Kids make me sick

I don't know if there's some secret society of child rearers who, clothed in dark cloaks gather and plan our destruction. But I have some pretty high suspicions these people exist. My primary proof of this evil organization is that when people's kids are sick, they don't tell you that until you've picked them up and allowed them to breath on you. My best friend and his wife are members in good standing. After spending the better part of a day with him and his kids, one of whom i snuggled with while she fell asleep, he told me they had some weird thing where they had snotty noses and diahrea but nothing else. That's actually quite a bit, especially when you're running full out on a treadmill at the gym. Turns out in addition to those visible symptoms there are some pretty fantastic stomach cramps that the kids couldn't articulate.

These people wage war on us because they hate us or more precisely they hate our lack of responsiblity. The fact that I just went to the beach for the last three days on a whim insites demonic rage that only a campaign of biological warfare can satiate. They are winning this war people. If they can't go about willy-nilly doing as they wish why should we? What right have we to have fun when they're toiling on the next generation of people? Sadly, I know when my time comes, I'll join their rank and file and rain down sickness and pain aplenty on my unsuspecting single friends. What can I say? I'm a sheep also the benefits are amazing.

Lightening striking sea sickness

I have a lot of nightmares. Invariably I have them the night before I go to the temple, or if I've read about or seen anything with a rattlesnake in it a few hours before bedtime or had pizza right before bed. I've had the standard old nightmares of being attacked while in bed, being pinned down unable to breath or scream or talk or communicate, being watched from outside my window, watching rattlesnakes cover my bedroom floor, vanity, headboard, nightstand and slither in my shoes and eventually up my bed. I've drowned, been shot, forgotten, slashed to pieces, fallen from great heights, been choked, trampled and in car wrecks, trapped under ice, even never born (that's surreal let me tell you) but never have a I had a dream like last night.(maybe those aren't your standard old nightmares but its what I get) The dream couldn't have been more then moments in real time, even in dream time it was quick.

I found myself in a brick house with white trim, nice new double pane windows and furniture several decades out of date. The house had a familiar air. The same cold, damp smell of my Uncle Al's basement. A smell from childhood. Not an unpleasant smell but unexpected in a second story bedroom. A steady, fat rain beat on the window, ran down the siding and gushed out the gutters into planters. Its interesting to me now that I could see the exterior of the house from within. But dreams always have their own rules you understand inherently while you dream.

I was hell bent on getting to my car, which was white and a sedan and parked on the street just to the left of the drive way. I ran down steps from the second story to the drive way. Steps that weren't there moments earlier when I surveyed the exterior. I was drenched by the time I got to the corner of the grass and the sidwalk where a large tree sat. Coming underneath the tree my cell phone, unknown to me until now, vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and felt the air charge with electricty, it arced between the ends of my half open flip phone. I threw it away and watched it go supernova in the street. Unaware, I found I'd thrown myself downand was doing my best to hug the grass and be flat. Lightening came down and bloomed all over the tree, poured onto the ground and ran through me, over me and out of me. It arced between tree branches, my fingers and my teeth. I felt no real pain only a distant pressure all over me. I thought I might be the first person to actually drowned in electricity. It kept coming, strike after strike, not disappating but pooling, rolling over the ground and burying me in blue white brightness.

And that's where I woke up. Not startled, or gasping but uncomfortable. I was on my stomach, spread eagle, fingers dug into my matress with a smidgen of drool down my chin. My hands were numb. I rolled off the bed, tripped to the light switch and squinted at the bright bulbs in my lamp. My clock read 430, only three hours till my temple trip. Another temple trip tradition under my belt. Also, my stomach hurt.

Just a lad

I turn 29 this month. The fact isn't bothering me on a constant basis, its more like smaller spasms of bother like an eye twitch. I'm saving up the anxiety like a fat store of worry, for those times when everything's going great, whenever that is. As the years go by the idea of a worry free or at least worry-less-than-now future seems about as real as the tooth fairy. (jeez somebody's kid is screaming its lungs out right now, its unbelievably loud. Clearly this lady doesn't care that her kid just ran down my isle flinging its spitty straw about, I still can't even tell if its a boy or a girl, maybe it's Pat) Aging is supposed develop you somehow. It feels more like its breaking me down. Its stripping away my inhibitions, my sense of propriety, and piece by piece my sanity. I can understand why if you live long enough someone ends up emptying your bed pan. Perhaps, just perhaps, you figure out "hey being a baby was pretty much as good as my life got so I'll head back that direction". That seems to be what happens. Your hair falls out, your teeth fall out, you shrink, you start being dressed up in ridiculous ways, you lose the ability to connect on an understandable level with anyone, buttons and lights make you smile with wonder, and you shuffle about teetering and tottering about to collapse. I mean you if you hang around this place long enough people will even start feeding you. I have to say, on those really lazy days when lay in bed for hours, dozing and staring off its pretty great.

