DON'T BE DUMB

Matt (other matt, not the one now) was hanging out of the window with a baseball bat when Bill Rudolph pulled us over in his Volvo.

Bill had been following us for about two blocks and had seen it all.

"Destroying Postal property is illegal, and hanging out of cars like that is dangerous. You wrecked all of your neighbors' stuff. You boys know better than that." (quotation approximate - feel free to substitute any angry suburban dad rant you would like, as long as it gets the same general point across.)

"What do you think you're doing?" (this quote is accurate, so is the answer).

Matt replied, "Bein' dumb."

Obviously unprepared for the honesty of this response, Bill drove off and never told our parents.

ISLAND - Part 2

The water felt good on Jerry's skin, almost good enough to make him forget how much it stung his eyes.

The lagoon just down the beach from his sleeping spot was shallow and warm like a bathtub. Unlike a bathtub it was filled with little black crabs that made little clicking noises when they came up onto the beach. Jerry could see them scatter before him as he waded into the water.

The lagoon was also possibly the bluest thing Jerry had ever seen. He didn't know what that meant, exactly. He just knew that every time he looked at it from any angle he thought, 'Holy Shit! That's blue!' Which had never happened when he had looked at blue things in the past.

It was also a puzzle - which may or may not be why Jerry chose to burrow out his sleeping hole so close to it.

No, that wasn't true...he bunked on the beach because of the snakes. Stupid fucking snakes.

It still twisted Jerry that he couldn't figure the lagoon out. It was circular, about a quarter mile across and it was closed off to the ocean on its outward edge by a thin sandbar. The water of the ocean outside was rough, choppy and cold, and often raged with swells and frothy whitecaps. It was inhospitable and intimidating, and Jerry, not surprisingly, wanted nothing to do with it.

The lagoon however was always placid and warm - a perfect blue lens, unfazed by the weather or conditions in the ocean not more than ten feet away. Day after day, rain or shine, come hell or, quite literally, high water, the lagoon remained a polished opal. Not a drop of the ocean outside the sandbar ever seemed to intrude on it nor did a drop of the falling rain ever appear to disturb its polished surface.

It was amazing, it was astounding, it was miraculous -
It made Jerry very, very mad.
It made him pissed, in fact.

Jerry didn't undersand the lagoon and he didn't like things he didn't understand.

Far from awakening in him any sense of wonder or curiosity, they tensed him up like the sound of nails on a chalkboard; like the bracing cold of the water in the ocean that Jerry made it his business to avoid.

They reminded him of when people would whisper to each other when he was a boy on the schoolyard.
They reminded him of people making plans behind his back.

The last of the salt water dried on Jerry's skin and left a fine dust of salt on his shoulders...
Looking up at the height to which the sun had climbed, Jerry started.

"My stick!"

He charged out of the water towards the fringe of the jungle, leaving a wake behind him.
As he dissappeared into the trees, the waves were swallowed just an instant too quickly by the lagoon.

ROBOT BABY - Part 1

The consensus among the people I polled is as follows:

If you had sex with an android, and you were capable of having a kid the first place, you'd probably have a robot baby.

By capable I mean, of course, you'd have to be biologically set up for it. You know, like, you'd have to be a woman, I guess. And you'd have to have all of your baby-cooking stuff inside all working and ready to go. And you should be on vitamins - because I heard that proper nutrition is important.

You actually might want to start now with the vitamins, just in case.

HERE, HOLD THIS

1: Hold this for a minute.

2: Hold what?

1: This.

2: What?

1: This.

2: What is it?

1: Doesn't matter.

2: I bet it does.

1: Trust me, it doesn't. And it's probably better you don't know.

2: Why?

1: 'Cause you'll freak out.

2: No, then.

1: Too bad.

2: Too bad what?

1: You already have it. You have for a while now.

2: How's that work?

1: It just does. It's not your decision

2: Well then, what should I do?

1: Just ignore it. It'll go away.

2: Go away?

1: Or you'll eventually forget it's there.

ISLAND - Part 1

Living on an island is hard, thought Jerry, for the first of what would undoubtably be many times that day.

He blinked his eyes against the rising sun, then closed them tightly as he strained at the waist to sit up from where he had slept, lying prone in his body-shaped depression in the sandy beach.

As he rose from the beach his body curled slowly upwards, joint by aching joint. When he had grunted himself into a seated comma he paused, like he did every morning, to let the grains of sand fall from his back and hair, where they had accumulated through the night.

