Travis Kadoom Shotwell i get a small but incendiary thrill when i walk out of the store, opening the box, stuffing handfuls of the cereal into my mouth, trying to whistle "hip to be square" at the same time, and then i've opened my umbrella and i'm running down broadway, then up broadway, then down again, screaming like a banshee, my coat open, flying out behind me like some kind of cape.

anti-religious does not == smart or intelligent.
Most of the time it comes off as angsty and shit.
I couldn't give a flying fuck what you believe. Except for one thing, and that is the belief that not believing in God makes you smarter than other people.
I'd hate to break it to you, but your not the first person or the last to believe this. Also there are people who are far smarter than you will ever be that believe in God. There are also redneck hicks that still think the earth is flat, who also don't think there is a God. Does that make them smarter than somebody with a PHD who does?

I like this. I'd be more interested in a quote that got this idea across than I would be in any of the other quotes posted in this thread. (although I did like the zappa one)
One or two quotes like this is fine I guess, but if you're making some sort of collection out of this, it's not going to make you seem intellectual, you're only going to come off as a pretentious jackass who's still pissed off that his parents made him go to church when he was a kid. You might as well try to point out that the earth isn't flat. It's very easy to prove, but most people are already aware of it. And anyone who disagrees won't be swayed by hostility. It only provokes anger from both sides, which only destroys any chance of an actually intelligent conversation. There's no sort of enlightenment going on here, nothing deep. If you want something intellectual, forget religion, and focus issues which actually matter.

now with the income of an suburban apothecary i'm saving up for three things.
a debt from the beginning of the year,
a new crankset for my bicycle,
a Korg Electribe ESX-1.

a paper dealing with doing science, and some idiot that thinks every bit of technology can be evil.
( How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wiezenbaum )
i still need to finish, it's only a page and a third unspaced. i think i need one more.

so i just finished one of those epic battles with homework. i am exhausted and have sustained myself on only pringles and yoplait for +6 hrs. i'm out of nicoteenz. merrr. goodnight guise.

i HATE being hung up on.

here is a little photo evidence ( if you have been curious as to what my weekends look like. )

I hate fashionable women, and just women in general. I really do. Every time I look at them, my blood pressure shoots through the roof. When they're gabbing on the cell phone. When they're adjusting their lipstick and taking up my time rifling through their stupid purse. When they whine to me about their period. When they blither on and on about some artist/film director/musician nobody else gives a flipping fuck about. When they cry and expect your personal sympathy.

But most of all, /fa/, I hate them because they're smug, hyperactive little bitches made that way by our shithole society. Look what uncontrolled feminism and the media has done to them: they think they're superior. They can call the shots. No woman will even know what it feels like to be completely alone and unloved unless she is FIERCELY ugly. All their crying about relationships is merely them fucking up; any girl can get any guy she wants if she tries.

When girls are feeling down, they can have any man they like and fuck him. Even if they have no friends in the world, even if they are pathetic, ugly whores, they could just sit next to any guy on a bus and strike up a conversation and make him theirs. But a lonely, pathetic man is hated by women. They know they're better than him. They give him nothing. Even though they know he suffers from his biological urges, they sit and laugh and do nothing for him. They get to choose who is happy and who is sad.

I know this is BAAWWWWW over being a virgin. I know that it's not morally right. But I'm posting it because every single one of you thinks the same thing. When you watch your roomate make out with his girl, when you hear it in love songs on MTV, when you see it on the streets: know that those women are laughing at you, hating you, denying you something completely harmless, just because they hate who you are as a person. And that's their never-questioned right in this world.

It was the womb like atmosphere that triggered the frying sensation (or maybe it was the 2cb and lsd), and it seemed so suddenly clear to me the deepest connection with raving, and yes, this was a rave. No Drug Dealers, no Permits, no Lasers, no Promoters handing out fliers, no too much of much. 90 people, an LCD projector, DJs and minimal techno in a small dark box. Pulsating rhythms, mothers blood pumping, heart beating, lungs breathing. The warm, dark atmosphere. No wonder it makes you feel so close to those around you.
I actually started to howl like a wolf. But why? Well, I was tripped out by all that prenatal stuff, of course. It was overwhelming, really, it was. But was it really? What was so overwhelming? The simple music? The low budget visuals? The Go-Go dancer that was often motionless? Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe. Boop, Be-Doo-Dupe, Do Do Dupe.
There was barely enough to dance to, and yet I injured my left elbow from moving too suddenly too many times. Too bad, that was my new move.
People cheered and screamed at the DJs, everyone was just so into the music, and there was just so little there. You could imagine only a midi and a single lap top making up the records, and it was that simplicity that made it so provocative. Pure, Beautiful, Modern - Art


Now, I’m sure many of you have encountered little shits in supermarkets. Little kids running about and knocking things over, being rude, walking all over their parents, you know the kind. But the worst are the biters. Yes, those little cunts that feel it is okay to bite you whenever they feel like it.
Okay, here’s the best part. A biter got me today when I was grocery stopping. He broke the fucking skin, too. This was when the gears started turning, the moment I saw a tiny sprickle of blood on the little shit’s teeth as he was grinning at me like the little cunt he is. I made my eyes get wide, and started screaming “SHIT! SHIT!.” Now, my good friend, Tom we’ll call him, was there too, and he instantly picked up on it. He started shouting “FUCK! MAYBE HE DIDN’T GET IT! FUCK!.” By now, the kid is scared shitless and starts crying, and instantly, Mizz Mom appears out of nowhere and starts getting pissy at us for yelling at her kid.
Here’s the kicker, I look her straight in the eye and say, “Mam, get your son tested as soon as possible, he just bit me and I’m… I’m FUCKING HIV POSITIVE.”
And now there is silence. Not a peep in the entire store. The brat knows he just fucked up big time because his mom isn’t defending his ass. She just stares at me wide eyed. I walk away from them, buy my shit from the wide eyed cashier, all the while blood is dripping from my calf, making a nice little trail on the floor. And, just s we leave, we start to hear the mother sobbing. Sobbing like the cunt she is.
I have never felt any more satisfaction than the moment I heard that sob.
copypasta

Sex with a sixteen year old

What I hate is being in a bar and a
beautiful woman squeezes in next to you
and you strike up a conversation
with a lot of vertiginous eye contact
and just when you think you might be falling in love
some big tough-looking guy shows up
with a nasty scowl on his face
and the woman sighs and gives you a sad look
and whispers adios mi amigo

Also I hate it that you are flying off
to Vancouver this afternoon
just as I am getting interested in you
which is unusual for me because
I never get interested in anyone under forty
and you're only sixteen. Sixteen! I know I
refused to go for Chinese food with you last night
because I figured there was a danger of us
ending up in the sack and you only sixteen
how could I have ever forgiven myself
and what if my daughters ever found out

And today on the phone you give me
a few more tantalizing details about your
seemingly extensive and far-ranging
sex life and you happen to mention you're a big
noisemaker
when you get going you wake up
neighbours dogs cats birds for blocks around

And all of a sudden I realize I should have
gone with you last night for Chinese food
I love noisemakers
they're my favourite people
but it's too late and the next time I see you
you won't be sixteen anymore

Sixteen come to think of it
isn't all that young the little woman
Charles Dickens left his wife and eight kids for
was not much older and Lauren Bacall
(when she put her lips together and blew
in To Have and Have Not)
was only sixteen
and Bogie who took one look at her
and decided to devote the rest of his life to her
was three times her age
four times would be scandalous
but three times is okay

By Lori Selke

12 February 2007

Her lips are cold.

She doesn't kiss him on the mouth, of course. She merely brushes those cold lips along his neck, behind his ear. She raises goosebumps there, with her chill touch.

He notices out of the corner of his eye that her lips are blue, a lovely purplish hue that sets off the veins in her pale-as-china skin. He wonders if her lips are tinged with lipstick, or if that's their natural color.

Her nipples are blue, too. He wants to touch them, take them in his mouth, to see if they, too, are cold. To see if he can warm them. But he isn't allowed to move his hands.

She is wearing a tiny blue g-string; she is rubbing her crotch on his knee.

This dead girl is the best stripper he's ever seen. He will tip big.

All the girls in the club are dead. The sign out front flashes neon, three simple words: Dead. Nude. Girls.

But this girl is different.

He can't exactly say that she's his type, because dead girls aren't normally his type. Really, normally he prefers them breathing. And the hollow-eyed blondes that bracket this girl's appearance on the stage are definitely not his type—now that they're dead and their artificial tans have faded, they seem even more like plastic dolls than before.

But this girl. She may be dead, but there's a fire in her eyes. A sinuousness to her dancing. It's anything but rote, mechanical, programmed. She's still remote, and, he must confess, a little detached from the audience. But he can tell that she loves to dance. Even now.

Her skin is smooth as porcelain, and just as cold.

Her stage name is Lily, so he brings her a spray of white flowers, callas and lilies of the valley. He waits until closing time, although the flowers have begun to wilt a little by then, and hands the bouquet to the stage manager. There is a card attached.

