My Name Is Bratcher Lev

2010-01-20T14:05:00.002-06:00

3 Years

2009-08-26T21:00:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow, 08.27.09, is your third birthday. You're starting to show your age, my friend.

To the Kid in the Yellow Jacket Who Gave Me a Backwards Peace Sign As I Drove Past

2009-04-23T16:21:00.002-06:00

I guess you weren't really giving me a peace sign backwards. You had two fingers up, but it was more "What up, Dawg?" than "Peace, Man." Of course I'm not well versed in urban hand gestures, you could have just as easily been giving me the British version of the finger. Most likely you have never been much farther than the edges of your yard so this probably isn't the case. Speaking of yards, really?

Your mom lets you stand one good push away from the edge of the highway? Really.

The worst part is I can't remember your face. Instead, just above that yellow jacket, sits the baby's head from Eraserhead. Maybe it's because I was thinking about how much I enjoy the movie Eraserhead but I don't really understand it and then I thought of the weird kid on the side of the road.

In a yellow jacket.

What up, my little Dawg.

The Brad Pitt Rule

2008-10-19T22:40:00.004-06:00

I've come across a revelation. A revelation, at least, to me. A couple of places on the intertubes have called it "The Brad Pitt Rule" and I think that's a pretty good name.

There was a girl in college. There was a girl in college in one of my classes. There was a girl in college in one of my classes that I often felt like walking out of. Instead, we'd pass the time talking quietly and jotting witty quips on our "notes."

I got to know her and thought something along the lines of "Hey, this is a pretty cool chick." I didn't throw myself out there much, but for some reason I did this time. I called her up and asked if she wanted to grab some coffee. She hemmed and hawed a bit and said that she'd love to, but she had to "go running." One of the things that we had in common was the fact that we both risked death by trying the Atkins low-carb diet. She had started running and had really gotten into it. I, on the other hand, had started napping and had really gotten into it.

I tried a couple more times and every time she had to "run." After the third time I started to catch on.

This is where the Brad Pitt Rule kicks in.

The Brad Pitt Rule states that if you ask a girl out and she says yes, then great, she probably likes you. If she gives an excuse, then you have to ask yourself, "What if it weren't me who asked her out? What if it were Brad Pitt? Would she still have to study, or hang out with friends, or run?"

Of course not.

She would have moved things around, made exceptions, rescheduled, done pretty much anything to go out on that date.

Brad Pitt himself isn't really relevant; it's what he represents. He represent what she wants.

If you are what she wants, she will drop her other plans to spend time with you. You make time for what your heart truly wants.

Of course, there are exceptions. She very well may have to work all night or need to study for her midterm that's in the morning. But if she's really into it, she'll be up for something some other time (and maybe even suggest it herself).

So if there's an excuse and nothing else is planned, she's just not into you.

Sorry.

Quit calling her.

Weirdo.

JaK+8

2008-09-24T18:21:00.003-06:00

After watching a couple of episodes of "Jon and Kate Plus 8" . . .

. . . it is becoming more probable that I will never have children.

Crap!

2008-09-08T18:43:00.001-06:00

I missed it! My two year birthday came and went, and I had no idea.

Poo.

(that's two fecal interjections in 17 words. Not too shabby.)

The Implement of My Return

2008-08-11T20:07:00.006-06:00

I really did. I had every intention of coming back. There were several ideas that had come to fruition enough to immortalize in text. Partly screaming wreckage from my "Thing a Day" ordeal, partly updates in life. Even observations and dreamscapes. Sentence fragments for punch. But then something happened. Maybe nothing happened. Regardless, I was more than happy to continue silently. You know that squiggly circle cartoon guy on those Zoloft commercials? The one with the voice over that talks about losing interest in what you once enjoyed.

In a way, I guess, I was that squiggle man.

Honestly, I am still fairly ambivalent about it all (in this case "it all" represents the idea of making digital carbon copies of my thought and periodically anchoring them to mass of ones and zeros in the intertubes). I am both alive and dead here.

I am Schrodinger's blogger.

I am here, though, and I suppose that's the most important part. What usually brings me here is intangible. A thought, a dream, a concept. This is not the case tonight. That which brought me back is quite concrete, a thing that can be grasped and weighed and looked at with judging eyes.

It is a keyboard.

Start lighting your torches.

It's one of those white Buick-sized monsters that purr when you type. By "purr" I mean click sensuously. It's a holdover from the days when screens were monochromatic, disks were floppy, and Oregon Trail was the pinnacle of computer gaming. Since the mouse became the main way people interfaced with their computer the keyboard has suffered a slow humiliating death. It has been resigned to an afterthought, something to be cheaply produced and used only when absolutely necessary. A keystroke on a modern keyboard gives as much tactile response as pressing down on the back of a young frog. The buckled spring keys have been replaced with a (much cheaper) membrane contact system. Press the key and the two contacts squish together and register a keystroke. Woohoo.

This only really matters to a certain grouping of people. It's actually the cross section of two groups, in the middle of which I nestle myself quite comfortably. This is easiest to show in Venn Diagram:

I have wanted to return to my roots for some time now. Thoughts like "I wish I still had that old 286 computer) were intermingled with internet research. I stumbled across a few off-brand types at various thrift stores and such places. Their heaped forms stand testament that they didn't work (note to self: throw those out . . . no wait. eBay. . ."Slightly used. . . Vintage") To do it right, you need to go with the right one, the original:

IBM.

I was at a Swap-N-Shop (a nice term for "outdoor place for me to sell you my crap and vice versa") and nearly walked past the old lady's stall. Out in front sat a beat-up, dingy keyboard. The gray dust of the gravel sat heavily on it as it had been laid out to display and then packed up at the end of the day on a number of occasions. After many failed attempts I had ceased running my fingers over every keyboard I came across. I had purchased every one that didn't meet my fingers with a sickening squish and not once had one of them worked. Out of some semblance of habit I depress one of the grimy keys.

Click.

It took me a moment to realize the gravity of the situation. Shakingly I asked the old lady (some might call her a bag lady) what her price was. I haggled her down from five dollars to three, though inwardly this felt quite greedy.

I took it home and shelved it. The longer it sat there untested the longer the possibility that it actually worked. This seemed quite impossible, though, given its condition. I found it in my heart to nurse it back to health, bathing it in sweet rubbing alcohol and scrubbing behind its plastic ears with Q-Tips. An hour or so of TLC and it shone like the sun. Well, an old, burly sun with grime still in some crannies.

Long story long, I plugged it in and here we are!

No excuse for no update

2008-08-06T05:26:00.000-06:00

Triumphant Return

2008-07-14T09:15:00.001-06:00

I've got something brewing. Give me some time to form it.

Ten Minute Dream

2008-07-11T10:48:00.004-06:00

I took a ten minute dream in the passenger seat
While the world was flying by
I haven't been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime.

Yes yes, I know.

I wish I had a delectable tale to pour out, something to give meaning to time past.

But all it seems I do is jump-start stalling.

Thing a Day! 5: April Showers, yadda yadda yadda, Pilgrims

2008-03-24T16:18:00.004-06:00

Showers.

I like to take them.

I don't take them three times a day like my old roommate Matt, but I try to get one in everyday.

I like to think of myself as a shower head aficionado. Or maybe a shower head snob. I like a certain kind of shower head, and when I find one it makes me happy inside. Which kind do you speak of, do you ask (you probably didn't)? Lots and lots of thin, tiny, powerful streams . From one side of the head to the other razor sharp streams. You can keep your massaging heads with 22 different settings or your "outside ring" heads. When you stand under it, it should feel like someone leaning against you with their fist.

And maybe bees.

Where did I gain such deep knowledge of the shower vagaries? Extensive traveling and staying in countless homes and churches around the world, my friend. The most memorable, though, was in Garden City, KS. It wasn't so much a shower tub or shower stall, but rather a shower room. Just think of a high school shower room then take out all of the machismo and every shower head but one. I'm not really sure what it's purpose is, but I imagine you could slick the floor down with shampoo and make a pretty rocking tile slip n slide.

The first night we were there I took a shower (as I am apt to do). A couple of guys came in to use the restroom and I yelled to them to make sure the door latched. Why?

The opening of the shower room was immediately adjacent to the door, on the other side was the gym. Right there. Of course the door didn't get latched and if there was some mysterious indoor wind it would be flapping in the breeze like one of those old-timey saloon doors. Rather, it was just standing wide open. When the water was off, I stuck my sopping wet head around the side. I could see clearly see a game of basketball going on.

That's not really true.

I didn't have my glasses on, so people shaped blobs I assume were guys and girls were playing with a blurry orange sphere that could only be a basketball or a large grapefruit. The key detail here is that my clothes, towel, and everything were around the corner in the actual bathroom, well out of reach.

So my options were to stand there cold, wet, and naked until another guy finally decided he had to pee or make a break for it and streak.

I stood there shivering for a few minutes weighing my options. The whole time I noticed there was always someone facing my direction. If I decided to go for it, whoever the lucky person was would get a good 3-4 clear seconds of my glory.

So what did I do?

I think I made someone's day.

Thing a Day! 5ish: A Place Holder

2008-03-24T04:22:00.001-06:00

Well. That didn't take long to get off track. I missed a couple of days for no good reason other than I was off and enjoying my leisure. I had thought about throwing a few things up (posting, that is, not vomiting) since I already have a few things finished that just need the typing treatment (I tend to write long hand and then transfer) but I think that lessons each of them to toss them around willy nilly.
So later today I will post about Pepsi.

Or Showerheads.

But for now I offer you this: there's a website called Goodreads where you make a virtual representation of your bookshelf. I did so, but have yet to touch it since. A few days ago I get an email from someone named "Aliie" saying she lives in Missouri and she wanted to know what was up. I told her what was up, as long as "up" means "I too live in Missouri." I then get a response asking how old I am and if i wanted to be her goodreads friend, which seems a bit strange, so I click over to her "page." She's 14. This was my answer, verbatim " I am 25 years old. And since you are a 14 year old girl, forgive me if I do not think we should be "friends" here."

If that was Chris Hansen, I think I passed the test.

But I doubt To Catch a Predator scours the seedy side of literature social networks.

Thing a Day! 4: It Probably Won't Clear Up

2008-03-20T04:15:00.003-06:00

I'm a big believer in the best gift you can give your wife (or husband, depending on your plumbing and emotional wiring) is your complete sexuality. The key aspect of this is, naturally, abstinence. I preached this as a youth pastor and I believe it in my personal life. But even if I didn't, even if I were morally okay with sleeping around. I still wouldn't. Why?

Because it's a scary world out there.

AIDS, HIV, and their friends are no laughing matter, but there's just got to be something worse brewing out there. Several decades ago no one knew about AIDS or HIV until it exploded. Just wait, this new super disease is watching and waiting. It's going to be truly nasty too.

I expect its main symptom is making the lower half of your body fall off.

Everything from your belly button down topples to the ground.

There's obviously a long incubation period, that's why we don't know about it . . . plus the person you got it from had to have time to give it to you. You're walking along several years later and

SNAP

you're standing on your torso looking in horror at your still-twitching legs lying beside you.

Imagine going to your ten year High School reunion (or 20, or 30, etc.) wheeling what's left of your body on a skateboard. You avoid stares as best as you can until you run into your old best friend. He tries to hide his shock as he asks "Dude? What happened to you?"

You point to a girl-torso hiding in the corner.

"Amber."

note: I was going to either vlog this or make an animated video to change things up, but as it were I'm temporarily without my camera and can't find my microphone to save my life. So . . . this is the transcript of what might have been.

Thing a Day! 3: I Sweded This.

2008-03-19T16:26:00.003-06:00

One movie I was looking forward to seeing is Be Kind Rewind. I saw it about a week ago and I have to say that I enjoyed it. Despite his being over the top sometimes, I still like Jack Black. For some reason I feel an affinity with him. The movie is directed by Michel Gondry, who directed, among other things (The Science of Sleep, for one) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If I were to make a list of favorite movies (which I surely have) Spotless Mind would be among those at the top ( nestled around Solaris, Dreamcatcher, and Gigli).

A bit of background on Spotless Mind: essentially people use a new technology to erase the memories of those they've loved and lost or those who've hurt them. This is not a new idea but Gondry's vision is fairly remarkable as we are dragged backwards through Jim Carrey's quickly dissolving memories of his relationship.

If I had the opportunity to take part in some sort of experimental study for this technology, I would. But I wouldn't do it to remove sad or painful memories like everyone else.

I'd erase the funny things.

What I wouldn't give to go back to the first time I saw Flight of the Conchords or Mitch Hedberg. I find that love and laughter are the sweetest things in life. Since I don't have love. . . I have laughter. There's nothing like the first time you experience something so unbelievably funny that tears run down your cheeks, your stomach cries out in pain, and you fight for breath. You return again to it and it's still funny, but the magic has lessened. There's a good thing in familiarity, but to go back to that virgin time, ah, what a magic.

Thing a Day! 2: The Killers Hermeneutics

2008-03-18T04:29:00.010-06:00

Okay. Let's get this ball rolling. I've got things lined up for almost every day of the month. If there's anything you want to see, let me know. There's no way for me to track if anyone is reading this, so probably the best thing is for you to leave a comment, even if it's "I read this" or "I let my eyes roll lazily over this." Otherwise, I'll more than lose interest and it will never happen (see National Novel Writing Month). Also, check back regularly since there will be something new every day. Tell all your friends! Make up little stickers that say thebratch.blogspot.com and slap them on stop signs and things all over town like the cool local bands do! I tend to ramble, which results in long posts, but for this project I will do my best to follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple Sanjaya). Hmm... I think that's all the housekeeping issues. Onward!

I love the Killers. I really do. If anybody can seamlessly transition from fake brit-pop to All-American Western-infused rock they get my vote. As I was working tonight, I stopped to actually listen to the lyrics and I realized that I have no idea what he's saying. Sure, I can understand the words, but what the crap does "I took a bullet, and I looked inside Running through my veins An American masquerade" mean?

Luckily, boys and girls, I went to college. There I studied hermeneutics . My intentions are to break down, line by line, the song "Sam's Town" and maybe together we can unlock its hidden meanings.

"Nobody ever had a dream round here"
-Okay, apparently the singer, Brandon Flowers, is upset about how his neighbors and the people around him have a complete lack of initiative. Or they're all insomniacs.

"but I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me"
- He is acknowledging the fact that everyone's apathy bugs him.

"Nobody ever pulls the seams round here"
- It's not very well known that "pulls the seams" is a phrase that is similar to "does a good job" or "excels at what they do" or "usually doesn't drool on self."

"but I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me"
-Brandon's okay with being surrounded by jackasses.

"I've got this energy beneath my feet"
- Okay, maybe this explains why everyone's wearing knickers on their heads: they're living by a nuclear power plant, most likely exploded Chernobyl-style.

"like something underground's gonna come up and carry me"
- Ah! Brandon Flowers is also a fan of the movie Tremors! His daydreams of fighting desert worms alongside Kevin Bacon certainly get him through the hum drum of every day.

"I've got this sentimental heart that beats"
- He makes a point to mention that his heart beats, so this is obviously something that has come into contention. It would seem that the oafs around him have mistaken him for a zombie. Truly tragic.

"but I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me"
- His heart is "starting to get to him." I think this might mean he was born with some some of congenital heart problem. It is getting worse, how terrible! To make it worse, what life he has to live is lived amongst mutant blockheads.

"Now why do you waste my time?"
- This makes sense, considering the last line. Remember, boys and girls, it's all about context. Brandon is frustrated that we are taking up his time. This makes sense given his situation but is still a bit rude.

"Is the answer to the question on your mind"
- This half statement/half question is obviously Brandon's attempt at confusing us in hopes that we'd get so wrapped up in the riddle he'd be able to slip off to the side and leave our pathetic selves in a logic prison.

"And I'm sick of all my judges"
- Despite his bad heart, Brandon Flowers has done something naughty and found himself before a jury of his peers. Since he's still able to walk around, one can assume that he is simply on probation. This must make touring difficult.

"so scared of what they'll find"
- Brandon! Didn't you learn the first time? You're on parole, and if you screw this one up, they'll lock you up for a long time.

"But I know that I can make it"
- Our first positive comment from Mr. Flowers. He aspires to leave the mouth-breathers behind him. Let's hope the skeletons in his closet don't find him out.

"As long as somebody takes me home every now and then"
- Like every good Anglophile/Las Vegasian, Brandon is fond of the drink. When he's had too much, he does the responsible thing and takes a cab home.

"Oh, have you ever seen the lights?"
- This is obviously the tequila talking. Pay no attention to this.

"Have you ever seen the lights?"
- Brandon stutters.

"I took the shuttle on a shock-wave ride,
where the people on the pen pull the trigger for accolade
I took a bullet, and I looked inside"
- You know what. . . this is ridiculous. Either Brandon Flowers eats a lot, a lot of prescription medicines or he writes using a door covered in nouns, adjectives, and verbs, with a handful of darts.

Thing a Day! 1: The Nerdiness Continues

2008-03-17T05:23:00.002-06:00

In light of the momentousness of today, I am gifting myself something that I am sure I will regret: work. Almost anybody that's into gaming or nerd rock knows the name Jonathan Coulton. A year or so ago (I suppose longer, given the nature of what I'm about to talk about) Coulton came up with an idea to do a song every week for a year and post it as a podcast and on his website. Most of them are very funny and all are very well done. This has inspired me to do something similar, albeit much smaller in scale. I present:

THING A DAY! from Bratcher Lev

Every day for a month I will post. Something. It may be funny. It may be depressing. It may be a recipe (there's nothing sexier than a man who cooks [eh, ladies?]). It may be a shopping list. It may be The Idiot by Dostoevsky copied word for word. But it will be something.

Thing a Day! 1: The Nerdiness Continues

Like most guys, I like star wars. I like it a lot. It's got a great, expansive story and the movies are a blast to watch. It only goes so far though. I'm not like some of those people. You know who I am talking about. Dressing up and totally geeking out is fine if you're into that; it's just a little much for me.

I was, however, surfing along and read about a book called Deathstar, or something similar. In it, the authors talk about the inner workings of the Deathstar (the moon-sized space station that housed a laser strong enough to destroy a planet). A figure was dropped that about a million people worked on the Deathstar at any given time.

So let's take a step back and look at what this means.

In the first movie, Luke blows up the Deathstar.

Luke Skywalker murders a million people.

Now, the Deathstar was a military installation, so many of the casualties were soldiers, but a station that large would have entertainers, merchants, etc. contracted out to fill the needs of those who work there. Those people had nothing to do with blowing up the planet of Alderaan. They just worked there.

Also, my good friend Barrett, like everyone else, is getting married soon, and I am one of his groomsman. The other day he called me up to ask me what my favorite color was. When I said burgundy, I could tell that wasn't the answer he was looking for. After a short line of questioning, I found out that instead of engraved pocket watches that would be thrown in a drawer never to be seen again, he'd make us all lightsabers. I did mention that Barrett makes lightsabers, right? He does, or at least he has, and to be honest, holding one is pretty impressive.

So we will all have lightsabers, and I am truly excited.

I hope they will walk down the aisle underneath our raised lightsabers.

Nerd Love

2008-02-08T18:03:00.002-06:00

My nerdiness is only surpassed by my romanticism. Or maybe vice versa.

Wizard People, Dear Readers

2008-02-05T14:56:00.000-06:00

Okay, the post I've been working on(the one announced) is still in the works. Let's be honest, though, I haven't done this in a while so it's not flowing quite as easily as usual. But I offer this in the meantime:

There once was a man named Brad Neely. The story goes something like this. . . if I remember it correctly. Brad and a friend were playing pool when they noticed a nerdy guy wearing headphones playing alone. They discussed at length about what he could possibly be listening to. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that it was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on tape.

Mr. Neely has made several web cartoons and is well known in several circles. When he decided that he would give his own Harry Potter audio book a shot, it wasn't far from what he was used to. The result is Wizard People, Dear Readers. It works as an alternate audio to the Sorcerer's Stone DVD. The "chapters" of the "book" correlate to the chapters on the DVD which makes reviewing a particularly favorite part or taking it in during multiple sittings very easy. It had a successful tour at indie film theaters but was stopped due to alleged copyright violations. My personal opinion is that it is parody at it finest, an homage as opposed to taking advantage of the source material.

But lucky for you, dear readers, it is available for free on the intertubes if you look hard enough. (I feel the need to mention that I did not upload these. . . I simply found them and linked to them)

PART 1

PART 2

INSTRUCTIONS: Pop the DVD in, press play, turn the volume all the way down, and play the audio AS SOON AS IT STARTS (You'll know it's synced when you hear and see "PRIVET DRIVE").It syncs nicely.

Please, please take two hours out of your day and listen to/watch this. It is a gem that truly needs to be shared.

2008-01-04T00:49:00.000-06:00

Having worked retail through an entire Christmas season, this I've found to be quite true:

Glitter is like the herpes of craft supplies.

That stuff never comes off.

The Mystery of the Aleph

2007-12-21T14:25:00.001-06:00

Let's look at a number line. You know, the kind we learned about in school with has marks along a single line that have numbers underneath them. In the middle is 0, with 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. to the right and, if you'd like, -1, -2, -3, etc. to the left. It's just a simple number line.

Imagine a man is standing on 1. His desire is to walk to 2. Every step he takes takes him half way between himself and his goal (in other words, he crossed half the distance with each step). From his perspective, his first step is huge. He crossed half the distance between 1 and 2 with little effort.

There's another thing we learned about in school. When you divide a number (or thing) in half (by two), and then divide it in half, and keep on doing this, there is no end. You will end up with exquisitely small things, yes, but never will you reach the next integer.

Step by step he realizes that despite the great journey he's taken, he will never reach the next number, the next hash mark on the line. He will walk for all eternity. There is infinity between 1 and 2. Since there is nothing beyond infinity, if this is the case, then "2" doesn't really exist.

Since he could just have easily gone left instead of right, infinity lies that direction as well. The only "number" at all is the starting point, which is really an arbitrarily chosen spot in the vast infinity. We have an idea of numbers that serves our purposes, but these really are nothing more than created symbols set in place to help us quantify something than is, in actuality, unquantifiable.

I Want To Work Here

2007-12-07T00:43:00.001-06:00

The execution of this is pretty solid, but the thing I get most out of this is the fact that wherever, whatever this company is, it looks like my dream job.
This was just a random Thursday night, where the employees have an official hanging out time in the office.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Bad News, Sports Fans.