Unfortunately to go that direction as a 28 year old grown man is frowned upon. Meanwhile, some 80 year old is slumped over in his chair, having pudding shoveled into his face and we say, he's earned it after all that toil. We even feel sorry for him. He's probably just laughing his azz off behind closed doors having finally figured out the system.

The big plus side of birthdays at this age is that most of your friends and family are working full time and can afford to drop some change on you, that is if they really love you. (hint hint) Giving gifts on someone's birthday is kind of a weird tradition if you think about it. "Here you go I got you this colored paper and shirt to say, hey I'm glad you're not dead yet." Just what is it we're celebrating here? The fact that I was born? or that I'm not dead yet? At some point it clearly goes from one to the other. (holy crap I think there's a girl in leather pants looking at magazines....wtf? leather pants? who ARE these people?...yup they're definitely leather I just want to go up and ask why? its like a million degrees today and she doesn't really have the ehum..shape for them) I think that at first its about celebrating the birth. Then you get to the middle years, say 8-68 or so. Those years seem a little forced so we attach significance to them with little mini bosses. 13 you're finally a teenager, 16 you can drive, 18 you can get the hell out of your parents house, 21 you can drink, 25....dont know why this one's significant, 30...end of the 20s, 40 middle age, 50 half a century, 65 retire (psh yeah right).

Might as well capitalize on the 20s. I really need to get to work on a birthday gift list. I've got a few things already that would be nice. A wetsuit, a bike, another year of disneyland, maybe a new longboard of my own, perhaps a flat screen tv. I guess most of those are pretty big ticket items but I have real needs here people. Also if anyone can figure out how to fit a new job into a box and get it to me that'd be swell.

Some sort of a nexus for these people

It turns out I'm a magnet for people with social disorders. Some how I keep running across these people. Our lives run parallel and occasionally intersect. Like God is reminding me that im only a hairs breath away from being on a constant course with them. Now that's real motivation for behaving.

On these occasions we run into each other I'd say its a 70/30 split between on the road and in bookstores. Maybe that just tells you what I spend my time doing, driving to bookstores, mostly. There are the other times where its not an occasion but a series encounters, like my last job. One of my bosses, the micro manager. There he was everyday socially alergic to not being an ass.

But here I find myself once again thrust up against the pulsing, ugly face of the socially disabled. Today there's three of them. The fat ass and the two harlots. Upon my last visit to the bookstore he (the fat ass) was here. He's as close to a real world representation of Comic Book Guy as you can get. Greesy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, forest green polo shirt, a sweet sweet pair of jorts (no I'm not kidding) and two fat feet straining the tensile strength of his flip flop straps. The last time I was here he was hogging all the power outlets. Now he's talking loudly on his cell phone hogging some power outlets. I wonder if his mother knows he's emerged from his basement bedroom? At any rate, there he is breathing my air, flakey scalp spinning off, twirling away in all directions, mixing with the motes in the air. (For my next trick I'm going to write a sentence containing only commas) All of it caught up, playing along in the light streaming in the window. It would be kind of beautiful if I was on my own air supply watching from aprotective plastic screen maybe encased in some sort of a biohazard suit. Gross.

The two harlots I saw as I was driving up to the bookstore. They were treking across the vast parking lot, huffing and puffing. Lord knows why. At least they couldn't be that hot given the amount of clothing they were wearing. Then again, I'll bet a quarter inch of makeup can trap some serious bodyheat. I didn't pay them much attention really other then to shake my head and think, who are your mothers? While I was signing onto the wifi network tweedle skank and skankier showed up at the coffee shop I was situated at. They were carrying on like they were on cellphones. So freakin loud. I found out they're from Seattle and are so glad to find a Seattle's Best Coffee shop in the area. I honstly thought they might be a little drunk they were so loud. Meanwhile I give them a sideways stinkeye hoping to shame them into submission. If only... Here's the really annoying/embarrassing part: I get up to buy some water, while I'm waiting for the salesman I hear, "hey do you need a bandaid?", I turned to my right, the blonde one was looking at me, skank mode fully deployed. I was waiting for her to drop a pen and do a bend and snap but instead I said, "Excuse me?", pointing to my arm she reponded"I said, did you need a bandaid? cause you're all cut up" I looked down at my arm back at them, noting the latin chick's tatoo and bra strap hanging past her shoulder. I turned back to the salesmen, made the ookkaaaayy eyes at the guy and paid, turned around and while heading back to my seat the blonde one shouted, "I was just complimenting your hot body." What the hell? Who does that? I wanted to pop right out of existence right then.

That's just my latest interaction with the shambling masses of humanity, bent on proving they're just as stupid as they look. Look at Comic Book Guy, he's still there breathing my air, yeeaahhuuuh.

