My views on children:
1. I don't trust them. Something about their beady little eyes and grubby fingers. Are all children villains? The off-rhyme-relationship between the two words seems to indicate so. And thieving? If I don't have a concept of what's mine and not-mine at age twenty-one, then what chance does a nine-year-old have? Seriously, I see one in the book store unattended and I'm all like, "Dude, you're nine. What are you doing here? You can't even read. Put the mad-libs down, because your fingers have germs on them."
2. They are like mini-people. Tiny, strange and annoying mini-people. They're like shrill person-larvae that have some rudimentary grasp of the damage they can inflict and it only intrigues them. There is no concept of consequence. So what if bites that break the skin leave permanent scars in the shape of tiny mini-person teeth? Human flesh tastes like candy.
3. They swarm. Where there's one, there are invariably others. They're like locusts, except bigger and more voracious. And they play games like 'hide and seek' so you even when you think you've gotten rid of them all they're still there. Lurking. And giggling.
4. The screaming. When humans were evolving from fuzzy proto-humans, the scream fulfilled a specific function as a sort of alarm, saying "I am a small child so pumas can kill me AND THERE IS ONE RIGHT THERE." Today, with modern anti-puma technology being what it is, the scream serves a function more akin to a "Joy-Siren," otherwise known as a "Bieber-Alert." Such a cry teaches listeners not to fear pumas, but to fear happiness.
5. Their ubiquity. Children are everywhere. There is no escape from children. There could be one behind you.
Right.
Now.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Things that Graduated Life has taught me:
Being out of school for two months has basically made me an expert on everything about life. Being a generous sort, I've decided to pass on some of my wisdom. In a list. I like lists (It's a graduated thing.)
1. Despite your best intentions to the contrary, you will not start cooking more once you've graduated. Unless it's cereal. Unless you're out of milk, and then it's dry cereal. Until you're out of cereal, and then it's tortillas with cheese on them. And then it's tortillas. Just tortillas. Only tortillas. Always tortillas.
2. When tortillas run out, rely on leftover baked goods from your job or handouts from your roommate. Your girlfriend will get wise to your ascetic antics (ascantics?) too quickly to nourish yourself for very long. She is wise, the girlfriend. Too wise.
3. Nobody will understand your trials and tribulations. Seriously-- all the sudden everybody's going to talk to you about how 'lucky' you are, and how they wish they 'didn't have to write ten pages by tomorrow' and stuff. Don't these people understand how hard Donkey Kong Country is?
4. Boredom, not inspiration, is the source of humanity's achievements. I'll bet Beethoven was all like, "Dude, I've already refreshed my facebook five times and it's not even noon. I'mma go write some sonatas."
5. It turns out, that whole "social interaction" thing was pretty cool when it happened. Some might even say it was necessary to your continued mental health. But they don't know the joy of completing a city made of sugar-cubes. Or talking to yourself. Do they, Keller? No, Keller. They don't.
6. Making a city of sugar-cubes, even though you only made it up for a blog post, starts to sound like a good idea.
Um...
... Excuse me for a couple of hours. I've got to go... Work. On a thing. Made of sugar.
1. Despite your best intentions to the contrary, you will not start cooking more once you've graduated. Unless it's cereal. Unless you're out of milk, and then it's dry cereal. Until you're out of cereal, and then it's tortillas with cheese on them. And then it's tortillas. Just tortillas. Only tortillas. Always tortillas.
2. When tortillas run out, rely on leftover baked goods from your job or handouts from your roommate. Your girlfriend will get wise to your ascetic antics (ascantics?) too quickly to nourish yourself for very long. She is wise, the girlfriend. Too wise.
3. Nobody will understand your trials and tribulations. Seriously-- all the sudden everybody's going to talk to you about how 'lucky' you are, and how they wish they 'didn't have to write ten pages by tomorrow' and stuff. Don't these people understand how hard Donkey Kong Country is?
4. Boredom, not inspiration, is the source of humanity's achievements. I'll bet Beethoven was all like, "Dude, I've already refreshed my facebook five times and it's not even noon. I'mma go write some sonatas."
5. It turns out, that whole "social interaction" thing was pretty cool when it happened. Some might even say it was necessary to your continued mental health. But they don't know the joy of completing a city made of sugar-cubes. Or talking to yourself. Do they, Keller? No, Keller. They don't.
6. Making a city of sugar-cubes, even though you only made it up for a blog post, starts to sound like a good idea.
Um...
... Excuse me for a couple of hours. I've got to go... Work. On a thing. Made of sugar.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Why I hate everything that water has in it...
Like fish.
Or floating anthropoids.
Or bacteria.
Or mutha fukken HOLE IN HEAD DISEASE.
Seriously, that's a thing.
