DECLARATIVE SENTENCES

I purchased a cigarette-rolling machine. Its picture is to the right. It did not come with papers. It did not come with tobacco. I will have to buy both.

Oliver likes to chew things. This could become a problem. I will have to watch it closely. He chewed my fleece throw blanket. Perhaps he liked the texture against his sharp little teeth. Perhaps he liked the scrunch against his tongue.

Louie yields to Oliver. When Oliver eats, Louie watches from a distance. Oliver eats like a piglet. Lou mops up the remnants. I am a bit nonplussed by this development. I had hoped that Lou would automatically assume leadership. Perhaps he has abdicated his Alpha-ness. Maybe it is too early to tell.

Money is good. I would like to have more of it. I worked 13.5 overtime hours last pay period. I look forward to receiving my check. I don't work for free.

One of these days, you will click on this site and your monitor will melt. The story on the screen will be that hot. This is not that day. I am simply warning you.

[IN]COMPLETE THOUGHTS

My mind is blank. I have nothing (and everything) to write about. Interesting conundrum, eh? I was walking Lou and Ollie earlier today, and I was thinking about writing an extremely sexually graphic blog post. That could be fun. Or a blog post that is incredibly violent.

I am feeling very much handcuffed, right now, as family members go through something that I cannot do much (if anything) to alleviate. I feel impotent. Thus the sex and violence, methinks. It's an outlet of sorts. A way to blast my mind out across the Interwebs.

Then, as I was the hounds, I thought to myself that it might be cool to write four-word teasers to stories. This idea was brought on by the internal phrase He slid his member. Interesting, huh, the way the mind sometimes reverts back to its crocodile nature when faced with a giant bundle of tangle of knots of Emotion? It's almost as if the thoughts that churn are so damned nebulous and vague (yet far-too crystal-clear), my mind kind of throws up its figuartive hands and says, "Fuck it. Let's melt into pleasure."

To be continued.

Anyway, four-word starter phrases. You all can fill in the rest:

He slid his member...

The quick red fox...

"I ate my beets!"

The scuffed football spiralled...

The force of impact...

He had never seen...

The pleasure bloomed and...

Machetes chop as effortlessly...

Home is where the...

Her breasts heaved as...

Skinning a catfish takes...

Oliver humps Louie often.

DOMINANCE? OR FORBIDDEN PLEASURES?

The Beagle has landed. Oliver, my new dog, a two-year-old beagle, is making himself at home. He and Louie are getting along swimmingly. In fact, it is as if they have been roomies for a long long time already.

Lou is smiling more than I have seen him smile in the last year, year-and-a-half, and his is an air of contentedness. He's got a playmate 24/7 and so he is happy. I am happy for him, too. I like his new roommate. (Although he scratches a lot and I, too, am beginning to scratch, sometimes. Uh-oh.)

Anyway, it is seeming to be a joy to have adopted young Oliver (Perhaps named after Oliver Twist, seeing as how both are or have been orphaned, unwanted? Naw, he just looks like an Oliver.)

So...what was I saying? Oh yeah. Little Ollie is making himself at home. For instance, more than a few times I have walked into my bedroom to see His Highness lounging languidly on the pillows on my bed. That ain't gonna work, Oliver. Sorry to bust yo' bubble. Too, Oliver is wholly at peace with eating out of both dog food bowls (as is Lou) and Ollie sees nothing wrong with basically taking the bone out of Lou's mouth and chewing away on it. I will not interfere; they will work it out for themselves.

One more way that Oliver has made himself at home? Whenever he and Lou playfight, invariably Oliver will end up behind Louie, slowly pumping his pelvis in the general direction of Lou's ass. And I mean slowly, languidly. Truth be told, damn near everything this little dog does is done in a languid manner. Screw "Oliver," I should have called the kid "Languid."

So which one is the Alpha? I don't know yet, but it seems that Oliver is well on his way to Napoleanic heights. Just stay off my pillow, Nappy. I could do without the itchies.