He waits in the parking lot.

She comes out in a thin robe, pale blue and vaguely hospitalish in cut. She is smoking a cigarette, which he finds odd. She stands beneath one of the fluorescent fixtures mounted on the outside wall; the harsh light makes her look even paler and more washed-out.

"Hi," she says, her voice low and husky from the smoke.

He tries to smile, to relax his shoulders. "I'm Jim," he offers.

"Pleased to meet you, Jim," she says. "Thank you for the flowers."

There is a pause. He tries a joke. "How can you smoke when you don't breathe?"

"I don't inhale." She doesn't smile.

"I'm not quite sure where to take this," Jim admits. "I think you're beautiful. I love to watch you dance. I could watch you all night."

"Thanks," she says, and smiles. A blue-lipped smile.

"What's your name?" he ventures.

"Lily will do."

"Is that your real name?" He is blushing; he knows he's being impertinent.

But she smiles again and takes a long drag from her cigarette. "It is now."

Where do you take a dead girl on a date? The cemetery? A funeral home?

Lily wants to go to the library.

"There's a cafe," she says. "And it's quiet."

She doesn't eat. She doesn't even bother to pick at her salad, like the other girls he's dated in the past; she doesn't even order a salad. She just sits, watching him eat his sandwich and sip his coffee.

She asks him to check out six books for her. "They won't give the dead library cards," she says, and smiles. Her smile makes his heart swell and his palms sweat.

"What do you do when you're not at the club?" he asks once they're through the checkout counter.

She shrugs. "I sleep."

"The sleep of the just," he jokes. She doesn't laugh. At least I didn't ask about coffins, he thinks.

She holds hands with him as they walk back together, toward the club. Her palm is clammy and cold, but he doesn't mind.

"Where do you live?" has asks her at last.

She waves a hand in the air. "Here," she says. They are standing outside the club again, and she is smoking without inhaling.

"You can't be serious," he says.

She frowns. "Why not?" She takes a puff from her cigarette. "Did you expect me to say I live in an apartment? What for? Or maybe you want me to take you back to my place, a crypt in the cemetery perhaps?" Her cheeks remain porcelain-white, but he can tell that she is angry. She drops the cigarette on the ground, stubs it out with her toe. Clenches her hands into fists, and then lets them relax.

"I'm sorry," he says simply. Then, "Do you want to see my place? I'm sorry I didn't ask you earlier."

She manages a small smile. "Is it a dump? Are you embarrassed?"

"It's nothing special," he says. "That's all. Nothing much to see."

He had been worried about the first kiss, he realizes when her tongue slips into his mouth. He had worried that her breath would stink of the grave, that her tongue would remind him of rotting meat. But it's just a kiss.

A romantic kiss.

Her lips are cold.

Not icy, not frigid, just cold, as if she'd been outside on a snowy day.

It isn't until the third trip to the library that he notices the titles of the books she's borrowing.

Tell My Horse. Jambalaya. Guidebooks to Haiti. New Orleans Cemeteries. And a worn little pamphlet titled Famous Voodoo Rituals and Spells.

She's been taking out armfuls of these books. Consulting with the ladies behind the counter about interlibrary loans. He wonders what they make of her requests, her pallor, her scent, earthy and musty. Do they imagine her just another goth girl out in the daylight, or do they know about the club, not so far away?

It takes him another week to screw up the courage to ask.

"Stupid, stupid, doesn't know a thing about it." Lily is muttering over a copy of The Serpent and the Rainbow, taking copious notes.

"Why do you need all these books?" he says.

She flinches, sharp, like she's just heard a gunshot. Her smile is tight. "I'm just curious, that's all. Why should I stop with the self-improvement, just because . . ." her voice trails off, and she will not meet his eyes.

"You're researching zombies, aren't you?" he says.

Dead girls can't blush. Lily only nods curtly.

He collapses onto the bed, his bed, his narrow bed, the only place to sit in his tiny studio apartment besides the desk chair. He puts his head in his hands.

After a moment, Lily is standing beside him, one cold hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

"It's not being a stripper. I like being a stripper. And it's not you. It's being dead."

He drops his hands to the mattress and closes his eyes. She sits down on the edge of the bed.

"Or, well, being undead." Her voice is quiet and roughened by smoke. "I like dancing, and I like you. But it's all I have. And it's not enough. I see live people around me, every day—eating, laughing . . ."

He has never heard her laugh, he realizes.

He tries to picture her porcelain skin, rotting. Warm with decay. He listens to her voice, soft as smoke.

"Who made you this way?" he asks, without opening his eyes.

"The manager," she says.

"Who is he? Some voodoo priest?" He pictures a black man with a bone in his hair, puts a hand to his forehead to wipe the image away.

"He's just a man. I don't know where he learned to do what he did. Or how to undo it."

He stops asking questions.

He starts to watch at the club, striving for a glimpse of the manager. He spends so much time there that some of the other girls start to come on to him.

"Blondes aren't my type," he says, as kindly as possible, to the woman leaning over him, her large breasts hanging in his face. He can see the raised line of a vein that once traversed the left one, but instead of being blue or green or purple, it's as white as the rest of her skin.

She smiles at him. "You're Lily's boy, aren't you?" The blonde stripper runs a finger along the ridge of his jaw. "She likes you a lot, you know."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"She won't mind if we play," the blonde says.

"I know," he says, although he doesn't. "And you're very pretty."

Her eyes light up at that. She has very pretty eyes, limpid and moist, just like a living girl's eyes. She sweeps back her hair with one pale hand. "Then would you like to go to the back room with me?"

"Some other time."

"I can see why she likes you," she says. "You're a sweetie." She turns around and wiggles her ass at him. "Ta-ta," she waves as she heads to another customer.

Jim can't bear to look at the other customers. It's bad etiquette in a strip bar, but that's not the reason he avoids their gaze, tries to position himself so that he can't even see them out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't want to know what kind of guy prefers to come to a zombie bar. He doesn't want to remember what brought him here in the first place, before Lily.

He's no necrophiliac, though sometimes he wonders about the other patrons. He has his limits.

He always liked the shy girls, the lonely girls, the broken and the damaged. Maybe he thought he didn't have a chance with the blonde cheerleader types, the tan hardbodies that populated the high-end gentlemen's clubs.

Maybe it was misplaced pity. Maybe it was a closet fetish for control.

But he didn't think so. To be dead was to admit something. Something about reality. We would all be dead someday, strippers and marks, bartenders and managers and bachelors and regulars, everyone in the club. Of course, they wouldn't all be zombies someday, and that thought gnawed at him always, like a worm at the back of his brain.

The manager wasn't at all like he'd expected.

He was from New Orleans, he'd learned, but he was white. Jim hated to admit it even to himself, but he'd guessed Creole at least. And he looked like a nice guy. A little sad, a little thoughtful. He watched his dancers without a trace of lust or greed in his eyes.

He was going bald, just a little at the crown. His eyes were blue, his hair a sandy brown. He was tall, with big hands and thin wrists. He wore black jeans and a black t-shirt. Every day. Jim had been watching him for three days now. He slouched, but his clothes were remarkably tidy for such a casual outfit. As if he ironed his t-shirt every morning before putting it on.

Jim had learned the man was from New Orleans because he'd bought the guy a drink. The manager had smiled and slipped onto the bar stool next to him with a tired smile. "Not too many people in this sort of place buy me a drink," he said, with a nod towards the stage. Jim could hear the accent in his voice.

"I'm Drew," the manager offered, and put out his hand. Jim shook it.

"You're Lily's boy," Drew said.

Jim took a long draw from his beer. "That's right," he said. The bartender set a second beer in front of Drew.

"It's nice that she has a beau," the manager said.

They sat together in silence, the dull bass thump of the DJ's beats shaking the floor beneath their feet.

"I take good care of her," Drew offered, without prompting. "I take good care of all my girls. She'll tell you that, too."

Jim studied the manager's countenance for signs of a guilty conscience. The man just picked at the label of his beer. He didn't frown, or clench his jaw. His eyes stayed fixed on his hands. Haunted, maybe. Not guilty, if Jim was reading his face right. He couldn't be sure. He took a last long gulp from his beer.

Drew did likewise and slipped from his stool. "I appreciate the drink. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."

"I'm Jim."

"Well, thanks, Jim. You're welcome here any time." Drew saluted him with the beer bottle and headed toward backstage.

After the conversation with the manager, Jim starts checking out books on his own, without taking Lily to the library. It almost feels dirty, somehow. He hides the books beneath his bed and takes her out twice as often to compensate. He begins to feel as if he lives at the library. The women behind the counter smile when they see him now. "Take care," they say, and, "you treat that girl right, now."

They must know she's a zombie. They must.

And he must know the answer to the question that has been pushing against his brain like a bubble ready to pop. He can't figure out how to ask it politely, so one night, late, after fortifying himself with a couple of shots of vodka straight from the freezer, he just bursts out with it.

"How did it happen?"

She looks up from the book she is reading. "What?"

