Whistling loved the ice cream truck song. It reminded her of Daddy when he was the ice cream man for the town of Rollick. Whistling’s family lived about seven miles away in the neighboring town - Frisk. Daddy’d have to pass Memory Mounds Cemetery everyday on his way to Rollick and again heading back home.
World War II took Daddy away. Whistling didn’t get to know him well, but he had to go fight them Nazis “…so’s you, and Mom, and everyone we love can keep living our lives,” Mom always told Whistling, but what Whistling’s experiences with her father (that she can recall) were wonderful; even in her adulthood they inspired dreams. And Mother always assured Whistling that Daddy was a wonderful man.
The best listening times for this song are the hardest times. I’ve relied on this tune on several occasions, several days, and conscientiously I will get tired of it, but when I need either reassurance or just a plain ole reality check – I will be hearing this song.
Walking out of Lindsey’s was never an easy endeavor. If you made it past Whalin’ Jack and his pool-stick-leg of a thousand-and-one origin stories you had to deal with Big Hurt’s grabby hands, and she didn’t earn the name Big Hurt for her gentleness; she was Swishpit’s tri-county, bare-knuckle, walnut smashing champion.
Tonight, however, I was prepared. I had Leslie poor Whalin’ Jack a shot of his favorite rum and serve it to him just as we were about to cross paths, and I distracted Big Hurt by pointing to the television and yelling LUMBERJACK TOURNAMENT. I felt slightly disingenuous for about three seconds but rejoiced when I opened the bar door and walked out with pain-free-soon-to-be-numb testicles.
With a sigh of relief and a cheerful buzz I travelled homeward down the pavement. Shortly thereafter I stumbled past a prostitute. Typically, I offer no interest in these women. While holding no qualms against their profession, being the mayor’s speech writer I didn’t care to be incidentally caught on a camera phone somewhere and splayed on a social website. I wasn’t one of the people in the spotlight but I was responsible in part for the upkeep of the mayor’s image, and me being caught pain-free-testicles-deep inside a streetwalker wasn’t the best way of honoring my duties. Especially if I wasn’t even shit-pants-hammered or wigging out on a bad batch of LSD; if I were to be caught sober or just slightly buzzed (as I was that evening) – not only was I going to be seen as a deviant, but a sociopathic deviant as well. No thank you.
After a couple of hours of rough sex and good weed behind closed curtains and depowered cell phones, I paid her and sent her away from my apartment, and then showered.
I wasn’t sure what had famished me more, the sex or the weed, but my stomach growled. The weed’s effects reminded me to get a blood test within the next few days. The fridge was nearly barren as I’d been avoiding the market during its pique busy hours. I preferred to shop early in the morning or late after hours to avoid crowds.
My stomach gargled again – blood test – and rejoiced I was to find a batch of apples in the crisper. I grabbed the peanut butter jar and proceeded to spread its contents on to the apple. I took a bight, embracing the crunchy, cold, creamy goodness of it all and as I was about to spread more peanut butter on to the ripe red fruit the ripe red bitten fruit turned to gold.
Timidly curious, but still hungry – blood test - I grabbed another apple from the bag, but after about a minute of passing it from hand to hand there was no transformation. I even spread peanut butter on it, but I wound up with only sticky hands and a stomach demanding more food – blood test. I bit into this latest apple, and that was the key. Instantly the partially consumed apple turned into gold. I bit into another new apple and the same reaction occurred, although momentarily I was disheartened because this most likely meant that I could no longer eat apples, and I enjoyed them quite a bit – sweet ones, sour ones, bitter ones, the ones we made into bongs at office parties, staff meetings, and speech writing sessions.
Sure enough, after a few days of testing out this bizarre gift of turning used apples into gold I discovered I was cut off from consuming a full apple as the gift didn’t apply to any other fruits or foods that I ate, but I was unsure if this gift was a permanent one. At night I walked past the block where I met the Magic Bearing Hooker, but I never saw her again and there were dozens of sleepless nights that were filled with questions, questions about why I was granted this unusual ability: What happened to that hooker? And did all hookers grant magic powers? Should I pick up the next one I happened upon? Although I didn’t want to be barred from eating any other food that I liked, so I decided to allow that last one to play out on its own.
What I did do, I amassed a small fortune quickly and quietly. I began selling these golden specimens as art pieces to the filthiest of the rich; even sold some of the bong-fashioned-apples to several empire established musicians and well known authors.