2007-11-25T14:45:00.000-06:00

I have the unfortunate duty to declare that my digital self will remain in limbo for an undetermined amount of time. We were supposed to have had this remedied Saturday, but the complete idiocy of the installer and the jackassery of the customer service drove my mother to out and out cancel our service and declare a ban on all things Time Warner in our home. So, until we settle on a satellite company, I am only yours on the weekends and the occasional weekday trips to the library.

I also saw a woman on the TV the other day on a show I'd never before watched. She quietly but strongly stood (sometimes sat) by her friend's side while others judged her appearance. The other other friend (the other support member) was the one that always commented or spoke, while this first one simply laughed and smiled (perhaps all of her comments were edited out). But near the end, she had her time in the sun with a well spoken interview.

She was beautiful. And she was a star.

Ahem:

2007-11-17T11:11:00.000-06:00

Okay. Internet went wonky (thank you ron weasley for my new favorite adjective [wonky cross]). should be back up next week. Have had to check emails at library, which is no fun. News later (I hope . . . there's really no news right now . . . but maybe by the time I write again something, somewhere will have happened).

New Post.

2007-11-16T21:50:00.001-06:00

This is a new post.

shells

2007-11-05T16:17:00.000-06:00

Invariably, spend long enough time at the beach and everybody starts picking up shells. You almost have to. when you start picking them up you pick up anything you find: shell fragment, pieces, etc. after a while you stop picking up fragments and start only picking up whole shells. Any whole shell you see you pick up. Even the shells that aren't particularly aesthetically pleasing, you pick them up because somehow, despite crashing on the shore and withstanding who knows what other kinds of punishment, it is still whole.

After picking up several whole, though somewhat ugly, shells, you start only picking up the pretty looking ones. The ones that have different color striations, no barnacles, clean edges. You pick up several of these and realize that your bag or pockets are now close to full, and in order to fix the new dilemma you dump out all the fragments and most of the ugly whole shells. You feel satisfied at your finds and start to walk home from the beach. You kick up something out in the hot, dry sand, the kind right in front of the dunes. You reach down and pick it up.

It's a shell, not particularly colorful, a little chipped around the edges, and perhaps it has a little barnacle growth on the underside. But this shell, out of all of the shells you've found, this one is your prize. All the others will go into a baggie and be forgotten several weeks from now, but this shell stays separate from the others. Why? because it was so far away from the others, hidden in the hot sand. Somehow it ended up farther than any of the other shells and was never stepped on by beach joggers or ran over by lifeguard trucks. When others look at your prize shell they may notice brighter, more colorful shells tucked away in the baggy, but yet you have this shell separated.

It is a little sad that you are the only one who knows and sees the true beauty of the shell, but perhaps it is better that way.

when I was a lad I was a little bit shy

Blinding

2007-10-27T20:27:00.000-06:00

"So. What do you like to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know, I know. Asking about hobbies and such, it's one of those courtesy questions that you don't expect a straight answer, like 'How are you doing?' But I mean it, what do you do to keep yourself busy? To keep from going crazy, you know, and pulling out that blonde hair of yours?"

"I don't know. I like to sing, I guess. I draw a little but mostly I watch TV in my pajamas, mostly. You're laughing at me, but I'm serious, I'm not really an adventurous person, not really. What about you?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. What do you do to 'keep from going crazy,' as you put it. The stuff that saves that weird curly red hair of yours."

"Well, I'm just as boring as you, really, except sometimes I get this itch inside of me, you know, just like if you just need a cigarette or something, and I go blinding."

"You go blind? What do you mean?"

"Blinding, not blind. Okay, you're looking at me funny, let me explain. It's this thing I made up. Kind of a game really."

"So you play made-up games, huh? What are you, twelve?"

"Ha. I'm not done explaining it to you. First, you have to be in a car. find an intersection, preferably a traffic signal, and just fly right through?"

"What? Okay, ha, ha, you got me. I'm sorry I called you twelve. You don't have to make up dumb stories about playing chicken in a car to impress me."

"No I'm serious. That's blinding. It's best to play at an intersection at a time of day that you know the traffic won't be heavy. Give yourself a bit of an advantage, you know? I call it blinding because you're driving blind into traffic, get it?"

"Well, I think I--"

"At first you're going to want to close your eyes as you go through. Don't. When you have your eyes open, and you're going for it, you'll probably see another car in the corner of your eye. Maybe you'll make it through, maybe you won't. That glimpse of another car says that odds are stacking against you. When you see that and you make it through, that's living. If you had your eyes closed you wouldn't get the same jolt of energy, the buzz."

"You're not being funny. I'm a little touchy on the subject, because, well. . . because my dad died in a car accid--"

"Oh, and it works at a stop sign, but that's not nearly as good as a traffic signal. You actually have a bit of an excuse with a sign, they're bland red sheets of metal hidden off to the side. It's easy to miss those; people do it all the time accidentally. But traffic signals-- You've got a large red beacon hanging there in the air flashing stop at the speed of light. You've got to do it on purpose to blow through one of those."

"Do, do you have a death wish or something?"

"A death wish? No, of course not. I've got a life wish. I want to live. I want to feel the blood pounding in my veins. I want to taste the boundaries of death and walk away. I want to prove that I am alive. So, yeah, you wear pajamas and watch TV, and I, uh, I do this."

"I, I think you should take me home now."

"Sure, I'll pick up the check and we'll--"

"You know what. . . I'll get a cab instead."

this is not a quote

The Shop Around the Corner

2007-10-23T09:43:00.000-06:00

I hereby announce that I have entered into NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, this stands for National Novel Writing Month. Information can be found here. In a nutshell, it's an event that happens every year, where aspiring novelists such as myself start on November 1st and hopefully conclude November 30th with a 50,000 word novel. I heard about it last year and decided that I would jump on the bandwagon come November.

I am cheating a bit, though. I am going to try to knock out my story that I have been sculpting for 3 years now. It has gone from being "the untitled dream story" (some know it as the Twilight Zone story) to (tentatively) "We Own Your Dreams." Hopefully, by Nov. 30th, it will be We Own Your Dreams. I have maybe 6-8 pages written, and at this rate I'll finish sometime near my death and will certainly have wasted my notebook full of other story ideas and leads. Hopefully this will give me the push I need toward regular writing.

I do consider myself an aspiring novelist (currently I am also an unknown essayist) and others such as myself flock to bookstores such as Barnes and Nobles' or Border's to be amongst the things they love. True, I love reading as well, and these are generally the places I come when I slake that thirst, but I have a different viewpoint of such bookstores.

They are my ninth circle of hell.

Why is this? Because all I've ever wanted to do with my life is be an author. Just like everybody else in those stores. I pour hours and hours of toil and sweat into writing a work and leave a large piece of me within. Somehow, someday someone else picks it up and decides that it should be published. I am overjoyed with this idea and ecstatically go through the long process of rewriting, etc. When the final, finished project is done (probably with a cover picture that I think is stupid, yet I am powerless to change) it is placed on the shelf in the fiction section between Brand, Max, and Brautigan, Richard.

Lost in a sea of thousands no different than it.

If you never say your name out loud to anyone they can never, ever call you by it

I Have Two Guns, One For the Each of Ya.

2007-10-09T20:55:00.000-06:00

I have two types of posts. One type I come up with an idea and make out a rough outline of the things I want to say and how I want to say them. I save the draft and let it sit until just the right time. Like wine they age, drawing in influences and nuances from the passing of time. sometimes they ferment for months before I pull them out and finish the process. I have maybe ten of these right now, and the oldest ones date to last March.

The other type is more or less impromptu. Something big may have happened to me that I just have to get down in words, or maybe I'll just get the urge to write and won't have anything officially prepared. This second category, that's this post right here.

I'm thinking of changing emails again. I have my very professional aarontbratcher@yahoo.com, but my main email is brokeneyesglaring@yahoo.com . This one has two strikes against it: apparently I was feeling very emo at the time of its creation and it's embarrassing to give it as an answer to "what's your email?" (It's because I wear glasses, get it? broken eyes glaring. Apparently I'm mad about my myopia). Also, I've done something wrong on the internet somewhere and now I get a ridiculous amount of junk email. Tons. I'm thinking of fully embracing "Bratcher Lev" and go with bratcherlev@yahoo.com, but I'm going to have to sleep on it.

I've been working on the Harry Potter books for about 3 or 4 months now. I started them after seeing the first three movies, but after reading three books that were so similar to three movies I had already seen. . . I lost interest. I've finally passed the point I stopped last time around and am currently in the middle of Goblet of Fire. I'm tempted to say that I am halfway through it, but it's such a brick of a book that despite having read what seems to be the same amount of pages as the whole of the first book, I am only a third of the way through it.

I facebook. Yes. Since Facebook decided money was much more awesome than catering to only collegiates, they have opened a floodgate of third party applications that you can load onto your own page. Most of these are dreadful, and every time I pull up my own page I wade through a sea of applications for Superpokes and Top Friends Lists and Zombie Wars. One such application I did let in was the "sorting hat" application. Just as you could probably guess, you answer several questions, and someone somewhere wrote some code that interprets your answers as a guide to one Hogwarts house. I took the test and it wanted to stick me in Gryffindor. Honestly, I didn't want to be. Not that the house with the most stage time isn't fan tabby tabulous, I'm just not one of those types that immediately go for the main characters. I wasn't Cyclops when we played Xmen, I was Gambit. I was never Ryu when we played Street Fighter, I was Blanka. And I'm not Gryffindor.

So I cheated and put myself in Ravenclaw, the house with which I can honestly relate the most. My thought, though, was "at least I'm not in Hufflepuff."

In fact, I think I'd rather live in the real world where there are no Hogwarts Houses than live in Rowling's world and be in Hufflepuff.

your's is the first face that I saw, think I was blind before I met you

You. It's You.

2007-10-08T21:11:00.000-06:00

I've always liked to draw. I used to doodle ninja turtles in all of my notebooks. They were frozen in a perpetual fight against nameless lopsided villains. I was never one of those kids ,though, whose drawings made you think "wow, this kid's actually pretty good".

I finally stopped doodling and didn't draw for the longest times. I never took an art class in school because I was always in band or some other elective. When community college rolled around, I decided to put myself in BASIC DRAWING 101, because, well, because I could. Maybe I could feel that child with the crooked Ninja Turtles within me, desperately wanting to get out.

I really liked it. It almost came easy to me. I did, however, have to keep erasing and erasing until I finally got it just right. Charcoal became an amazing thing to me, and shading was this mystery of science that had eluded me for so long.

After I finished with the class, I kept drawing in my free time. I'd buy crayons and draw brightly colored faces, deeply lined with many colors for shading effects. It's really similar to my photography philosophy (another hobby that I'm spread too thin to properly pursue). All of our family pictures growing up lacked the same single element: our family. There were nice pictures of mountains, and hot rod cars, and birds, but who were we at the time? How old were we and what fashion trends had we succumbed to at the time? Who knows. People are the most important thing to document.

Tangent over.

So I'd always draw people. Mostly faces. And without fail, every single time, someone will come up to me and ask "Who is that?" "Who are you drawing?" as if I had someone posing in front of me, or maybe I knew someone who had a green tinted face. Why does every drawing have to be of somebody? Why can't it just be a face? Start with the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the eyebrows, hairline, and the chin, and how it turns out is how it turns out.

Depending on how crass I felt, I'd sometimes respond with "I'm drawing you."

At some point I moved on to painting. This was a big scary world that I've yet to conquer, or even do more than dip my toes into. I got a portaits books and found a recipe for flesh toned paint and went crazy. I couldn't quite get the mix right, though.

I made purple people.

After a while, I figured out my problem.

Too much blue. Way too much blue.

I only have one of my paintings left. The rest I've given away. My favorite one, though, I still kinda wish I had kept. I didn't paint it for myself, though, so it wouldn't be right for me to keep it. It was painted over Christmas break for a friend. We agreed to bring something back to each other. My problem was this: what could I possibly bring back from Kansas City? I painted her a picture instead.

At least I have a couple of fuzzy cameraphone pictures of it.
Honey, I'm a prize and you're a catch and we're a perfect match
Like two bitter strangers

Springfield Cards

2007-10-08T19:55:00.000-06:00

The middle section of my month long (or longer) trip extravaganza took me to the far reaches of man's settlement. I dared the very edges of civilized society so that I may say that I have done so. And later blog about it. Was it the Great Alaskan North? No. Siberia? No again. Antarctica? Not even close. The frozen tundra of wasteland that I visited was none other than Springfield, Missouri (Hyperbole and exaggeration, I know, yadda yadda yadda [no soup for you] ).

Most of our time was spent playing video games, seeing movies, and eating at the restaurants that we had been dreaming about for the past year. I've had several conversations with the boys about how much we all were jonesing for sesame chicken from Hong Kong Inn. Basically, we were living the dream.

One of the final evenings there was spent in a little big stadium hidden in the middle of the city. This is where the Springfield Cardinals played. You may be familiar with the St. Louis Cardinals, and you'd probably assume that there is some sort of association between the two. You would be right. Or wrong. I don't really know. They do have similar emblems (do teams have emblems? Are they logos?) and it seems that half of the inhabitants of St. Louis seem to make their way down to Springfield at some point in their lives.

We were three rows from the dugout and it felt like if I really, really wanted to, I could throw my Pepsi at the first baseman and hit him. This would probably only work once, though. It was all fairly surreal as to how close to the action we were (being a minor league stadium, it is much, much smaller than, say, Kauffman stadium, but just as professional looking). Then I happened to think:

"You know, I've seen on TV where the batter tips the ball just right so that it zings straight to the right. Right, uh, right here where I'm sitting. Oh, crap. I'm going to die."

Sure enough I got hit and needed major reconstructive surgery. Well, not really, but I knew this would be a certainty. Right on cue, a foul ball shot straight at an old man maybe fifteen seats to my left. He jumped to the side as the ball took out his beer in a yellow shower of terror. The man got up, wiped off the beer, and raised up the demolished paper cup, demanding a new one.

I tried my best to pay attention to the game, but most of my energy was spent in preparation for a sudden move. Maybe to the left, maybe the right, but it would certainly have to be one of those things where you act out of instinct and not "Oh hey, I'm about to get laid out by a baseball. I should move, yes?"

Something changed though. The paradigm shifter was named Nick (I think maybe it's spelled Nic) and he's three or four years old. He's Matt's nephew and it wasn't that long ago that he would run screaming, utterly terrified out of the room whenever he saw me. He's warmed up to me and now he decided that he wanted to sit between me and Nick (big Nick, one of the guys that came to Springfield). Being that I enjoy my space, there's an empty seat to my left, and I gave him the go ahead to sit there.

Right where the ball would inevitably fly.

The first half of the game I was perpetually ready to duck out of the way, and the second half, I found myself always ready to throw myself in front of Nic(k) when the ball does come.

Kids. They always change things.

and the stars look very different today

My Name Is Greg

2007-10-03T18:51:00.000-06:00

Where have I been?

Not here, that's right.

I've been at Target. Working. Those of you familiar with my Sunfresh employment are probably shaking your collective heads at the notion that I haven't come very far. And to be honest, you're right.

But a job's a job, and I'm happy to have one.

The pay is a little depressing, and every beep of the register is a note in a song whose lyrics go something like this: "I have a Bachelor's Degree. I have a Bachelor's Degree. I have a Bachelor's Degree, and yet I'm doing this." I realized just today that I'd be doing the same thing and being paid the same wage if I were 16 years old. That's eight years ago.

It's not all bad, really. I've got a nice name tag. It's for somebody named Greg, though. I've learned to answer to the name "Greg" and I don't really mind. You can't blame them for thinking my name is Greg, it is on my name tag, after all. And only an idiot would wear a name tag with the wrong name on it.

If I do get an "Aaron" name tag (mental note: see about getting a "Bratch" tag) I may keep Greg and swap them in and out as I see fit ("well, self, is this a Greg day or and Aaron day?" [Maybe a Bratch day?]). I may even work out a system; I'm Aaron if I'm doing something good, and Greg if I screw up.

squeaky swings and tall grass

Ode to a Razor (An Exercise in Narcissism)

2007-09-11T11:46:00.000-06:00

After leaving my last position, I decided that I would take some time to myself and not pursue a job. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to let my razor have a holiday as well. Everything I've done in my life is based out of "I'll try anything (legal) once." I had never highlighted my hair, so I tried it. I had never completely bleached it out, so I tried it. I had never dyed my hair black, so I tried it. I had never let my beard grow out before, so I tried it. To top it off, I decided to let my hair grow out, as well. This changed when I saw the guy at the theater.

The guy taking the tickets wore glasses like mine and had my same build. His hair was brownish and both his beard and hair were ridiculously long.

He looked retarded.

Seriously, he looked terrible. That moment I decided to renege on one half of my commitment.

I have had longer hair in the past, but it was due to the wish-I-could-forget-about-it bowl cut with the part in the middle and shaved up underneath. You know, the haircut that everyone had back then. I was no exception. I wish someone had told us how stupid we looked.

But I digress. Since I've been looking for a job (and have recently acquired one [today is my first day] ) I decided it was time to dust off the old razor.

I think my mom's proud of me.

BEFORE

AFTER

FUN FACT: Since I didn't do it at home, all I had to work with was a safety razor and a pair of scissors.

Buttworms and Automatic Sinks

2007-09-10T20:37:00.000-06:00

I'd like to think that most people wash their hands after using the restroom. I'd like to think this, but honestly, I know better. I see them walk right past the sinks. Perhaps they give it a look as if to make a mental note of "no, not this time," or perhaps they keep straight ahead, the thought of cleaning off whatever genetic material that may be on their hands nowhere near their line of thought.

Not that I'm a sink saint. I'm not OCD about it or anything. I am, however terrified of parasites, and not washing your hands is a good way to get a big family of pinworms in your butt.

Biology class was a lot of fun for me. But when we got to the part about parasites, I couldn't handle it. I mean, c'mon, I diced up a huge fetal pig (fun story, our pig was big and black, twice the size of everyone else's tiny pink piggies), and several other formerly living creatures. But parasites, just the thought of it gives me chills. Whatever the "fear of parasites" is is probably the closest thing I have to a true phobia.

I tried to face my fears once and watch one of those TLC Discovery type shows, you know, the kind with titles like "James, the half ton man" or "the boy who had no face" or "the lose who never went on dates." I've always like these medical mystery shows, and when one that was named something along the line of "Eaten from the inside out" came on, I made myself watch it. I made it through, but it was tough. There was no losing of lunches or tossing of proverbial cookies, but I still hated every moment of it.

Biting my nails was a bad habit I had as a kid. I more or less kicked it, but every once in a while I would notice that my fingernails needed cutting, and instead of waiting until I came home to cut them I would bite them off. I figured ragged nails looked better than grungy long nails. A good friend of mine named Jonathan told me this is the very method by which he was host to his own special friends living in his colon. Apparently the eggs can live in the dirt that's underneath your nails and once you put that junk in your mouth, yeah, it's in your system.

Needless to say, I stopped immediately.

Being afraid of parasites and being a bit of a hypochondriac is a mostly bad combination. When my Biology professor listed the symptoms of pinworm infestation, my mind started going. The main symptom: itchy butt. Yeah, that's happened before. Crap. What do I do? The prof told us the only way to test if you do have pinworms is to have someone else wait until you are asleep, and stick a bit of scotch tape to your pooper to see if you have any. This is because they wait until you are asleep (smart little buggers, they're inside you and yet they know what kind of wicked schedule you keep) and then "come outside" and do a little dance, make a little love, and generally get down tonight.

Neither KC nor the sunshine band would be able to convince me that I'd be comfortable with someone performing the scotch tape test.

No, I am not a sink saint. I try, but sometimes I just don't wash my hands.

But a lot of the times I couldn't do it to save my life.

What is it with those automatic sinks? You know, the ones that are in every bathroom built since 1994 and have some sort magic voodoo sensor that knows when your hands are waiting patiently, soaped up and ready for a vigorous rinsing.

I just can't work these things.

It happens every time. Without fail. I squirt a little soap into my hands and rub it around, generally bubbling over my whole hand region. I put my hands down there and start the washing hands motions. But nothing. Not a drop of water comes out. I apparently haven't tripped the sensor. Either this, or it is mad at me for the last time I came in because I let myself get out of hand and it knows that this time will be no different. When no water comes, I start shaking my hands, trying to find the sweet spot. Somewhere, somewhere in this basin is the magic spot that gloriously unlocks the treasures of a thousands springs. But I have to find it first. Without fail I start to shake wilder, harder, and faster. Eventually I am angry and punching the air under the spout, muttering under my breath that if the bloody sink had a real faucet I'd be done by now instead of flailing wildly like a small child after a refined sugar eating contest.

At some distant point in the future, I find the spot that the sink has greedily hidden and wash the crusty soap from my hands. I always walk away wondering if I can develop some sort of bathroom going technique that is totally, 100% hands-free. Afterwards I'd be able to walk past the hexed sink and smile, knowing that I have no need of its cruel services.

Until then, I'll walk by, hoping to God that I see a handle on the sink.

If so, hopefully it's not one of those that you have to hold the handle down to make the water flow.

I mean, seriously, how are you supposed to use those?

Left, right, left, right, left, right, dry

Broken Heart

2007-09-08T00:07:00.000-06:00

A Quick Rant. . .

2007-09-06T13:22:00.000-06:00

. . .Hopefully followed by a longer, more involved rant sometime soon.

After seeing a trailer for the upcoming "Mr. Woodcock" movie, I can't help but think. . . "Hasn't Billy Bob Thorton played the EXACT SAME person in every movie since Bad Santa?"

Things I've Learned On My Recent Travels

2007-09-04T14:08:00.000-06:00

1. Always bring one more Harry Potter book than you think you will need.

2. Don't assume your Conservative Christian grandmother threw your Harry Potter book away because it's evil. Check under the car seat one more time.

They Say It's Your Birthday, Well It's My Birthday Too, Yeah.

2007-08-25T07:45:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun idea: go to Wikipedia (one of the seven wonders of the world, in my opinion) and punch in your birthday (the month and day, not the year). In my case: March 17. There you will find a long list of things that happened on your birthday. World events, birthdays, and deaths, that sort of thing. Me? I share my birthday with Shemp Howard, the inferior "Three Stooges" stooge, Nat King Cole, John Wayne Gacy, Patrick Duffy, Kurt Russell, Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe, Billy Corgan, Mia Hamm, and the girl that played Veruca Salt on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Funny thing, apparently Saint Patrick died on Saint Patrick's day. Bummer.