The vodka hasn't done its job. It's frozen his tongue instead of loosening it. He pushes the words through the icy dam and they come spilling out, an uncontrollable torrent. "You know. You're this now. You were alive before, and now you're this way, and it's not that I mind, in fact I know it's probably sick and wrong but I probably kind of like it or I wouldn't never have gone into that place—not that I wouldn't have liked you before, I'm sure I would have liked you before, you're a nice girl whether you're dead or not. Very pretty, very sweet—but I've got to know."

Her eyes are dark. "Know what?"

"You know. How did it happen?

"You mean," she says the words slowly and with care, "How did I die?"

Jim lets out a breath he hasn't known he was holding. "Yes."

"And how did I become undead?"

"Yes." A thought occurs to him belatedly. "If you remember, that is. You do remember? I could ask—"

"Don't ask Drew." She unfolds her legs and crosses her arms, goes to stand by the window of his bedroom. "You really want to know? It's that important to you?"

She doesn't wait for his answer. "All right."

Unconsciously, she rubs her arms as she speaks. "We were on the road, in a van. A touring van. We were going to a show. Drew had got all of us girls a gig at some big party. I can't remember if it was a trade show or just some rich bachelor's fling. All I know is that it was a day away, we'd be driving all night. Drew was going to drive ahead in his own car and meet us there."

She brushes her hair back from her face. "The bus was defective. It hadn't been inspected in a while, and it had a leak. A monoxide leak. The bus driver started to feel sleepy, pulled over at a truck stop somewhere, forgot to turn off the ignition. We were all asleep in the bus. Fourteen of us. The bus driver passed out as he stepped out of the cab; they managed to recusitate him. But we were goners. So I'm told."

"That's awful," Jim whispers.

Lily ignores him. "You have to understand, this next part might be a little fuzzy. It's what Drew told us, but I can't be sure, you know? He was all torn up with guilt. If he hadn't booked us for this stupid show, we'd all be alive. And he's from New Orleans. He knew a couple secrets. He called in some favors."

Lily lights a cigarette. Usually, Jim doesn't smoke in his room, but he lets it go this time. He watches the ember of her cigarette instead of her face as she speaks. "And that's about the size of it," she says. "He couldn't give us back our lives, but he could give us a semblance of it. He thought he was looking out for us. Maybe he was. Maybe he just didn't think it through. Maybe he just didn't know." She blows smoke out the window. "He's a nice guy. He respects us. Maybe he even loves us, in a way, like family I mean. We owe him everything. He opened the new club just for us. How many bosses would have done that? How many bosses would have gone as far as he's gone for us?"

"But you don't want it any more," Jim says.

Lily nods. "I don't want to be a dancer forever."

Jim sits on the bed for a long, silent moment. Then he reaches underneath and pulls out the hidden stacks of books. Lily's eyes widen, just a little. "I've been doing some research," he says.

His apartment is so small. He's always thought himself lucky to have an actual bathtub. Sure, he might have to crouch inside with his knees against his chest, but at least it's a tub. A real tub.

He's fetched the box of salt from above the refrigerator and let the hot water dissolve the crystals.

Now Lily is reclining in the hot, salt water. She is naked, but he has seen her naked many times before. "You're sure this will work?" she says. She sounds nervous. Understandable.

"How does it feel?" Jim asks.

She shrugs, making the water splash. "Like a hot bath. A little itchy."

"Salt's supposed to have something to do with the process. Disrupts neurochemical activity somehow."

Lily actually smiles. "I don't think it's working."

"We're not finished."

If he were a girl, it would be easy. A curling iron, or a blow dryer. He doesn't even own an electric razor. He has to go to the kitchen and unplug the toaster.

There's an outlet by the mirror. If he stretches the cord, it will just be long enough.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" he says. He tries to keep his voice steady. It wouldn't do to have it crack. Not now.

"Jim." Lily starts to get out of the tub, then sinks back. "This is really sweet of you." She pauses. "Have you thought about the consequences? A dead girl in your bathtub . . . an undead girl. . ."

"It's OK," he says. "I've been thinking about this a lot. I want to give it to you." It's his turn to hesitate. "Anything to make you happy." He doesn't look at her as he speaks.

The bathroom seems to echo with their mutual silence. Finally, she says, "Will you kiss me once more? For old time's sake." She tries to make it into a joke, but it falls flat.

Jim balances the toaster on the edge of the sink. He leans down, over the rim of the tub. Lily grasps his face in both of her cold, wet hands, and kisses him deeply, until her lips lose their chill and take on the heat that he is radiating from every pore. Her palms, too, warm against his skin. It is almost, at the end, like kissing a real girl.

She strokes his hair, then releases him. He dries his hands thoroughly on a towel before he hands her the toaster.

He wants to leave the room, leave the apartment, turn and walk away and never return. But he has to wait to see if it works. He has to look, for he can't merely listen for the sound of her breath—she doesn't breathe.

She looks as if she's asleep, her hand clutched around the toaster lever. She looks as beautiful as always. But he can smell ozone, and burning hair. And her eyes never open, her hand never moves.

He doesn't call Drew. He calls 911. Then he grabs his coat, and heads for the door.

He stops to pick up the stack of library books.

Copyright © 2007 Lori Selke

My heart closed for that half second while my mother's eyes were white and her arms were thrown up in the air. I lost track of her glass of wine. Then she landed on the broken table and slid to the side. Glass broke. Everything rushed.

"This is what happens," she said. She wiped at the red wine with her shirt and with the tablecloth. "This is how someone becomes an atheist." She was ruining the tablecloth and her shirt and she was grinning. Her front was dark with the wine. I ran to the sink and got paper towels out from underneath.

"Your shirt is filthy," my mom's friend Ryan said. "I advise you to take it off immediately." Everyone laughed. "There they are!" Ryan said. I pulled some paper towels off the roll and pushed through the group of them, all crowded around my mom.

My mother looked up from the floor and saw me. She pulled her shirt back down.

They forget I'm here sometimes.

"Oops," someone said to my mother. Now they were quiet. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" someone else said to me.

It wasn't past my bedtime at all, but rules change depending on the circumstances. My mother stood up and took me by the arm. She walked me to the kitchen door and she gave me a kiss on the ear.

"Get lost, kiddo," she said. "Grown-up time."

"Make sure it doesn't stain," I said, and she nodded. "The floor too," I said.

I ran back to my room. I turned my light out and climbed under the comforter. I wrapped myself tight. After a few minutes I could hear the front door open and then close. They were going somewhere else.

It wasn't until a minute later, when my bedroom door opened a crack, that I realized my mother hadn't gone with them. I kept my eyes closed and breathed slowly, making my chest raise and lower. Raise and lower.

"Are you asleep?" she whispered. I made my eyelids flicker, and pretended I was dreaming.

In the morning I got dressed and went to make my mother some tea. No cream. No sugar. The cup rattled on the saucer as I carried it to her room. The more I tried to hold still, the more it rattled.

My mom was face-down on the pillow. I turned her alarm off and set her tea on the night stand. I looked around for anything I could clean up before I woke her. Her clothes were strewn everywhere, and there was a pile of her books on the floor. I put the clothes in the hamper. I set the books on her dresser beside a broken tube of lipstick.

On the dresser mirror, my mother had written "Get your shit together!" in lipstick. When I first saw it, I thought it was directed at me.

I sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. The snake tattoo curled all over the skin on her back, jet black with twists of green. The eyes were looking at me.

"Hello," I whispered, and the snake twisted a little as my mother shifted in her sleep. I kissed the tips of my fingers, reached out and touched them to the snake's nose. The snake's name was Sicily, like the place. My mother told me that once. Sicily was my friend.

I liked this quiet part, just sitting with Sicily in the morning, before my mother woke up. Part of Sicily's tail went around the side, where you aren't supposed to look at your mother.

When I touched my fingers to Sicily, I could hear slithering in my head, like a slow rasp.

Mom was going to be late for work. I shook her shoulder, and she grunted. Then she rolled over, and I looked down at my hands, and picked up her tea.

"What time is it?" she said.

It took her a minute to wake up. Then she sat on the edge of her bed, and she sipped the tea. She didn't smile and say "Was I a total idiot last night or what?" the way she always did. Instead, she stared at the mirror and drank her tea quietly.

After she was done, she sat for a few minutes more, wrapped in her bed sheet.

"I'm sorry," she said. I shrugged my shoulders.

"Whatever," I said, but she shook her head. "It's okay," I smiled. "Nothing I haven't seen before!" I laughed, and I expected her to laugh too. "Nothing I haven't seen before" was what she always said when I was having a bath and she had to pee. She said "Nothing I haven't seen before" and then it was okay for her to come in.

It wasn't the right thing for me to say this time, though. My mother set the tea cup down, and pulled me into a hug, and she squeezed me too hard and for too long.

"It's okay," I said, and tried to remember where it was safe to put my hand on her back. Snakes are friendly, but they don't much like to be touched.

Then she saw what time it was. "Fucking Christ," she said.