Despite having all of this money, I continued working for the mayor’s office. Life without purpose was far too boring for someone like me, but I was looking forward to disappearing from society. I never cared for any kind of spotlight, positive or negative, and thanks to a generous, magical hooker, my dream of anonymity was to come true. Thank you, Magical Hooker. Thank you, hookers everywhere.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Something new I learned this week – New Zealand is void of any reptiles. What I found to be even more than most interesting was the bullheaded fortitude of one of New Zealand’s most aggressive predators – the Longfin Eel, native to New Zealand and most recently introduced to the southern parts of Australia.
The Longfin Eel, I find to be, a remarkable animal. It can live in absolute darkness, bottom feeding in the deepest lake of New Zealand, Lake Hauroko, and still slither-swim its way towards the shallow ends of New Zealand lakes undeterred by the presence of other predators or even humans. These creatures can sense a blood within a 2-mile radius which makes them prospective eaters in concurrence with being omnivorous eaters.
There have been tales & factual accounts of these Longfin Eels feasting upon other eels and even human beings, and it is the way that these creatures feed on larger prey that excites me and forces me to respect them so much.
Longfin eels grow up to an average of five to six feet, there are records of as up to eight feet, which are rarer than most – but if they are to grow to such a size they require the proper nutrition, and that is unachievable by feeding off of bottom dwellers and herbivores. These eels are highly capable of feasting on larger victims, and it is their method that I found most intriguing.
A Longfin Eell has several rows of hundreds of back-curved teeth, which allow not only instant penetration beneath the flesh but also an instant snag – and since these creatures can swim backwards as equally as well as they do forwards, they are more than capable of dragging an unsuspecting meal through the water.
Once they have established their toothy grasp, the excitement begins. While pinching down on their meal’s flesh they violently rotate their bodies, much like a power drill, tearing chunks of meat from their captive, and don’t think that these eels are alone for too long because they travel in packs, and once blood hits anywhere near their dwellings – a swarm of Longfin Eels are soon gorging upon a newly made carcass.
It’s funny whom you meet close to midnight. I’m more accustomed to midnight and after, still working out the kinks for this stuff.
Proof that I am a force of nature: I returned from a walk around the trail betwixt eleven and half- past-midnight and lounged my homebound steps right into the company of an unknowing black cat.
I crossed its path.
The eyes widened, eyes as dark as its fur, and it sprinted towards the neighbors yard, leaping the fence right into their backyard where it provided their two Pit Bulls something to claw.
There is project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a few years now, and by a few years I mean the last fifteen. However, work schedules, deadlines, and other more lucrative projects have kept me from delving deeper into this half-planned creation, but behind all of that is a single, nearest-to-perfect entity that has kept me from pulling the trigger.
Being a lifelong horror fan, I have been fascinated with the gothic arts. The finely detailed architecture suitable for death by impalement, the reality bending, orgy flexing mythology, and the depressing, rage inducing music that can make its listener cut themselves dozens of times over before fornicating with a bat in hopes of contracting rabies and herpes so as to leave a lasting message to both animals and people.
Mostly, I’ve been fascinated with gargoyles, which is the basis for this project that has been hibernating in my long list of untouched/unfinished works. I have no qualms with telling a story that’s already been told because honestly, every possible story has been told – murder, love, greed, satire, comedy – they’ve all been done, just with different twists and alternate takes but deep down they’re all the same stories.
The reason, though, that I keep pushing this gargoyle tale to the backburner is because of Greg Weisman. Greg Weisman is the creator and writer of the animated series Gargoyles from Disney. He was also a writer and producer for the short-lived (and equally excellent) Spectacular Spiderman on the WB network.
I was fortunate enough to catch this show on its premiere one weekday afternoon and instantly I was a fan. The story was melodramatic, the characters were layered and complex, the animation was groundbreaking and breathtaking, and most importantly there were damn good stories being told - too damn good. I never attempted a gargoyles tale of my own until about five years after the show was cancelled and yet all I could still do was compare it to the excellence of Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles. Within the stories, which were very human, Weisman wove in all kinds of mythology from across the globe; from Shakespeare’s creations to Native American symbolic rituals to plain old urban legends, and he was able to make it all make sense and serve a purpose to forward the development of the story and its characters and to this day I still return to it for inspiration or to simply be entertained.
Gargoyles even stirred my current love/hate relationship with comic books as the story from the tv series was continued in a series written by Weisman and published by Slave Labor Graphics.