12 months of the Bratch

2007-08-15T17:44:00.001-06:00

I always feel the need to preface surveys with a statement that leads you to believe that I do not do these ad nauseam. This one is so different than the others that I'll suspend my disbelief that no one will read this.

! JANUARY !

1. Who kissed you on new years?
no one.

2. Did you have a new year's resolution this year?
I always thought these were trite, no one keeps them.

3. Does it snow where you live?
Yes. Well, it did a lot when I was a kid. Now it's not that often. All that time spent on my patio spraying 80's-era hair spray cans into the sky finally paid off.

4. Do you like hot chocolate?
Only when it's made with three to five time the normal chocolate, otherwise it tastes like hot chocolate water, which at that point it might as well be hot ham water.

5. Have you ever been to Times Square to watch the ball drop?
I've been to Times Square, and I've seen the ball drop, but never at the same time.

♥ FEBRUARY ♥

1. Who was your Valentine?
I had one in ninth grade. . . that was my last one.

2. When you were little did you buy Valentine's for the whole class?
I had to. Those were the rules (implemented so kids like me didn't feel bad that all the cool kids got all the cards and I only got one from the teacher and the weird girl that sat in the corner eating glue [how is it that there were cool kids in elementary school? We were barely out of diapers, none of us deserved to be top of any social caste] ).

3. Do you care if the groundhog sees its shadow or not?
Only if it's in the context of the movie Groundhog Day, which is on the list of "movies that I do not own but wish I did, but don't remember when I do finally decide to buy a DVD."

! MARCH !

1. Are you Irish?
Yes. 1/4, along with 1/4 Norwegian, 1/2 German, and 1/8 Native American (wait a second...)

2. Do you wear green every year on St.Patrick's day?
I tried to get out of it as a kid because I assumed there were specials rules if it was your birthday, but I always got pinched anyway.

3. What did you do for St. Patty's Day in 2007?
returned to KC for my birthday.

4. Are you happy when winter is pretty much over?
Yes, it is the best thing ever ( reference ).

! APRIL !

1. Do you like the rain?
When sitting outside, reading a book: yes
When driving: no

2. Did you play an April fool's joke on anyone this year?
No. I did pull a "Surprise! I'm quitting!" about the same time.

3. Do you get tons of candy on Easter?
I've gotten an Easter basket mostly every year. This year I bought my own (to the tune of a pack of kitkats and a pack of reese's with a cadbury egg for good measure).

4. Do you celebrate 4/20?
no.

5. Do you love the month of april?
Not really. Am I supposed to?

! MAY !

1. What is your favorite flower?
Pansies, because the yellow ones look like nuclear warning signs (this was my answer as I child, and I've never really seen fit to change it)

2. Do you celebrate cinco de mayo?
no

3. Finish the phrase "April showers..."
Bring may flowers, may flowers bring pilgrims. Perhaps the first joke I ever remembered

4. Do you celebrate May 16th: National Piercing Day?
Not aware of this

5. Is May anything special to you?
No more than any other given month.

! JUNE !

1. What year did/will you graduate from high school?
2001

2. Did you do anything fun during this month?
Not really, I bummed around the house all months (which, I suppose, was fun)

3. Have a favorite baseball team?
being from KC, my default team is the Royals, though they don't really warrant fandom.

! JULY !

1. What did you do on the Fourth of July?
Shot off all of the fireworks I've amassed over the past three years with my dad and brother.

2. Did you go on any vacations during this month?
Phoenix, AZ; Springfield, MO; Knoxville, TN

! AUGUST !

1. Are you doing anything special at the end of your summer?
Arranging the move to TN

3. Did you have a sunburn?
No. I'm the proverbial geek with no tan. When I do tan, I get pretty dark.

4. Did you go to the pool a lot?
No.

! SEPTEMBER !

1. Will you be attending college/school?
Maybe. If I'm down there by then, I'll start Real Estate school, if I don't, I'll just be working and helping take care of my grandma

2. Who was/is your favorite teacher?
teachers are all a blur.

3. Do you like fall better than summer?
I think so.

! OCTOBER !

1. What was your last Halloween costume?
Broke Bible College Student (worn during a Halloween party a few years ago)

2. What is your favorite candy?
reese's peanut butter cups. This answer has stayed constant my whole life.

3. Who's birthday is this Month?
Matt Maddux.

4. What was your favorite thing about this month?
The smell.

! NOVEMBER !

1. Whose house do you go to for Thanksgiving?
Usually a grandparent, whether it's mom's side or dad's.

2. Whats best about this month?
The start of Christmas Season.

3. What are you thankful for?
A lot. (what a cookie cutter answer).

4. Do you love stuffing?
Definitely. It's my favorite Thanksgiving-only foodstuff. My mom doesn't like it so when I came came from college she'd never make it, though I asked if she would. Over the course of the year she'd forget and I'd forget to remind her.

! DECEMBER !

1. Do you celebrate Christmas?
Sure do.

2. What is December 1st, 2007?
Is there a specific answer to this?

3. Have you ever been kissed under the mistletoe?
No

4. Get anything special last year?
It was mostly a no-nonsense cash Christmas.

5. What do you want this year?
Not sure. Haven't thought about it.

6. Do you like cold weather?
Yes. But I don't like driving in snow or ice, so it's a little bittersweet.

7. HAVE YOU EVER LICKED A FROSTED POLE AND GOT STUCK???
There are things that I've been warned not to do and I took heed. This is one of them.

Happy Birthday.

2007-08-15T17:11:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday, Bratcher Lev. A year ago I birthed you so that I may have an e-presence beyond the myspaces and facebooks of the world. I had also started a youth pastor job and thought this a good way to keep up with my young sheepies. The address was printed on the bottom of my card, which I gave out liberally at the beginning of my career. If I were given a business card by my spiritual shepherd that had the ever-enigmatic "thebratch.blogspot.com" printed at the bottom I would have immediately visited as soon as I could. If it were as well written and dynamic as you are, I would have been a regular visitor. This never happened, however. Thanks to a google program, I know when and from where people visit my page (this I check almost never . . . as I know where the two hits may be from). It never read IL except for when I knew I was there (for some reason, it didn't tell the difference between me and everyone else).

And so it goes.

I have left the occupation for which you were created, yet I continue nurturing you. What started as a professional venture quickly became a personal project.

Bratcher Lev, we salute you.

And yes, we know what your name is.

It's About Time.

2007-08-13T21:25:00.000-06:00

I just read that the world's oldest person, Yone Minagawa, just died. She was a spry 114 years old. This is a bit funny because she's no longer the world's oldest person. Now, she's dead, just like everybody else her age.

You can't really be sad at her passing. She lived a long, long life. A life, surely, filled with rice, fish heads, and manual labor. Her death is probably everything she's hoped and dreamed about for the past 20 years.

A part of me wants to think that there is some sort of system that balances out life on earth. For every death, a birth. For every birth, a death. If this is the case, Yone was a very selfish person.

C'mon lady, give somebody else a chance.

I only lied about being a thief.

2007-08-13T09:23:00.001-06:00

There's a look that all kids get on their face when they're working up a tall tale. Usually it's in response to questions like "How did this get on the floor?" or "Why is my couch cut up into little pieces?". Sometimes the look happens when they decide that the current moment needs a little magic, so they tell a story that can't even remotely be possible. These usually start off with "This one time..." and proceed to tell a story about how they walked on the moon, or saw Bigfoot, or obtained world peace.

I did my fair share of lying as a kid. I was a bit of a pyromaniac, as well. My brother moved in with us for a while and he smoked. This meant that there were lighters laying around here and there. When my parents made a trip to the store (or some other mundane errand) I found the need to light toilet paper on fire in the sink. With a light sitting right next to me and the parents gone, what was I supposed to do? Do the dishes? So I crumpled a bit of toilet paper in the sink, lit it, and turned the sink on just as it was about to go out. For some reason, I had the divinely given knowledge that if it were to sit and go out, it would start to smoke. And smell. Maybe I got distracted by the awesomeness of the fire, but the last bit of paper I forgot to wet. It went out and began smoldering. Unfortunately, I was totally right about the smoking thing.

The whole house smelled like smoke.

My parents came home. They freaked out because they thought the house was on fire. Mom and Dad searched and searched for something that shorted out. The whole time I'm squawking "It's okay. I don't think anything's wrong. It's probably nothing. We should probably go. It's nothing to worry about." I let them search frantically for twenty minutes or so before conceding "I, uh, may have lit some toilet paper on fire."

This was the only time I've ever been slapped.

I guess I kinda deserved it.

I was pretty good at lying. I lied to a friend of mine about getting a drum set in the sixth grade. Why? I dunno, I guess I was bored. When I really did get a drum set, I had to explain to this same friend how my old drum set broke with the tom drum fell off and broke through the bass drum, which was apparently cracked the whole time. I don't think he bought it. I wouldn't have either.

The funny thing is, writers lie every day. It's their job. They're paid to make up grandiose stories. When a kid makes up a ridiculous story, I always think how good they'd probably be at writing.

This is a much better thing to say to their parents than "Your son is a dirty, dirty liar."

Edit:

2007-08-11T20:28:00.001-06:00

Just read through Adam's Song and fixed several errors: grammar, verb tense, muddy language, etc.

I have this strange habit of writing and throwing my work into the great abyss without first proofreading it. Maybe this is an attempt at keeping a fresh, existential feel to my work, but the truth is I need to stop it. It's more "lazy" than "stream of consciousness" and the truth is I'm lucky I haven't made any glaring Freudian slips and unknowingly cast them upon the eyes of the world.

Adam's Song

2007-08-09T14:36:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you a story. Our hero's name is Adam. Adam went to a church camp year after year because he thought the girls were pretty. Oh, so very pretty. The camp he attended had separated the boys and girls (it was a church camp, after all) on two sides of a rather large lake and split them further up into separate cabins of a dozen or so kids, give or take a camper. Each cabin had two leaders to make sure the campers didn't dispose of each other in any brutal ways. One of these cabin leaders brought an item to the camp central to our story.

Mouth wash. It was named "Dr. Something or Other" and it was 70% alcohol. It appeared normal, but to this day Adam can't find the mouth wash in any store. It's almost as if it was deposited there from the very gates of Hell.

The other boys in his cabin took turns swishing said mouth wash. Most of them only endured a few moments of burning, searing pain before spitting. One boy, probably named Magnus, kept the concoction in his mouth a full minute before triumphantly spewing it. Since everyone succumbed so quickly (except Magnus, of course), Adam politely declined when offered the communal bottle. After all, he was trying his best to look cool in front of all his cabin mates, who were quite impressionable.

The next day, however, Adam did try a shot in the comfort of the solitary company of his cabin leader. He gathered his wits, gave the vile liquid a sniff, said a little prayer (something along the lines of "Dear God, don't let my mouth fall off"), and threw back a cap full of ginger colored fluid.

Adam would be lying if he said it didn't burn something fierce. He would also be lying if he said it didn't bring tears instantly to his eyes. But, honestly, it wasn't as bad as he had expected. In fact, he spit it out two minutes later out of boredom. His apparent natural tolerance for the effects of nearly pure alcohol gave him an idea.

This idea would be one he regretted for a long time (though he would relish any opportunity to tell the story). If he were so inclined, he probably would have stolen the mouth wash and taken advantage of its high content of alcohol. He wasn't inclined, though, so he did the next best thing: he challenged Magnus to a gargle-off.

The setup: the two contestants would face off in the downstairs area of the cabin. In one corner was Magnus, the champion whose mouth wash powers everyone had witnessed. In the other corner was Adam, the challenger and underdog, whom the gathered crowd may not have been able to name. A pile of loose change, a few stray dollar bills, and a warm coke soon appeared on the floor. This was the fight purse; everyone in the crowd threw in something. They were not old enough tp understand the basics of gambling, so they threw their money into the pot to go to the winner, not expecting any payout should their fighter win.

Without a bell or any official signal, the contest began. Both combatants threw back a full mouth load of the concentrated evil. The manic crowd heaved and threw themselves on every agonized tear that rolled down Magnus and Adam's cheek. After a few minutes the tears stopped forming and the faces locked in grimacing stares soon turned to looks of boredom. The audience quieted as the contestants encountered a factor they had not expected:

Numbness.

The pain seared and blew all the pain receptors in their mouths. This added a measure of danger that, in all honestly, the cabin leaders should have recognized, addressed, and used as the reason to shut down the competition ( though you could argue the leaders probably shouldn't have let it be held in the first place). After the pain left, the waiting game began. Everything shifted gears from judging who could withstand the pain the longest to deciding who could withstand the boredom of long minutes passing while a liquid festers in your mouth.

Adam previously held the record for mouthwash gargling at nearly three minutes (this was unofficial because the only available witness was the cabin leader). The stopwatch was pushing 25 minutes when they both conceded to spit at the same time, declaring the match a draw. The pot was split up (not more than 3 dollars each, though well-earned) and the warm coke was given to Adam as Magnus was more of a Pepsi man.

There were three immediate results of the face-off. One, all of the guys in his cabin could mostly remember his name (it was something like Adam). Two, the sheer amount of time spent with 140 proof alcohol in his mouth lead to a decent amount of alcohol seeping into his cheeks. Though certainly not drunk, this was as affected as he had ever been by alcohol (not counting NyQuil). Luckily, the face-off had been at night and Adam went straight to bed. If his genius plan had unraveled during the day, he would have risked walking tipsy around the Christian camp. This would have inevitably lead to a phone call to his parents saying "Come pick up your wino son."

The third immediate effect was his mouth looked funny when he looked in the mirror. The next morning Adam checked the mirror again and his gums were angry. It hurt to eat the cereal from the cafeteria and rubbing his tongue on the roof of his mouth uncovered large blisters there. They were roughly the shape of his tongue, which had been plastered against the roof the night before. By the end of the day all of the skin had turned white. His taste buds, normally only seen as small uniform bumps on his tongue, were raised and looked like white, fleshy half-opened umbrellas.

The mere thought of eating food made his mouth hurt and he didn't dare put anything to his lips besides water. The white skin was the top layer of skin which Adam had managed to completely burn off thanks to a chemical burn from the mouth wash. Soon the white skin peeled away and revealed long strips of raw gum underneath.

Adam tried to make the best of nearly becoming the only 14 year old he knew with dentures. There was a girl named Patricia at the camp he had talked to all week and had developed a crush on. She didn't throw pine cones at his eyes when he approached her, so he assumed she felt the same way. Adam decided to turn his experience of pain into an experience of manliness. When the time was right, he told her this story. When our hero got to the part where the dead skin peels off in long white strips, he pulled open his lips to show her that it was no mere story. This act, which should have said, "This is how stupid I am." was meant to be interpreted as "This is how awesome I am." Undoubtedly, Patricia did her best to hide her horror at the gaping maw before her. They quickly went back to whatever it was they were doing and she no longer spent time with him after that.

One of the worst things about this ordeal was Adam's inability to eat. The show-down took place in the middle of the week and the parents didn't come to pick up their kids until the weekend. By the time Adam's dad picked him up on Saturday morning Adam hadn't eaten for days. As this wasn't his first year at camp, previous rides home had been spent excitedly talking about adventures had while inwardly pining for the girls he had crushed on and knew would never see again. This trip, however, was different. Answers to questions like "How was your week?" and "Did you have any fun?" were answered at best with monosyllabic grunts. The dad noticed something amiss and called Adam out on it. So far on the trip home, Adam could only think of the throbbing in his mouth and the gnawing in his stomach. When his dad keyed into something being wrong, Adam told him everything. Needless to say, his dad was irate. Furious, even. I won't go into details, but you can imagine the one-sided conversation that lasted the rest of the hour long car ride.

Adam's dad thought maybe soup would be good for him and made him a bowl if chicken noodle goodness, but one sip made Adam's raw meat mouth scream in every molecule. It was still too acidic to eat. After some other experiments they settled on strawberry flavored Ensure, which to Adam tastes like liquid awesomeness in a bottle. If this old people drink hadn't been developed, our hero may not be alive today (don't worry about IV's and all the other medical things that could have been done; after all, this is a story).

Adam was, despite everything, very lucky. First, his mom wasn't there to pick him up and receive his news firsthand. Being a nurse, she didn't think of self-inflicted chemical burns as something her son should do to himself. He was lucky, too, so much of his gums didn't die that his teeth became loose or even become independent of his mouth. Also, Adam had a genetically high gumline that made many of his teeth look shorter than they were. His parents had considered an operation that would rectify this, but it would not have been covered under their insurance. Turns out, Adam saved his parents a bunch of money, not by switching to Geico, but rather by burning off the top layer of his gums, with the same result as the operation.

Probably the biggest thing about this story, mind you, is that Adam's name wasn't Adam at all.

It was Aaron.

It was me.

Thank You Puberty

2007-08-07T07:22:00.000-06:00

It seems like everyone has a tale to tell about that moment. That moment when a younger version of yourself realizes for the first time that you are changing. You are well on your way to manhood/womanhood (please choose one only).

This is not that story.

Did you know that Mariah Carey used to not be astronaut diapers crazy? Believe it or not, there was a time when her music videos showed a rather normal Mariah, one without hair weaves or unnaturally curvy curves. She had crinkly curly hair and wore blue flannel and sang her songs in a field. This is the Mariah that I will be talking about.

The elementary school that I went to felt it necessary that every grade put on some form of musical program. Perhaps they thought this would be fun for the kids, or maybe they wanted to give all of the teachers a chance to open all the classroom windows and chain smoke for an hour a week. I'm not sure what the teachers did once we left because I had the misfortune of being one of the students.

In fifth grade, our pageant had something to do with heroes. I'm thinking that there was some sort of montage dedicated to firemen/police officers/soldiers/janitors/bag ladies/jurors/professional plasma sellers/ eagles/ mad scientists/ and maybe teachers, but only if there was time. Our big finale, though, is the central figure in our story.

Mr. Cook was our principal. After three long years at our school (the school was newly built) dealing with us holy terrors, he decided to throw in the towel occupationally. It was the year I was in fifth grade, so everyone was making a big to-do about how he was "graduating" with us. This was a funny term for this because neither one of us were doing this. He was retiring and we were getting ready to face the dark horrors of sixth grade and junior high.

The last song was dedicated to him. While we sang it, pictures of Mr. Cook were projected onto the back wall in some sort of "this makes it look like he died but he's only really retiring" fashion. The song, though, this is the important part.

For a few weeks previous, whatever we'd be working on would be stopped once or twice a week so that we could shuffle to the gym (and try to get away with yelling in the hall) to practice the fifth-graders program. We'd be told to sit on the floor and be quiet (we were only capable of one of these) and everyone would do so. Most people would sit with their friends and I would sit by myself, which was common. I wasn't the weirdo who talked to his self at recess while simultaneously picking stucco off the walls and boogers out of his nose. No, I just didn't have many friends.

There we'd be, sitting on the floor in a loose group of friends or not-friends, and whoever was in charge of the program would explain what we would do today. The thing that we did every time, though, was work on the last song. It was the finale, and it was about Mr. Cook, so it must be flawless. The song, you may be guessing, is Hero by Mariah Carey. It goes something like this "And then a hero comes along/With the strength to carry on/And you cast your fears aside/And you know you will survive." Apparently Mr. Cook was this type of hero, which was news to me. I though this type of reverence was reserved for the likes of firefighters/police officers/septic tank cleaners (see previous list), etc.

I didn't really care though, because it gave me a chance to sing.

I didn't wear pink, nothing in my life was "faaaaabulous", and none of the boys in my class made me feel funny, but I liked to sing. I liked to sing a lot.

I read somewhere that Mariah Carey has a vocal range of some 2 million octaves (or somewhere around there [just go with me on this] ). Her higher registers border on the silent dog whistles that you see in movies and TV shows but never encounter in real life (this is, at least, my experience). She hits all of these high notes in the song "Hero."

And so did I.

In hindsight, it was probably good that I was sitting alone in the gym. When Mariah would hit a note that peeled the paint from the gym walls, so would I. I matched her note for note. These days I have a smoky rich (ahem) baritone voice, but in 1995, well, my voice did not match the wispy mustache that had already started growing beneath my nose. The fact that I could hit these notes was very pleasing to my fifth-grade self, as I still entertained the idea of being a professional singer. The coming years would effectively lower my range, and I would no longer have the castrato tones.

It's not that big of a deal because I couldn't pull off the "man singing like a woman" music niche quite Freddy Mercury or Mika.

That's probably because I don't like boys.

Just checking in from Tempe, AZ

2007-08-06T23:15:00.001-06:00

So, turns out I'm in the hometown of the band Jimmy Eat World. If you are not familiar, they are most well known for their song "the middle" which was more or less of constant rotation in radio stations across this great land in the years 01-02. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won some sort of award for its ability to be the song that no matter what is playing somewhere on the dial. Anyhoo, I did some research (because we passed a sign reading "Sky Harbor Airport" and I remember that the have a song called "Goodbye Sky Harbor," so I fired up wikipedia the next chance I got) and turns out I am in their home town. This is probably not nearly as exciting as it would seem, but these guys were my favorite band for many years (and still hold top billing for "favorite bands") and it's a nice thing for me.

I got another story idea this morning. I worte it down as quickly as I could before forgetting it. As I was writing down the details, I realized that it wasn't a new story, in fact, it was the hook to another story that I had thought up a coupla years ago. One that, though it had a nice basic premise, it had no real plot or conflict. But, ah yes, this is no longer the case. It is well on its way to being a fully excavated story project. I'm a bit excited.

Now all I have to do is take all these ideas and make them into actual stories.

Reading List

2007-07-27T22:30:00.000-06:00

I've revised my reading list. Whenever I go to the library or a bookstore I never remember any books that I've recently thought "yeah, I want to read that." I normally roam listlessly from shelf to shelf before dejectedly slipping into a booth with an overpriced coffee (or, if in the library, replace "overprice coffee" with "randomly chosen, yet inevitably grimy book").

But now, now, I can print this out and take it with me . . . and I will finally knock some of these out.