INTRODUCTION DAY

Baby gate? Check. New food and water bowls? Check. New leash? Check. Treats on which to chew? Check. Bright new yellow bandana around Lou's neck? Check and check.

There is a new dawg comin' to town. Named Noah, looks like an "Oliver." Or a "Nelson."

I'm going to set out to pick him up in about ten minutes. I'll shoulder the nervousness for Louie. Nervous? No. Not really nervous, I guess, but I am a bit trepidatious. Same thing? Maybe. I am just hoping that 1) they get along--which I do anticipate--and 2) that Noah/Oliver fits in, here, to my and Louie's schedules, as seamlessly as is humanly (or canine-ly) possible. I have a dual dog den, now, in my dining room. Two of everything.

Let's hope that it stays that way.

SNAPSHOTS

feelings bunch up,

fear shoulders aside confidence and

love and pragmatism

play chess

pragmatism is quicker on the timer

but love takes its time

grief and denial play a game of badminton

grief goes for the kill

denial plays a steady game

but falters at the end

slam the shuttlecock

smile for the birdie

do tea and coffee talk?

the steaming containers open slightly

to let out wisps of Wisecrack

sugar is silent and stoic

when one would expect it to walk around

with a lampshade on its head

burly

strong

sarcastic

tender

loyal

Love

fear sets up shop, cracks open the sports page

concern has been relegated to dishwashing

fear cocks back its bowler and fires up a cigar

fear talks like a '30s gangster

cigar is teethed in the corner of the mouth:

"see that blank room, sonny? i want you to walk into it

and take a seat. life is life. the dark horse is a mudder."

I'm planning on getting another dog. Not a replacement, obviously, for Louie, but rather a partner-in-crime. A friend at work offered me a beagle that her brother was doing a shipshod job of nurturing. How the hell could I refuse? This beagle, whose name is Noah, is about two years old and has, through various circumstances, been a member of three households. His eyes are melted butter.

I went to visit last Sunday, to see what Noah was all about, and my friend came out of her house with him wrapped in a towel, having just given him a flea bath. He looked like a sharp-nosed baby with yellow eyes and droopy ears.

Lou's interest was piqued immediately. His expression jumped about 13,000 levels of Alert and when Lisa set Noah on the ground, they at once set about Dog-Ass-69ing each other. No growls. No yelps. No snaps. All good signs. Lisa's husband opened up the gate to the backyard and the two canines shot into the open green, Lou bow-slapping at Noah and Noah, eventually, torpedoing Lou, going in low, always moving forward, always under Lou's feet. I laughed. Lou, 70 pounds, looked like a Great Dane compared to the 35-pound Noah.

I shook my head. Noah? No. The kid looked like an Oliver, to me. Louie and Olly. It has a certain ring to it.

So. The plan is to stop by this coming weekend and take Oliver and give him a good home. I wonder, though, does anyone out there have any second-dog advice? Or, better yet, does anyone out there have any second-dog horror stories?

Oliver seems to be--and I'm told that he is--a sweet dog. And Lou needs a buddy. I tend to be a somewhat-neglectful asshole sometimes. (Albeit a loving asshole. God. That sounded bad. An asshole that loves...I'll stop whilst I'm behind. Whoops!) Anyway, is this a mistake or a boon for both Lou and me?

LADY CHATTERLY, HARBINGER O' YAWNS

Meagan and I ventured off to the Detroit Film Theatre tonight to view "Lady Chatterly," a supposedly highly-erotic and "brilliant" adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's "historic" novel of the same name. After enjoying a fine meal of sauteed mushrooms and lentil burgers and a Reuben at the Cass Cafe, on the Cass Corridor, we drove around the block about five times trying to determine just where the hell the Film Theatre was. We had heard that it is a slightly non-descript white edifice, an adjunct to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Yes and no. We saw the white building about five times, but, seeing as how they had not a solitary sign indicating that, yes, this was the DTF, we passed on by each time.