After she went to work, I opened my dictionary and looked up the word she had said last night, atheist. I stood in the mirror and said it to myself. "Atheist." I leaned my forehead against the cold glass, and I said it very quiet. "Atheist."

Nothing happened.

There are some words that connect with that secret part of you, and it feels as though you're opening up in slow motion like a flower on TV when you say them all by yourself. Last night, after I heard my mother say "atheist," I felt a bit of that strangeness. But standing in front of my mirror, I felt nothing.

School went the way school always goes. Class. Hallway. Class. Hallway. Lunch. Repeat. When she came home from work that night, my mother told me that she was sorry again. We were eating macaroni and cheese in the living room, with our plates in our laps.

"I'm going to try and get things back on track," she said.

"Things are on track," I said.

Upstairs I said "atheist" into the mirror again, and nothing happened. So I leaned forward and pressed my face against the glass and I said "Nigger" as quietly as I could.

I let myself go crazy for one, two, three seconds. I remembered how I wanted my father to hit her for saying it, wanted her to hit him for saying nothing in response. I remembered his watch beeping in the middle of that pause, and how I wanted something more than their faces inches away from one another.

This was the first and strongest of my magic words. It didn't matter how many times I saw it on TV or heard Tupac say it. The one time I heard my mother say "Nigger" it created a new word all of its own. No dictionary could describe it. When he left that night, she sat on the floor and cried for a half an hour, and then she put on her boots and ran out after him. I sat on the bed in her room, looking at myself in the mirror. I fell asleep waiting for her to come back.

I said "Nigger" and it felt like I was pulling back the skin of an orange. It tore but it felt good. When I opened my eyes, my mother and father were standing before me, face to face. My memory was here in the room with me.

"Nigger," my mother said, very quietly, very carefully. Neither of them moved. Neither of them said anything else. This was the way my mother used to look, shirt torn, her whole body shining with safety pins and spiked bracelets. Sicily curled around her shoulder, visible through a tear in the back of her shirt.

This was my father as a younger man, face serious, glasses straight. I watched for as long as I could.

When his watch beeped, I ran to the front door. I pulled on my shoes while tears streamed down my face. The laces wouldn't tie. That's where my mother found me, crying and struggling with the laces.

"Baby," she said, sitting down beside me. "Oh." Her voice was so soft. She pulled me into a hug and I cried. "What's the matter?" she said.

"Ghosts," was all I could say. She hugged me tighter.

"I see them too," she said. "Not the same ones you see. Mine are old men and women. Bad memories. But I see them too." She kissed my head. "I have magic words too," my mother said. "I've forgotten a lot of them. But there's always been magic in our family." She took my hand. "Did you know that Sicily is older than I am?" she said.

I shook my head, and she nodded.

"My mother gave him to me," she said. "The first time I got my period, she kicked in the bathroom door, screaming and yelling. Already I was terrified, blood everywhere. But my mother made it so much worse. She was wearing this horrible wooden mask, and I had no idea what was going on. She screamed words I didn't understand and she punched me in the face."

My mother was smiling as she told the story. I sniffed a little and laughed.

"I thought I went deaf," my mother said. "Everything was quiet, and all of a sudden I could see Sicily, my mother's tattoo, moving around on her skin. My mother was still yelling, I think, but I couldn't hear her. I could only see her lips move. Sicily was hissing and I was crying. When he jumped onto me, I passed out. When I woke up, my mother was sitting by my bed and sobbing. She just kept saying 'You're a woman, now,' over and over again."

"Grandma did this?" I said.

"She had this crazy idea that magic needed rituals," my mother said. "We weren't Native American, we had no Indian blood, but she went out and bought this insane wooden mask. She bought a bunch of feathers and arrowheads. Anything she could find. She didn't understand that we were just magic anyway. She needed to fit it into some system. Come on get up," My mom helped me up to my feet. She finished tying my shoes.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"We're going for a drive to the desert," my mother said. She pulled the door open and we walked out to the car. "I'm going to punch you in the face and you're going to be a man."

The desert had more stores and streets than I expected. We went to the grocery store, bought bread and peanut butter and honey and some orange juice. Then we drove until there were no more stores. Until ours was the only street. A long thin dirt highway. My mother had a map.

"We're looking for an Indian reservation," my mother said. She threw a candy wrapper out the window. "There's one out here, the map says. I don't know what tribe it is, or anything. We're just going to get what we need and then find a mesa to climb."

I didn't ask what a mesa was. It was something magical. I could tell from the way my mother said it. When we arrived at the Indian reservation, my mother took a bunch of money out of her pocket and counted it.

"I hope this is enough," she said.

"They probably have an ATM machine," I said.

I listened to Tupac in the car while she went looking. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the window. I listened to the song "Changes", and then I listened to it again. This CD had been my father's. I stole it from the box of things my mother had left out for the garbage man. I couldn't remember what my father's voice had sounded like. In my head, his voice was Tupac's.

My mother came back with a big wooden mask under her arm. In her other hand she had feathers and a small paper bag. We drove for another two hours into the desert. We passed hills with flat tops, made out of mud, and my mother looked up at each one we passed. Eventually we stopped, and we climbed out of the car. I had to carry the blanket and the food, and my mother carried the mask and stuff. We climbed the side of a hill, through dirt and rock and up into the hot sun.

"I couldn't find a shaman," my mother said, when we reached the top. "I bought this stuff at convenience store. It was full of all kinds of tourist crap." She tossed the mask and feathers onto the ground. "The girl behind the counter was your age," she said to me. "I felt so stupid buying it. But you know. Tradition has to be maintained."

She took the blanket from me and unfolded it. I helped her and we laid it out on the ground and I could feel all the rocks and sticks underneath it, but I didn't complain. My mother took the small paper bag out of her pocket and opened it.

"Sacred Mushrooms," she said. "I don't know what I was expecting. A medicine hut? Some kind of teepee with an old woman sitting inside waiting for me? Everyone just directed me to this kid selling pot, and I asked him if he knew where I could find anything. He charged me fifty bucks, which is way too much for a handful of mushrooms he picked out of some cow shit."

In the bag there were weird dried-up-looking sticks, with round ends, which my mother poured out onto the blanket. They didn't look like mushrooms to me.

"We'll put them in peanut butter sandwiches," she said. "That's what it said to do on the internet."

So we made peanut butter sandwiches. I did most of the work, and my mom laid on her back in the sun with her eyes closed.

"It was weird to all of a sudden have this new tattoo," she said. "I was supposed to hide it from the kids at school, but I didn't. I showed it off. It was even weirder to see my mother without the tattoo. I was so used to seeing Sicily on her back and arm."

"How many am I supposed to put inside?" I said. I picked up a few of the dried mushrooms. My mom covered her eyes against the sun and looked over at the sandwiches.

"Put it all in," she said. "Half in yours and half in mine."

"Are they really magic?" I said.

"Well, I don't know," my mother said. "We're magic already. The mushrooms are just a kind of drug. But they're a part of how Indians do their magic, and that's why we're here."

"But we're not Indian," I said.

"No," she said. "But this is what my mother did for me, and so this is what I'm going to do for you."

We ate our sandwiches and sat on the blanket to wait. We were quiet for a long time. After a while, I moved closer, and I leaned my head on my mother's shoulder. It was warm and it loved me.

"My mom never seemed interested in saving the world," she said. "She told me again and again that I shouldn't use magic to get ahead in life. It's not worth it. Misusing magic to get a better job or more money will just end up making you unhappier. You'll have to keep using magic, and life isn't about how much money you have. That's what my mom always said. She said that life is just about how your day is going."

"What was grandma like?" I said, but my voice seemed to slip away. "I don't remember."

"I think it's kicking in," my mother said. When I turned to look at her again, she was wearing the wooden mask and she had all the feathers wrapped up in her fist. "I love you," she said, and she punched me in the face. I felt the punch, but I didn't hear it.

I felt invincible. My eyes watered up and my nose was on fire and I felt like I was going to live forever. There was something magic about getting hurt. Nothing felt real because the world was too bright and it looked like the ground was made up of patterns that locked together. I reached out for my mother. Even with the mask, it was still her and we were still on a hill together.

She picked me up and hugged me tight and I felt like I was slipping through the fabric of her clothing, like we were two colors of play-doh all wrapped up together.

I could hear Sicily hissing and slithering, and I could feel him snaking around onto my back. There was a moment where I opened my eyes and my father was standing on the mesa with us, flickering and grey and too colorless for the flashing wonderful desert. He was staring at us, and shaking his head in disappointment. He wanted me to hate my mother the way he hated her, for what she had said, for calling him "Nigger."

My mother turned to look and he was gone. She took the mask off and looked again. I wanted to throw the mask off the side of the hill, but I didn't. We lay on our backs and watched the clouds in the sky. My mother sat up and looked around. "Where's the peanut butter?" she said.

I handed it to her. The wind sounded like glass.