Finnegan’s Wake- James Joyce
Flatland- Edwin Abbott Abbott
The Man in the High Castle- Philip K Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said- Philip K Dick
The Sirens of Titan- Kurt Vonnegut
Harry Potter series
On the Road- Jack Kerouac
Narnia series
Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World- Thomas Ligotti
The Yellow Wallpaper- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Man Who Folded Himself- David Gerrold
All You Zombies- Robert A. Heinlein
Polaroids From the Dead- Douglas Coupland
The Once And Future King- T H White
Turn of the Screw- Henry James
Ender’s Game- Orson Scott Card
Way of the Peaceful Warrior- Dan Millman
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World- Harlan Ellison
Freakonomics- Steven Levitt
Naked Lunch- William S. Burroughs
Ella Minnow Pea- Mark Dunn
I Am Legend- Richard Matheson
Bad Wisdom- Bill Drummond
Green Mansions- William Henry Hudson
Blindness- Jose Saramago
Viy- Nikolai Gogol
Phantoms- Dean Koontz
The Violent Bear it Away- Flannery O'Connor
Catcher in the Rye- J D Salinger
Nine Stories- J D Salinger
The House Next Door- Anne Rivers Siddons

Any suggestions? Apparently if I ever want to know love in my life (or at least begin to understand the complex infrastructure known as the female mind), I should read Pride and Prejudice. I just don't think I'm up to it, yet, though. Not yet.

Complete and Blatant Ripoff

2007-07-26T21:24:00.001-06:00

I am not ashamed of my mental property thievery.

Class of 2001

2007-07-26T15:01:00.000-06:00

I'll play this game.

1. Who was your best friend? I guess it was the Me-Nate-Meg Triumvirate.

2. What sports did you play? "Impressin the ladies", "Sobbing quietly into my pillow"

3. What kind of car did you drive?Black 2001 Ford ZX2 (Yes... I remember the Red Focus)

4. It's Friday night, where were you? Probably at church... always at church.

5. Were you a party animal? I was pretty social with my youth group, and we hung out a lot, but the joke was that they were "get-togethers" rather than parties because of a definite lack of alcohol and sexing.

6. Were you a flirt? No. I don't think I knew how to. Not well, at least.

7. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Choir, as a result of "well, I've never done this before. . . might as well give it a chance"

8. Were you a nerd? Probably.

9. Did you get suspended or expelled? No. The closest I got into trouble was drilling a hole into a math book in shop class.

10. Can you sing the fight song? "Go Oak Park, You're awesome, totally cool and everyone wants to hang out with you, Nobody hates you . . . except maybe your parents..." I think that's how it went

11. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. Mayabb is the only one I can name, honestly.

12. Where did you sit during lunch? I was in the group of guys (Jacob Horowitz, Jamison Devine, Nathan Magers, Andy Cudzilo) that sat outside everyday, rain, shine, or snow. Usually it was in the senior courtyard, but when it was locked, we ate behind the theater.

13. What is your schools full name? Oak Park High School

14. School mascot? Norman The Northman

15. Did you go to Prom? No.

16. If you could go back and do it over, would you? Never. Why would I do that again?

17. What do you remember most about graduation? Thinking "This is it? this is the culmination of 13 years of public school. This sucks."

18. What was your favorite class to skip? I never skipped a class.

19. Did you have a job your senior year? I worked as a sales clerk/knowledgeless Bible salesman at Omega Christian bookstore

20. Where did you go most often for lunch? Senior Courtyard, see above.

21. Have you gained weight since then? Gained and lost, gained and lost, etc.

22. What did you do after graduation? I went to Mexico on a missions trip that summer, so I think that counts.

23. Did you go to your high school reunion? Our 5 year past a year ago, and apparently there were people who were upset that nothing was planned. As it is, I've more or less forgotten everyone in High School, so a Reunion would essentially be described as "go to the place and meet all these people again, people that you probably didn't like the first time around . . . that's why you blocked them out".

Check Inventory: One Pair Glow-in-the-Dark Harry Potter Glasses

2007-07-26T13:43:00.000-06:00

I have two confessions:
1. I am back. Hopefully for good.
2. I only made it halfway through the third Harry Potter book before getting distracted and moving onto something else in my life.

I was hanging out with a certain Kelly McIntyre and a reputable Evan Ross last Friday evening when Evan stated that he had to leave in order to stand in line for a book. I have done this to see a movie but never once for a book. I agreed to tag along and experience the Potter Mania first hand. Since I was there and enduring the hysteria, I figured I'd pick one up myself. Evan got his armband and I got mine. Evan's was a glorious gold color and mine was a dreadful blue. Turns out, he had reserved the book, and I was in a pariah caste known as the "walk-ins". A plastic bag full of cheap Potter goodies and a schedule of the night's events was handed to us both.

The only things of note were a temporary tattoo of Harry's scar (though in a shape of a 7 as well) and a pair of plastic HP glasses. I have seen free HP glasses before, but these were different in two ways. First, they were not single-piece thin plastic like the others seen before, but rather they were thick with hinges held in place with little screws. If they had actual lenses in them, they could pass for actual glasses. Well, except for the second difference. Every pair of HP glasses I've had the pleasure of seeing were black, and these were not. They were whitish. Evan and I took turns giving reasons why they would not be able to afford to add the black ink. An epiphany hit when I realized they were glow-in-the-dark. I have yet to test this hypothesis, but I think it's the actual reason for the color variation. Maybe not 100% Harry Potter canon accurate, at least it gives the opportunity to play "nerd ghost" in the dark.

We arrived at about 9 PM. Obviously, many people were already treading the hallowed Barnes and Nobles grounds, but as time wore on the number grew exponentially. We walked out of the cafe with coffee when Evan made a passing comment about flashbacks from Renaissance Festival. A teen boy in a green tunic and a self carved staff interjected "What's wrong with the Renaissance Festival?!" Apparently the two crowds mix heavily.

Looking around, it was funny to see people with old left over Halloween costumes. Anything remotely witchy was apparently acceptable as Harry Potter Gear... as long as it accompanies a smudged lightning scar and an older brother's graduation robes. My normal, not-remotely-witchy appearance made me feel pretty out of place. Before I could let it get to my head, I realized that Evan and I were more or less the only ones there over the age of 16, at least the only ones without a child dressed as a 7 year old Gryffindor team member.

As it got closer to midnight, the number of people there were mesmerizing. If you've ever been to the Barne's and Noble's at Zona Rosa, you'd know that it has two level, both of which are the size of several third world countries. At midnight it was literally shoulder to shoulder with Potterites. My first thought was, when deciding the legal limit for occupants according to the fire code, I can't help but think they didn't allow for wall to wall people. I've never considered myself claustrophobic, but when I had to lean into the bookshelves to keep from brushing up against people in all directions, I decided to buy the book at a later time. Regardless, the way things were set up, if there were books left over, I wouldn't be able to get mine until maybe 3 or 4 AM because I was a Walk-in pariah.

Oh well, at least I can play "nerd ghost" with my glasses.

To The Lady in the Radiator: a quick post.

2007-07-17T17:50:00.000-06:00

When you do a lot of reading in your formative years, you tend to come across many more words than you or your friends use in every day conversation. Hopefully, you are smart enough to figure out these words' meanings from context clues. But pronunciation. . . this could be anybody's guess.

At least this is the way it is for me. I've always been good at spelling, but I apparently have a gift for mispronouncing words. I tend to pronouce words phonetically, especially when they are not supposed to be, apparently. A good example: I came across the word "posthumously". To me, it will forever be pronounced in a very wrong way because the sound that it made in my head when I first came across it was not what I would have heard if I had people around me who made use of the word regularly in their vocabulary. Or maybe even used it once. Either way, posthumously always rings to the sound of "POEST-hume-uss-lee" instead of the proper pronunciation "poss-CHEW-muss-lee".

I suppose I will next hit Mariah Carey, since I have been asked politely.

Still here too.

2007-07-16T08:51:00.000-06:00

Hello. My laptop gave me quite a scare when it decided it no longer wanted to charge the battery. I brought it begrduingly into Best Buy (where I had purchased it) and they told me I needed to get another charging cable. Luckily, I had purchased the extended warranty on the laptop, so it was covered (if you remember, this is the second time that I have bowed to the extra warranty gods and they smiled favorably upon me). So in a week I should be able to continue my life here. Once the cable arrives, that is.

Upcoming topics: Ventures into painting, camp mishaps, temporary art, long sleeves, and Mariah Carey.

Guntron Alliance Force

2007-07-01T11:00:00.000-06:00

Read it again and you'll get it.

Sgt. Grumbles

2007-06-30T22:31:00.000-06:00

Dinosaur Meteors

2007-06-29T16:01:00.000-06:00

There's something starkly beautiful to me about the last panel.

Also, an actual post, look for it soon!

Take a Look, It's in a Book

2007-06-28T19:51:00.000-06:00

No One Is Thirsty

2007-06-27T15:01:00.000-06:00

Lord Gloom

2007-06-26T21:50:00.000-06:00

.tI er'ouY, gaT

2007-06-26T10:49:00.000-06:00

Here we go:

4 Jobs I've had in the past:

* Christian Bookstore salesclerk
* North Kansas City School District After School Program Associate
* Youth Pastor
* Lawn Mower Salesman

4 Movies I could always watch:
* The Wedding Singer
* Moulin Rouge
* Braveheart
* Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

4 Places I've lived:

* Kansas City, MO
* Springfield, MO
* Lee's Summit, MO
* Salem, IL

4 TV shows I love:

* Attack of the Show
* Arrested Development
* Jericho
* Mystery Science Theater 3000

4 Foods I love:

* Anything Mexican (except enchiladas)
* Anything Italian
* Thai food (Nam Sod, Panang chicken... yum)
* Noodles

4 Websites I frequent:
Most of Meg's list plus:
* imdb.com
* Penny-Arcade.com
* Youtube.com
* Joystiq.com

4 Places I'd rather be:

* Tokyo
* The Grecian Isles
* New York
* Chicago

I'm Tagging:

* Anyone that sees this and hasn't done it yet (honestly, I have no idea who that may be)

I Really AM Crazy

2007-06-17T05:29:00.000-06:00

I have a funny nose.

No, it doesn't tell jokes ("A priest, a rabbi, and a nose walk into a bar..."). And yes it is a bit upturned and fruit bat-ish (this I've been told by small children) but that's not it either. It has a thing about smells.

I can usually remember how a person smells just as well as what they look like. Good smells are very pleasant to me and bad smells send me reeling. I can barely think when I smell a really nice perfume. When I cleaned out the forgotten hamburger out of the refrigerator, I could barely function. Needless to say, I am very affected by my sense of smell. There's one kinda weird thing, though.

I smell things that aren't there.

For years, whenever I've pushed on my nose, I smell something. Not a "you're smelling your finger" something. It's not anything I've smelled anywhere else. It's a completely other smell. A phantom smell. Sometimes when people lose their arm or leg, they can still feel the arm. They still sense their phantom limb. For some reason, I sense some mystical energy that has long ago been stripped from my being. Or maybe I just have sensitive olfactories that don't like being stimulated.

I had a friend whose house I used to spend the night at every once in a while. When I'd come home, everything would have the same smell. This mystery smell smelled kinda like pickles, but more bitter. It'd be on my clothes and everything that I took there. But when I let someone else smell my jacket (or something else I had on me) nobody could smell anything. Nobody.

Whenever I came home to visit from college I would freak out. Freak out. Every time. You see, after a while of being there., I'd always have the strange smell on my hands. It was a kinda brackish, crisp smell. I started investigating and realized that it only happened when I was at my mom's house. If you saw me, you probably would have been very concerned about me because I started sniffing everything to try to figure out what I touched that was causing the smell. The TV remote, my doorknob, the sink handle, the chairs, the table, everything. After a while I was completely out of hope. I had no idea what was causing this new, strange smell. Finally, my mom asks if I had tried the ice. Seriously? The ice? No, I hadn't tried the ice. But since I had tried everything else, I opened the freezer.

It was the ice.

But my mom couldn't smell it. Not on the ice, not on my hands, and not even on her hands. Nothing. Everybody that came over I gave them the ice test, and one by one they failed. No one else could smell it. I was a little concerned and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air." I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said "FRESH" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but I thought "Naw forget it, yo home to Bel-Air." I pulled up to a house about seven or eight and I yelled to the cabby "Yo, home smell you later!" I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there to sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.

Ow. My Head.

2007-06-14T13:42:00.000-06:00

Have you ever stared at a light through a fan?
The flashing brights and pulsing darks.
Swinging in a never ending orbit.
That's what I see now.
Only there's no fan.
And there's no light.

Last year I started having migraines. The funny thing about that is, for the most part, I've never really had a headache before. Not really. So somehow I'm opened up to a whole new world.

The world of Bright, Throbbing Pain.

I had it off and on over the summer. Maybe I could blame my lackluster lawnmower sales on a long string of migraines. Maybe I can't. No, not really, I really wasn't a good salesman. I did what I could to take care of them, and when fall comes. . .

No migraines.

Fast forward almost a year. Actually, fast forward to 20 minutes ago. I'm talking (typing, whatever) to a friend when I notice that I can't really read the words well. Have you ever tried to read after staring in a bright light? It's the same kind of thing. Only problem with that is I didn't stare at a light. I didn't look out the window or anything. As the bright patch grows, I start to think to myself:

"Crap."

If you, oh reader, are not aware, one of the common beginning levels of a migraine is what's called an "aura", which is a flashing or glowing light sensation in the eyes. Does this sound familiar? Oh yeah, light through a fan.

Meg (both the person I was talking to and one half of my readership [hi Meg]) suggested that they may be allergy related since they apparently are confined to a general "summery time" schedule. It's probably true. I already have a normal allergy. In August, my eyes start to water and itch and I sneeze constantly.

This made for great first impressions at the beginning of every school year.

Perhaps I am well on my way to becoming one of those guys that are allergic to EVERYTHING. In due time, I will be allergic to bees, pollen, dogs, cats, grass, dirt, smoke, lemurs, Ninja Turtle bubble bath, regular bubble bath, vampires, TVs, the weather, girls, hockey pucks, and doorknobs.

As my head starts to pound, I have only this to say:

Here we go again.

Just a Quick Note (that was a musical pun, in case you missed it)

2007-06-11T14:15:00.000-06:00

Okay.

I love music.

Always have.

Probably always will.

Although my tastes have changed and/or evolved (which would be an moderately interesting post in and of itself) I have had a few "favorite songs."

My first ever was "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon.

I've done a lot of thinking and soul searching and I decided long ago that my favorite song of all time is "I Melt With You" by Modern English.

I now present it to you, oh reader.

Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world crashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

I'll stop the world and melt with you
You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time
There's nothing you and I won't do
I'll stop the world and melt with you

(You should know better)
Dream of better lives the kind which never hates
(You should see why)
Trapped in the state of imaginary grace
(You should know better)
I made a pilgrimage to save this humans race
(You should see why)
Never comprehending the race has long gone bye

(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
(Let's stop the world) You've seen the difference and it's getting better all
the time
(Let's stop the world) There's nothing you and I won't do
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you

The future's open wide

**The future's open wide

(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
(Let's stop the world) I've seen some changes but it's getting better all the
time
(Let's stop the world) There's nothing you and I won't do
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you

The future's open wide

hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm

I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)
You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time (Let's stop the
world)
There's nothing you and I won't do (Let's stop the world)
I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)

I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)
I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)

I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)
I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world)

And Now... A Post Just for Meg with Returning Guest: Mathieu Chedid

2007-06-08T12:36:00.001-06:00

Presenting the most absurb music video/song.

Probably considered disco more than, rap, it has a very rappy feel.

And it's the closest I could come to annoying you/finding French rap.

Happiness is Fluorescent Clothes and Fanny-Packs

2007-06-07T12:03:00.000-06:00

I grew up watching Nickelodeon.

Like many other kids my age, I spent as much time watching a spasmodic offering of bright colors and yelling cartoon faces as I did, say, sleeping. I guess there was other things on other channels that I might have enjoyed watching. But Nickelodeon held a sickeningly tight grip on me. For nearly 10 years (ending vaguely mid 90's) I prayed many seemingly drug-induced hours to the Day-Glo gods.

Nearly every Nickelodeon program ended with a blurb stating that said program was recorded at their Mount Olympus:

Nickelodeon Studios.

A giant geyser of green water (slime, apparently) bubbled happily high above roaming droves of ecstatic children. The smiles on their faces were well warranted.

They had reached Mecca.

I have a friend who's family goes to Disney World (Land? The one in Florida, anyway) every year. Maybe I'm a poor abused child, but I never went to Disney world. The truth is, I never wanted to. Why go to Disney World when Nickelodeon studies is so close? The prospect of attending a taping of What Would You Do? and maybe even meeting Marc Summers held so much more appeal than having your picture taken with some dweeb in a Donald Duck costume.

Recently, I came across some news that killed my spirit.

Nickelodeon Studios is shut down. From the Wiki:

"The studio tour closed in 2001 after staffing cuts were made. The Game Lab portion of the tour would continue to run until Nickelodeon Studios closed in 2005.

The facility closed on April 30, 2005, after Nickelodeon had gradually moved its production facilities to Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California, and New York. The final program taped at Nickelodeon Studios was Nickelodeon SPLAT! on August 17, 2004.

The Slime Geyser in front of Soundstage 18 was removed in May 2005.

The trademark "Nickelodeon" sign above the facility was removed in January 2006.

A time capsule buried by the network in 1992 in front of Sound stage 18 was removed in August 2006 and was replaced with concrete. The time capsule contained items deemed important to the children of 1992 as voted upon by Nickelodeon viewers, including a new Nintendo Game Boy, an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine and various other toys. The time capsule was scheduled to be opened on April 30, 2042, fifty years after its burial."

I remember when they buried the time capsule. I think maybe my whole generation sighed collectively, though subconsciously, when it was desecrated. The things that were important to us aren't that important, I guess.

Then again, Nickelodeon today isn't the Nickelodeon of my youth. Just watch the drivel they show now.

Maybe it's for the best that the golden age of children's programming was ushered quickly into Eternity instead of letting it die a slow, horrible death. Images of creepy abandoned amusement parks flash in my mind.

No, I'm glad that they didn't let that happen.

Je suis si culturel j'écoute la musique française de roche (quoique je ne comprends pas un mot de lui).

2007-06-05T12:24:00.000-06:00

I have something to say.

I, Aaron Thomas Bratcher, listen to French rock music.

Okay. I've admitted it. Eleven steps to go.

A couple of years ago I rented a movie called "The Triplets of Belleville" which is a French animated movie. You'd never really know it was French (except that it was set in France and revolved around the Tour de France, but other than that, you know) because there is no dialogue.

Kinda strange and artsy-fartsy, but I really like. It works really well. It's a beautifully animated movie and despite a complete lack of speaking, it wraps its dirty French animated hands around your heart.

There's a song in it named "Belleville Rendezvous" that is sung by the three old ladies in the movie but is sung by another guy on the soundtrack (kinda like was sung by the people in the Lion King, but it was really sung by Elton John). This guy who sings the song is named Matthieu Chedid.

But his stage name is ~M~.

To be honest, he looks like a Flock of Seagulls reject.

But I really like his music.

I don't understand a word though.

I tried punching the lyrics into an online translator, but the result was still a word salad of French and English words.

The only French I took in school was in 6th grade. It was the Modern Language quarter, and the quarter (which was 1/4 of the year) was split up into three parts between Spanish, French and German.

So, doing the math, I only took 1/3 of 1/4 of a year's worth of French.

6th grade French, even.

So I now present to you:

~M~

Qui de nous deux

Je dis aime

Taking Care of Business

2007-06-03T15:02:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, I kinda had this thing.

I couldn't use any other restroom except my own bathroom at home.

Sure, I could urinate anywhere (like any other guy) but, uh, taking care of business, I couldn't do it anywhere else.

This was intensified when I started high school and discovered that the stalls in the boy's restroom had no doors.

No Doors.

Who does that?

Does this prevent smoking in the bathroom? Can't you tell if someone is smoking in a stall with or without a door before you even walk into the bathroom?

When my stomach starting rumbling and it was only first hour I knew it was going to be a long day.

And this was the life I lead for a long time.

Until I started traveling overseas.

The food in Romania was strange. None of it tasted good. None of it really tasted bad. It was just food. They told us not to drink the water so we had giant water bottle mountains we went through. Apparently there's two kinds of bottled water in Romania: normal, regular, the-kind-of-water-I-drink-on-a-regular-basis-type water and something else. We got a new shipment of this other water and everyone tried it and spit it out. I picked up a bottle of it and the only English I could make out on it was "still water" which is kinda how it tasted: brewed in a still. Very, very watery moonshine, maybe. It had that brackish Powerade kick without all of the good flavor or coloring. My friend Josh and I took turns taking shots of it.

We procured two cans of Mountain Dew (Mind you, all we've had for a week was room-temperature to warm water) and risked our very lives by pouring them over two glasses full of dirty Romanian ice. It was the best thing I've ever tasted.

I'm surprised I don't have some strange Romanian stomach worm.

I guess I still might and he's been living happily for many years.

One afternoon spend out on the town (err, rather, the village, I guess) found me with stomach pains. I have to find a restroom, and fast. Our interpreter pointed me to a small building at the side of the road. I went in and experienced two firsts in my life.

One: my first pay toilet.

Using the toilet was 50 Lei which was the equivalent of only a few cents but I still took a second to realize what she was talking about.

I have to pay? To use the toilet?

Toilet paper was an extra charge. But I didn't need to buy any.

I wanted to check the toilets out to see if I'd be able to use them. If they were as dirty as just about everything else in the country, I'd have to reevaluate just how bad I had to go. When I opened the door, it was what I feared. Worse even.

The "toilet" was a hole in the ground. Thankfully, there were two ridged areas on each side for my poor little feet to plant for careful aiming.

No thanks.

I waved to the old lady at the door and tried not to listen to my stomach as it protested my decision.

Okay, so I didn't use that one.

But let me tell you this: the trashcans next to the toilets in Mexico are not for your boogey-filled Kleenex.

Apparently they have really bad plumbing in Mexico. So bad, even, that the presence of toilet paper clogs up the pipes.

Yeah, I think you're following me.

The trashcan is for used toilet paper. Take this, add the sweltering Mexican sun and heat and you've got the recipe for a pungent trip to el bano.

Oh, and rarely is there both a lid on the toilet bowl AND the tank. (This is not the Cancun or Aruba Mexico [I think. I've never been to those, but I assume resort cities aren't like this] but rather the Mexico where the houses are made from cinder blocks and the roads have curbs but no pavement.)

When I came home, I looked at the bathroom in some random restaurant or store, one that I would have avoided beforehand, and I saw a sparkling clean facility that I had no problem whatsoever using.

Ah, perspective.

Monkey Slide

2007-05-26T12:55:00.000-06:00

I play this just so I can listen to the music.

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/slide.htm

Lost Found? (Or is it Found Lost?)