As they did every morning, most of the grains chose to reunite with the rest of their friends on the beach. But, also as always, a not insignificant number chose to make a detour on their trip downward, slipping between the tender patch of skin at his lower back and the waistband of his tattered khakis. Far from finding any shortcut back to the beach, these grains instead ended their trip lodged in and around his crack. Jerry assumed this outcome was as unfortunate for the sand as it was for himself.

Starting every day with this little tragedy was one of the reasons that living on an island was hard. The snakes were another.

Sighing gently - Jerry wiped the sleep from his eyes with his sand-covered fingers, and then attempted to wipe the newly deposited sand from his eyes with the same sandy fingers that put it there.

"Where's my pokey stick?," Jerry asked to no one, blinking back sandy tears.

As usual, no one didn't have much to say.

"Fuck it then."

He went to wash his abraided eyes in the salty ocean.

THE LAST FIVE

The last five nuts.
Waiting silently in their ziploc prison.
Sitting stoicly resigned to their fate.

On the one hand I admire them greatly. Their ability to bide their time, watching as their comrades were indifferently selected for consumption over a period of months. Day after day, a few at a time, until only the last five remained.

But at the same time they had months.

Months of time to plot, scheme, innovate...to lead their companions to freedom.
The plastic walls that held them were formidable but, at the beginning at least, the population of nuts was as well. You would think that after a while they'd realize what was going on, and have some desire to escape their fate.

My friends suggested that perhaps they achieved some kind of zenlike resignation in regards to their eventual consumption. That by ignoring their impulse to save themselves they were able to overcome their fears about their imprisonment and certain demise - and thus to renounce the drive to escape.

But I personally don't think the situation is anywhere near that poetic. I think that the last five nuts may have had balls enough to stick together, but not quite enough to stand up and fight.

Stupid nuts.

PILE OF PEOPLE

I was recently at the bottom of a pile of people.
How I found myself there is not important and frankly, I can't quite remember how it happened.

But I was most certainly there. It's one of those things you can be reasonably sure about.

I'm not going to recommend that anyone go out of their way to try it.
And, as my experience was unintentional, I don't think that I would be in any position to endorse it even if I wanted to.

But in the event that you do find yourself in a similar position, here are some tips:

1. Don't exhale - As you may or may not be aware, they don't put a whole lot of air under piles of people. You're going to have to make due with what you brought with you.

2. Leave your valuables at home - You won't need them, whatever they are. There's nothing under there for money to buy. Not even traveler's checks, which are usually safer to carry. As for family heirlooms, expensive electronics, autographed vinyl records and the like - nobody's going to be impressed by them and they'll probably get broken.

3. Check your ego - Being under a pile of people is humbling. If you're there on purpose this may, in fact, be the reason you're there. Regardless, don't expect to be able to impose yourself on the situation too much. The situation is going to be imposing itself on you until it decides otherwise.

4. Have a sense of humor - But don't be too joky about it (see rule 1).

5. Don't resent the people on top - (disregard if you are under the pile intentionally) Chances are high that they didn't have any more control over where they ended up than you did. Chances are also high that they are people that you might love very much in different circumstances. Don't let the current situation preclude future friendly overtures between you - that is assuming, of course, that the pile breaks up in enough time to allow for such thoughts to be more than simply academic.

TRILLIAN

Yesterday I was in the car with Trillian. Trillian is not a writer.
Trilian is my friend.

Trillian is a scientician, or maybe she's a scientologist, or...I'm actually not very sure.

She kills mice all day in the basement of a building that the government owns.
Sometimes, after she kills them, she takes bits of the mice's insides and messes around with them. She sometimes puts the bits inside tubes or in big machines.

Trillian says that when she kills mice for the government and plays with their insides it cures AIDS and maybe cancer.

I tell her that people still die of AIDS and cancer all the time.

I've asked her before if they're still working out the kinks.
That usually makes her pissed.

ICE BREAKER

Hello.

As you may have guessed, I'm a writer.

I became a writer when I decided one day that I wanted to be one, and so I wrote something.

that something turned out not to be very good
regardless, upon performing the act of writing, on that day, I became a writer and have been ever since.

In fact, I'm writing right now.
Well, not exactly now, I suppose. You're reading it right now, and the rest of the words are already there - so that must be impossible.

But, still, I find myself writing this line right now for the first time, and there is nothing in this entry beyond it. I'm serious!
Scroll down to glance at the rest of the text, go on, do it - then come back here. Huh? There's nothing there? This is the end?

Well, I guess you were right after all.

THINK ABOUT IT:

"Coherence in the absence of rationality is the essence of the rant. "

--ZB
overheard in Los Angeles, 2006