"He was going to fight me for custody," she said, scooping out peanut butter onto her finger. "He was going to tell them I was an atheist and a racist and I beat you with a spoon and that I was an unfit mother. In the end, I think he didn't want the trouble."

"I love you," I said. She knew that though. She could feel it through the air.

"He was a good man," she said. "But he never wanted kids."

It was dark when we came down off the mesa, and my arms and back were sore from lying on the rocks. We left the mask and feathers and the blanket and everything else up there. I was tender where Sicily had taken hold, but he was dark and beautiful on my skin and I could hear the slithering sound now in my head, quiet and constant.

I watched my mother walking ahead of me, and I thought about the time the wooden spoon had broken on my behind. I thought about my mother drunk on the kitchen table telling jokes. I thought about her slamming me into the car door unexpectedly. I thought about her calling my father "Nigger."

My nose was still bleeding and it felt swollen as I climbed into the car beside my mother. She rummaged around on the floor for the Dolly Parton CD, and I got that feeling in my stomach and in my heart and behind my eyes like when I said my magic words, like when the table broke and my mother fell. My heart opened and everything felt like it was in slow motion. This was my mother and she was crazy and broken and scary and she was strong and she was mine.

Dear Apple,

I am writing to apply for a position with your company, and I am including my resume for your review. It outlines my experience as a computer programmer in the field of natural language processing. In this letter, I would like to talk to you about the next level of user experience.

You have cornered the market on usability, Apple. Anyone can pick up any of your devices and find themselves productive within moments. But what are the limits on that productivity? As far as I can tell, there are none. I don't believe you do enough to guide your users safely through the sometimes dangerous new landscape that sprawls behind that flat screen. I don't mean spam, here. I'm not talking about protecting them from others.

Late at night, drunk, our language changes. Our adjectives shift, becoming stronger, more romantic. Our verbs become more clear, more specific, occasionally more desperate. They change even when we're talking of simple things, like eating an apple if you will excuse my example. In the day we simply eat an apple, but late at night, while my wife sleeps, I tell another woman how I am piercing the apple with my teeth. Then I am cutting flesh from it and laying those pieces on my tongue. I am imagining that its flavors are hers.

We can measure a user's word frequency in their first few days of use, and warning flags can be set to detect an increased appearance of certain word classes, perhaps even specific emotional tones.

And, according to presets in your system, your connection can be suspended for your own good, long before you hit send. Txt Msging and Email are the new drunk dialing, and we can help protect our users from themselves. We can protect them from their own natural inclinations to lewdness, regret, longing, desperation. Imagine a robot operator listening to your calls, his robot hand at the ready, waiting to disconnect you when you call her at four a.m. to tell her that you should never have let her go, that you think about her breasts sometimes, about that hollow where her neck cups up behind her ear, sometimes you think too much, are you there? You bitch. I'm sorry that I let you go. I should have followed. I can't bear to think of you with him, piercing and laying his flesh on your - DISCONNECT.

There are words which indicate drunkenness, but sentence complexity is a better indication when you are working with certain emotional tones. Lust, for instance, has specific complexity markers for its drunken and sober instances. Sober, the verbs become more complex, the scenarios depicted are less straight forward, involve motivations, adjectives and adverbs. Drunk, there are subjects and objects and there are simple descriptions of what should go where. For some, they will want the call to end much sooner if they are sober. They make much worse fools of themselves when they are sober. Are you still dating him? What is he, half your age? Maybe I should call him. Does he still have that bright red farmyard phone with the laughing eyes? Is his number still Horsey? Do you - DISCONNECT

We can make the world a better place for the broken.

have them help you download these.


tiny cities made of ashes:modest mouse
dumpweed:four year strong
bright spring morning:suburban legends
sylvia's song:calla
melt the sugar:summer obsession
do you have a map because i am lost in yr eyes:a day in the life
velveteen:glitter*
you know where to find me(acoustic):portastic
sunday drive:the early november
winding road:bonnie summerville
black ballon:goo goo dolls
limon y sal:julieta venegas
life less ordinary:carbon leaf
The Perfect Song:the National
jack the giant killer:the nields
romantic boredom no.909:refrigerator
distant sun - brooke fraser
silk from ashes - adrian bourgeois
better after all - jonatha brooke
the prize fighter - velvet teen, the
10,000 stones - adrianne
my moon my man:fiest
get comfortable - the junior varsity
make my heart attack - spitalfield
cheap trick - hot rod circuit
head over heels - kids in the way
sunrise goodbyes - houston calls
sadie hawkins dance - relient K
when yr heart stops beating - (+44)
list - the f*gs
do it again - the tyde
head over heels - kids in the way.
station - one of the loudest tragedies ever heard
when bad news gets words - lucky boys confusion
the tragedy of Christopher Needs - somerset
lg fuad - motion city soundtrack
lover i dont have to love - bright eyes
the recluse - cursive



ive been handpicking great songs and making an awesome playlist.
its acousticore.
it a little bit of handsteeze and a whole lot of gang gestures
nobody will read this. byah!

edit::if you do its still a work in progress.

I am in love with a beautiful, terrifying, hilarious curmudgeon in his youth. When he gets old and every second sentence starts off with, "In the good old days," he'll mean now! These are the good old days, when we climb into the car and plug in the iPod and holler along to Bobby Darin and Moulin Rouge, taking turns with the verses.

March 31, 2003

Right now I am in an observation room at the University Hospital. I took too many drugs, and thankfully, brought myself here. I remember how I kept pulling the IV?s out of my hands, and then screaming that it hurt. I was drunk and I had taken a lot of pills; I started taking the Lorazepam to get high, but after 20 pills I was a compulsive meat puppet who just wanted more. Now I?m hooked up to a drip that is taking forever to get into my body. I have one IV in my right arm, one on my left, and some pasty things hooked up to my chest to monitor my liver. It?s really quite disgusting.

All of the Valium I snorted completely hypnotized me and I was no longer in control of what I did. I just wanted to die. So I drank a bottle of rum and took some other pills I had lying around, and after all of that, decided I wanted to live. I don?t remember driving myself to the hospital, but I did. I never called my parents because I was afraid they would yell at me. I called my cousin Jackie because I knew she would be understanding.

After my drip finished, I yanked all the cords and needles out of my body and tried to leave. I got to the door of my room, the nurse stopped me, and convinced me to wait for the doctor to come and talk to me. He told me I was in here to get help and it was in my best interest to stay, so I went back to my bed. I wasn't really keen on staying, but the only reason I really wanted to leave that minute was because I needed a cigarette.
April 1, 2003

Now I'm in the City Hospital Psychiatric Unit. At first I was somewhat intimidated by the cliques the current patients had formed. I got here just in time for sterilized supper. I sat down, ate slowly, and eyed everyone through the corner of my eye so that no one would freak out on me. Then I saw John, who I knew from raves. I was shocked and relieved that he was in there with me, so I smiled and he came over to eat his supper with me. It was weird making conversation with him, I mean, what do you say when you recognise someone you know in the psych ward?

There is a girl here that I have seen at raves, but I don't plan on talking to her because she's really sketchy and looks like she might bite me. There's also a guy who thinks he's Jesus, and often speaks of judgement day. He's really a nice guy, but John says Jesus stole his underwear from the laundry room. I also met Mabel. She?s a lovely old lady who is bipolar and schizophrenic. She?s had several shock treatment sessions, and definitely looks like it. When John and I played chess this evening, all of a sudden Mabel yelled, ?Shoot him! Shoot him!? She had an indescribable look of terror in her eyes and then carried on rambling about the devil, or something of that nature.

John looked at me and said, ?So why are we in here, again??
April 2, 2003

They forced me to take medication last night, one little blue pill to help me sleep, and the other was the Prozac that I was already prescribed. The blue sleeping pill they forced on me gave me the worst migraine of my life, and I couldn?t sleep, so they gave me another. Little help that did-the migraine got worse and I barely slept all night. NEVER take the blue pill.

A doctor came in to talk to me bright and early, when I was at my worst: sweaty and shaky from the migraine, red-eyed and frazzled from the lack of sleep. As he asked me endless questions about my state, I lay on the bed in a fetal position with a cold facecloth on my head. He asked what I thought would help, so I told him that being in here would only make things worse. He agreed, and said that he would begin the paperwork so I could be let out within a day or two. He seemed like a decent doctor, but his talk of the importance of having some sort of spiritual belief put me off.

Even though I wasn't thoroughly impressed with my doctor, John's is worse. His doctor likes to give everyone electro-shock therapy, and he wants to give it to John. John's been on so many different medications that he actually considered it, but I've convinced him not to. It?s such a frequent occurrence here, that the patients simply call it ?the therapy?.

Last night I called Janelle. Right now she's at the University Hospital Psychiatric Ward, and the only reason I'm not there is because they didn't have an open bed. She has been there for a week or two. She also tried to kill herself. I told her to call Erica and let her know what was going on with me, because we all volunteered with the same youth group and I didn't want Erica wondering where I was.