I think I'm so clever

Sometimes when I read I want to write. I will even have a notion of what I'd like to say or perhaps a story to tell. It ends there, generally. I've got the big ideas, the big emotions but I'm sadly lacking in the virtues. Namely, words to string together to lay it all down. You'd imagine maybe, perhaps, I'd have picked up something from the books I've read over the years. Unfortunately writing, good writing, you can't get by reading good writing, you actually have to do it. That is not to say you can't learn good writing from reading good writing but you just on occasion have to actually put something down on paper, or pixels.  

Maybe this blog is my attempt to do that.  To srcibble down the frantic, fleeting growth inside my head I'd call a story.  I think I'll give it more of a try, in the very least you all can amuse yourselves at my expense, I have no problem with that.

Considerations

Starting a blog post or a paper or almost anything I'm writing that will be seen by others, except a journal entry, can take me hours to do. Even though I know I'm going to go back and edit, and more than likely it will be placed at the end of the work, I need to start off in the right tone, the right punch. The idea that you only get one chance to get someone's attention always preys on my mind. Of the countless things to read and take in this person is foregoing all of that to read what I've written. Its intimidating. Its comical. Especially considering the readership of this blog is nonesxistent. But if someone's going to see it possibly, even if its a theif in the night, I have to try and get it juuuust right. Its directly related to being my mothers son. Only instead of made beds we're dealing with ideas and concepts encapsulated (what a great word) in sentences. Plus you have to slave away to write something funny or amusing because you don't have comedic timing to take advantage of like you do when you're in real time. Instead you end up doing this a lot.......punchline. Its hackish but effective. At least I'm not up here wearing a pair of rainbow suspenders shouting, "Who's ready to LAUGH!"

People tell me to blog, that they'd like to read what I've got to say.  You poor simpering fools, how I have you fooled(hence why you're fools).  Is it good manners to call your readership (is that a word?) fools?  If you're still reading....well, enough said.  On a completely unrelated note, I've added Elle Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to my Jack Johnson station on Pandora....its effing epically good.  A little Jack a little Ella, some Nat King Cole its like drinking from a fountain of smooth poetic dreams.  Just kind of courses through your brain, down through your toes and makes you feel like the most romatic sonofabitch alive.  I recommend it.  Ok time to publish this thing.

I've got a lot problems with you people and now you're going to hear about them

Contrary to the title of this post its not going to be a tirade. Please ignore my gaping absense on the net. I've been busy, and well, disinterested in blogging. I just realized I often put commas in sentences where I should put elipses(sp?). Ah well, it is what it is.....I don't like that phrase(a comma would have been much better there, dang it!). I hear it all the time at work, as well as "all things being equal". That's just a way to say, "you need to disregarding anything that might prove or imply that I'm wrong in order for me to be right so that you're actually wrong." I guess, "all things being equal" is at least succinct.



So I've been reading lately. Reading a lot actually. You see I don't have a TV anymore. In fact since you last heard from me I moved into a place by myself. It's remarkable. Initially the lack of a television was disconcerting. Now its comforting. As I said, I read a lot. Not even good (by the educational world's standards or maybe even Church standards) books really. Its great. I dont have to read "the classics" or some popular book I can just read whatever stumbles, or shambles (we mustn't forget shambling books) across my path. I've picked up a few of John Scalzi's novels and they're fantastic. What could be more fun then old people, in space, fighting wars with aliens? I'm not sure either. I mean you know my disdain for the elderly. I think it's a great idea. Once they reach the age of 75 we can shoot them off into space and let the cosmos deal with their slow, dangerous driving, their tyranical diatribes about youth, and their death(pun intended) grip on healthcare. I don't care if you did fight the Kaiser you're going into space where we'll let the relativistic problems of FTL travel deal with you. In the very least I'll be dead by the time you get back this way. (For those of you who don't have a clue, FTL is faster than light, and the relativistic problems have to do with the principle that as you approach the speed of light the passage of time slows down so theoretically you could age a year and everyone else would age 10, though that ratio isn't even close to being correct from a mathematical stand point) At any rate, Scalzi's a good author, he's agnostic, maybe atheistic, but who isn't from time to time?



I also just finished a great book by David Sheff, called Beautiful Boy. It's about his family's life, before and during his oldest son's addiction to drugs. It was a sad book, but inspiring and hopeful as well. Alright, I'm hungry and since I'm not traveling anywhere close to the speed of light its still early enough to get a panini from Corner Bakery. What I'd really like is an improbability drive. Basically its this; a subatomic particle is most likely to be in a particular place, such as near the nucleus of an atom, but there is also a small probability of it being found very far from its point of origin (for example close to a distant star). Thus, a body could travel from place to place without passing through the intervening space (or hyperspace, for that matter), if you had sufficient control of probability. Basically you could pop from place to place, it'd be fantastic.

Finally, I've found two new online comics that are a lot of fun. I'll post about em later.