Last Post of the Year!

This is my last post of the year. Look forward to next year in which I expect to be blogging more often.

The madness War

Saw an article today about an economist who estimates the total cost of the war in Iraq, financially speaking, will probably end up somewhere around $2.2 trillion. Staggering, isn't it?

Anyways, it reminded me of a poem I wrote, back when I worked in the type of place that actually had cubicles. The Borgish feeling of just being one of many was exacerbated by me placing plastic army men around my cube around the start of the war and by the fact that at the time, my project was depression (had to write about it) and, at that time at least, I was the only person working on the subject, leaving me virtually no one to talk to about my work. So, an escalating war, immersion into the realm of depression, and no one but four gray cube walls within arms reach to speak to, and little green men pointing their weapons at me from shelves and from behind stacks of paper really put me in a state of pseudo psychosis. From whence I wrote the following:

The madness War

The military buildup
is threatening my cubedom.
The rigid charging soldiers
with their arms upraised
may break my concentration.
In green and beige
they chatter into their radios —
the static hurts my ears.
Those little green men keep
marching around in my head.
they go round and round and round and round
until I Fall Down.
I guess it’s what I deserve
for getting stuck between gears.
Why can’t I get any peace?

Year of the Dog

With all the warm weather we’ve been having lately here in the sunshine state, this Christmas holiday is really looking up. Rain is predicted for a day or two, but overall for the past few weeks, it’s just been gorgeous. That said, I’m really looking forward to the passing of the holidays and the introduction to a new year. I know it’s such an arbitrary thing, our measurement of the passage of time -- January 1st is really just another day -- but I think any kind of fresh start, even an imaginary one, would do me some good.

I read two articles in the “Business” and “Lifestyle” sections of the daily newspaper yesterday which really caught my eye. The first pointed to the increase in lavish gifts Wall Street bankers, brokers, and pork barrel traders were buying for their loved ones this year -- apparently it’s been a really good year for them. We’re talking about $50,000 diamond rings, $1 million worth of private jet travel, $7,000 mink coats, $5,000 necklaces, $20,000 facelifts, $15,000 hair, makeup and wardrobe makeovers, stuff like that. This story warmed my heart. It’s nice to know some folks really are benefiting from the economy.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a new trend is catching on. In an effort to live more environmentally friendly lives, groups of people living in or about San Francisco vowed to spend no money for the entirety of 2006 on new purchases, excepting food, the bare necessities for health and safety, and underwear. Everything else was bought used or not bought at all. Apparently, this is a movement designed, presumably, to help reduce the average American’s eco-footprint on the world. The “Compact” movement has spread around the country, eliciting both progressive delight and spite from those who see these groups as out to destroy America.

A “compact” lifestyle has such a nice ring to it. I think I’ll start using it to describe my way of life. Just think, my very way of daily living has been on the cusp of a new eco-movement, possibly a green revolution.

And all this time I’ve simply referred to it as being broke.

I can’t say for certain, but I think all of my friends, lovers, and family members would agree that it would be nice if in this new year I could quit living an enforced sub-compact lifestyle and return to something a bit more normalized. Bad enough that Benjamin, Jacob, and Ryan went without presents from Uncle Dave this year, but even my attempt at an economical Christmas card has failed. I sent out a link to an online e-card, which has apparently been removed from the server. So instead of Santa and his deer singing a cheery Christmas Song, my message to folks was:

503 Service Unavailable
Apache/ProXad Server at badaboo.free.fr Port 80.

Perhaps I can follow it up with a 403 Unable to connect to the localhost Happy New Year message.

I was born in the Year of the Dog so I hoped that this would be my year. It hasn’t been, but I’ve been feeling a lot more like myself lately than I have been in years, so maybe that old dog just took his time getting around to me. Maybe the server error is just a final note to a bad tune, and I can get on to a better life starting today. I guess that’s how I’m going to think of it, because being depressed is no fun for me and this time of year ought to be fun.

Things are going to be better from here on out. Million-dollar Christmas gifts I can do without, but a voluntary sub-compact lifestyle would be heartily welcomed. By this time next year I expect I’ll either be mailing classic children’s books to my nephews, or mailing brand new ones to publishers.

It’s time to get to work.