So Erica came to visit this afternoon, shortly after my cousin arrived. We flipped through John?s Feng Shui book, and then created our own little psych ward Breakfast Club. It was great fun! When Erica had to leave she joked that she was "making her rounds" because she was going to go visit Janelle at the other hospital. She tried to joke about things, but I knew she didn't know how to deal with this.

Thankfully, I can still smoke. There?s a little area for us to go outside and puff away, which has become a frequent haunt of mine because there's nothing better to do. I look like crap. How good can you look after an overdose? I?ve taken to putting on my black beret instead of doing my hair...and I?m sure that a girl wearing a black beret, bright pink fleece pants, and bunny slippers is quite a sight.

Three days in the hospital, and I've only seen a doctor once. I find that somewhat strange since, umm, I tried to kill myself. The only advice I've received was to continue taking Prozac. If the doctor told me anything else of value, I don't remember. There is NO ONE here to offer any type of emotional support, listen, or even guide me. There are just people to watch you and treat you like a child. To top it all off, they wake you up at 8 a.m.! Bastards.
April 3, 2003

The paperwork from the doctor had finally been completed, so I could go home. I wasn't referred to a doctor or given a prescription refill, just told I could leave. They said I should tell my family doctor what happened, but if I do tell him, he'll never prescribe me Valium again, and I've really been craving it. John didn't want me to leave, so I lingered as long as I could stand to, which wasn't long. When I left, I promised John I would come back to visit, and I would. The look in his eyes when we hugged goodbye was terrible. I felt horrible for leaving him there.

I honestly don't know what I'm going to do now. I have already failed most of my university classes, so there is no point writing the final exams. I have no summer job lined up, and my cat isn't even staying with me anymore because my parents have her.

As soon as I got home, I checked my messages. No one called. At the moment I tried to kill myself I felt completely alone in the world and didn't care about
anyone except myself. That's why I did it.

I theif.

I think of those papers we once passed around at school, “Stare at this picture of Jesus for thirty seconds, then close your eyes,” someone will say. “But it’s just an optical illusion,” I reply, disappointed in my friends, who haven’t figured out that after you look at anything long enough, you start to see things that are not there.

I hate shaving/showering/other hygiene related tasks, but more than that I hate not having shaved, and not being showered a hundred times more than I hate actually having to bother with hygeine. Some of the time.

I know slug's Fuck You Lucy.


I love the fall/first half of winter, basically the months october through january.

I do not like conflict, instead I've just completely ignored its existence, which explains the mysterious disaperances of at least five people i used to know.

The want-ad said nothing about a degree, but it's good to give a bit beyond what they ask for. A degree says that I'm responsible, valuable. The ad told me exactly what they were looking for, and I invented a past that was just a little bit better, like they were getting more than their money's worth with me. Everyone likes a deal.

"Where do you see yourself in five years?" the owner of the tour guide service asked. He looked up from the papers to meet my eyes.

"Developing tours of my own," I said, and smiled. "I want to help shape people's impression of Nova Scotia."

"What do you think Nova Scotia has to offer that distinguishes it from the other provinces?" he asked, and I pulled my chair closer to the table, closer to him.

My smile was wide.

"I would have to say the people, first of all," I said.

After the interview he shook my hand firmly.

In my car I pulled slowly into traffic. I found a country music station to listen to, even though I hate country music. Listening to music that I hate calms me down.

He called me early the next day. The job would be simple. Tourists would sign up for the tour, they would rent bikes from his company, and I would take them on a predetermined route along the Herring Cove road, through a national park, and then a picturesque fishing village. He had it all planned out.

My plan was a little different.

My friend David worked the video camera. I had the megaphone strapped to my back.

At Shelly's house we clumped together in the road, still straddling our bikes, and I took the megaphone off my back. A thin brunette woman in the crowd wheeled her bike next to mine, and I turned to her with my smile as genuine as I could make it.

"Why are we stopping?" she said.

"This is the first stop on today's tour," I told her, and I pointed to Shelly's house. "This is the home of Shelly Taylor," I said, loud enough for even the couples at the back of the tour group to hear.

"Who's Shelly Taylor?" I heard one of them whisper, a man in a bright red windbreaker. I was glad, then, that I'd not memorized a set script for this, that I'd decided spontaneity and improvisation would be more dynamic.

David was off to the side, making sure that he got everyone in his shot: me, the tourists, and the house itself. I hoped that the camera's microphone was as good as he said it was. The preamble was important too.

"Let me tell you," I said to the questioning man. "Shelly Taylor is my current girlfriend, "I smiled. "This is the home of Mister and Missus Taylor, her parents. Shelly, who lives upstairs, gave me a curious present this year for my birthday. She gave me a book called Oral Sex Tips for Men. What the hell is that all about?" I didn't give them time to respond. They began to realize this wasn't the kind of tour they'd expected. I lifted the megaphone to my mouth, and turned to the house.

"HEY SHELLY, IT ISN'T BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW." I said, my voice bouncing off the houses and echoing back to the group. "IT'S BECAUSE I'M SAVING THAT FOR A GIRL THAT I REALLY LOVE. YOU'RE JUST HELPING ME KILL TIME. YOU'RE LIKE INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY," I said. "ONLY CHEAPER."

A woman in the group behind me got on her bike, and started off down the hill. David filmed her as she biked away, and then turned the camera back to me. Everyone else was looking at me expectantly. I shrugged, watching her go.

"I hope she doesn't get lost, with no guide," I said, but now they were looking beyond me at Shelly's house. I turned around again, and saw that Shelly and her mother were standing on the porch, staring at us. I lifted the megaphone to my lips again. "AND I'M KEEPING THOSE DVDS YOU LEFT AT MY HOUSE." I said. "THEY'RE MINE."

I got on my bike, not looking back to see if the tour group was going to follow. I knew they would.

The second stop was my most recent ex-girlfriend. I'd decided that reverse chronological order would be the best method, starting off with fresh anger, shocking my audience with the viciousness of my feelings, and then, as I worked my way back through time, we would visit the homes of old lovers that I'd had time to reflect over. In this way, an emotional depth would emerge over the course of the show.

"Michelle and I used to get in fights," I said as we slowed down on her street. "I would accuse her of cheating on me with this call centre flunky, and she would call me jealous and paranoid." The crowd pulled into her driveway behind me. "Two weeks after we broke up, I saw them coming out of the movie theatre, holding hands. Now, maybe she wasn't cheating on me at all, and my paranoia and bitterness drove her away. Maybe she needed someone to trust and to be close with, and all I wanted to do was own her. Maybe that drove her to him." I paused. "Now, I recognize that these are very real possibilities." I said. "But let's pretend for a second that they aren't."

I raised the megaphone to my mouth.

"HEY SLUT." I said. "IS THIS A BAD TIME? I'VE GOT SOME PEOPLE OUT HERE WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN PURE EVIL. WHY DON'T YOU PUT ON THAT SARI OR SARONG OR WHATEVER THE FUCK IT IS THAT YOU NEVER WEAR A BRA UNDER AND COME ON OUT."

An hour later we were parked in front of Chebucto Heights Elementary.

"This isn't what I paid for," a man said, wheeling his bike next to mine. I nodded my head.

"I understand that sir," I said, "and of course you're free to leave at any time. I have no doubt that you'll receive a full refund from my employer when you explain the situation to him. If you are interested, though, school is almost out, and Kelly will be here to pick up her daycare group.?

I don't know whether he stayed with the group because he was afraid of getting lost, or because he was genuinely interested, but by the next stop, the vibe of the group had clearly changed. The people remaining were laughing and asking me questions. They stood behind me giggling as Sheri stepped nervously out onto her front step.

"I LENT YOU TWENTY DOLLARS THE DAY BEFORE YOU DUMPED ME," I said through the megaphone, and I could hear the crowd snickering. "MAYBE YOU COULD PAY ME BACK NOW?" Sheri went into the house, and a minute later came out with a twenty dollar bill. The man who had complained about the tour biked up to her and took it from her hand. "YOU MADE STUPID FACES IN BED," I said. We biked away.

By stop six, they were asking David if they could get a copy of the tape. I said that if they left us fifteen dollars, we could have it burnt to DVD and mailed to them. I said maybe you'll see it this fall, on TV.

We pulled into the last driveway, and a man behind me was laughing already. He kept poking his wife in the ribs and saying "ONLY CHEAPER!" She kept responding with, "HEY SLUT!" and they would laugh even harder.

"This is where Enid lives," I said quietly, and all of their chatter died down. "I pointed to the back door. "That door leads down to the basement, where I lost my virginity at the age of fourteen. We were both drinking. I'd never been drunk, and to be honest I had never even kissed a girl. Enid changed all that. She... hold on," I said, as the front door opened, and Enid stepped out. "Here she is now," I said as Enid locked the door. She turned to see the crowd of cyclists on the street. I lifted the megaphone to my mouth.