So, recently, my car has decided to choke on its own exhaust pipe. I'll be driving it and it starts cutting out in the middle of the highway. Since there is nothing BUT highway in foco, I'm forced to drive through horrible empty parking lots until I reach my apartment from getting groceries while my car reminds me every thirty seconds that it's dying of car-bronchitis (chronchitis?) (Really, it's more like tuberculosis. That's consumption, right? I feel like my car is the kind of car that would tell you stories about how it's spent its life workin' in the coal mines over a cheap beer.)
(That'd probably be black lung disease.)
(Regardless.)
This affliction chose to take hold during one of the shittingest cold-snaps this town has seen in a while. Like, negative eight. But since I have no sense of temperature/self preservation and I heard that a blockbuster was closing down on the south end of town (along the highway), I convinced a group of my friends that "No, we shouldn't spend the frigid evening safe in the comfort of my apartment" and that "It's totally a good idea to go to blockbuster, like, right now."
On the way there, my car starts coughing. It waves me off and tells me it's nothing, but I can tell something's wrong. But I say nothing. My car has its dignity, after all.
We reach blockbuster and things are still too expensive to afford (even though I REALLY wanted a twilight-themed snuggie) so we all decided to go back to my apartment.
Just out of the parking lot, my car coughs again. I inquire after its well-being, and it waves me off. As it opens its mouth to tell me it's all right, it erupts in a fit of oil and ill-will. Giant wracking coughs jolt the car as we're careening down the highway.
I turn on my emergency blinkers.
Once we've turned off into a K-Mart parking lot, I apologize to my friend about how my car is about to hack up a carbourateaur (I don't know how to spell car-parts.) She says it's cool, and something-something-something "this disease that fish can get called Ick."
"Ick?"
"Yeah."
"What is 'Ick?'"
"It's short for *big science word.* Basically, fish have absolutely no immune system. Whenever anything shocks their system--like moving to another tank or getting introduced to another fish or being breathed on--they get sick. Ick is when these tiny parasites take advantage of stressed fish."
"Take advantage of?"
"They get under the fish's scales and then multiply, growing into big white wriggling pustules."
"... What."
"Yeah, then the pustules burst, sending parasites into the water to infect more fishes."
"... WHAT."
"Yeah. At least it's not as bad as 'hole in the head' disease."
I am silent.
"That's where bacteria basically burrow-"
"My car is shitty, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
So, this is why I hate water. Because it makes holes in your head, and then parasites get in the hole and make pustules of other parasites in your brain. Also there are fire-worms there.
PS- It turns out that, yes, humans can get Ick.
Or floating anthropoids.
Or bacteria.
Or mutha fukken HOLE IN HEAD DISEASE.
Seriously, that's a thing.
So, recently, my car has decided to choke on its own exhaust pipe. I'll be driving it and it starts cutting out in the middle of the highway. Since there is nothing BUT highway in foco, I'm forced to drive through horrible empty parking lots until I reach my apartment from getting groceries while my car reminds me every thirty seconds that it's dying of car-bronchitis (chronchitis?) (Really, it's more like tuberculosis. That's consumption, right? I feel like my car is the kind of car that would tell you stories about how it's spent its life workin' in the coal mines over a cheap beer.)
(That'd probably be black lung disease.)
(Regardless.)
This affliction chose to take hold during one of the shittingest cold-snaps this town has seen in a while. Like, negative eight. But since I have no sense of temperature/self preservation and I heard that a blockbuster was closing down on the south end of town (along the highway), I convinced a group of my friends that "No, we shouldn't spend the frigid evening safe in the comfort of my apartment" and that "It's totally a good idea to go to blockbuster, like, right now."
On the way there, my car starts coughing. It waves me off and tells me it's nothing, but I can tell something's wrong. But I say nothing. My car has its dignity, after all.
We reach blockbuster and things are still too expensive to afford (even though I REALLY wanted a twilight-themed snuggie) so we all decided to go back to my apartment.
Just out of the parking lot, my car coughs again. I inquire after its well-being, and it waves me off. As it opens its mouth to tell me it's all right, it erupts in a fit of oil and ill-will. Giant wracking coughs jolt the car as we're careening down the highway.
I turn on my emergency blinkers.
Once we've turned off into a K-Mart parking lot, I apologize to my friend about how my car is about to hack up a carbourateaur (I don't know how to spell car-parts.) She says it's cool, and something-something-something "this disease that fish can get called Ick."
"Ick?"
"Yeah."
"What is 'Ick?'"
"It's short for *big science word.* Basically, fish have absolutely no immune system. Whenever anything shocks their system--like moving to another tank or getting introduced to another fish or being breathed on--they get sick. Ick is when these tiny parasites take advantage of stressed fish."