I Stand Corrected

In an earlier post, I claimed that the childhood nickname my parents called me by was Bumbalardee and was named after a Sesame Street cartoon that I loved, featuring a poor child’s birthday party with rats as guests. While I’m convinced that such a cartoon or puppet piece was performed, I must humbly apologize for the story of Bumbalardee itself. My mother recently wrote the following letter to me:

The name Bumbleardy (my spelling) is, indeed, from an old Sesame Street bit but it had nothing to do with rats. The number nine was the subject of the animated piece. Bumbleardy was turning nine and invited a bunch of pigs to his birthday party. They showed up early while his mother was out and behaved quite piggishly, more or less trashing the place. Bumbleardy, however, remained at ease in the midst of the commotion. We nicknamed you for him, not because of the piggish party, but because you were always so comfortable around animals. A favorite photo, from a trip to the African Safari in Hamilton, captures you at about two surrounded by taller petting zoo animals, donkeys and such, barely visible but totally relaxed.

Sure enough, when I did a Google search for the name Bumbleardy, it popped right up as Bumble Ardy. Not only was there a cartoon with the pigs and number nine, it was done by none other than Maurice Sendak, the author most well known for creating Where the Wild Things Are. Apparently, he has put the cartoon into book form this year.

So, I humbly ask for forgiveness from both my parents, Mr. Sendak and the folks over at Sesame Street for my faux pas.

Happy Christmahanukwanza!

Trying to recover my former style of writing poetry (consisting of odd subjects, humorous expressions and non-living things turned inside-out) I put pen to paper the other day and this is what came out. Not my best work, but 'tis certainly the season.

Sip a draught of beer,
Or any available cheer.
Kick back your heels and rest,
There is no cause for stress:
Is there another time of year
Like Christmas to the New Year,
Where politics are cast aside?
Or should be; this is a time to bide
Others’ faults, oddities and beliefs,
Not a time for the giving of grief.
Bad spirits, sour grapes,
Comments about old drapes,
Begone! to the rest of the year
(Where forgotten, I fear
Is Christ’s mass and Christ’s word
And Christ’s name is used as a sword).
Would it that he could rise once again
And teach us to be, year-round, civil men.

All my references are humans

I stumbled across these online and couldn't resist.

Ode to Coke

I was going to write about successfully quitting my Coke habit, which is to say, stopping my habit of drinking the corn-syrup cola called Coke, or at least stopping my habit of drinking it every day as opposed to just when I go out to eat, which, if one is aware of my financial status, is not often.

I got addicted to Coke working at the newspaper. I didn’t need it during the day. Hell, usually, I was so busy during the day I didn’t have time to drink anything, except during lunch. My newspaper days were chock full of phone calls and short drives to school events and businesses and intersections to take photos of tree-sized logs that had come off the back of those log trucks -- you know the ones, with the little red flag hanging off the back on logs that look like they could fall off at any time? -- and had crush some poor soul’s Navigator.

So I was busy busy busy all the time and didn’t even have the time to think of caffeination. But production days always went on forever. We’d finish writing and editing the copy, drive down to our production office in Fuquay-Varina (that’s actually the town’s name. Dumb, isn’t it? I lived there for about a year at one point. The difference is there they had a 24-hour open Harris Teeter. Louisburg closes at 11) to lay it all out on the computers there (with the ads already done there -- otherwise the whole operation could have been done at my desk), scan in all the relevant photos (think pre-digital cameras) and all that jazz.

Well, that whole process always took all night -- longer because due to a scheduling conflict with the actual Fuquay newspaper (whose production offices we shared since we were part of the same chain) we would have to wait until they got done with their work first. There weren’t enough computers to go around. So after working eight hours, writing and editing, and answering the damn phone, we then had to drive to Fuquay (about 15 minutes) start production at 5 p.m. or later. So, to stay awake and aware (one of my duties was to proof the whole deal -- my editor was dsylexic and couldn’t be coutned on to cacth all the mitsakes) I discovered that caffeine was my very best friend. And to get that steady flow of pep, I would sip from a can of Coke all night until we were finished. That usually meant anywhere from 3 to 6 Cokes a night.

Later, when I worked as a proofreader for an agency in Durham, I found my attention would shift as well, unless I was constantly infused with caffeine. Coffee highs were too bell curved, plus I really don’t like coffee, and it gets cold. So I did the same thing. I’d usually consume about 3 or 4 16-ounce cokes a day there. So I got in the habit of chain Coking -- pouring it into a glass with ice, and sipping it out through a straw (to save my teeth), pouring more in when the glass would get to be half-empty.