"WHERE ARE YOU OFF TO NOW, HARLOT?" I said. "OFF TO STEAL THE INNOCENCE FROM ANOTHER STARRY EYED YOUTH? OFF TO CRUSH ANOTHER CHILD'S ROMANTIC NOTIONS WITH YOUR DEMANDS TO HAVE YOU HAIR PULLED INSTEAD OF BEING GENTLY KISSED, LIKE HOW THEY THOUGHT SEX WAS SUPPOSED TO BE?" She just stood there, staring, and then turned and went back into the house.

"THANKS FOR RUINING MY LIFE." I said as the door closed behind her. I turned, grinning, to the crowd of cyclists, and nodded. "That about wraps it up for today's tour," I said. "I hope that you come away from this tour with a newfound impression of what it's like to live in our beautiful province, and the..." There was a sound behind me, the shriek of a megaphone turning on. I turned to see Enid standing on her porch again, megaphone in hand.

"YOU NEVER CALLED ME BACK," she said. "YOU STARTED CRYING HALFWAY THROUGH, AND RAN OUT, SOBBING LIKE I'D STABBED YOU OR SOMETHING. I WASN'T ABLE TO HAVE SEX AGAIN UNTIL I WAS NINETEEN. I KNEW THAT I SHOULDN'T BE GUILTY, BUT I COULDN'T..." I lifted my own megaphone. "HARLOT HARLOT HARLOT," I said, drowning out her words. "HARLOT HARLOT HARLOT." I turned to David. "Stop recording," I said, but he shook his head. "This is good TV," he said.

"I COULDN'T GET THAT PICTURE OF YOU OUT OF MY HEAD," Enid said, "YOU PULLING UP YOUR SWEAT PANTS AND SAYING 'I'M A WHORE, I'M A WHORE' OVER AND OVER AGAIN. FOR YEARS I HATED MYSELF FOR TAKING AWAY YOUR INNOCENCE."

I got on my bike, and started down the hill, not looking back to see if the tour group was following me until I was almost a block away from Enid's house. They weren't following.

"THE TOUR IS OVER," I announced through the megaphone, and I could see David filming me. There was no way I would give him associate producer credit now. He turned the camera back to Enid.

"HE HAD THE CUTEST UNDERWEAR, THOUGH," Enid was saying. "BATMAN UNDERWEAR, AT FOURTEEN." I turned the corner and biked another block before stopping.

This could still be salvaged. It was just another twist, another way my show was going to distinguish itself from the other reality shows. I just had to swallow my pride.

The first of the cyclists came around the corner toward me.

At the back of the crowd, a woman poked her husband in the side. "HEY SLUT" she said, grinning. Her husband laughed. "I'M A WHORE," he crowed. "I'M A WHORE, I'M A WHORE!"

im just a stupid fuck with brilliant luck who has watched far too many john cusak movies where persistance get the girl no matter how big an ass he makes of himself.


i cnt feel my face.. this is awesome.

correspondance

____me_______________

i will start with an update on my life.

the magnitude of my move and situation hit me like a fist in the balls. and to leave what i had just learn to be comforable was worse. i was living with a lady friend, taylor landry, but things didnt work out. we were married but only in the sense of sharing a bed, fighing subtly and spending dead time together. or.. rather live time. because why would you call on a friend to kill time instead of to live time. i think thats w.blake.

long winded self promises of future schooling. up close the sound remains the same. i am exactly as before. i need to be educated a suppose. but nothing really interests me. but rly none of that calls me. what i currently fancy is the idea of being a pastry chef. hopefully this job goes through at a bakery/coffee shop.

i am still between jobs but am applying for foodstamps, unemployment, and medical. i think i got the latter, my interview was yesterday, the 24th. nailed it. though i dont rly kow what that means with a social worker. hopefully i can get my teeth fixed.

oh. and i had mom and dad for dinner last night and had the greatest time. there is nothing quite like having a home that you are proud to have company over, or good carne asada.

xo
-bryanJuarez

______my cousin leslie:__________


wow well at least you're alive... i miss you tons and really i am sad to hear that your life the life of a smart kid an american kid with so many opportunities to make something of himself has resorted to recieveing food stamps and trying to get by in the world by doing nothing. bryan i hope you know that i love you and that you really need to take a look at what you're doing with your life. will you be proud of the image you leave behind. does it even matter to you. smoking and drinking and sleeping around, would you want this life for any of your family members. do you forsee this future for jason, kevin, elmer, i hope you find what you are looking for, and i hope you know you can count on me. you don't have to be "cool" and be a "rebel" for us to accept you. i love you and i feel you're going down a bad path.

735713

_______me again_________

i feel sort of challenged. resorted to welfare? i am under the impression that those systems are in place to help get ppl on their feet, not for one to mooch off of working ppls point something cent per dollar. what it rly means? i have bad teeth. i never took care of them and four hundred went towards half a root canal. i can not afford to get my wisdom teeth out and i know they are shifting my teeth around. if i sound defensive i am. but you know what its like to be talked at. sry if this invites more "having words" than a conversation

i smoke, a lot less than i used to. im down to one pack a week. i cant afford to, my apt is a non smoking complex and since me and T stopped living together, ive had a lot more five dollar bills in my pocket. fancy that.

i rly wish i was trying to get by in a world by doing nothing. its hard to get a job when my phone has been dead. and i cant afford the phonebill or a replacement cellular device. i am usually skating around town in a dress shirt and slacks trying to get hired.

i drink constantly. i think i am self medicating. the whole situation with leaving escondido is a trip. i am tossed every night i go see my parents. i have five friends in ontario, i have five friends in escondido, and two roommates at home.

i drink by myself. i had mom and dad over and during the wait and food prep i had two glasses of rly good wine. it might be a problem, i never turn down a drink. but i am not wasting money on it. so it works well for me.

sleeping around. i dont even have a network of friends, so even if i did want company i couldnt find any. i am guessing you mean with taylor? shes gay.

i rly dont want this to come off as an attack at what you said, but i do feel like i am backed into a corner. i wasnt there for you. i fucked up. but thats another subject for another day.

i am not trying to be cool, or a rebel. although the smoking, drinking, riding a motorcycle, or sleeping with a lesbian isnt helping my case any.

i am not looking for you or anybody else in my family to accept me. i know its there, i know i love you and i know you love me. that should be it. i know you are looking out for me. and i am not ever going to dodge that kind of care. but i am in love with a constant state of crisis. i love to be without, and when i am hungry is when i am working the most to not be. i dont know if that makes any sense, but its how i feel.

i am not under the impression that i am out here to "find myself, nor do i think its some sort of passage to be boozed up in public. i am- in love with what i am doing, and i wish more ppl could see that past my drinking habits, cigarette smoke, and bad hygine.

xo
-bryanJuarez

or else things pop pff all wrong.

like perhaps you need ot be fscke din the first place or else you go all postal and pul an ak on some ppl.

im glad im fucked up.

and its a good kind of fucked up.

how is it good stuff. ha ha ha ha aha

its like everyone evacutating the space station and i am fucked. im going to cals state fulletron. berkely and such. santa bobo and such

weve lived in houses with a grip of ppl and i wan to continue to life in a house full of ppl but that i dont know.

or a room full of plp i dont know. im eager to sart moving again.

i feel like otto.

the busdriver.

no ides just yet but im goint to get back into this circle. i doubt the kids from four yrs ago still read these posts butwhatevs. life will go on. maye tonight will end in two forties..

oh and i was typing funny because i had a cigarette between my nuckles.
but tonight should end in fourty ounces. i have to work tomorrow so thats not a big deal.

passion defies reason.

and huzzah! four doallrs in change and a lotto ticket for four bones.

looks good.

mmm fiend.

if yr on it. add me.

myspace.com/st4rw4rs

ive long since forgotten about this website ha!

red tulips, diamonds.

sunflowers, rubies.

well, it looks like everyone and their mom is giving a head up on how things go, umm. i am getting a job, i am not leaving the state as i planned. which boo sucks but it gives me a chance with this girl i adore and i dont have to move away from nancy and melinda. or more any further from sura. umm... nothing much doing at all ive been sitting around home. today i field dayed and got halfway through the house tomorrow during noontime i will finish the house, and watching Return of the Jedi. i am in need of a toenail clipper so if anybody can help out. awesomr. i dont have anything real or genuine to day other than this so umm. so long all. txt me. i desperately need to shift my outbox to inbox ratio. its pretty bad. 3:1.. maybe?