"Take advantage of?"
"They get under the fish's scales and then multiply, growing into big white wriggling pustules."
"... What."
"Yeah, then the pustules burst, sending parasites into the water to infect more fishes."
"... WHAT."
"Yeah. At least it's not as bad as 'hole in the head' disease."
I am silent.
"That's where bacteria basically burrow-"
"My car is shitty, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
So, this is why I hate water. Because it makes holes in your head, and then parasites get in the hole and make pustules of other parasites in your brain. Also there are fire-worms there.
PS- It turns out that, yes, humans can get Ick.
Monday, February 7, 2011
A Thank-You to Brian Jacques
So, Brian Jacques recently passed away. He was the author of the Redwall series, which was all about talking mice that fought talking rats with a magic sword.
Man, I would totally keep going with how ridiculous that sounds, but the truth of the matter is that the Redwall books were some of the most influential books of my childhood.
I loved the whole shebang-- all the silly agnostic mice that lived inside of an abbey and ate delicious things, and the evil rodents that wanted in on the good thing they had going. All the badger-lords of Salamandastron, and the Long Patrol that they bossed around. The sword of Martin the Warrior, and all that shit. I loved it.
I mean, seriously-- I read it all. I listened to the books on tape to go to sleep at night. I'm not ashamed to say that I liked Redwall more than I liked most everything else that I was reading or watching (or doing, or that was happening in my life) at the time.
Redwall was the first saga that I ever really felt I was a part of. I grew up with the story, and I felt myself invested in the world that Jacques created. I wanted everything to go well for the talking mice just as much as I wanted to eat the delicious things that the critters at Redwall Abbey cooked up (to this day, there has never been a writer that has tantalized me with descriptions of food like Brian Jacques.) As silly as it was, I thought that it was the coolest thing. Moreover, I thought it was the most important thing for the mice to find the sword of Martin again so they could fight off the slavers and the brigands just in time for whatever non-denominational woodland festival Redwall had going at the time. Brian Jacques made me care about a story--about a group of characters, a place, an entire world and everything in it-- in a way that nobody before (and very few since) have been able to do.
In time, I grew up. I stopped reading the Redwall series because I started high-school, and at the time I thought those books were for little kids. And anyway, I had other things to read--things for class, other series of books, and so on--so I left the world of Redwall behind.
Except, I don't think I ever really did. No matter what I read, or where I've gone or what I've learned from years of books and classes, some part of me has always been sitting down at the table with Matthias, Methuselah, Basil Stag Hare and all the rest, eating a bowl of strawberries and cream and listening to the story of how Redwall Abbey was saved from Cluny the Scourge. And I know, and I can say without any hesitation, that I've loved every minute of it.
Thanks, Brian Jacques.
Man, I would totally keep going with how ridiculous that sounds, but the truth of the matter is that the Redwall books were some of the most influential books of my childhood.
I loved the whole shebang-- all the silly agnostic mice that lived inside of an abbey and ate delicious things, and the evil rodents that wanted in on the good thing they had going. All the badger-lords of Salamandastron, and the Long Patrol that they bossed around. The sword of Martin the Warrior, and all that shit. I loved it.
I mean, seriously-- I read it all. I listened to the books on tape to go to sleep at night. I'm not ashamed to say that I liked Redwall more than I liked most everything else that I was reading or watching (or doing, or that was happening in my life) at the time.
Redwall was the first saga that I ever really felt I was a part of. I grew up with the story, and I felt myself invested in the world that Jacques created. I wanted everything to go well for the talking mice just as much as I wanted to eat the delicious things that the critters at Redwall Abbey cooked up (to this day, there has never been a writer that has tantalized me with descriptions of food like Brian Jacques.) As silly as it was, I thought that it was the coolest thing. Moreover, I thought it was the most important thing for the mice to find the sword of Martin again so they could fight off the slavers and the brigands just in time for whatever non-denominational woodland festival Redwall had going at the time. Brian Jacques made me care about a story--about a group of characters, a place, an entire world and everything in it-- in a way that nobody before (and very few since) have been able to do.
In time, I grew up. I stopped reading the Redwall series because I started high-school, and at the time I thought those books were for little kids. And anyway, I had other things to read--things for class, other series of books, and so on--so I left the world of Redwall behind.
Except, I don't think I ever really did. No matter what I read, or where I've gone or what I've learned from years of books and classes, some part of me has always been sitting down at the table with Matthias, Methuselah, Basil Stag Hare and all the rest, eating a bowl of strawberries and cream and listening to the story of how Redwall Abbey was saved from Cluny the Scourge. And I know, and I can say without any hesitation, that I've loved every minute of it.
Thanks, Brian Jacques.
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