Anyway, we finally asked a kindly passerby and she directed us to the correct destination. Much thanks, madam.

We parked. We walked across the street and into the building. The clientele were pretty much what I had anticipated: Older, white and wealthy. The DTF is really something to behold, though. With architecture from the 1920s, the stage-area is replete with ornate gold trim and royal red curtains. Unfortunately, the seats are way too close. Meeg and I chose a row near the back and settled in to be dazzled by the eroticism. An older man and his wife sat down directly in front of us. This would prove to be a hinderance to my enjoyment of the movie. The woman's hair was coiffed and teased and curled so that it basically blotted out the bottom to middle of the screen. Normally? Not a problem. But, this time, seeing as how the film was produced in 2006 in France, the bottom of the screen was rather important.

[Let me diverge from this wholly entertaining critique of super-soft porn to say this: If you're going to have a film with subtitles, do you think it's too much to ask to film the movie in a wide-screen so that the words on the screen are white against black? It truly is a pain in the keister when the subtitles are white like the actor's shirt. I don't speak French; I need to be able to read the letters on the screen.]

Anyway, the woman's hair ended up pissing me off. I had to resist reaching up, at several points in the movie, and forcibly jamming the lady's hair down on her skull so that I could read the fucking words. Anyway. I resisted. My socialization as a toddler shall now be deemed a success!

And on to the movie. I'd almost have rather read up on this. Don't get me wrong: The actress Mirina Hands was pleasing to look at and blessed with a nubile internal organ package, but the movie was two hours and forty-eight minutes long from start to finish. There was no intermission and there was no food or drink allowed in the theatre. I might say that it was agonizing. And the sex scenes weren't even all that steamy. Did I mention that the movie dragged from the beginning, in which Connie Chatterly wanted to get her rocks off, two hours and forty-eight minutes to the end, in which Connie Chatterly has gotten her rocks off and is trying to set Parkin the gameskeeper up with a farm so that, if she leaves her crippled war veteran hubby Clifford, she can meat up (pun intended) with her lover later and continue dancing naked in the rain and fucking in the mud and placing flowers lovingly in the folds and creases of each other's genitalia? Yeah. The movie was long. And pretty damned boring.

The most exciting time that I had during the marathon movie was when, after a particularly "steamy" scene, when the theatre was death-tomb silent, one of the moviegoers had the misfortune (or audacity) to sneeze. And the sneeze did echo. And the sneeze was wet-sounding. And the sneeze was perfectly timed. And I did feel the shoulders of Meeg shaking silently next to me and I did feel the need to remove my arm from her shoulders before I lost it myself and burst into gales of barking laughter. And so I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from braying guffaws. I knew that I was doomed if I happened to look over at her, so I looked straight ahead...right into the rat's nest that was the perfumed lady's hair. Surreal moments...gotta love 'em.

Someone sneezed later. That time I was prepared. I had Tic-Tacs.

NEW BLOG I CAME ACROSS

Check this out. Not only is this woman intelligent and as cute as a button, but she also takes some kick-ass pictures. I particularly liked the shot of the shark surfacing.

Wow. Is all.

LITTLE MISS MUSTARD

I was talking with a friend today at work and, for some reason, the topic of tuna wraps came up. I am a fan of buying those spinach tortillas and making my tuna fish and wrapping the whole shebang up like a burrito and going to town on it. I mentioned what I like to put in my tuna fish: hard-boiled eggs, pickles, onions, sometimes walnuts, and an assortment of anything from green olives to jalapenos to finely-minced celery.

She opined that mustard was good, too.

I'd thought that I had heard her wrong. "You're saying that you put mustard in your tuna fish?" I asked.

She nodded. "Sure. It's really good." She took in my shocked expression and laughed. "What?!"