Since I left that job, I’ve been steadily drinking Coke, adding to my waistline and compounding my heartburn and probably doing no good for my overall constitution. Until about two and a half weeks ago. I just decided to quit (or at least quit drinking it daily) and so I quit. I’m back to drinking Coke only as a treat. I drink more iced tea now, but that’s not really addictive, especially since the stuff I’m drinking doesn’t taste very good. And water. I drink a lot more water. I still treat myself when we go out to eat -- which, considering we often end up in the burg of Wake Forest, which seems to be totally shut down on Sundays, the day we shop for groceries, we more than not end up at Applebee’s, which only serves Pepsi products. I drink it, but it’s just not the same thing.

So, as I was saying, I was going to write about kicking the habit, but then I realized that some fellow bloggers like this guy or this girl might not like it so much, seeing as they are both addicted to the heavier stuff -- tobacco, I mean. You do know that nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine, don’t you? So I thought, since they seem to always be blogging about trying to quit or being off cigs for 3 days or 6 months now, that quitting smoking must be really hard and so writing about quitting drinking Coke, or at least, learning to drink Coke in moderation, might seem a little offensive to say the least.

So I’ve decided not to blog about it.

Instead, I’ll just post the dedication I wrote to the drink I was an addict of for so long:

Ode -- to Coke

Sugar.
Water.
Syrup.
Color.
I willingly open my arteries to your sugar rush.
Sip.
Hold --
then you slide down over my tongue,
past my cracked teeth;
pouring pure sugarcane satisfaction
into me.

No dessert can rival,
no sweetener can match
the pure-pleasure,
open-addiction,
ecstasy-driven
lust
I derive
for
that in-credible,
un-challenged,
un-equaled,
one and only,
one
of
a
kind --
Coke.

Yum.

Cool Factor 10

The AlterNet has a list of the Top 10 or so YouTube vids viewed online. There's some amazing stuff in there, much of it performed by Generation Next. A lot of talent these kids have these days that would never have gotten noticed except for on corporatized TV shows like American Idol.

The first two I'd already seen or don't care about. The Quick Change video has got a cool factor of about 9, even if you figure out the trick. The Pachelbel guitar boy is awesome, the rocker girls make you want to be back in school; and the urban ninja dude makes the mall look exciting.

The rest are just so-so. The soccer thing would be amazing if I thought it was definitely not faked. And if you haven't yet seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite -- don't watch the last one if you don't want to ruin it.

Years ago I was sitting at an outdoors table at a restaurant in Buffalo and I saw this little black kid riding his bike across the street. He was going through a parking lot and suddenly turned the handlebars the wrong way and went right over the top. He landed in a roll and came up unscathed. I was amazed. He rode off, but about 10 minutes later here he comes and does the same thing. It was a stunt move that he had taught to himself.

That's what the ninja guy and the other YouTubers remind me of. Nobody paid them to just be cool; they just are. Which reminds me of a story my pops told me once. He and his brother (my cool uncle Dave, who died a few years ago of a heart attack), who was several years younger than my dad, Jim, were always fighting when they were kids. So, after one contentious battle, when Jim got the best of my uncle, Dave hatched a plan to get his brother back that must have taken weeks to implement. Every day when he got home from school, Dave put a ladder up against the house and practiced jumping off of it, going up a rung each day or so.

He got to the point where he could jump from about the height of, say, a second-story bedroom window. Then, the next day he picked a fight with Jim, claiming he was stronger or tougher or whatnot and when my pops challenged him, Dave bet him he couldn't jump out of the bedroom window. So Jim said, sure, you first, and Dave threw open the window, climbed out and jumped, hitting the ground just right to avoid injuring himself. Not to be outdone, Jim jumped too, with the expected result of hurting his ankle in the process.

Now, my dad's a pretty cool guy -- he looks so smooth with a cigar clenched between his teeth, and he outclasses me on anything physical -- he used to get up at 5 a.m. to jog a couple miles before work every day, and he still holds his own in racquetball against anyone who isn't a total athlete. Plus, he is of the old school fixit dads who make great homeowners because there is hardly a repair job they can't handle. So he's definitely got a high coolness factor.

But nobody was as cool as my uncle Dave. Dave, with his deep, soothing and magical voice; Dave, whose childhood antics later developed into a love for garage rock; Dave, who always had the latest gagets and pinball machines for his kids (and nieces and nephews!) to play with. Dave, whose band members (that he was managing) played Amazing Grace on the sax at his funeral and whose family held up lighters in tribute.

Like the ninja dude, and definitely that guitar kid, I’d say my uncle was easily a Cool Factor 10.

Three aliens walk into a bar...

Three Petterbine aliens and a human being named Jason are sitting in a snoosis joint on the inner cusp of Saturn's rings. "What do the Kek Comet, NGC 4214 cluster, Doradus Cloud, and the Cordites on the 15th moon of Pekus Prime have in common?" one of the aliens quips.