Last night, I began to explore the world in which my own gargoyle tale would be taking place. I know that any gargoyle epic will instantly and forever be compared to Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles. It set a standard for those of us that prefer working in this genre, and if anyone is to comment that my stories are similar to Greg Weisman’s own gargoyles mythology, I must say I am flattered.
Thank you, Greg Weisman. And damn you for being so good at what you do.
Chewing and chewing, sometimes it’s the next best thing to fornicating – not that the former doesn’t happen during the latter.
The past, I could care less about – I have no qualms, no quarrels, questions, nor quandaries about it. I lived it. I was there. It was boring then, needing to question it is boring now.
Sometimes it's best to not know. Sometimes control means detachment. Always, honor has consequences.
I sensed the soul of my brother prior to his conception. At first, I thought it was the toddler version of spit-up, and then it presented itself as bodily gas before revealing itself to be a singular mental ward associated with pure evil.
That was the night I chose to never sleep again.
The crib was never a place for sleeping, the house was never a place for living; the sun was never for seeing. The night is my fully armed hammock, offering endless comfort, neighborhood accessibility, and volatile projectile trajectory.
The old lady talked to herself. Occasionally the three of us shared a conversation, but we each had our own agendas. All of them ended in gunfire.
What the hell were we talking about outside? It was something significant; I think we even fit sports into the picture.
My Nuggets keep rooollin’. Hope the Spurs finally fixed the kinks in their Tejas Voodoo.
I don’t regret my upbringing. Its wickedness accentuates its awesomeness.
The doctor loves my insurance. Yet, it’s the best conversations I’ve had in a multitude of months.
Certain people get worried when they feel the wind between their teeth. Certain people think breathing is easier without teeth blocking all of that potential vacuuming space, could probably discombobulate a moth if you really tried.
In regards to social commentary and caring my interests are few, but time after time I find it necessary to be informed. Strangers seem to think I’m approachable, acquaintances feel like they know me; I feel the need to be informed, particularly for business situations.
I don’t care for small talk. I know there are decent folks in this world; it doesn’t mean I have to chit chat with them. I’m a conversationalist in an explorer’s sense. I like picking peoples’ brains, exchanging conflicting views while solidifying a guaranteed drunken experience, and whether it ends in bloodshed or not is irrelevant; how much fun we had that night as individuals with similar views, some conflicting opinions, and mouths that never go dry until the hangover kicks in. With small talk, the evening usually ends with the air raid alarm sounding while explosions bombard the city as I’m roaming throughout the catastrophic neighborhood with my hands dutifully throttling someone whom I’ve made my own personal squeaky toy. I still get a kick from watching their eyes bulge from their sockets whenever I forcefully squeeze.
Business is business.
Yet, to progress in this state of humanity one must be prepared for idle chatter. Slightly gone is the appreciation for courtesy silence. It’s the kind one can find now only while traveling on an elevator or perhaps a capacities-full escalator, even in a movie theater. Keep your conversations to yourselves, although being completely alone and still dictating a conversation will throw general onlookers off. The best part of it all though is that they’ll leave you alone, naturally because they think you’re one body away from being considered a mass murderer. In actuality, alienating the general public sometimes becomes an evolving art.
Politics, social media, forms of entertainment; just a few categories that I stay up to date on not because I care about these things but because I know people are going to want to discuss these things before I can seclude in my own private world where none of those things matter because they have no bearing on my survival or my loved ones’ survival, and rarely do socially conscientious subjects enlighten me in the ways of eliminating negativity because most of the societal seeds that have been planted were spawned from negativity, particularly on the internet – so much downtrodden personal aspects and wasted negativity located all over that technological whirlwind.
If only assisted suicide by Skype would begin trending; that’s when I’d be tempted to begin acquiring computer hacking skills. There’s an ornery moose in Wyoming that is well aware of my other hacking skills.
Lines get thinner, thicker, crooked; each one an intimate, painful crackling scream by the city, but humankind doesn’t feel it and wouldn’t recognize it until it shivered a bird fiercely enough causing it to shit on humankind’s car’s hood; and in better cases the windshield.
Those lines define relationships between us. It defines what is a friend, an associate, a confidante, the endlessly endearing acquaintance; a stranger, and a stalker.
Television is usually the last media on my mind, mind you I rarely watch it but the noise is priceless. I need noise, that’s why I keep a television. I have music, music instruments, headphones, things that are more dangerous when shattered, and things that purely go BOOM.
The neighbor-baby shrieked. It bellowed a handful’s more. One of the cars left the house, Neighbor Baby occasionally screeching now, but occasionally, harmoniously grunting. Silence settled for an impressive amount of time, even long enough for the missionary car to return home just in time for them to continue being a family – if they choose.