2007-05-23T21:11:00.001-06:00

Usually my posts are well-thought out (that's open to discussion, surely) and there's a bit of method to my proverbial madness. This one, though, this one is impulsive.

I just watched the season finale of Lost. The last half of the season has really turned the show around. You may have noticed that I've written about how far astray Lost has become (It was a long time ago, but due to my hiatuses, it's not that far down the page). This was written mostly on impulse as well after watching an entire episode about popping the clutch of an old VW bus. After this . . . I couldn't imagine it playing a part in the actual storyline.

I was proved wrong tonight.

I'm glad that I was. I've always liked Lost despite being frustrated with it (on a side note... I can't believe I'm posting about a TV show. Of all of the issues that I could be discussing [i.e. rogue unicorns] I write about Lost). Plus Hurley (the big, Teddy-bearish guy) after being berated with a few "you can't come with us, you'll slow us down and get us killed" (AKA "you're too fat, Mr. Fatty McFatFat") he plays hero and saves the day. With what?

That stupid VW bus.

Ghost (Without the pottery wheel scene)

2007-05-23T15:00:00.000-06:00

I started a post last night. Since I woke up at 3-ish in the morning with my computer sleeping happily next to me... I suppose it wasn't very good since I made myself fall asleep. I don't know what happened to it... I guess it got lost in the dark murky waters of the intertubes. I didn't have my notebook with me (let's recap: it's the one where I've been writing all of my ideas for the past two months I haven't had steady internet access) so I think I was winging it. It's probably for the best. I wouldn't want to tarnish my image with a not-well-though-out post.

There's a group of friends I haven't seen in a long time. I like to call them my "midnight showing friends."

I love movies. I love them so much, I see them the night before they come out. For the unaware, many big theaters play many big movies at midnight the day before they come out. So if you are really into a movie, that's when you want to see it (because you just couldn't possibly wait 19 hours and see it the next night). The heavens must have aligned, because there was a string of movies that came out that were worthy of midnight viewings. The first three Star Wars movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spiderman (maybe a couple of other superhero movies), etc. I would see the same people at every midnight showing.

I had midnight movie buddies.

If you go see the new Spiderman movie, chances are you might notice a man or woman holding hands with the shortest Spiderman ever. It only takes finding a spiderman Halloween mask when you've already got Spidey jammies.

Seeing a kid dressed up as a movie character is one thing (a cute thing, even) but seeing a fully-grown man dressed up in a jedi costume that he's certainly spent months sewing is something different.

It's awesome.

Seeing a room full of people dressed up as Jedi, wookies, Darth Vaders, Boba Fetts, etc. is unreal.

If you've never been to a midnight showing... wow. It's not a normal movie-going experience. First, logic tells you that to see a, say, 7:00 PM show, you should probably get there by 6:40 or so to get a good seat. Well, for these super duper special showings, to see a 12:01AM show, you should probably be there by, eh, 8:00 PM. Maybe earlier. Seriously. Crazy stuff.

To keep ourselves busy (I use "our" because, hey, I was one of the crazies there [though I wasn't dressed up, nor did I even have a plastic lightsaber or anything] ) there were lightsaber fights up front by the screen. Some guys had the store-bought telescoping plastic lightsabers and those broke quickly. Then there were the ones that had their own hand-made lightsabers with PVC pipes as the blade. The ones that made their own lightsabers, yeah they could fight with them too. Have you ever seen the old internet meme video of the kid performing lightsaber fighting technique (AKA swinging a stick wildly)? It was like that... but with two people.

One of these stretches of time spent waiting for the show to start, I , well...

I heard a ghost.

The seats in front of me were empty but there was a voice coming from them. It was loud enough to hear it, but not loud enough for me to understand what the words were. It had an ethereal, distant sound that made me think at first that maybe there was a radio or something sitting under the seat in front of me. I scooted myself around and craned my neck. No radio.

But the voice kept on.

I was weirded out, to say the least. From what I could make out, the voice wasn't speaking to me. Maybe it was having ghostly small talk with other theater-haunting spooks.

Someone who had taken more science classes than I did would probably take note of the shape of the theater. Big. Curving. There's apparently a few factors that when they come together, can create wonderful things.

Like a normal voice from one side of the theater bouncing off the movie screen and landing on the other side.

I told the people I were with, and they were awestruck. After a few minutes, though, we figured it out. We even looked around the room and finally matched the words with the lip movements of a girl on the other side of the theater.

If she only knew how haunting she was.

Wait...Huh? Where am I?

2007-04-28T12:19:00.000-06:00

Okay. I have no internet connection. None. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. Regardless, I don't even have a computer for the next two weeks, so if said connection DID exist in my home. . . I still couldn't use it. Well, not like I'd like to.

But have no fear. I keep a long list of topics in my spiral notebook (an old friend . . . I now only own one! Where did they all go?) to write about whenever I get my eSelf up and running.

I think I may have some existential decisions made.

STILL the best thing no one else knows about

2007-03-31T23:18:00.000-06:00

If you like this, do a search on YouTube for "Flight of the Conchords."

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=flight+of+the+conchords&search=Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_conchords

Springtime for Hitler

2007-03-27T12:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, the title of this is a little misleading. I fell asleep while watching the original The Producers and my great love for Will Ferrell was not enough to outweigh my deep distrust of Matthew Broderick, so I did not see the remake either. For those of you who are at a complete loss, "Springtime for Hitler" is the name of the play that the Producers put on in hopes that it will fail horribly (apparently this will actually make them money [I don't really know, like I said I fell asleep ] ).

Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with Hitler.

But the Springtime part-- that I can work with.

When you were a kid, the very first day of class would consist mostly of "get to know you" type games and information sheets filled out and handed into the teacher (before recess). This is, of course, unless you had a hellspawn teacher, then sometimes you actually had homework on the first day.

C'mon lady.

It's the first day.

And I'm eleven.

So these information sheets were always the same: write your name, parents/guardians' names, address, other identifying things, and answer some fun questions that make me look like I care about the little things in your life (though I do not) such as: What is your favorite color? What is your favorite food? What is your favorite candy? What is your favorite season?

These questions varied very little from first or second grade (when we were actually able to write on our own) all the way through high school. My answers generally changed through the years (color: green... then black and red [I think I was goth before goth was goth]; food: Italian... then Mexican; candy: Reeses' peanut butter cups... then Reeses' peanut butter cups...hmm... I guess they didn't ALL change).

One answer that always stayed the same was "season: fall." There was so much about the fall that I loved. The brisk wind that made you wear a jacket. The vivid oranges, reds, and yellows. The sounds of waves of freshly fallen leaves rolling on the ground. The smell. The smell. As I've written before, I've always been a sucker for a good smell. And the smells of autumn win. Everytime. Burning leaves, hay rides, bonfires. . . The whole season is a sensory overload.

But.

But I think I have to change my answer now. Not that I'm filling out info cards any more, but you know, just in case. These things come up in conversations sometimes. And, uh, sometimes you have to write about them in essays (essays? Is that what these are considered? I don't really write about "today I did this, and then I did this" so I don't really think they're considered blogs. Plus, "blogging" is SoOoOo 2004. Pshaw).

My new answer? Spring. The thing about Fall is it's a little depressing. If you laid out the year like a person's life, fall would constitute the "staying in a hospice" section of the time line. Everything is dying a slow death. It always seems so much shorter than you'd like. After the first cool breezes felt on your skin, before you can take it all in the trees are all bare and the frozen corpse of the world is hidden somewhere under a blanket of snow.

There are things about winter that are nice. Fresh snowfall is breathtaking. Christmas is during the winter, and it wouldn't be nearly as magical if it were, say, July 25. Snow days off from school are always a great thing (not an issue for me, anymore). Sledding is fun (or so I've heard, I've never done it [yes, yes, I was a very deprived child] ). But beyond all these, winter is dreary.

Look outside during the winter. What colors do you see?

Brown and gray.

That's it.

Brown, naked trees, brown snow at the side of the road, and everything else is gray. The sky is gray, the clouds are gray, the snow is gray(okay, light gray). Beyond a simple color issue, there's something about winter that is just dreadful. It's even been medically documented. There's such a thing as "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (also humorously known as SAD) where those with this affliction suffer from bouts of depression during the long, dreary winter months. And honestly, you can't really blame them. There's rarely enough sun to close your eyes and point your face towards the sun, soaking in the warmth and energy coming from the Big Guy in the Sky (the omnipresence of God shows that this term cannot mean Him, so we're using it to describe the sun.) This is something that I like to take every opportunity to do, usually immediately upon coming outside from a long stretch of inside living.

That's what I love about the spring. There something I can't quite describe about it. It's like the world is reborn. The scents of freshly budding spring flowers blow with the wind. The air is buzzing with energy, and the sun is again pumping beautiful beams of golden light. Everything has been waiting for this moment.

I don't really like to be hot. Not really. I hate to sweat. I'm a big guy, and it happens without a whole lot of effort. The sweltering heat of the summer is nothing like the warming, invigorating heat of the spring. Okay, here in the Midwest it can get pretty hot in the spring, but it just gets that much hotter in the summer. So what we're talking about here is moderation. Just enough heat to get the blood pumping and thaw everything that's been frozen since November, but not enough to boil it in it's own bodily fluids. That's a pleasant thought. Not really where I was planning on going with this.

So, to recap, not much Hitler and a whole lot of Springtime philosophizing.

I'm going outside to face the sun.

Lost Lost?

2007-03-05T12:25:00.000-06:00

There have been a couple of shows that I have watched in marathon form. 24. Scrubs. And also Lost. At the beginning of the second season, we (my roommate and I) got the first season DVD and watched them through. It's a funny thing watching those kind of shows with another person. If you were doing it alone, you could knock out a couple of episodes and then go do something more productive. But when you're watching with another person who is as pulled-into the series as you are, you finish one episode, look at each other, give a small nodding grin, and hit play on the next episode.

The first season of Lost was great. There was a lot of well done twists and turns. The second season slowed down significantly. Despite having an island full of people, the first 6 episodes of the season (that is, the entire "fall" season)was about only three of the characters. Somehow, I just didn't care about that particular storyline, so it was quite agonizing for me. But since I've invested so much time and energy into the show, I kept watching.

I watched an episode of Attack of the Show (a digital media show on G4 [the video game channel] )and the host opened the show by saying that he finally felt justified in deleting the Lost season pass from his Tivo after last week's episode. For those of you not versed in Tivo lore, this means that he will no longer record Lost, and essentially he will therefore no longer watch it.

It's like in Castaway where Tom Hanks lets his oars drift away in the end after Wilson floats off.

I hadn't watched the episode yet, so I immediately stopped the show for fear of hearing something that I didn't want to hear. I watched the show on my own Tivo and I must say . . . I am tempted to do the same.

Here's what happened (don't worry about spoilers):

The big guy, Hugo, found a VW minibus on the island.

The end.

Okay, they told some more of his back story. but this was all that was in the episode. Nothing added to the story line. No character development (maybe a smidgen for Hugo). Nothing.

The worst part is they decided to push it and then pop the clutch to get it running. This seems all nice and nice (though a bit melodramatic) but there's one problem with it.

They did the exact same thing on Little Miss Sunshine.

You know, the movie that just won a ton of Oscars a few weeks ago.

It's one thing to say "hey, we're going to drag this out as long as possible and never really come to a conclusion. I think we'll add a lot of tangents and superfluous story lines to pad out the episode numbers."

But it's another to say "I know it's pretty obvious, but we're going to do that one thing from that big indie movie. C'mon we need something to show hope. They did it and it was hopeful. Let's do it too."

I know I could use the free time that comes with not watching Lost, but who'd want to actually do that?

FUN FACT: I just wrote two blogs in a row. Okay, that doesn't count. I can't touch clay pottery. or anything ceramic. It's like nails on a chalkboard. ::shudder::

MUSIC SNOB: Stay by Lisa Loeb

Camp Candy

2007-03-05T12:18:00.000-06:00

YouTube is a beautiful thing. It's quite shocking how much things like Myspace and YouTube have blown up (not plastic-explosives kind of blown up) in the past year. I set up a myspace account just because Xanga had become quite droll (apparently many more people had made the migration before I had). I found a couple of friends on there, but for several months i had little more than a few things in the "About me" category and a picture of myself. Then everyone and their brother got a myspace, and suddenly it's this thriving internet community.

YouTube's story is pretty similar.

I'm not here to give a written history on the now corporate giants YouTube and Myspace, so I'll move on.

I made a YouTube account in order to group a couple of videos together I didn't want to forget about (I guess I didn't want to just Bookmark them [yes, bookmark not favorite, Firefox is how I roll, dawg] ). I didn't expect to keep it, so I put in the first thing I though of as a name: Yoyobratch (Fake ultra-white ghetto Aaron strikes again [Yoyo as in "yo yo, wut up, dawg" and not "I love Duncan Yo-yos"). After continually adding videos, I came to a conclusion:

I was stuck as yoyobratch.

[An aside: as I am writing this I am eating a few cool ranch Doritos (the best chips created by man)and drinking orange juice. It is a startlingly great combo.]

I stumbled upon a video of the intro sequence for an old cartoon I watched as a young kid. It was called Camp Candy and, as the name suggests, it's about a summer camp run by none other than John Candy himself (pre-death John Candy [post-death John Candy wouldn't have worked out as well {though it was animated, so it would have been possible} ] ). This was one of the shows that I got up for on Saturday morning.

To be honest, as I flip through the channels on any given Saturday morning (not that that happens much [ever] ) I can't imagine anything offered to be worth getting up for on a Saturday morning. But back in my day there was quality children's programming. Like John Candy running an animated kids camp. Or the NES System's animated commercial Captain N: The Game Master.

Okay. So it wasn't amazing then either. But when I heard the intro music, oh man. I was instantly and magically 7 years old again, sitting on our old blue couch with crusties in my eyes and a Ghostbuster toy in each hand. My mom is in the kitchen, knowing not to speak to me until I was ready (I, uh, wasn't much of a conversationalist in the mornings. My only response would be "Don't look at me! Don't talk at me!") The couch cushions are sitting vertically against the couch and I am sitting on the springs in a makeshift fort. In front of me is some sort of remote control box.

Now that I think about it, this this confuses me. It worked as a remote control but was connected to the TV with a long wire. . . so it wasn't really remote, more like attached, but with a long wire so you can sit down and use it. I guess an attached, but with a long wire so you can sit down and use it control doesn't have the same ring, so it's considered a remote control. It was about the size of two bricks (and about as heavy) with a slider nob on the front. On one side of the control box was 1, and the other was 34 (back when there were only thirty-some channels, even on cable). If you wanted to watch MTV, you'd slide it to 24 and it changed the channel. Now, I know that even though it was 1989, TV's had actual, legitimate remote controls at the time. Here's my best Jerry Seinfeld impression:

What was the deal with that thing?

I digress. Hearing the minute worth of music and seeing something that I haven't seen for nearly twenty years brings back a flood of memories. And yet none of them are bad. It's easy to forget about the hard stuff , the bad stuff that you have to deal with as a kid. When we grow up, we seem to only let ourselves remember the good things. The candy, games, and fun.

What is it about this that I really miss that much?

Do I miss Camp Candy itself? Probably not, it was a mediocre cartoon. Do I miss the sleepy Saturday mornings? No, I can still do that (though I replace Camp Candy with sleep). Maybe I miss it because I know it's gone. Forever. This moment in time that is seared in my head will never happen again. Even though I may remember it vividly, I will never be 7 again in a makeshift fort and sleepily pondering the oddities of my TV remote control.

Maybe I miss it because I was really, truly happy. I didn't know any better. I hadn't yet figured out that it's a screwed-up world. People were nice and I didn't know that deep down inside, everyone's bent. I knew nothing of murder, terrorism, fraud, child molestation, or domestic abuse. All I knew was Camp Candy.

And it was good.

FUN FACT: I can bend the top joint of six of my fingers (thumbs don't count and pinkies can't). Try it with me. Stick your finger out like you're pointing at someone. Then bend just the very last joint, like your finger is a lower case r.

MUSIC SNOB: Humble Me- Norah Jones

2007-03-03T06:00:00.000-06:00

The Man playing the String Bass is my hero. Wait for it.

He's really into marimba music, I guess.

Also, I've retroactively added videos of songs mentioned in MUSIC SNOB: where possible.

Late Night Studies with The Bratch

2007-03-03T04:47:00.000-06:00

It's always fun to be up so late working on stuff for school/work/etc. that your stomach rumbles and you actually think "I wonder what time McDonald's starts serving breakfast again?"

Glass. Mayo. What?

2007-03-02T23:09:00.000-06:00

It's always when I don't have the time to write that I really, really want to. But I can't.

I just can't.

I get great ideas while I'm busy and tell myself, "I'll remember this, don't worry."

But I don't.

Ever.

Like right now, I'm thinking "If plastic is so cheap, why are things still in glass bottles and jars? Surely the process for making plastic is cheaper than making and handling glass, plus there's the added bonus of producing a 'shatter-proof' product. This is something that we take for granted these days. A dropped jar of mayonnaise is a terrible, terrible thing. So why is it so hard to make them in plastic jars instead of glass? I know, a lot (most?) of mayonnaise jars (I'm sure there are those that see the word "mayonnaise" and cringe in gross queasiness [seeing it three times here must make you roll up into a fetal ball, those of you that hate mayonnaise. Sorry, I said it again. Wait. . . where was I? Oh, a nested parenthetical clause inside a quotation. I'm too convoluted to follow my own self. Five extra bonus points to you for reading this far. Three extra bonus points if you still understand what I'm saying this far in. Okay, back to glass jars] ) are plastic, but there are still those that aren't. Why not make them all plastic?"

This is what I'm thinking instead of working on my last college class.

FUN FACT: Sometimes I go to Wal-Mart and buy a bottle of bubbly. Welch's sparkling grape juice, that is. You know, the stuff you buy for birthdays and New Year's when you want to say "I'm festive, but also a teetotaler." I didn't used to like it, I thought it was cliche as a kid. Now I just get it whenever. It's over 2 bucks for maybe 16 oz. of drink, but it's basically the best grape soda you'll ever drink.

Plus it comes in a GLASS bottle.

MUSIC SNOB: Be Still My Heart- The Postal Service

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qanvfBiY_MY

Lightning McQueen

2007-02-25T21:31:00.000-06:00

One of the girls in my youth group asked an open question in the van this weekend. "Who here absolutely loves the movie Cars?"

A few girls piped in agreement and I added my thoughts. "Well... I like the movie Cars."

"You sound just like Lightning McQueen."

A couple of other girls piped in agreement.

What? You're telling me I sound like Owen Wilson?

Who knew.

FUN FACT: I sound like Owen Wilson, apparently.

MUSIC SNOB: Fidelity by Regina Spektor

One of Those Faces

2007-02-19T20:25:00.000-06:00

I have one of those faces.

I really do.

For as long as I can remember people have stopped what they were doing for just a moment, and they get this look in their eyes. This look of recognition. I ask them what the matter is and they immediately shake themselves out of whatever daze they were in. "Oh, well," they'd always say," you just remind me so much of my __________ (brother, cousin, son, grandson, etc.). You two could be twins. You know?"

Yes. Yes, I know.

There was a guy at Fine Arts one year. He looked just like me. Even I was impressed. There was one small difference. One key detail that was awry. A single thing threw the whole thing off.

He was 7 stinking feet tall.

But I still got the "Aaron, he looks just like you!"

There was a guy I went to church named Andy. I was in youth and he was in singles' group. People would ask me if I was going to the next singles event and people would ask him what we talked about in youth. Andy and I joked all the time about it. Incidentally, he just got married, which means that I may yet have a chance. The guy in the green shirt... that's Andy.

There was a guy in Bible college named Charlie. Every so often a friend of mine would approach me and say "Aaron! I saw you across the campus and I called your name but you didn't answer (or something like that). I got closer and I realized that it wasn't you. And he was Asian!" Despite my Germanic heritage, I've been accused of being Asian many times. Even by children. The reason? Probably my naturally squinty eyes, and Buddha-like build (ha!). At the time, though, I had long, black hair, which helped me slide effortlessly in and out of Asian social circles (well. . . not really. But I did enjoy eating noodles with chopsticks) and cemented my Asian stylings. I didn't really know the guy, though I did talk to him at an Insyderz concert and told him that he was my (or I was his) doppelganger. Charlie (his name) though it was funny, but his friends had never seen me and thought it was him.

Man, his friends are jerks.

My mom called me the other night and told me that everyone was coming up to her and saying that they saw me on TV. Well. . . at least it was someone that looked like me. I asked her who it was, but she couldn't name the guy. After some excellent deductive skills on my part (I gots mad sleuthing skillz, dawG) I figured out they were talking about Sundance Head on this season of American Idol. Yeah, the guy with the giant goatee and chest hair forest. People told her this, mind you. More than one. Oy.

And the best one, I think, is a friend of mine (more of a sister of a friend of a friend, but here I'll take all the friends I can get) and her boyfriend had just left the movie Catch and Release. They both were excited and were fumbling over each other to tell me that I was in that movie. Not only did a guy look like me, he even acted like me. We were one in both appearance and personality.

This man, of course, was Kevin Smith.

Out of all of my doppelganging, this is my favorite. I hate Jay and Silent Bob, and I never cared to see clerks, and I heard that Jersey Girl was terrible, but I like Kevin Smith.

Congratulations, Kevin Smith. . . the least you could do is send me some of that Clerks money. You owe me. . . I gave you your good looks and suave, smooth personality.

Why? Why do so many people "look like me?" I've given this quite a bit of thought and here are my conclusions.

Let's take any random, average guy.

Does he wear glasses? Check.

Does he have spikey hair of some sort? Check.

Does he have a goatee or other type of facial hair? Check.

Does he have brunette or dark hair? Check.

Does he often wear button-down shirts? Check.

Is he kinda chubby? Check.

Congratulations! He looks kinda like me!

FUN FACT: I can't roll my R's.

MUSIC SNOB: Read my Mind by The Killers

Phone Tag

2007-02-01T17:24:00.000-06:00

I've said several times that I'm really good at being "someone people used to know." It's very true. I don't know why. If I had some strange, freakish fear of using the phone I may have an excuse. But I don't. I enjoy talking to people. These are the people that I've grown close to over the years. So why do I struggle with keeping contact with them? I don't really have an answer. Nothing witty. No quip.

So I picked up the phone. I've started systematically calling the people that I haven't talked to in a long time (usually years).

I guess you could argue that it's less personal if I talk to a person in this context as opposed to picking up the phone and calling only them. Meh, not really. The fact that I'm calling at all shows that I give a crap. I could easily continue not talking to all these people.

