in the hot latte bubble bath. I drank in the steamed milk then spit it out in a thin stream. Time stopped then, and I was a fountain, a cherubim statue made of white chocolate, melting slowly from the bottom up--evaporating into a java nirvana. The sky above me parted and the face of a goddess appeared. She was a giant soap bubble shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow. She spoke:

“What can I get for you, sir?”

I felt myself rocking and a soft whisper--the African folk tune--leaking out of my crusted lips.

“Sir? Sir!”

“Uh, oh, um, hmmm…I want to pamper myself this morning.” I said.

“You bet sir!”

I hadn’t noticed before but the back wall was actually a curtain and was parting slowly revealing an assembly line of industrial age gears and rotors and steam whistles. Working the line was a crew of munchkin women dressed as show girls in leotards of bright primary colors. Red, Yellow, Blue. The neon light reflected off the sequins sewed all over their outfits. They sang and danced and seemed to perform for only me and that made me happy and I clapped and danced and slobbered and the whole café danced with me.

Comedy

Best Blonde Joke Ever!

Daddy?

When I was a child I had a lot of faith in adults, especially my parents. And by faith I mean that I really believed that my elders had the answers to all of those curious questions I had about the world. I came to the realization the other day that somewhere along the line, I turned into an adult. Even though I lack most of the important contemporary signifiers of adulthood, (marriage, children, a career, a mortgage) I am at an age where my friends are starting to have these things. Yes, the kid’s I grew up with now have children of their own and those adorable little brats are brimming with questions. Questions that are above my head.

This is probably completely obvious to parents, but like I said, I am not a parent; this revelation came recently while driving over the mountains with my buddy and his daughter who was in the back seat seemingly fascinated by everything on the other side of her window. We were stopped at an intersection and there was road work being done on the cross street to our left. A policeman was directing traffic and the headlights of passing cars were reflected off the rainy late evening air as drivers slowly maneuvered around the cones. “Daddy, what are those glowing things?” Cassidy asked from the back seat. I hadn’t noticed myself but surrounding the bulldozers and work trucks, road flares were blazing red, pulsating like stars. My buddy answered without hesitation or even much thought, “those are road flares, Cassidy.” I looked back at Cassidy in her car seat and saw a look of awe on her face as she made the new association between image and sound…r o a d f l a r e.

I am willing to concede that the object that glowed in the street was a road flare, but is that all it is? I became as curious as Cassidy, what is a road flare, really? I guess it is a chemical reaction, a warning sign, it is probably many things. I was struck with the realization that the way we learn about the world as children is very much a matter of faith in our elders, in their knowledge. My buddy is a smart guy but he doesn’t have the answers to hard questions. He tells his daughter what his parents told him, those glowing things are called road flares. In this way we pass our collective wisdom and ignorance down through the generations.

Faith in authority is a very shabby way to acquire a world view. Ideally, we would have all of eternity to find things out for ourselves (and maybe we do) but if we want to get anything done in this life, we must trust others. I bring this up because I love reading smart people’s ideas about the world; I like to hear what people think about God and space and what it all means. But after my epiphany the other day watching Cassidy, I can’t help but see scientist and priest (the smart people from two warring tribes, or so we would be led to believe. Science and religion should not be at odds with each other, it is the politics of each field that conflict) in the same light as I saw my buddy, a man answering a question the best he could but not really having qualifications to answer it at all. The scientist and the religious give good answers but not final ones. This might all be very obvious, but it has allowed me a little wiggle room--a space to dream. Are we absolutely positive that we understand the expansion of the universe? Do we know for a fact that our distant ancestors were mistaken about God and the gods? Is a capitalist market really the best way to organize our society? Do we know for a fact that trees don’t talk?

Civilization will “progress” and there will still be love and goodies and even catastrophes in the future, in Cassidy’s old age and in her children’s children’s age. But how might the world change dramatically if instead of just seeing a flare--those chemical reaction causing an energy release--Cassidy saw something completely different and had no restriction placed on her vision? What are we failing to see because we fail to look, or even worse, choose not to?

Yuppy Chain Holiday Card (a little late)

Pleasant season my friends,

Hi. Some of you may not know me but I am my master's (Matt) house plant. I live in a pot on my master's speckled linoleum counter top. He sincerely apologizes for not keeping his blog more up to date but wants you all to know that he will be working on that in the coming weeks. So, another year has passed and I want to write a letter letting you all know about the exciting stuff going on in our thrilling lives, and, well, to brag about my master.

My master is currently working towards completing his four year bachelors degree in six years. All of his professors say he is a pleasure to have in class and that in fact, he is brilliant. Just last week my master found the solution to a math problem that even his professor could not solve. My Master is so smart. I wear a sticker on my pot that announces the unique genius of my Master.

Not only is my Master an intellectual giant but he is an absolute big shot at work. He works in a large office--the central nerve of the University. The pressure he must face behind his desk juggling the delicate power of order in a shit storm of chaos. Without my Master's monk like calmness and sharpness, the office would collapse. My Master works so hard. I tell him to relax, play a game of civilization, but no, he works into the wee hours of the night, by candle light as to not use to much electricity (My Master is very environmentally minded), grading papers for the professors and balancing the budget for the Dean. My Master is the center of the world.

Oh and you should see all the stuff My Master has bought this year. He is really boosting the economy, as rich and successful as he is. He eats out almost every night and not just at McDonalds either but really rich exotic places. Greek, Tai, Mexican. He is a big shot. All the waiters know him and give him big helpings. My Master tells them jokes and though they aren't as clever as My Master, they laugh and laugh. My Master is so popular.

My master also has a way with the ladies. Women adore him. His beautiful girlfriend comes over and they laugh and smile and stare deeply into each others eyes. They are so in love. Other people might think they have loved but I seriously doubt anyone has ever loved like My Master loves. His girlfriend is the most beautiful and intelligent woman. She is a big shot too.

My Master was also in a biking accident this year. Very painful, I'm sure. My Master though, God Bless that sonovabithch, took it like a true man. He had titanium rods holding his arm together but after a few weeks pulled them out himself without even taking pain medication. My Master can beat up anyone!

Yes sir. Our lives are wonderful. We are doing exciting stuff almost everyday. This spring My master is going to take me skydiving in the Congo. We are living the American dream and doing it so stylishly.

Happy Holidays,
Peter Plant

Freedom? Yeah Right!

Did you out-of-staters know that here in Washington State, voters have voted to ban indoor smoking, making our granolafied state the most intolerant state in the union towards smokers? This new law means that puffers can not smoke in bars or coffee shops and not only that, but must be at least twenty five feet from a door. In other words, in the middle of the street, dodging those smog farting SUVs.

I realize smokers aren't the most popular demographic out there but it isn't really the smoking part that gets me about this law, though I am crushed that I'll no longer be able to spend late nights at the Horse Shoe Cafe drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. No, I'm more shocked that voters feel they can tell business owners how to run their own shop. How un-American can we get!

On today's front page in the Bellingham Herald, there is an article about one business owner who refuses to have his rights taken away. Abel Jordan, the owner of Casa Que Pasa, a popular tequila bar and burrito joint here in town, is allowing smoking at his restaurant. He says he looks forward to fighting his one hundred dollar ticket in court. He says about his restaurant: "Ultimately, it's private property, if you don't want to come into my smoking bar, don't come in."

People making their own choices? My God, what a concept. Do you think we are capable of such a feat, Washingtonians? God bless you, Mr. Jordan. Tell me when and where and I'll be there with my flaming torch and pitch fork.