I never craved the taste of raw flesh until that Soilwork concert in Croatia. That entire summer I drowned my urges beneath my subconscious, but when she and I were out in that gigantic crowd; embracing the pulverizing energy on display I couldn’t help myself.
We danced, we grinded body-on-body, but when she turned to kiss me on the cheek goodnight I lunged for the back part of her neck, bit oh so delectably in and tore out her life. I gnawed on her beefy torso chunk, sucking down the bitter-tasting life-force while she slumped downward through my arms.
She stopped clawing at me once her head met my chest and her arms spiraled down my own like raindrops downside a windshield. For several minutes I stared at her lifeless body, and it no longer interested me. My attention could focus only on the jumping, breathing, heart-beating bodies that remained, which made my stomach churn; not because it hungered but rather because it was full, it was pleased.
I never looked into anyone else’s eyes in the crowd afterwards because I didn’t want to remember any potential dismemberments; I only wanted to taste them.
Success is earned. Quite true, success is indeed earned; yet, strangely enough, success must also be accepted – accepted by the individual, by society; by anyone capable of thinking.
I could plant a Cerebral Palsy patient to witness air hockey, and even that twisted cat would find one reason or another to say about a contestant, “This dude sucks.”
Millions of novels have been written, and there are more unread novels in the world than there are price-tagged ones. And while they may follow the path of a dying breed, they also follow a survivor’s path.
There are people in the real world that love to turn a page; written word will never die, it’ll just get digitized while continuing homogenization, paving the way for continued newness; but we'll still be bored, mainly because Destiny hasn't presented itself and Fate hasn't killed us. But we still choose to walk that numbered middle trail; the one that stretches from six o' clock to twelve-thirty, nine-fifteen to three-fortyfive, and two names for every six. Some people are addicted to it.
Success has more than two names. Success always beats the clock.
The coffee was bland enough for me to believe that no one has pissed in the pot yet; didn’t mean I was still disease-free. Keechy’s is a unique diner, but it’s centrally located in a city where progress had long since passed, and it has a bathroom where the sink is an extra urinal.
I popped a synaptic enhancer so I could make a call. It was cherry flavored this month. The appointment to see my bio-enhancement therapist was still on. I really didn’t need it but it’s required after every individual procedure. Even though the capabilities for engaging in bio-enhancement have been widely available for over a decade, people are still people and every one of them reacts differently.
Although, mostly everyone forgets that bio-enhancement began as an underground fetish movement in dank garages and rickety tool sheds all across the Northeast. But once Hollywood accepted it – yet another revolution was abused and sold for spare parts.
Surfed the expressway on my way home, relived the blurs.
I went looking for it this time.
I hadn't driven that way since after going mutually oral in the university parking lot with Shaileen.
I smoked a clove that day,
Drinking a coffee,
The bittersweet aromas lifted the elation; she was that damn good.
We blurred.
I was tired of driving,
It was time to surf again.
Surfing brings back blurs.
I had never experienced anything like that avalanche. Watching brothers dash their heads past the sheltered hut, losing their lives; all pointless.
Luckily, the rendezvous was buzzing a-plenty. We had taken the daily opportunity to invite every single, potentially lesbian female throughout the base to this shindig.
Making out with a Lieutenant isn’t everything it should be. Sometimes they’re better, even worse; but rarely are they dull; so I have only high-octane explosives to think about.
I didn’t feel like cheering for the Knicks. The Melo trade didn’t burn much because it became inevitable, but when I found out Chauncey Billups was going as well – DAMN.
Denver’s win was a proud one last night.
Bulls beat dem Heat. AROOH! Deng backed it up tonight.
Watched Big Willie’s Hancock – see what I did there – really enjoyed it.
Exchanged conversation with a recognized number, but oblivious to the name. I’d lost the number in a swimming pool during the summer.
YES, you are all numbers to me.
Picked up Dylan Dog Casefiles...the movie made me do it. It's Buffyd up, but I'm still watching it; am also wondering which story to read next. I'm non-fictioned out, could use some make-believe now.
Now leave, you smelly, meaty digits, got Regular Show to watch. Do not deny yourself the greatness of Regular Show....
Before instant gratification through mass media, internet, and downloading, there was the treacherous, dismal, forced association prison known as high school. Throughout these years I was blessed to be surrounded by some of the best friends I had ever known. We all took pleasure in different genres of music and respected everyone’s own personal musical abilities and all around intelligence, although some of us chose to shadow our skills and our smarts when an outsider disrupted our circle.