So, if I haven't talked to you in a long time, don't worry. You're on the list.

Also, I suppose you could beat me to it if you wanted. 618-316-3237

EDIT: I feel the need to mention that the man in the pic is not me. Nope, not even close. I don't have a mullet or awesome 80's glasses.

A man can dream, though.

Also, new things coming.

Just play Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Just Stay. As Far Back. Against the Wall. As You Can.

2007-01-26T15:53:00.000-06:00

After going away to college and then going out on your own, actually coming back home and visiting is a surreal event. It's hard to sit there in your living room and pick up where you left off several months ago like you'd never left. Turning to your old favorite radio station is always somehow comforting. Sitting in your old bedroom, looking at all the old stuff you deemed wasn't important enough to take with you. . . it's strange. Almost unnerving.

Those living room conversations. "So, how have you been?"

How do you say "I'm doing more or less the same. I'm just in a different geographical area."? So you say, "Good." and nod a bit.

Driving around your old neighborhood is strange (Note to self: use a word other than strange for the rest of this entry ... "peculiar?"). I like to drive past all the old places I used to hang out and see if I can imagine in my head what it would feel like if I were still living at home and those places were still the places I hung around. Actually, I can almost do it, but just before that final image forms, it's ripped away and I'm back "visiting."

I think, deep down inside, subconsciously- that is, I'm jealous of my old friends that either went to school near home or came back home after school. I love my hometown. As much as I feel the need to get out there and experience new life in new places, I think this may just be a displacement or transference of the fact that I don't really want to leave. Something that concerned me about my "being in the ministry" is it's so rare that people actually pastor or work at a church in their hometown. Rather you talk to a pastor about what they've done so far, and usually they'll say "1 year in Virginia, 3 years in Oregon, 2 years in New Jersey..." etc. How do you lay down roots that way? Where is the stability?

I've gotten a bit ahead of myself. This was supposed to be a lighter entry (*cough*). So, I drive around and soak in "home" as much as I can when I have a chance. I swing by the "mall" and do a bit of walking around and check out which stores are still open (not many anymore.)

My senior year I worked at a Christian Bookstore in the mall. For some reason, any time I entered a Christian bookstore for the next year or so, I'd get a bit queasy. A couple of doors down there was a store, uh, opening?, where several stores set up for a few months but never made it and always closed. One of the more successful stores that set up inside the, uh, opening, was Rue 21.

If the store were laid out like a giant, square-faced clock, the guy's clothing would be from 6 O'Clock to 9 O'Clock. The girl's, clothes, though, were from 9 O'clock all the way around the clock face back to 6. In other words, yeah, they had guy clothes, but they were only in roughly one-fourth of the store and push together in the front corner. I was maybe 16 at the time and found a shirt or pair of jeans that I wanted. Because it was a new store, I wanted to try them on first. I asked one of the sales girls where the fitting rooms were and she pointed behind her.

If they made bathroom stalls for little people, that's what these would look like.

Since they had just opened, they didn't have any permanent fitting areas, so they had set up a few "booths" kinda out in the middle of the back of the store. I think to myself " Hmm. Okay." (Maybe I said it aloud.) and enter one of the "booths." As soon as I start to try on the new piece of clothing, I hear the door next to mine open and see a girl about my age or a little younger walk in. This is a bit odd to me at first, but I focus on putting on the shirt. Out of the corner of my eye I see two arms go up in the air and a shirt fly off of them.

Surely not . . . I couldn't quite finish the thought.

A sideways glance reveals a bare shoulder. Now, I'm not very tall. I'm just under 6 foot, mind you. Nothing extraordinary. But I can nearly see this girl changing. In the middle of the store. In the bare-bones co-ed dressing area.

I'm also standing in the middle of the stall. It wouldn't have been much effort to shuffle closer to the near wall and see everything if I were of that mind.

All I can think is Who's idea was *this*?

I decided quickly, yes, the shirt (or jeans) fit, and yes, I'm going to buy it. I shimmy back into my normal clothes and leave the poor girl alone. She had no idea how exposed she was.

Or maybe she was busy checking out my shoulders.

FUN FACT: I am actually quite good at skipping.

MUSIC SNOB: Eyes by Rogue Wave (It has a prominent roll in Just Friends!) Also, Hackensack by Fountains of Wayne (Also in Just Friends [a 2-for-1 deal!] ).

Christmastime is Here . . . Wait. Replace "Christmastime" with "My Screaming Mortality".

2007-01-25T10:45:00.000-06:00

I made the mistake of listening to the song "Christmastime is here" on the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack (I think, maybe one of my most prized possessions).

Big mistake, friends.

I think the first few months of the year are mildly depressing for me because I know that Christmas is as far away as it can possibly be.

I'm not one of those crazies that listen to Christmas music year round (I think I just lied) but it always seems to mean more outside of the traditional "Christmas season." And yet, when it really is Christmastime, it always seems so trite. Why is this? Is it because no other music is played, ever, anywhere during this time? The beautiful songs that tug mercilessly on heart strings are singing about this time, yet it seems so mediocre. Is it the saturation that kills it? Is it the Old Navy commercials with people jumping in and out of presents? Why don't I like Christmas music at Christmas time? Well, rather, I don't like it as much.

It doesn't have that quick pang that hits you center mass when you hear the first few notes of a great Christmas song.

But it's not Christmastime. It's now the "new year."

2007.

I graduated high school six years ago.

Where have I been? High school seemed to last so long, yet that was only 4 years.

It's been 10 years since my freshman year in high school.

If I had kept with the whole "orthopedic surgeon" thing, I would have been in the middle of Med School right now.

I'm a youth pastor, which I love. I'm doing what I know I'm supposed to do. I'm doing what I went to college to do. I'm doing what I dreamt about doing in high school. But, honestly, I feel vaguely unfulfilled.

Why?

Maybe it's because I'm about a month away from being 24. Which is one year away from 25.

A quarter of a century is me.

What have I done? Graduated college? Actually, no. I'm still working on my one, last, remaining class.

What have I created? A stack of half-thought out stories? A ream of melodramatic poems (blech. I hate poetry. Maybe just my own. Why do I write it, again?) Pages and pages of pretty decent story ideas that I'm too afraid of messing up by actually attempting to put them to paper? A good, healthy youth group?

Yeah, that last one. Everyone I talk to and everything I read says that that last one will really only happen with a good deal of time. Years. Who has that kind of time? I'm almost a quarter of a century old.

My own screaming mortality is challenging me to a staring contest.

I feel like I've been here a long time. In my mind was an image, I think, of a group of kids that were fundamentally different after just 6 months under my leadership. We've made some great strides, but I haven't lived up to my delusions of grandeur.

Actually, I'm just afraid I'll screw everything up some how.

Isn't that really what we're all afraid of ? About everything?

What could have been different? Could I have been more assertive? Done more with what has been provided me? Been more observant of the needs around me?

When I was a kid, every day seemed so long. I looked at my chubby face in the mirror and wondered what I'd look like as a man (answer: pretty much the same. More facial hair, though.) I saw the adults in my life and wondered if I would ever get there. With each day an eternity, would I ever actually become an adult, or would it be this intangible goal, past my grasp, well over the horizon of my life? They all seemed to have it together.

Sometimes I feel like I've missed something. Some key step that acts as that missing gear that gets the machinery up and running. After eternity days as a kid, something clicked over and sent my day-to-day into a rocketing snowball of time. Was there something that got lost in the fury?

No.

I know that it's just the way it is. For everybody, probably. Nobody's really got the answers. Not all of them.

We're all just doing the best that we can.

FUN FACT: I've collected knives since I was 5 years old. I remember that's when my dad gave me my first one; it was a Buck. I took it to the ditch (why???) and whittled a stick. Ah, memories.

MUSIC SNOB: "Quality Revenge at Last" by Hey Mercedes.

Coffeehouse Aggravations

2007-01-22T15:24:00.000-06:00

I'm really excited about tonight. We're starting a college group tonight at the local coffeehouse. It's going to be low-key and group discussion instead of preachy sermonic style. I've been leafing through some of my Bible College notes on Calvinism Vs. Arminianism (or predestination vs. free will, respectively, mostly). There's a few things that I wanted to brush up on, so I've been doing some research. First off, I have the worst note handwriting EVER. It doesn't help that I used "slow days" as an opportunity to practice my ambidexterity. Even with my left hand (that is, the one I normally write with) it's not that great. I didn't always sleep much at school, so every so often I'd find myself dozing off while writing notes. Whereas most people would stop writing when they fell asleep, no, not me. I'd keep writing, the line of ever-increasingly illegible letters finally trailing off of the page. One notable instance I had, in my sleep induced note-taking state, scrawled in big capital letters "PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST." Yeah, I'm not sure what I was dreaming, but I doubt it was about Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Bible College. It's a place where you can go. And then leave. And then rifle through notes taken in said period of time. And then wonder "Did I even go to class?"

FUN FACT:

My favorite smell is the body spray Love Spell by Victoria's Secret. That junk = catnip.

MUSIC SNOB:

Stereo by Audio Learning Center (on Cope Park album).

"You do what, now?" -- "What?" -- "YOU DO WHAT, NOW?"

2007-01-18T13:32:00.000-06:00

Who I met today:

A nearly deaf piano tuner.

I'm not even kidding.

I'm thinking of starting a couple of new bits in my blogs (The aspiring Conan O'Brien in me desperately wants me to have more "bits" in my life). I think I'll call them "Fun Fact" where I divulge a lesser known detail about myself, and "Music Snob" where I name a song that I don't think gets nearly enough attention (my inner hipster is radiating).

So, let's get this rolling:

Fun Fact!

I take every opportunity to use chopsticks when I eat. This includes eating at Asian/Japanese/Thai/Malay/Chinese/etc. restaurants where it is seen as normal and eating other types of food where it isn't (Salad! It's fun!)

Music Snob!

"Perfect Memory" by Remy Zero. One may remember this as the song played at the prom on the season 1 finale of Smallville (the only season that I watched).

Moms and Video Games

2007-01-18T08:45:00.000-06:00

When talking about video games, it's easy to identify the level of comprehension a mom has of the world of video games. The following statements are indicative of which level they are:

Level 1: Doesn't know much :: "He's playing Playstation." (It may still be possible that a kid could still be playing this thing. But that fact of the matter is that it's been nearly a decade and two generations of console gaming since we were all reeling over Playstation One Games.)

Level 2: Knows very little :: "He's playing Nintendo." (Unless he's 25 and playing a Nintendo for nostalgia's sake. . . no, no he's not.)

Level 3: Next to nothing :: "He's playing Nintendo Playstation." (I think I've heard my grandpa say this. It's so wrong that it's almost funny.)

**An important point to make is that it doesn't actually matter what the kid is playing. He could be playing a Wii or an Atari 2600, the answer would still be "He's playing Super Sony Nintendo Playstation."

Hitler Bat Bat Bat: A Bratch Original (Original Idea from Maddux)

2007-01-10T12:39:00.000-06:00

An Open Letter To the Collective Xanga Entity (Ironically not written on Xanga)

2007-01-02T13:20:00.001-06:00

Dear Xanga,

I am sorry that you're feeling so left out. It's a real shame what's happened. A few years ago, you were the man. The Man. You were edgy. Blogging wasn't yet a buzzword. People came to you and really opened up. "Like, today I totally talked to David and he was all 'What?' And I was all like 'huh?' LOL." These are the kind of gems that people filled your virtual pages with. But now, alas, you are a mere stepping stone to myspace. Anymore, it seems that the only thing written in you is " Sorry I haven't written in so long. I don't really use Xanga anymore. Myspace is teh rulz lol!!!!!1!!" At least people still overuse dumb abbreviations like LOL. It's not your fault that the internet culture passed you up for the culturally cliched Myspace. You, one of the biggest progenitors of online diary writing (C'mon, we both know that's all blogging really is) can't be blamed that Myspace and Youtube have been scooped up by society as the super-hot "it" thing. I am just as much to blame as anyone else. I barely even check on you, let alone write in you, because hey, facts are facts. The list of subscribers on the left side (conveniently set up for sorting by updated pages) hasn't moved substantially in a long time. I don't get comments anymore because nobody reads anymore.
Good night, Xanga. And good luck.

Aaron

I like Coldplay. . . just like everyone else

2006-12-16T10:19:00.000-06:00

It's true. I like Coldplay. I like Coldplay a lot. I've heard a couple of people state that to say you like Coldplay is to be musically weak. Everyone says they like Coldplay because it's easy to say that. They are a pretty mellow sound with lots of hooks and they're decent people . . . especially for a bunch of British guys (har har). I've long held that I really don't care what other people think about it; if I like it, I like it. I liked Good Charlotte for a while back when everyone else did. Sure, they weren't musically deep, but I liked them. No other reason. I liked Dashboard Confessional before most people did. Then the 14 year old girls of the country discovered him and it was just me and a bunch of 14 year old girls that looked at Chris Carrabba and thought "wow, I totally understand." I still like a lot of emo music. I don't listen to it exclusively (anymore [I went through an emo phase, I think, a little bit before it was trendy and marketable]), but I enjoy it every once in a while.

I think maybe my problem is the fact that I'm a sucker for a good hook. This is probably why I like All-American Rejects (first CD, mostly), Jimmy Eat World, and liked James Blunt (for the shortest time possible).

So. I consider Coldplay to be one of the top bands in my head. I don't really care if everyone else feels the same way.

That's up to them.

I Know Kung Fu

2006-12-15T01:06:00.000-06:00

I love Netflix.

I've started a run of Keanu Reeves flicks. Not because I think he's a great actor, but simply because I can. I've started with the Lake House and will move on to Constantine, and probably Bill and Ted after that. A good friend of mine, a guy, enjoyed the Lake House so I did not hesitate to put it first on my list.

I was not let down. I enjoyed the sci-fi/romance slant. For some reason, it received mostly bad reviews. A central vein for the negative reviews was the idea that there were inconsistencies with the plot. Some things were apparently hard to follow as well. My favorite part of this is that suspension of disbelief is steady for the entire premise of the movie "magic mailbox that opens to the future/past", and yet some plot points that weren't fully developed. . . that's just too much, apparently.

I liked it. I really did. The soundtrack had two Nick Drake's and a Paul McCartney. . . how could it be bad?

I can relate in a way. At least to one aspect of it. The idea of waiting, waiting, always waiting is something that seems so very real in my own life.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

2006-12-13T17:19:00.000-06:00

I have a confession to make.

In middle school it was popular to make your notebooks sparkling silver. To do so, one must carefully peel the paper part of a gum wrapper from the foil part. There's a shiny side and a dull side to the foil and you use your nail to apply the dull side to your notebook. It's silver gum-wrapper foil leafing at its finest.

My confession is this: I still do it.

Several weeks ago I was thinking about cinnamon gum (serious, who sits around and contemplates cinnamon gum?) and how you can lick the gum wrapper and stick it to your forehead. It burns. I found myself wondering what else you could do with gum wrappers. A bright epiphany reawakened this knowledge about gum wrapper leafing. Now I subconsciously slip all of my gum wrappers back into my pocket where I would have thrown them away several weeks ago. One of my notebooks is gleaming with the shiny shininess of something shiny (in this case, gum wrappers).

You'd think I was a thirteen-year-old girl.

Two more confessions: I love watching Frasier and real estate "flipping" shows on TV.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town ( HO HO HO)

2006-12-11T17:07:00.001-06:00

Santa Claus is world renown for giving out presents to children all over the planet. Now there are approximately two billion children in the world. However, since Santa does not visit every child in the world, a conservative estimate of those who are good reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million. At an average rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming that he travels from east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second or 1 every 1/1000th of a second.
The sum total distance traveled from house to house (with an average distance from each house being about .78 miles) leaves a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at a staggering 650 miles per second -- approximately 3,000 times the speed of sound.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 350 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional Reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" Reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them -- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons.
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance -- this would heat up the Reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of Reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the Reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire Reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to forces of 17,500 Gs. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing all of his bones and internal organs.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Untitled

2006-12-08T13:28:00.000-06:00

Jorja loved Peter. She loved him more than any other man she could think of. The only ones that even came close were her dad and grandpa Joe. Her dad was a bit distant but she knew he loved her. Grandpa Joe meant the world to Jorja. She remembered being picked up as a small child in the strong, war-scarred hands. Even still Peter was king of them all. He was the bad boy, the guy that people looked at and shook their head sadly when he flew by on his old motorcycle. Peter believed in living wildly. Always courteous to Jorja’s dad and grandpa, once out of the house his girlfriend could see the switch flip in his mind and he became the man she feared but mostly loved.
Jorja’s dad watched as she stormed out of the front door early in the morning. The low rumbling of Peter’s motorcycle sounded out in the driveway as Jorja’s dad, Ryan, swished the remaining orange juice in his glass.
“We both know that he’s a bad influence on her, Ryan, but we have to let her figure out on her own that he’s a damned fool.” Ryan’s father, Joe, stepped into the kitchen from the study. He continued wiping an oily carburetor from Ryan’s beaten-up LeSabre parked in the driveway.
When Jorja was little she loved watching her dad and Grandpa Joe tinker with cars. She stormed out of the house because her dad had suggested she stay home and help work on the car instead of go see Killer Mutilators 3 at the County 7 Theatre. Ryan rubbed his hands nervously as he thought about what she would be doing during the course of the day. It would be the third time she spent all day and most of the night with Peter.
“I know, dad. I guess I don’t want to lose her too...” Ryan trailed off as he cleared the knot in his throat and chased it with the remaining juice.
“You won’t. She’s smart, that one is.” Joe set the carburetor on the table and started washing the breakfast dishes. “I give her another week and she’ll open her eyes and see him for who he is.”
“I suppose so.” Ryan fiddle with the car part and wiped a single gray tear that collected below his eye.
Ryan had been entertaining a thought that kept his stomach on the verge of becoming unseated. Was he really scared of his daughter’s boyfriend? Surely not! He had ran several missions in Vietnam, saw things that no grown man should ever see, even though he was no more than a child at the time. He had lived in the household of Joseph Ferguson, long-time army combatant that saw action in WWII, Korea, and the beginning of Vietnam. His dad had run a tight ship of a household. Ryan looked back at it and secretly thanked him.

But despite all this, some days when Peter Hopkins came in to call on his daughter there was a look that Ryan caught for a mere moment. A look of icy malice. Was he just being overprotective? Maybe he wasn’t giving Peter enough credit or a chance to disprove his reputation. Ryan knew Peter’s father, the town sheriff. Both were cold men, Peter and Danny Hopkins. But Ryan shouldn’t be personally scared of the young boy. No, he decided, he was only concerned for his daughter. This conclusion helped him sleep at night.

Just as he had expected, Jorja hadn’t come home that night.
It was when she didn’t come home in the morning that Ryan Ferguson began to panic. He had called the theater and all of her favorite haunts. There was no word of her. Her friend that worked at the burger joint down on Washington street said she had come in with Peter at 10 PM and left an hour later. When Ryan called the Hopkins house Danny said that his son had come home around 2 or 2:30.
“Did he say anything when he got home, Danny?”
“Nope, sorry. I fell asleep in front of the TV last night and I heard him come in. He went right to bed and woke up about an hour ago to go play pool at McMurray’s with his stupid friends.” “Thanks for your help, Sheriff.”
“No problem, Ryan. Let me know when she comes home. I’m sure it’s no big deal.”

Ryan’s knuckles went white gripping the hard plastic of the phone. His head buzzed with accusations, theories, and cries to his God for mercy for his sweet little daughter. The screen door slammed much like it did the morning before as he ran to his battered green LeSabre. It fired right up thanks to the clean carburetor from the day before.

A heavy odor of smoke, body sweat and beer hung acridly in the air as Ryan stepped through the door of McMurray’s Tavern. It was 10:30 AM and the doors were open to anyone willing to play pool; even minors were allowed so long as they promised they were only there to shoot pool and not to drink. This of course was not the truth with Peter and his three scabby friends. Four half-empty beer bottles lined the sides of the stained green felt table. Many other bottles had been haphazardly lined up in the same manner and then knocked over in a drunken haze.
Ryan caught himself before speaking to them. All four boys were larger than he was and each had a belly full of drink that would deaden any pain Ryan might be able to inflict if the situation called for it. He expected one of the might have a knife; it was probably Peter himself. Being the Sheriff’s son, he got away with anything and everything, including underage drinking.
“Peter.”
“Hey, pops. Want to play some 9 ball?” Ryan caught a shine in his drunken eyes.
“No. Where’s my daughter? Peter, where’s Jorja?”
Peter snorted and spat in the corner. “I dropped her off around 1 or so. Why?”
“She never came home. What happened last night?”
“We went and saw the movie. It was pretty gay, if you ask me. Let’s see... drove around, ate at a diner, went to the park, came here for a few drinks, went to a burger joint, then, uh, I dropped her off.”
Ryan followed along in his mind. It didn’t add up.
Peter caught Ryan’s attention by offering to ask around.
Ryan nodded silently and pushed his way out the heavy oak door to the parking lot. As the LeSabre’s motor turned over, a tinny ringing started in Ryan’s pocket. He pulled out his phone as he pulled out of the gravel parking lot. The little display read “HOME”. Ryan caught his breath as he hoped desperately to hear his daughter’s voice once he pressed the SEND button.
“They found her, son.” It was Joe, his dad. His voice seemed a bit strained as though it were on the verge of tears.
“What? Who found her? Where? Is she alright?”
“Jerry Jones was driving down 98^th street when he saw something in the ditch.” Joe’s voice wavered. “It was her, son. It was Jorja.”
Ryan nearly swerved into oncoming traffic.
“She’s alive, but she’s in a bad way. They have her at Saint Mary’s. I’ll meet you outside."
Ryan said he was on his way before hanging up the phone but he wasn’t sure if it was aloud or in his head.

If Jorja’s dad had counted, he would have noticed he broke seven traffic laws on his way to the hospital on the other side of town. He wasn’t counting, though, but was thinking in fragments, doing his best to stay on the distorted road that he could barely see through the tears. No... not her too... Cindy, now her... I won’t let her go... Oh, God...
The LeSabre hopped the curb as Ryan Ferguson threw it into park outside St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital. This was one of the few times that Ryan had ever seen his father openly cry. Joe was standing just outside the door with a wrinkled kleenex in his hand and damp tear marks on his sleeve. Ryan caught Joe crying when his dad’s wife had died of breast cancer, When Jorja’s mother lost her battle with leukemia, and now this time with Jorja.