Triangular theory of love

wasted six minutes of my life
i will never get back. im reclined. i cant do anything when i am not in a prone position. hold on.
k spit time:
I thought the chance it was a hundred to one
I could count up the percentage of my coming undone
but now some calculation of impatiently fated rhymes
ribbon of words to the wreck of my valentine
that a fine mess like this should get dished
I woulda made it more unlikely if I had one wish
I'd take this, with an interstitial liquid bliss
and instead another fraudlent plot, a twist
this a fist full of good credit
this a circumstance that I must edit
I said it ever thusly
tounge in cheek
on one knee
you could trust me
but see, that's just fine,
last chance, lost mine
handed then to a bandit,
thin:
my last dime
every twist of the tounge another radical move

i cant quite seem to get myself straight.
today, training was alot of fun.
wouldnt have any trouble in teh boot camp
though a girl makes me want to stay,
the promises of another make me burn.
i lie to myself every time.
i know a life of sin has led me to this sorry fate
though ready do let go? not so much
a trust bridge between the friends i pined for
only a week past burns such: this
no money, no anything. all i want to do is
have friends over on friday.
rock and roll, brew in hand. mgd only for me, thanx
teq shots? sure. drinking early with tbe besties. awesome<3
i dont know. ive written alot of you off already.
to the most
what an immature and passive
way to not have to deal with
three nights past
though i am glad i did.
stfu with a finger in the air.
gah. late night rides, maybe a trip to simi in the near future. i want to drive around late night
make ppl wake up next day thinking who did this to my house?
i really want some passion to come my way.
i dont know why im not tired.
well i slept all day
i need a new tattoo. soon.
i dont want to wait the how many weeks?
nine is it, to be on a plany the date of birth
i should be with those
that acre about me the most. it unfair
for me to want to leave.
still the 26th i need to give a little something back.
a night to rest heads on friends. couches maybe? if you find one bring it. we can throw it in the back
of the house and drape
a stolen sheet over it.
bryan juarez is sick of breathing
its actually kind of boring
all the time with all the asthma, wheezing,
and the snoring
plus continue lying motionless to indicate you wouldnt mind
another night against my nine.
dont look at me crooked im not the one to blame
not the same, more whole and broken since last time
second hand ticks and with every second more time gone.
i should be asleep,
writing a, second letter
to a, certian someone
with text that seems insisting
her company missing
thoughts blistering
"im not trying to bum anyone out
not trying to be dramatic, just thinking out loud"
i know it doesnt make sense
words pasturized, cultured, homogenized, edited
no longer know where i stand
mind races again and again

i used to save things i loved.
like bits of txt.
dont remember many of them
but some are lyrics,
things lovers said,
quips from teh parents
quotes from the famous.
really wish it was something its not
now this empty rhyme is all that ive got.
few years from now ill be stting in an apartment
head in hands, tears, wondering where my life went
dont mind reading it
a silly time spend
hell bented
went
lent it. still i cant harldly get my words it
looking back up it, repeating, lips wet
dont like the weather
get out of the rain
as good as a nod to a blind man.
inspired? just listen
be open and listen
avoid ending up twisted
awkward yoga position.


i am the rhymy king
goodnight. im off to be foxen in the room.

warped tour.

my friend calls it "getting up to stuff"

fooling around i mean..

quaint.

Your password is based on a commonly used password. Your password is too easy to guess. It's recommended that you change it, otherwise you risk having your journal hijacked. Visit http://www.livejournal.com/changepassword.bml to change your password.

fsck you lj

i lost my phone.

for myself rather than the ppl who read this, ever want to just bask after a good experience, or during, like when the sun is out and your like: mmm, tasty. yeah i know there should've been a questionmark there somewhere but i am over it. like a bridge ov4r water. i totally basked but it was nowhere near as long as i wouldve liked, i wouldve have rather enjoyed a strike than talked or commented. like i said i am over it. my watch is totally chaffing. like, scurvvy has no more bones and just skull left, oh an i got a new tattoo. i would post a picture but i dont have the equipment. theres a zombie and a zombie and then it says mommy's little monster and then a zombie. on for each of my brothers. even though the monster is not plural its implied. i am ever so smitten by a friend that tried to kill herself last weekend. its something of a predicament and a pox on my fickle self. i saw v for vendetta and it reminded me of when i was all anarcho-punk sans the tight pants and hardcore patches. i cared so much about the entire crimethinc. idea and all that jazz. now its sort of a fancy but i dig. it is currently 0:13 according to my el lock and i am something sleepy. i suppose i will cross post this to myspace blogg too. i was going to say something but i make you look like an ass alot so nvrmnd. call me when you read this and hopefully we wouldve talked bu then...

luke chueh, thomas han and joe ledbetter rock the socks. look them up

If you put a towel over a dog's head, is the intelligent dog the one who pulls it off or is the intelligent dog the one who sits and waits, figuring that humans do strange things from time to time and if they put the towel on the dog's head there must be a reason for it?

chappelles show is over. im really glad too. i wasnt a fan of the lowbrow humor and the topics dave would mine for laughs.

ha. you lose.

Driving home yesterday, I stopped at a traffic light and idly watched two workers loading big stones into a truck. I immediately thought what a lousy job. But almost as soon as that drifted across my mind, one of the guys threw a stone into the truck over his shoulder. Not to be outdone, his partner on seeing this nonchalantly turned his back on the truck and tossed one in over his head. The two men stopped and grinned at each other like naughty bad boys. For the next two minutes-- until the light changed-- they threw stones in every crazy way they could think of, having the best time. As the light turned green and I was pulling away, one of the men saw me and realized I had been watching their show. I gave him a crazy-happy smile and a big thumbs up. ( He gave me two. )

so i introduced carlos to julie mak. it was a secret to me because i was upstairs looking for C0squared, which i mean to replace btw so you are not getting yoru tank back untill you know the exact price of refilling a sixteen oz. tank or take me to a place where i can charge it. i am not afraid of overdraft charges.
i felt all grown up today. i woke up, dl a little porn, walked around in my roos and then foind some pastries, i put on some jeans and my starwars shirt with some neat-o slipper i found like ten min ago and walked to work for a triple shortshot caramel macchiato hold foam light whip. lol i never thought i would have my own drink sentence. but meh. i paid seventy cents for my designer coffee and sat down in the cafe. it was muy tasty. i dont care about globalization anymore. neither do i care about the african aids problem, iran or north korea. it sucks, but thats all.
i want to go to the jesus house later today, before the sun goes down. im going to call my sidekick and try and f ind a crowbar. so long all.

i am never showing any bands to anybody anymore, you found a way to fuck them up for me.

Sometimes I miss smoking. It's been years since I stopped but sometimes like a delicious pungent smell that appears out of nowhere, nostalgia for them hits me. Pulling that first one from a new pack, the flick of the match or the metallic whizz of the lighter under your thumb, the first puffs that are not very strong because the cigarette hasn't really gotten going yet. The small satisfaction of tapping a long gray ash off in an ashtray. The cha cha twist of the fingers stubbing out the butt when you're done. The half empty pack of matches in your pocket. The circus colored disposable lighters you'd buy two at a time because they were so easy to lose. What more perfect dessert was there than a cigarette after dinner? Or one after sex? That magical, intimate few minutes when you shared a cigarette for the first time with someone new in your life. A friend explained it well: The problem with cigarettes is that they're your best friend because they're always there for you. If you're happy, they're there to share the moment with you. If you're depressed they're there. Tired? There. Nervous? There. They may end up killing you but a better, truer friend is not to be found. The only thing that comes close is a good dog.

something i liked. i mightve read it in a forum or heard it in a movie or was told by your sister

some ppl honestly gave up myspace and lj for lent.. wow.. lol

kooshtifer, gone for lent

everything is so god damn frustrating, the postal service 1800 number the fact that my phone has no damn reception. my wound on my tattoo that looks funny, my brother wont drop off the car between calsses, and i probably have no gas. the fact that i dont get my goddamn phonecalls returned. fuck this game.. im going to work for an italian pop, le sigh.






oh, and the phonebill.

i wanted to know if anybody nearby had any spare keyboards and mice. ill pick them up i just have this great paicr in mind. in any case take it easy yeah?

your a god damn turkey. so deal with it.

and in other news i am for sure going to get fired at dland. i am rather not in the mood to call a manager and tell them i quit but i am also not in the mood to ev4r run down there again for some sorry ass shift. o start work in like two and a half hours and thats why i am up so late. as it is a coffee place i am not going to have to deal with being up and cranky ill just do a morning strike and bean. umm coffee and a smoke. seeing as to i now am a fan of lucky strikes.. nvrmnd. oh, i fell in love with some dood i think his name is david cho. hold on lemme wiki and google it..


its david choe, and here is his website:
http://www.davidchoe.com/art.html

yeah not that hard bit its sweet sauce squared. theres this video at the wooster that is fantastix. i decided i am going to take art classes at rcc. this summer for sure. but like mid day. that way i can still work mornings and evenings. oh i worked at sixth and hamner last night and i couldnt stop saying archibald and riverside. damn i cant find the y key... as i get to it twice. lol yeah.. i basically suck at life. i am still trying to get used to not looking at my fingers when i type.. lol

ummm.. hmmm oh i am the car4mel king and dont let anybody tell you otherwise. i pwn at walling caramel. yeah i made that up thats why it sounds retarded but i am the best ev4r at erm.. putting caramel on the sides of the frapp cups. w00t for my prowess. umm.. i lost both pairs of my ipod headphones and all i have left is my beastly dj sound booth type ones.. lol they are too big to pocket conveniently.

in any case have a good night all. and umm.. avoid losing your keys

i am a barista and it pwn3s on dland.

disney=fuxage

MCCCXXXVII