Another musical commonality we shared was our passion for the underground. The undiscovered, the unaired, and the unheard of bands of that time, and with this being the mid-nineties the stuff we preferred hearing was harder to find than a car phone.
One of the hardest records to find was Racer X’s Second Heat (and to a lesser extent,Extreme Live: Volume 1 of their two live albums).
The internet was about to boom in a few years but back then, one could only find these rare and precious gems through magazines, record stores, and other personal collectors who usually took out ads in the rock magazines.
On the easily available Extreme Live Volume 2 was a song called Heart of a Lion. That turned out to be a Judas Priest song that Racer X had covered, but Jimmy being the biggest Judas Priest freak was clueless as to which album this song existed. We searched every one of our known resources, mainly other collectors and more magazines, but we were without luck in finding the song but did discover an older Judas Priest album that Jimmy didn’t own – Rock & Rolla.
Hastily, Jimmy ordered the album, and while it was a good one, Heart of a Lion was nowhere to be found. We felt betrayed; we felt nearly raped and splayed for the entire world to stare and laugh at our hapless high school doinks.
Neither of us was sure if this song was even on Racer X’s Second Heat album, but it was our mission to find out. Racer X Had released only four albums at that time – two studios and two live albums.
Monthly, we scoured the rock and metal magazines in hopes of finding Second Heat in the back-catalogues sections, and monthly the ad that contained the album for purchase always read “SOLD OUT”, and whenever we tried ordering it through the record stores the clerk would tell us it was out of print.
Our disappointment wasn’t so enraged that we wanted to thrash the record store clerks because they were actually very cool individuals who usually praised us for listening outside of the norm, so we would enact our primal anger on our musical instruments because, quite frankly anyone could kick our asses back then.
On a fateful trip to San Antonio, or maybe Houston, or perhaps even Florida – Jimmy and I were two grumpy-go-happy teens wandering a mall that was bigger than the neighborhoods either of us lived in when inside a record store Jimmy cried the elated rocker’s cry – “Duuuude!!”
Racer X – Second Heat, Track 6: Heart of a Lion. And, that’s right; ON CASSETTE.
In accordance with our group’s unwritten law, the first one to find it was the one honored in buying it, unless they were broke; then usually all bets were off and it was first come first serve, but we were all typically broke anyway so the law usually stood firm. But Jimmy did have the funds on him and we both quickly rushed to counter for him to make the purchase.
But our mission was not yet over. As soon as Jimmy bought it we tore the packaging like vultures through a rotting vagabond’s corpse in an Australian desert. Jimmy opened the cassette case and flipped through the cassette jacket. The bi-lines informed us that Heart of a Lion was originally set for release on Judas Priest’s Defenders of the Faith album but remained unreleased. It was a thrilling dead end conclusion.
I love technology, but I don’t put my faith in it, and I don’t have too much fun with it; and while I do enjoy immediate knowledge at my fingertips and having the capabilities of locating any album that I choose to, technology will never replace the thrill of the hunt. There’s just something invigorating about the feeling of disappointment, the agony of a fruitless pursuit, and the excitement of browsing a room’s entertainment offerings and finally unearthing that lost treasure, that priceless gem that you know you will covet and cherish as a unique conversation piece.
I am currently perousing through my newly acquired Dagoba albums; a French metal-industrial-very damn heavy band introduced to me by a friend. They're definitely one of the better new headcrushers that I've heard in quite a long time, fusing the ambient electronics with the soul-stomping riffs while the vocals aren't the average, instant growl-to-melodic transition. The singer likes to experiemnt in between while basing the foundations of the vocal melody on either ends of the extreme.
I am also battling a virus that I probably brought on to myself during a four day "happy juice" binge. It crept up on me, and before I knew it I was 3 days into editing my book, 2 bottles down (not to mention the drinks consumed during the friendly outings in between), and 5 drawings done. I wondered why I stopped but then I recalled the chunk of meat inside my chest called a "heart" that was ready to explode. Even now with every hacking cough I feel my chest tighten, like it wants my chest cavity to develop fault lines.
The book I'm editing is still my Parrish character and his band of night club and noire misfits, but I'm ready to start working on my Drunken Monk concept. Maybe this last weekend was a subconscious soul searching tool, hoping to inspire ideas for the Drunken Monk story. And if it wasn't, too bad because that's what happened.