They went up to the second floor, room 17. The sight of all of the tubes that were connected to his little daughter screamed out to Ryan. Desperately he wanted to look away but couldn’t bring himself to do so. A young doctor with a stethoscope and a chart walked in and told the two men how she was faring. She was asleep; the doctor explained that she was most likely in a coma due to strangulation. Deep purple marks hideously crossed her petite neck.
“Will she wake up?”
“We think so. It seems that whoever did this had his way with her and then choked her until she stopped moving.”
Ryan’s knees played at buckling. “I’m sorry, did you say had his way?”
“Yes, I’m sorry to say that your daughter was raped. There was a lot of damage.” The young doctor paused a moment. “She might not be able to bear children in the future.”
Jorja’s dad and Grandpa Joe stood over the white hospital bed listening to what the doctor was telling them. It was hard to take it all in.
Several minutes later a police officer came in and jotted down all the information he needed. He assured them that the assailant would be apprehended with haste and tipped his hat as he backed out the door.
Ryan filled out the proper paperwork. The doctor gave the same assurance and stated that he would leave them with the girl for a moment while he filed the documents.
Joe stood at the foot of the bed, not daring to go nearer, perhaps thinking that the closer he got the more damage might be inflicted. Jorja’s father nearly ran the length of the small room and pressed his flushed face against her own bloodied cheek. He could feel a faint trickling of breath against his skin and mouthed a small prayer, either for her benefit or condemning the God that would let this happen to his baby girl. He half-laid there several minutes more just soaking in her presence.
His stomach gurgled and he realized that he had not eaten yet. The doctor came back to check up on them and soon he found himself heading toward the hospital cafeteria with his father in tow.
Ryan and Joe sat down to plates of snotty mashed potatoes and gravy. The thick metal spoon swirled the gravy and never found itself heading toward Ryan’s mouth.
“Why didn’t we say anything to the doctor or police officer about Peter?”
Ryan let slip the fork with a loud clang. “Where have you been, dad? No one would believe it was the sheriff’s son!”
“Sure they would! No one is above the law, you know that.”
“Remember when that trucker was found nearly beaten to death at the truck stop on I-73? A few people that were there said that Peter was trying to steal the trucker’s rig when the trucker came out of the stop. Those people were hushed quickly and if I remember correctly everyone was okay with the case being unsolved! Don’t you get it? He can get away with murder because everyone is afraid of his dad! He just about got away with murder here, too. With my daughter!” Ryan’s bony fist plowed down onto the table, sending forks flying and eyes in the room darting away.
“Calm down son. Trust in the law. It’s what we can rely on.”
Ryan wiped flung potatoes from his shirt as he shook his head in disbelief, anger, and a little fear.

Several days went by. Jorja was still unconscious but was breathing more steadily and showing signs of recovery, the doctor reassured Ryan. The police had looked into the matter and resolved it quickly with a conjecture that it was a trucker that was passing through. There was nothing on Jorja’s person that could be linked to anybody through DNA. Nothing. The only thing they had was the shape of the hand marks on her neck; the assailant’s large thick hands were the only evidence they could pull from both the body and the scene where she was found. The police were happy with their findings and considered it a closed case. “Just be happy that she’s alive.” The police officer had told Ryan. A fiery furnace burned in Ryan’s core. The man in the blue uniform and the badge might as well have spit in Ryan’s eye.

The pastor from the Lutheran church on Walnut Street stopped by one evening. He had fluffy graying hair that drooped down to his Roman collar and brushed against the big round metal glasses he wore. Jorja had attended the church with a friend rather regularly. Ryan himself never really went but still considered himself a believing man. Well, he did anyway. Pastor Dobbins had tried to console him, saying that we can’t question God’s purpose or the things that happens in the world. By the time Dobbins was quoting from the book of Job Ryan chased the small man out of the house with a nine iron that he had pulled out of the closet. He had had enough. Sitting there listening to the man’s message of loving neighbors and perfect plans had set his insides on fire. The only thing that he could think of doing was wash out that fire with another. He pulled a bottle of cheap brandy from the cupboard and started drinking it without a glass.

Grandpa Joe found Ryan with a half-empty bottle of brandy on the floor by the television. Black and white reflections danced on the bottle as the images from the 50’s music collection infomercial played silently on the TV. Joe pulled his son to the couch and poured him a glass of juice.
Ryan groaned. A huge brandy-flavored jackhammer was pounding in his head. The last thing he remembered was calling out to Jorja and her mother, who were standing in the doorway. Peter came up behind them and cracked both of their skulls with a rusty tire iron. The teen dropped the bloodied metal instrument and it landed with a dull thud on the bodies of the women that Ryan loved. He tried to get up to stop Peter, but the brandy had turned into glue and kept him in place on the floor. The murderous Peter started laughing, showing perfectly white teeth. The grin grew until Ryan was staring at a laughing skull. A howling shriek shot off in his head, then his father had awoken him.
Ryan’s stomach lurched as he remembered the dream. “Dad, what are we gonna do?”
Joe sat there for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe the cops have it right with the trucker theory.”
“No it was Peter. I feel it. More intense than anything I’ve ever known. His story didn’t seem legit.”
“The police thought it did.”
“Of course they did! Sheriff Hopkins can make their life a living hell if he wanted to.”
Ryan’s eyes glanced over to a Harley Davidson magnet on the refrigerator.
“The motorcycle! He said he dropped her off at 1 AM. I was here in the living room waiting up on her. I uh, fell asleep but the motorcycle would have been loud enough to wake me up. He lied about that...what else did he lie about?”
Joe nodded slowly. “Well, while you think about that I’m going to go see Jorja. I pray every morning that today’ll be the day she wakes up. Maybe today’s the day.
Joe Ferguson walked out the door and drove away. Ryan buried his face in his trembling hands. If only he weren’t so petrified of Peter. In his mind he danced around the idea of taking the law into his own hands but when it really came down to it, that wasn’t the sort of man he was. Ryan sobbed into his brandy soaked hands. It was the only thing he could do.

The first thing Joe noticed when he pulled into the parking lot was the old black motorcycle. Peter’s motorcycle. Joe raced up to the second floor and halfway down the hall to room 17. Sure enough Peter was in there, standing over Jorja’s body. The door was cracked and Joe pressed his ear to the door to hear was he was saying.
“Hey baby. How you feeling? We had a pretty crazy night, didn’t we? It was our big night, the night we finally would, well you know. I’ve been waiting months for you to get around to a point where I wouldn’t get slapped for bringing it up. So you see why I just couldn’t take no for an answer when you backed out at the last second? We were there, honey. We were drunk, we were ready, but you go and prude out on me. How could you do that to me, babe?” The teen stopped to brush the matted hair from her face. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but I have needs. I think you’d understand. You know, you squealed a little but you were a good girl after a little while. Becca and Rachel, they never stopped screaming.” Peter’s face shone as a wry grin slid open. “I didn’t tell you about Becca and Rachel? I had them before you came along. I didn’t wait so long for them, damn prude you are, and luckily they stayed quiet. They’re still quiet, actually, out in Green Acres cemetery. Those truckers and their libidos, harming young girls and leaving them for dead. That’s a pretty good story. Shifts the blame pretty well. Either way, nobody’s gonna point a finger at me. That’s the important part. We’re not gonna tell our little secret, are we?” Peter dipped low and whispered into her ear. Joe fought to catch what he said. “You better hope you never wake up.”
A nurse came to the door and Joe stood, motioning for her not to say anything. She walked into the room and greeted Peter, who introduced himself as Jorja’s boyfriend. Joe stood just outside the door, listening. Peter told the nurse that he was going to stay with her for a little while because he was concerned for her. Joe had already seen himself in his mind throwing the door open and rushing the teen, beating him mercilessly. But Joe walked away. Feverish, burning embers threatened to scorch his soul. As he passed nurses and patients in the hall he half expected them to gasp at the flames that poured from his body.
Joe knew that he had driven home because he stood at the front door, though he didn’t remember doing so. Pure hatred ravaged his insides. Its heat seethed through his veins and seemed to billow from both his eyes and the toothy grimace that he now wore. Inside, he passed a mirror that told him that he looked the same as always, but he knew that he was different, forever blighted by rage. He rummaged around in the closet just off his study until he found what he was looking for. He could faintly feel the cold steel against his skin as he walked out to his car.

The motorcycle was still in the parking lot when Grandpa Joe returned to St. Mary’s. He quietly glided up to Jorja’s room and found himself standing above the form of Peter Hopkins. The boy had fallen asleep on the couch by the bed. Only a quiet “wake up” escaped from the old man’s pursed lips but Peter stirred sluggishly. Joe watched from somewhere deep within as he began kicking the leg of the couch until Peter was fully awake. The normally boisterous teen wet himself as an old Colt .45 was pressed against his flat nose. On the other end was Jorja’s grandpa. Peter’s and Joe’s faces were mirrored in the same ugly grimace, Peter’s of sheer terror and Joe’s of ripe bloodlust.
Joe’s lips moved again. “I woked you up because I wanted you to know who killed you.”
Peter would have begged if something cold hadn’t already touched his temple and sprayed blood all over the room.

EXCERPT FROM SHELBYVILLE CHRONICLE

– Joseph Ferguson was arrested today for the shooting death of 19 year-old Peter Hopkins, son of county sheriff Danny Hopkins. Ferguson stepped into the hospital room at St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital where his granddaughter was being treated and Hopkins was sleeping. Ferguson awoke the teen before firing his Army issued semi-automatic pistol that he had carried during his service in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Authorities say he stopped to reload the pistol twice, putting 20 bullet holes in the teen and one in the wall. Officer Roy Mendez says that it was a gruesome sight. On-sight security officers came into the room and subdued Ferguson who did not offer any resistance. Ferguson admitted to shooting Hopkins at the scene of the crime. Ferguson accused Hopkins of raping his granddaughter and leaving her to die. Authorities quoted the man saying, “I’ll gladly rot in hell knowing that this son of a [expletive] won’t be doing this to any other girls.” –

P.S. I despise Blogger's formatting system. Why do I spend hours creating indents (why do I have to do this in the first place? Shouldn't indentations typed in Word transfer over easily into Blogger) just for the to disappear when I post?

Kid Games, Zombies, and Terrorists

2006-12-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

Being an only child, you develop ways to keep yourself entertained. I had a ton of toys: X-Men, GI Joe, He-Man, Ghostbusters, Pirates of Dark Waters, Exo Squad, and a lot of lesser known toys. Whenever I went over to one of my best friend's house, he and his brother, who had many similar toys, would "play" by banging them together, chest to chest, arms flailing. the image was similar to a caveman slamming two rocks together furiously in a futile attempt to spark a fire. I did not understand what was going on, why they were fighting, what they were trying to accomplish, nor how they stayed intact after long hours of grinding "fighting." They didn't have names, desires, agendas, inventory, anything. They were just man-shaped plastic bricks. When I played, however, I set up intricate scenarios, complete with previously said components (names, desires, agendas, inventory, everything).

In other words, I made up my own RPG games years before I ever knew what one was.

In the car, I'd play another game in my mind. At the time Super Mario Bros. was still a strong column of adolescent pop culture (that and Nickelodeon! Pump Sneakers! Legends of the Hidden Temple! JTT!). As we made our way down the road, I'd see a little Mario-type man running alongside the car. He'd jump from fence to fence, climb hand over hand on power lines, pick up a "stop sign powerup" and use it to hit telephone poles for extra points. After a few years he leveled up and was strong enough to push the telephone poles over and had Spiderman-like abilities that enabled him to stick to the sides of other cars. This opened up a whole new world for him: the entire highway.

Going to the store as a kid was always dreadful. Luckily, I had another mind game to take care of that. Over the course of the two or so hours that we shopped for the week's food, I'd be busy in my mind. The entire store was my playground. I'd pick up cans and throw them. My super strength allowed me to swing shopping carts with ease. Inevitably we'd walk past the outdoor supplies and I'd pick up a rake and go swinging in the next aisle. Everything was usable. Everything was a weapon.

I love video games. I always have. There's a video called Dead Rising that I wish I had. It's only on the latest XBox system, and I only have the last generation XBox so I cannot play it. I have played it at a friend's house and I love it. Did you ever see the movie Dawn of the Dead? It's the same premise. You're stuck inside a mall that's teeming with zombies. Luckily every item in every store can be used to defend yourself. Everything is a weapon. Chairs, CDs, potted plants, baseball bats, shopping carts (!), plates, even cans of soda. When I first played it, I thought to myself:

this is my childhood.

The best part, though, is in a way I still do this. I worked for six months at Sears in the Lawn and Garden section. I was an okay lawnmower salesman. The fact that I had never field-stripped one worked against me because almost every customer was a grizzled old farmer that wanted to know the torque of every tractor or how to remove the solenoid. C'Mon man, look at me. I'm just a punk kid that's been told a very limited list of specs on each tractor. I haven't built one. I just sell them.

On Saturdays, Sears' policy was that everybody employed must have a full shift. In the corporate office this looked like a good way to increase customer service on "busy" Saturdays. In the real world this was anything but productive. While there were more customers on Saturday, the four or five customers would be with salesmen while the other ten or eleven of us would just be standing around. Then every customer that walked through our area would be belted with ten or eleven "can I help you find anything? Trimmer? Chain saw? Something else you don't need?" 's . This does not make for a happy customers.

Needless to say, I had plenty of time to stand around and think on Saturdays. I found myself thinking about September 11th and terrorist attacks. And then I thought "what if terrorists attack us? What if they attack Sears, in Springfield, Missouri?" I decided I'd have to be ready. Luckily, the Lawn and Garden section had much to offer in this way. The little guy in Dead Rising would be right and home here and would be proud of me. I started with the basic axes and sledgehammers, then figured a good swing with a chainsaw would still hurt even though we didn't have any gasoline to fire it up (mental note, buy small can of gasoline to put under counter . . . just in case). Some of the weed trimmers are pretty heavy and would be effective if swung backwards, the engine at the end of a long metal pole. The tillers would be perfect. They're heavy and have a mouth full of jagged tines. I think I could swing one of the push mowers pretty well if I had to.

I may have to level up before I try. I wouldn't want to have a critical failure and lose HP.

TVs and Waterbeds

2006-12-06T15:36:00.000-06:00

I've got it in my head that I need a new TV. In the off-chance that someone comes over and watches something on my little TV, they usually comment on one thing.

My speakers buzz like nothing else.

I've gotten used to it. I don't even notice it anymore. Every once in a while there's a pitch that really sets it off. Otherwise, it's a nonissue. Except when other people watch my TV, then it's a conversation starter. But come on, we're watching a movie, don't try to start a conversation, even if it is about the TV itself. Actually, I am generally a talker during movies and such. Unless it's one of those movies where everyone is trying their best to talk in some goofy accent (e.g. the Blood Diamond preview. Oh Leonardo, You're not foreign. You don't even sound foreign) and I'm trying my best to decipher the muddy dialogue. Christmastime a few years ago found us watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at a friend's house. We were all familiar with it, so we more or less talked through it. I'm particularly found of making quips at the TV (e.g. Mystery Science Theater 3000) so I was in my element. A very good friend of mine (the owner of many awesome quirks and idiosyncrasies) got up near the end citing undone homework as the reason for him leaving. One of the girls, ever the empath, asked if our talking was the real reason.

His response? "No . . . but you were." Translation: "No . . . well, yes."

His tone was impeccable. Agitated yet gracious. Irked but accepting. Classic Knepper.

My little Magnavox TV set shouldn't feel bad. True, it buzzes. But it's old. Not "get up and turn the knob to change the channel" old but old enough. I think I got it for Christmas or my birthday when I was nine or ten. Its sitting there in my mind, right next to the bed. My childhood self flips it on for a few minutes and changes the channels. I stop on CBS and hear myself say in my own, young, lilting voice:

"Wow, I'm up really late. Really late. Letterman's giving his monologue."

I'm not sure what bed it was sitting next to at the time, but at one point it was a waterbed. In retrospect I have to wonder . . . why? Why waterbeds? Nothing good comes from sleeping on a waterbed. Little to no back support, thundering sloshing noises with every move, and the ever-threatening possibility of replicating that scene in Edward Scissorhands. Either way, my parents gave me their old waterbed when they wised up and bought themselves a real bed. The waterbed was a queen, I think. As a kid, queen-sized beds are huge. I was a big kid, but I remember laying down and trying my hardest to stretch my legs and arms as far as possible to reach the edges. We traded that bad boy in and got me a twin-sized bed.

In college, people complained about how small the beds were in the dorm rooms. I always just shook my head; I've been sleeping in a small bed most of my life. A bed just big enough to roll from one side to another. That's all. I got into a strange habit of squeezing myself into the crack between the wall and the side of my bed ( I think this started, though, when I had the waterbed. I would squeeze in between the bed bladder and the wooden bed frame [I'm surprised I never killed myself this way] ). Every once in a while, I'll sit sleeping up. This is mostly when I eat late at night and get heartburn.

I now have a queen-sized bed (technically it's a "full," I think). I can more or less reach the edges now. It's funny though. I'm not married or anything so I only use one side of the bed. I try to utilize the other side as much as possible, but it's a futile effort. I keep my two blankets (a really thin one and a thicker comforter) over there for when it gets cool enough over night to need it. I keep my other pillow there to put against the wall if I sit up and sleep for a bit. If I had a stuffed animal or a real dog (or a wife) they'd probably be there, but I don't, so they're not (okay, not really on the stuffed animal part).

So my point is this: I need a new TV and a wife.

Maybe It's Her Smile

2006-11-22T09:14:00.000-06:00

A precedent has been set. The posting of lyrics, most likely assumed to be a one-time event, is near to my heart and I will take this opportunity to run with this idea.

I used to write lyrics down on paper and carry them around in my Trapper Keeper ( yeah! Trapper Keeper! I've missed your velcro music). I think I was hoping people would think that they were mine. This only happened once. I had the lyrics to Here Comes the Rain by the Mavericks, a 50's rock/country fusion song, and I set it gently on top of my Trapper Keeper. One of the most attractive seventh graders ( I think it was in seventh grade) picked it up and read through it. She said she liked it and asked if it was mine. I lied lied lied and said it was. I remember her smile as she asked if she could keep it. Of course you can. I wrote it for you.

Not true.

I've always loved music. My little boombox was on every hour of every day. It was on while I was away at school and it was on while I slept. The fact that the radio was on while I slept presented interesting situations. I would be playing Sega Genesis (or later on, Playstation) and I would hear a commercial come on the radio and I'd have wicked, wicked deja vu. After a few times I realized that the commercials that were playing were also playing at night, and I realized that someone in my dreams had said the exact same words as those being said in the commercial.

Music is a funny thing. I grew up listening to country and oldies. I don't listen to country anymore, but there's a seven year window (or so) where every country song released during that period I could name the singer, name of the song, and album during the intro. Therefore, I still have a lot of old country on my computer for the sole purpose of nostalgia. When I listen to these songs, I am whisked away to an idealized remembrance of my childhood.

None of the horrible times, none of the boring times, only the warm fuzzies.

There are specific songs and CDs (Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl, K. T. Oslin's 80's Ladies, and Huey Lewis and the New's If This is It) that if I listen to it I can close my eyes and quite clearly see my eight-year old self sitting on our old blue couch in the summer. The window is open and a faint, cool breeze is blowing. I feel the curves and angles of the X-men toy in my hand as I look outside and see my dad outside washing the car. My mom, she's in the kitchen cleaning. My dog is still alive and young enough to run circles around the dining room table. My parents probably still loved each other.

Warm fuzzies.

There are some songs that work adversely. For the longest time I couldn't listen to Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's It's Your Love. It was "our song" and it was the longest and oddest relationship I've been in to this day. Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" was one of the songs that played prominently at my brother's memorial service. I still can't bring myself to listen to the whole thing.

So, as mentioned, there's a song that's been nagging on me. It's by a now defunct (to my knowledge) Christian band that never really made it anywhere. I created a myspace music page in order to put it on my own myspace page (forgive me, O wrathful myspace gods).

Doubting Thomas' Maybe It's Her Smile

Maybe it’s her face
No makeup at all
As she tells me she’s not beautiful

Maybe it’s her hair
Soft, golden, and wind-blown
As we drive through the streets of town
It could be all these things
But I think it’s her smile

Maybe it’s her laugh
Or when she throws back and sighs
Or her eyebrows when I do
Something stupid

Maybe it’s her smell
The lotion she wears
Or how my hands smell like
Country Pear for days
You know it could be all these things
But I think mostly it’s her smile

Because I love to see her smile
Back at me
And I know she
Is happy

Maybe it’s her touch
The feel of her hands
When she puts her tiny fingers
In mine
Maybe it’s her eyes
Gently searching my soul
Still nothing stirs me
Like when I see those lips roll
And I see her smile

Because I love to see her smile
Back at me
And I know she
Is happy.

Fünf Jahre

2006-11-20T09:00:00.000-06:00

Over five years later, it's odd to think about September 11th. It's strange to think that it was five years ago. One of the things about it personally is the fact that I had graduated the May before it happened. That means it's been over five years since I've graduated high school. Anxiously we spend our whole lives with the goal in mind: that fine, glorious day when we take our last breaths as charges of the local school district (I had considered writing "scool" as a bit of irony, but decided against it [then again, I did just do it] ) and are no longer governed by others concerning our scholastic well-being. I have accomplished the goal. The main effort was simply enduring time and certainly not any amply mental exertion. And yet I took a good deal of pride when I walked across that platform.

Now I am at the crest of college graduation. With a single class left to take and having taken a full time position, I consider myself functionally finished with college. Four or five more years down the road I may very well find myself returning for my Master's, but right now I'm done. I don't plan on going back to school and walking to get my degree documentation. Last year I watched as my class walked and that was good enough for me (when, in fact, was actually the class after mine, but I came in with them [oh the joys of community college] ).

Speaking of September 11th (we were?), it's a bit strange that "September 11th" is the accepted name across the world's collective unconscious (thanks, Jungy). Not "Manhattan attacks," not "the World Trade Center Disaster," or "the day the earth stood still," just simply "September 11th." It was such a momentous occasion that it needs no other clarification. Occasionally it is referred to as September 11th, 2001, but this is mostly unnecessary. Any other past events that happened will forever live in the shadow of this one gargantuan event. C'mon, other Sep. 11th happenings, get with program.