The Petterbines are renowned galaxy-wide for their humor, so Jason pricks up his ears.

"I dunno, what?" "Yes, what?" the other two ask.

"None of them is planet earth."

The aliens break out into spasms of guffawing laughter, pounding the table and falling off their chairs. The human looks from one to another in puzzlement.

"I don't get it," he says.

Who Likes Short-Shorts?

I'm very fond of short stories. I like to read them, and when I'm feeling confident, write them as well. But there's real fun in writing limited-length short stories, which are referred to as short short stories. Or, if they're very short, they're sometimes called short short short stories. Arguably one of the best short short stories is Appointment in Samarra:

"A merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market. The servant returned, trembling and frightened. The servant told the merchant, 'I was jostled in the market, turned around, and saw Death.

'Death made a threatening gesture, and I fled in terror. May I please borrow your horse? I can leave Baghdad and ride to Samarra, where Death will not find me.'

The master lent his horse to the servant, who rode away, to Samarra.

Later the merchant went to the market, and saw Death in the crowd. 'Why did you threaten my servant?' He asked.

Death replied,'I did not threaten your servant. It was merely that I was surprised to see him here in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.'"

A bookstore whose newsletter I subscribe to recently sent me a list of 6-word-long short shorts published by Wired.com for some Sci-Fi contest. One complaint I've heard is that many are actually more like headlines or titles than stories. But there are some gems:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Weeping, Bush misheard Cheney’s deathbed advice.
- Gregory Maguire

Leia: "Baby's yours." Luke: "Bad news…"
- Steven Meretzky

The best of the six-word short shorts -- the one that inspired all the rest -- comes from the man who only wrote a single, one-act play in his entire life (which my friends and I performed while under the influence, some years ago), the man who took it upon himself to go U-Boat hunting off the Gulf of Mexico in a fishing craft during WWII, the man whose arguably best short story is being eradicated by global warming, Ernest Hemingway, wrote this:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Isn't that sumthin?

The reason I bring it up is I was looking for material I'd written creatively to show potential employers when I ran across a 64-word short-short I wrote for my own "Get a Life" writer's club, which has since gone defunct, been reborn, gone defunct again, and been reborn again, albeit with only a few remaining writers left to participate. These ones came from a title prompt of "The eyes have it":

Stella led her guests into the gloomy library. Shelves held jars of preserves, reminders of her husband’s glory days.
“Exquisite!” a vampire exclaimed, lifting a jar containing two withered hands.
“Yes,” Stella mused, “my husband was quite the… collector.”
“What is your favorite of Dr. Frankenstein’s collection?” another asked.
“Most people like the brains, but as for me,” she paused, “the eyes have it.”

--Angela Erwin


That sound. It hits my stomach before it hits my ears. It doesn’t register for a few minutes. But when I see the bright blood seeping into the asphalt, I know. Who could do something like that? Throw a kid into oncoming traffic. I look around for the answer, my gaze resting on two black orbs, and I find it. The eyes have it.

--Christine Gordon


The eyes have it — that heart-wrenching, pleading look. Twenty-three folk from outside town whose homes had washed away with the flood stood against the wall. Mayor Phelps had the deciding vote. Annex the community and help them rebuild? The cost might break the back of his tiny town. He stared long and hard into those eyes — then raised his hand. “The ayes have it.”

--David Leone

Fell free to deposit a 6-word or 64-word short short on the comments page.

Bumbalardee and the Tunnel Rat

I attended a moderately small college run by Jesuit priests in Buffalo NY. It was only a few blocks’ walk from the family home on Summit Ave., which was nice, as was the tuition, which, me being a son of a faculty member, was free. Anyways, even though it was located on Main Street in the middle of the city, it was still a somewhat cloistered environment. It was a largely middle class black community and the student body was largely white, suburban, or white, countryside. So there wasn’t a lot of mixing going on with the neighborhood folks. Since quite a few students were from downstate, I guess the term is, and lived on campus, and because it was kind of a catholicky place, the overall atmosphere was, well, kind of conservative.

So, I had this small fish in a small pond experience that came to mind recently after a long time. A guy named David Eliot e-mailed me about my blog, which he happened across during a “vanity search” on Google, and mentioned that he has already, at the age of 34, published two independent newspapers. Publishing my own rag is a sort of a dream of mine, though I’m not locked in on it, I would have a ball. I even recently drew up plans for an indie entertainment newsmag, but I gave up because I figured (A) it likely wouldn’t make any money and (B) that I had no seed money to get it going.

