Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2009

Fuck you, raccoon.

I like to walk alone. It lets me think about things. It lets me create things. The sounds I hear, the things I see--they make scenes in my head. For movies. Or stories. It's nice. Kind of meditative. Just drifting into a different way of thinking. I passed a trash can on my way home last night. Something rustled inside of it. I stopped and listened. The rustling continued. I was alone. Slowly, I stepped closer to it. It was too dark to see anything. I peered over the edge of the can. Black. The rustling continued. I leaned over to get a better view. Suddenly, a large raccoon jumped out of the can. I jumped back. "Ohfuckingshit!" I said. Not very cool. The raccoon climbed out of the can and waddled calmly into the bushes. I clutched my chest as my heart rate returned to normal. Fucking raccoons.

It is not a learned skill.

A plane went down into the Hudson River a few days ago. The pilot who brought the plane down is being hailed as a hero. I hate to sound so cynical, but isn't that his job? To fly planes and--in the event of an emergency--land the plane with minimal injuries/casualties and make sure his crew and passengers are off safely? Does it surprise us when people do their jobs correctly? I guess so. Adulation to the janitor who leaves the floor spotless.

With your fashionable frown.

In November I decided that I would write a song every day for the entire month. That did not work out as well as I had hoped. Nobody has the time to sit down and write songs like that. By the end of the month I had precious little to show for my proposed efforts: three songs about states I do not like that much, a couple of nonsense songs, and innumerable fragmented ideas. And an ongoing story about zombies. So I laughed it off and moved on with my life. I did not want to think about those songs too much. They are kind of shameful. I walked to my room with my backpack. I haven't used a backpack in a long time. It felt strange to have the weight evenly distributed across my shoulders. My roommate wasn't there again. I emptied out my backpack onto the shelf: two textbooks. Kind of a waste of time, I guess. That's okay. I'm used to doing things like that. As I made my way back across campus my mind decided to think about the songs I had tried to make before. T

A million miles from civilization.

People are not counted among my favorite things, so I was naturally very excited at the prospect of meeting my roommate. The fact that I was headed to Simkins, the testosterone saturated dormitory located as far away from everything as possible, simply added to my enthusiasm. Only the front door was locked with a card mechanism. I assumed that none of the interior hallways were locked--as they were in Jester--because the risk of "bro rape" was either so small it was negligible or so high they gave up on preventative efforts. Either one is okay, I guess. But kind of not. The first thing I noticed when I walked into my hall was the RA's information board. Normally, these boards have information regarding moving in, student health, and campus organizations. Not this one. This one had information exclusively regarding penises. Penises and masturbation. I continued down the hall. The only Franklin I've ever known was a turtle who wore a hat, so my mental image of m

A good sign.

I saw the ring, but it did not register immediately. What am I looking for? I thought. Everyone was on the edge with tell-tale smiles. It has to be the ring, I thought. There's nothing else I'm supposed to be looking at. Rings... ring... "Oh man!" Was the only thing I could think to say as I realized what it meant, my hands grabbing my head. It was hard for me to believe it. They had talked about it for a while, before. Everyone talks about things they want to do. Talking is free. But before, it had just been smiles and words. Darting eyes and clasped hands. Words don't mean anything. It was the idea. And then on that morning, as far as I was concerned, it became an action. And actions are the only things with real meaning. It took me the whole rest of the day to wrap my head around it. It was shock, I think. My friends are growing up. They're sitting at the big kids' table. It's easy for me to forget that we aren't little kid

On and on and on.

They found her at a hospital in Anaheim, 10 miles away from where she disappeared. Alive. She went home against the recommendation of the hospital staff. A policeman picked her up and dropped her at the mental facility there without filing any paperwork. That's okay, I guess. Everyone gets a little lazy sometimes. It's kind of funny to see the chain effect. I guess I'm supposed to feel relieved at this point, but honestly it's kind of hard to feel anything at all. Everything is so far away. All I hear are names and words. And those do not mean a whole lot. It all turns into drama in the end. Just silliness all around. Now they're trying to fit her with a GPS tracking device like she's some kind of animal. It's hard to care about it all.

I'm ready to give up, actually.

My grandmother lives in California with my great-grandmother, grandfather, and uncle. She is addicting to sleeping pills. In fact, she is addicted to pills in general. She will literally take any pills she can find just to take them. She takes money from everyone else so that she can buy pills. She suffers from dementia. She can't talk anymore. Now she's missing. She's been missing for a day. She disappeared when my uncle--carelessly, I guess--took her grocery shopping. No hospital has found her, the police have no clue, and nobody anywhere seems to know where she is. My uncle drove around all night looking for her. He's still looking now. "Someone probably took her in," the policeman said. If that was true, why didn't they call the police? Now she's lost somewhere in Garden Grove, California. I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel about it. I didn't know her very well, honestly. She bought me my first Batman action fig