Are there any other events that are so world-shaking they are simply known by the day on which it happened? Nothing comes to mind. December 7th is well known as the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (only if you paid attention in your history classes) but the accepted name for this event is "Pearl Harbor" not "December 7th." I of course could be missing some, but my point is this: five years later it's easy to brush it under our mental rugs. It was, after all, five years ago. It is the Pearl Harbor of our generation. But it really trumps Pearl Harbor in the fact that the attack on December 7th, 1941 was on military units, whereas Sep. 11 was an attack on civilian units and rescue workers. Over the course of the past five years we've all heard the observations and comparisons so I won't rehash it.

A few days after it happened, the country was still more or less shut down. Shops were beginning to reopen and the news reports (which we were all watching night and day) advised against travel and going to places with large gatherings of people. My family and I took our lives in our own hands and we went to Silver Dollar City in Southern Missouri (almost an amusement park like Worlds of Fun or Six Flags but with much less rollercoasters and much more food and hillbilly atmosphere). Every year for ten years (maybe longer) we headed down there and that year wasn't going to be any different. The thing I noticed first about the trip were the flags.

Remember when everybody had flags flying? The park had a row of maybe forty or fifty in a row as you walked in. In place of the normal hillbilly music in the loudspeakers, patriotic themes were blasting as the flags waved. I remember feeling my heart swell a bit and a tear came to my eye. I say all of this to bring up the thing that I've actually been thinking about lately:

Remember when patriotism was a fad?

Snap Crackle Pop

2006-11-17T17:35:00.000-06:00

Okay. For nearly a year I've wanted a turntable/record player. Not to wicky wicky wicky like a DJ, but to actually play records. I told my dad this and he snickered, "Why would you want a record player? They crack and pop and don't sound as good. Get the CD." Since I was born in 1983 CD's have more or less always been available. They're just not a big deal to me. Yeah, it sounds clear, it always has. But there's something unmistakable about listening to a record. Maybe it's knowing that this is how it was originally heard. Maybe the ambient fuzz adds something. I dunno. But I love it.

I've been blessed by a record player recently. Not only can I play records, but I can also plug my PS2 and XBox into the speakers. You see, I've had the same TV since I was 9 or so. I remember laying down one night and turning it on and seeing that Letterman was starting his monologue and thinking to myself, "wow, I'm up really late." That's how long I've had this TV. The speakers buzz pretty bad but it's been several years since I've noticed it.

It bugs everybody else, though.

So the record player/tape deck/receiver remedy that problem. I can play Guitar Hero without the buzzing (which, incidentally, is different from records because that's not how it's intended to sound).

The first record I bought was a Record Book of Night and Day, the Cole Porter Musical. It has several other Cole Porter songs as well. The only problem with this is it's a 78. . . and my player only jives with 33 and 45 rpm. oh well, I'll save it for some rainy day where I acquire a 78 player.

I just returned from an antique store with several more. Here's what I've scored so far:
Elton John Rocket Man 45
Wings With a Little Luck 45
The Romantic Music of Rachmaninoff (unbelievable. . .but the back side is scratched pretty hardcore)
This Is Broadway's Best (stuff from Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Kiss Me Kate, etc. But most importantly it has Tonight from West Side Story)
Bing Crosby tells and sings How Lovely Is Christmas (Half spoken story, half Christmas songs... and it's Bing!)
The Jimmy Swaggart Christmas Spirit (I couldn't pass this one up)
The Best of Chuck Mangione
BJ Thomas Raindrops keep falling on my head: from the motion picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I think I'm going to go out again tomorrow and see what I can find.

I really don't have any witty quips tonight. I just want to listen to some Rachmaninoff.

Bratch

No Witty Title

2006-11-16T20:01:00.000-06:00

I had planned on visiting my peeps down in the SPR today (that is, my friends in Springfield, MO). It was college days and my old youth Pastor, Doug Reed, the man who helped form the man I am today, is the speaker. Unfortunately, I had coffee with dinner last night (a late dinner) and couldn't go to sleep until after midnight. 3 30 AM (the time that I was to leave in order to have as much SPR time as possible) came very quickly and I knew that even with a ridiculous amount of coffee in my belly (coffee- this is all your fault) I wasn't up to the six hour drive. Plus it was still storming outside and that was a double whammy, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. I now wish that I would have sucked it up and gone anyway, but deep down I feel a bit relieved because I had so much that I was going to try to cram in two days as possible: hearing Doug Reed speak at the college days events, spending quality time with one of my best friends (since one is in China, this is a very small category), getting my yearbook from last year (some people aren't into those, but I can't help myself. . . it's a glimpse into a year of my life . . . even though I'm never in it), shopping for records (I'm a record guy now. . . did I tell you that?), having coffee two different times with two different people (girls) who may not want to have coffee with me in the first place, buying my hair product (Murray's pomade. . . they don't have it at my Walmart here because they don't have an African-American hair care products section . . . racists.), eat at my two favorite restaurants (Thai House, Adobe bar and grill), pick up my deposit money from my old roommate's parents, give my mailbox key back, meet with my mentor (the director of Student ministries @ CBC), maybe flirt with some of the CBC girls (who am I kidding, I didn't do it the three years I was there, I wouldn't do it now), and find the time to play some Guitar Hero 2.

Yeah, I'm okay with sitting here in my jammies watching Scrubs on the internet.

EDIT: Also, I have found candy corn to be quite tasty (and for dinner).

Murphy's Law

2006-11-15T12:40:00.000-06:00

About a month ago I went with an acquaintance/friend to St. Louis. It was a Friday and he appeared in the office just before I left and asked if I wanted to go with him to a thing. Seems the St. Louis Christian College (I think that's the name) brought in Ryan Dobson to speak at a pseudo-college days event. I spend a lot of time by myself, so I quickly accepted this invitation and we left. Ryan Dobson, son of famed Pastor/author James Dobson, was pretty interesting to listen to. He's originally from California and it shows. Thick, black plastic fashion glasses (not the Rivers Cuomo type, the "I assume he's secure enough with his image to wear those strangely proportioned glasses" type) were in the middle of his face and giant black plugs stretched his earlobes into little fleshy hula hoops all while wearing a tight button down shirt with some stylish print of a woman's face (no doubt made by Diesel or some other company that looks at the likes of Express clothing with contempt [this is a really long sentence] ). I've known several Californians in college. They all have more or less the same air and attitude, especially when exposed to the Midwest. Which is fine, I actually liked the guy.

But this story isn't about Ryan Dobson.

We were originally going to crash that night at the school with my friend's (we'll call him Matt [mostly because that's his name] )friend. We ended up just leaving that night. The thing was over at 10:30 or so and neither of us had eaten dinner, so we decided to stop and get something to eat somewhere we don't have at home. I suggested Chevy's (my favorite Mexican restaurant [really thin chips and chipotle style salsa {drool} ] ), so we head out trying to get there. I think I made a mistake by suggesting something we weren't immediately near.

It was the little pebble kicked down the hill that starts the avalanche in all the cartoons.

We start in the north side of St. Louis and somehow we end up on the south side heading west. Living in Illinois (and so is Chevy's), this is obviously a problem. I tell Matt to take the next exit, whatever it is, and we'll use it to turn around and undo whatever wrong turns we took.

But of course it is one of those interstate off-ramps that you can get off the highway but you can't get immediately back on. You have to play the "Where the crap is the on-ramp???" game. Being a good two hours away from home still, I tell Matt to find a place we can ask how to get back on the highway. At this point it is well after 11:30 and wherever we are (we literally have no clue where we are) Taco Bell is the only thing still open. So we pull through the drive-thru and ask for directions. The guys working there (bright shining beacons of society that they are) are confused that we didn't order food but still give most of an answer. As we're pulling away, we hear a sharp hiss like air being let out of a really big balloon. Matt looks out the window to see if we ran over some kind of air hose (what???) and doesn't see anything. So we pull away, and sure enough (you've probably seen this coming) there's a metallic ding ding ding and a thwop thwop thwop (this is fun) as we roll. Matt gets out but doesn't see anything. Hoping for the best, we get back onto the side road and Matt gives his little truck some gas. You don't have to be very smart to guess what sound we were still hearing.

I tell Matt to pull over again. We pull over in a little closed K-Mart parking lot. I get out and check the tire myself. In the middle of the tire was embedded a nail with a head the size of a nickel. Great. I think to myself, how could this get any worse?

If I only knew.

A year or so ago I realized that I didn't know how to change a tire, so I asked my dad if he could show me. I thought it would be a good bonding experience since he's a car guy. His response to the question? "You don't need to know how to do that nowadays." Thanks, Dad.

Something worth mentioning is the fact that neither Matt nor I are very "handy." He had never changed a tire before. I did change a tire, but only with a lot of help from my roommate. I get the truck up on the jack somehow and with great effort we get the lug nuts off the tire (apparently you're supposed to take them off while the car's on the ground . . . that would have been much easier.) and Matt gets the spare out of the truck. As I'm about to slide the spare onto the axle, I can't help but think "With the way that everything's been going, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't fit."

I really wished I hadn't said that.

Sure enough, it didn't fit. I tried it three times, once even backwards just in case. Nope. I can't imagine a scenario where you would end up having the wrong size spare. But somehow Matt did just that.

As simple as that we were stranded.

He calls his dad to come pick us up and we go back to Taco Bell to get something to eat because it is nearly midnight and we have yet to eat dinner. Taco Bell has a policy of not serving you if you walk up to the drive-thru window. Unfortunately, we didn't really have any choice because the lobby was closed. Matt walks up and motions to the guy to open the window. After a few "I'm not supposed to" looks, the guy opens the window. Matt explains our situation to the guy and asks if we could get something to eat. We don't think that this is too much of a stretch. After all, we picked up the giant nail in their parking lot. After a bit of coaxing they let us come in and wash the road grime off our hands and get a burrito. The funny thing is they make us stay by the door because they're afraid this is all a ruse to rob them. Sorry, Bucko, this is for real.

Matt gets a call from his dad telling him that he's not coming and Matt should just get a tow truck. Matt calls information and gets one. He has to hand the phone to one of the employees to tell them where we are because, remember, we have no clue where we are stranded. We kept asking the guy where we were and the best answer he could give us was "St. Louis County." Thanks, buddy. That really narrows it down.

We take the burritos (not Chevy's, but at this point I'd eat anything) and go back to the parking lot where the truck is. One of my favorite things about the night is us sitting by the truck up on a jack and one of those giant street sweeper cars pulls into the other side of the parking lot. After a few minutes it passes by us and I catch eyes with the big Hispanic man that's driving it. I could tell that he could care less about our predicament, especially when he drives right past us without slowing.

The tow truck comes finally and we tell him our situation. Basically, there's nothing he can do. The only thing he can do is tow us to a nearby tire place that will be open in the morning. We do just that, and the guy feels bad for us and doesn't charge us anything. Matt gets the idea to call his buddy at the school to come and get us and we'll just stay the night there like we had originally planned.

His friend calls back and says that he doesn't have access to a car.

At this point we're up against a wall. What are we going to do? Where are we? Is it even 50 degrees out here? I think about calling my friend who lives near the college. I saw her for two or three minutes that night, but other than that I haven't really seen her in two or three years. As I'm about to call (mind you, it's a good 1 or 2 AM at this point) Matt decides to get a cab to the school. We pass the phone off to the tow truck guy and he again tells them where we are. As we wave farewell to the nice tow truck guy, we are told that the taxi will arrive in ten to twenty minutes. so we sit in the cold outside some strange tire place and watch the occasional car drive by.

Forty-five minutes later I just start laughing.

This is ridiculous. I'm afraid to ask "What else could possibly happen?" because I know I will find out. A police car passes and I try to flag him down as he drives by. At this point I'll take anything. I don't really know how much more time passes, but finally a car with "Such-and-Such Taxi company" on the door flies right past us. Of course. I wouldn't expect him to actually stop. He actually does come by after a few more minutes and Matt and I pile in.

Matt and I have been talking and we decide that we should just take the taxi to some motel and stay there. It would cost the same to take the half-hour taxi ride back to the school as it would to rent a room. The lady at the front desk at the nearest inn tells me that there's some kind of convention in town and all of the rooms are booked. I should, though, try Holiday Inn. She tells me where it is, and I relate it back to our taxi driver who doesn't have a clue where it is. I go back in and ask her the directions again. "Your driver doesn't know where Holiday Inn is?"

At this point, the only response I can muster is "I dunno, he's just . . . "

I couldn't come up with any more words. I was completely tapped out. The lady at the front desk interprets this as "I dunno, I think he's been drinking." So she has pity on us and rents us a handicapped room that they rarely let out. I tell Matt that we do indeed have a room and he pays the driver. I look at myself in the mirror for a moment, trying not to relive the evening. Tiredly, I slip off my belt and shoes and fall onto the bed, drained.

The next morning I was supposed to be in the office at 7 AM. The "I'm stranded somewhere south of St. Louis and I won't be able to make it in until later" phone call was a fun one. Another taxi takes us back to the tire place. It's open now and we wait another half hour while they check out the tire and replace it. Matt pays for it and we ask how to get back on the highway.

We finally do find the highway. Twenty hours into this trip, I slouch down in my seat and sigh as I realize the final piece of the puzzle:

After all of this, we're still two hours away from home.

My Heart on my Sleeve. Well, err... My Heart on my Blog.

2006-11-13T22:49:00.000-06:00

If I were honest with myself, I'd probably realize that I don't really like poetry. True, there are some amazing, epic poems that are a gift straight from God (or at least, a reasonable representative). You'd think that I, as a romantic covered under a very thin layer of realist, would go wild for poetry. I'm sensitive, I cry at movies, I absorb poetry. Right? Well, for the most part, I read poetry begrudgingly. Maybe I think about my own experiences and toils trying to find the perfect words as I always fall short and end up scribbling rubbish on a leaf of paper instead of the lyrical masterpiece that I see and hear in my mind. That's the thing . . . I don't really like reading poetry, but I write the junk.

I can't help myself.

It's how I order my thoughts. Any time I'm going through a ridiculous situation (there's usually a feminine name attached to the problem) I have all these thoughts and ideas that rocket through my mind. I can barely hear the real world through their deafening roar (this is a bit of a hyperbole, but work with me here). So's I exercise my demons through paper baptism. The result is usually melodramatic, melancholic, and mostly without form, but I at least have all of these thoughts in some semblance of order.

When Email was still a fairly new concept I had a "poetry" address group to which I sent out all of my mental sieve droppings. For some reason, I thought that people might be interested in what's going on in my life (I guess I've replaced "poetry" in this equation with "blog"). Ha.

So here I present a selection of my "poetry" en masse. There's actually a chronological flow to most of it (paralleling developments in "relational situations" [or lack thereof {development and situations both} ] ). I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's readable, I'm not saying it's edifying. I'm only saying it's me. Somewhere. Somewhen.

Fun Fact: I made my first rubber band ball today. This makes me very excited. I put several short bands on the outside that just barely fit around it, so every once in a while I'll bounce it and one of them will zing off to hide somewhere in my office. It's a fun game, almost like a rubbery Russian Roulette with less death.

Fun Fact 2: If you, oh blog lander, have never listened to Iron & Wine, I would highly suggest it. The album Creek Drank the Cradle is okay, but Our Endless Numbered Days consistently surprises me every time I pop it in (or press play on iTunes [always a pleasant surprise on shuffle] ). If you've seen Garden State, He/they're the one(s) that do the song Such Great Heights on the Soundtrack, which is a cover of a Postal Service song (also an immensely amazing band [my number 2 Fav] ).

Okay *ahem*. back to the poetry.

Music Man

If I were a better painter
I'd paint you a mural
Showing Heaven and Earth
Light and Love laid out so fine
You'd gasp, point, and go "oh!"

But I'm not that good
Not at painting anyway
I can, though, paint you
a lopsided doggy that barks
and says "I LOVE YOU" in block letters.

I'd write you a full, long song
One with every instrument you could imagine
If I were a music man I'd do this:
I'd hire all the musicians to play
You'd sit back, relax, and go "oh!"

But I'm not any good at that
No one pushed me to musical greatness
I can't tell Bach from Mozart
But I think I can figure out
"You Are So Beautiful to Me" on the kazoo.

One day, hopefully, I'll have lots of money
Enough to buy your dreams and desires
We'd get old and fat together without money woes
But for now I've got $1.37 to my name
And I hope you'll like this plastic "I Heart U" ring
I got for a quarter out of the machine.

Fragments

These words are all I have
But they’re so useless anymore
I now know I cannot catch your eye
Nor make you laugh
Like I could so long ago.

I can only give you words to read
They’re my heart on paper
But I know they mean little to you.
So a fool am I, wearing my heart away
For naught, it endears me to no one,
Not even myself.

Every word I write is a scream in my mind
Shrieking the truth: No one listens.
But my fingers move
And my heart still bleeds
Forming words no one reads
And words no one feels
And words you shrug off.

With a mere comment
“You’re like a brother.”
Never have such words burned.
Nor have broken me in such a way
As to leave me shattered,
Lying darkly on the ground
Scribbling frail fragments
On dark paper.
Such is life.

#35

The world dies with a slow groan,
God’s sprawling creatures lose their zeal
Dropping steadily the instruments of life,
Death and heartache is their only warmth.

I am not wooed by the new colors;
Brown and yellow are colors of decay.
A pungent smell of the time hangs above the ground,
A new scent betraying burning leaves as a rich aroma.

My heart pangs for the giants looming above,
Autumn is the season of my soul.
I kick up little pieces of my life as I
Stroll across the fields of me.

This heart, once a vibrant green, wilts,
hues turning yellow, brown, and a mockingly vibrant orange.
And the fragrance hanging in the air?
It’s none other than the rising smoke of the bonfire of the
fallen pieces of me.

I pull my jacket tight as I meander longingly across the lawns,
A single brown leaf falls and floats to my feet,
A single grey tear is held back in mourning; it cannot show.
Autumn’s tendrils wrap tightly around my chilled interior
But the exterior only betrays the vibrancy of spring.

Worthless Poets

Everyone.
All want to sing of your love.
There is not a man living
who has not written a song
in your honor.

Hundreds of sonnets bear the simple title
of your name.
Who can resist the crafting of sweet music
to breeze through your amber hair?

Desperate men pine to have your ocean eyes
grace across their prose,
but who can blame them?

The power of one woman is amazing.
Were she a leader of military might
Empires would fall.

But she is no general.
Even still hearts of whole kingdoms are dashed
when she looks away.

Words repeat themselves
and songs slip to monotone
Has there ever been a beautiful word
that hasn’t affixed itself to her?
Most probably not.

A teeming mass of hopefuls gather at her side.
I do join them, these worthless poets,
by writing this very thing.
I can live with that.

But not without her.

Black and White

I've got to get you out of my head
Entertaining a dead future with you
Won't get me anywhere soon
We weren't meant to be anything more
Than friends, just friends, you know
I don't need you to tell me what
I can plainly see in black and white
From here on out I'll hold onto every word from you
They're as close as I'll get to holding you
I'll grow old without your love
I'll be okay, but I doubt it'll be enough
There will never be a "we" or an "us"
The sooner I realize this the better
Someday you'll only be a memory living in this letter.

I think the saddest thing is this:
You'll never be the wiser when
All I can do is try not to think of you.

Dead Letters

You’ve won.
I get it now.
Something about me unnerves you.
You don’t have to go out of your way to avoid me.
I’ll pull myself away.
We’ve had some fun times
But I see that they are dead now.
Did you know that when you laugh
your eyes turn into little triangles?
It’s a very beautiful thing
But I won’t make you laugh anymore.
We talked about doing something
sometime.
Maybe now I should just mail you the money for the meal.
You’ve pitied me but you never said no because you have
a tragically beautiful heart.
You smiled, nodding when I talked to you,
maybe hoping I would leave?

You don’t have to fake it anymore.
To be honest all I wanted was to make you
happy.
To think I thought I could help you with that!
Never have I had a more ridiculous notion.
No, I can make you happy, and I will.
How?
The phone will be silent and the letters will
die.
Kinda like me.

“Remember that one guy you used to know?
No? Me neither.”

Thing Of Dreams

It all started the day you bled out of my dreams
and reformed in the world.
I was fine with this world with all its misgivings,
but then one day I thought of you and you were gone.
I guess running through my thoughts all day
and long, stupid conversations in my dreams weren’t enough
to keep you.
Anytime I thought maybe you didn’t exist, you’d come running to me
and say “here I am, dummy.”

Remember the nights we spent behind closed eyelids?
We talked about the strangest things...
Why you always feel dizzy when you sit up too fast...
That time we walked in the rain and never really dried...

I thought it was funny, but it wasn’t a big deal to me.
You were here with me, that’s all that mattered
That look in your eyes kept me coming back to the
silly topics
you loved so much.

But no longer.
We lived and we loved
in the world of aspirations and desires but all things good must
end.

You seeped from my fancy and ran into the world
there you are, rather
close
but still so far
away.

There for everyone to see and steal
There for the losing of me.

I was meant for you, and so the other way,
but the world is big and those beautiful triangle eyes can’t help but gaze
at the other wonderful things of the world.

So here I wait, doing particularly nothing
until you grow tired of your adventures.
You are a thing of dreams,
you know.

Bratch

Bratch attacks Frenulum Linguae for 10 HP

2006-11-13T14:20:00.000-06:00

First let me start this of by saying I am in pain. I stabbed myself.

With a toothbrush.

It's true. I drew blood with a toothbrush. Not gingivitis "I need you to start flossing, Mr. Bratcher" blood, but forceful stabbing induced blood. Somehow I managed to miss all of my teeth and ram Ol' Bristly straight into the flap of skin that connects the underside of my tongue to the rest of my body. Yeah. Go ahead and laugh. Good thing I wasn't clipping coupons, or I'd be typing this with only seven fingers (do people tell the "those are thumbs, not fingers" joke after fifth grade?)So I immediately pull Ol' Bristly out and look at the little flap of skin and, hoo yeah, bleeding. It took less time than I expected for what little toothpaste I managed to get into my mouth before oral hari-kari to mingle with the open wound and cause more pain than you'd think toothpaste could. I mean, c'mon, it's toothpaste. I rinse my mouth out and commence brushing gingerly. Now it stings a bit when I talk and when I eat, but the worst is I keep tonguing it. This feat is surprising to myself because I didn't realize that I could lick the underside of my tongue. But I can, and I've been doing it all day. It reminds me of losing my teeth as a kid. You'd pop one out and for the next few weeks every slow moment you'd find yourself tonguing the hole where the tooth was because something's different. The tongue must get lonely to be so obsessive over every new little thing.

Somehow I don't think this will heal any time soon.