So, I was lamenting my launch pad status, when a friend reminded me that I did put out two issues of a really small independent newspaper when I was still in school. Crazy that I forgot that. It was called The Tunnel Rat, named for the system of tunnels that connected much of the Canisius College campus while I was a student. The tunnels are still there; only the campus has really grown, so “much” probably doesn’t apply any longer. Most of the student activity clubs were in those tunnels, beneath the student center, and I spent a good portion of my 5 college years living the life of a tunnel rat.

I’ve always identified with rats, inasmuch as I think they’re really cool animals, albeit frightening to find taking the lid off one’s garbage can (happened to my mother once). My father’s nickname for me as a child was Bumbalardee. This came from a Sesame Street cartoon where a really poor kid who has no friends instead invites the tenement’s rats to his birthday party. I scarcely remember it, but my folks claim that I loved it as a kid. So, naming my “underground” newspaper The Tunnel Rat had extra meaning for me.

I only put out two very short (a few pages each) issues, mainly because I couldn’t afford the printing costs. It caused a bit of a stir, this being a small, conservative pond school. How conservative, you ask? During my first senior year, I had a goatee going, not because I liked beards (I didn’t then), but because I had been too lazy to shave. A whole plethora of people and school administrators strongly suggested to me that growing a beard was wrong and that I’d better shave it. I’m serious! Try living in a small town sometime (or perhaps, Greensboro) and you’ll likely run into that same kind of attitude.

I promised them all I would shave it off, as soon as I could go a week without getting nagged about it. It took until Christmas break.

So anyways, to make a short story far too long to read to the end, I decided to publish my own paper not because I felt some kind of need to stir up trouble, but because I had just finished reading this cool book my sister Nicki had given to me (upon the promise that I not mention she did so to mom and dad) and I wanted to quote it in an op/ed piece for the Griffin, the college paper I was an editor at. But they wouldn’t let me use all the swearwords, which I thought were essential to the quote, as it knocked the press itself, so I created an entire publication so I could put the quote there.

It’s the scene in the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which, high on acid and other stuff, Raoul and his attorney pal are checking into a hotel when in Raoul’s eyes, everybody starts turning into reptiles and chewing each other to bits. Raoul exclaims to his attorney:

‘”But what about our room? And the golf shoes? We're right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody's giving booze to the goddamn things! It won't be long before they tear us to shreds. Jesus, look at the floor! Have you ever seen so much blood? How many have they killed already?’

“That’s the press table,’ he said.”

So I threw the essay with that quote, a one sentence entertainment review by my childhood friend Jeff Burnett, a nostalgic look back at record players by another friend, and a short story done up Mike Hammer-style about a campus police detective wannabe titled “Diary of a Dick.”

I played on an ongoing controversy with the English Department by doctoring up a group photo of them for the 2nd issue; I penciled-in satanic symbols and Led Zeppelin onto their shirts and books and ran it on the front to show how bad they were. I understand they got quite a kick out of it. (I’d show an image from the issues, except that I found out what is wrong with my scanner -- it’s busted. So, no scanned-in images from me until I get a new one. You know, when we have money again.)

A year later, my buddy Eric published a final issue of The Tunnel Rat on his own, causing much more strife, in part because he and I stood out on the corner and handed the issues to kids coming in, and in part because it was a lot racier and more fun and addressed ongoing controversies better than I ever did. If any student remembers The Tunnel Rat, it’s Eric’s issue that he remembers, I’m sure. For example, he played on the health ministry’s decision to excise contraception information from a campus magazine by including a dotted-line condom that students could cut-out and glue together before engaging in sex.

That one perturbed no small number of people -- self-important students and administrators alike -- who actually believed that if no mention was ever made of sexual activity, then by God the students wouldn’t engage in it! I’ve seen these kinds of attitudes persist during school board meetings, church socials, and of course, at the federal level, in just about everything Moral Majority types go on about.

So just today I was wondering if I might be able to find a reference to The Tunnel Rat, -- it being one of the few a vanity searches I’ve never conducted -- perhaps in some guy’s web page reflecting on his school days.

Nope. The only mention I found is so small as to make it a sort of a found poem. It’s mentioned, for some obscure reason, in the root directory of the campus computer mainframe. This is the whole of it:

Tunnel Rat - Lampoon
Publication – totally anonymous (Bootlegged)
File: 21/0

I guess if I want people to remember me for something unique and wonderful, I’m going to have to try something new.