Okay, okay. I'll try something at least once before I totally denigrate it. After all, I'm the guy whose mother put Jell-O in the lemonade once, a long time ago, to make it sweeter. "Okay," I said, "I'll have to try it. It might be good."

We continued talking about mustard for some reason. The conversation got more and more surreal as it unfolded. I learned that mustard on ribs was good, too. "Boil the ribs," she said, "and then take them out and massage the mustard into the meat. Then throw 'em on the grill."

Mustard. Colonel Mustard, in the kitchen, with the spare ribs.

"My mom told me once that if you get hurt, like a scratch or something, rub mustard into the cut. It's supposed to help."

I goggled at her. Mustard. Mustard, mustard, mustard. She was wearing a yellow Catepillar sweatshirt. Mustard. I began to feel that I was an actor in a Forrest Gump satire. Whereas Bubba talked about nothing but shrimp and the multitude of ways in which it could be cooked and eaten, my friend seemed well on her way to revealing the thousand and one uses of The Yellow Wonder.

"You're not talking about regular yellow mustard, right?" I asked, clinging to the hope that she might have been talking about some kind of gourmet motherfucking shit, but, no, my antcipations were dashed. Dashed, I say!

"Yup. Regular mustard. Good ole Plochman's."

Our cigarettes injested, it was time to head back to class. "So," I said, "I take it you like mustard potato salad?"

"Nope," she said blithely. "I like the regular kind."

GOOD-BYE

Cancer is such a motherfucking bitch. It just moves so fast, sometimes.

Uncle Rodney died this morning at around 4:00, surrounded by his siblings and a good friend. We saw him last Thanksgiving; he'd mentioned severe back pain that he'd thought had come from lugging hundred pound bags of rock salt. In June he'd awoken to paralysis, a malignant tumor in his spine. Admitted to the hospital, he had learned that the cancer was Stage Four and had spread to his bones and other areas on his body.

Diagnosis was near Memorial Day. Passing was near Labor Day. So fast. Cancer is a bitch.

I saw Rod twice before he died. The first time was right after he'd been admitted to the hospital in Ypsilanti in June. The second time was when he had been in physical therapy in Birmingham. Both times he'd been bright-eyed and had had his wry sense of humor, his dark joking. He was stoic and strong, stronger than I would have been, I'm sure, having been bullywhapped with the dual diagnosis of terminal cancer and paralysis. As I prepared to leave after the first visit, he'd said something about his being a wuss. I remember that my heart had caught a bit in my throat. "No way," I'd said. "That's bullshit. You're as strong as anyone I've ever seen." He smiled but I don't think he had believed me. I spoke the truth, though.

Strong. Stoic. Full of cancer and paralyzed, I had never even seen a tear...or a why-me attitude.

Uncle Rodney, my father's little brother, died this morning at around 4:00. He was surrounded by people who loved him. Rod's only son, my cousin Dean, died in a car accident almost 20 years ago at age 18, and his passing crushed my uncle.

20 years ago this December, Dean left this three-dimensional world. His father followed today.

I'd like to think that they are together, wherever--be it Heaven or be it an alternate plane of existence--catching up on lost time. I like to think that, on that tenuous slope between this world and the next, Uncle Rod saw his only son, Dean, smiling and beckoning.

And I think that Uncle Rod climbed painlessly from his deathbed and walked to the Doorway and embraced his son in a bearhug that will never be broken.

God bless, Rod. Say hi to Dean, for me.

OVER-OVER-OVERDONE HYPASCITY

You know what I don't need? I don't need a Botox-ed relic from the '80s singing that he was raised in a small town. What I need is professional football. I need the vicious hits and I need the perfectly-placed passes and I need my boys on my fantasy squad to stand tall and produce me copious amounts of points.

Thanks for coming John Leopard Tittycommune. But go now, please. The door is over there.

I am ready for some...football.

CHERRY ON THE 'TUBE

They say that the first time hurts. I am here to tell you that that is not just a theory.

I had my small red pitted fruit popped today and I am here to tell you that I feel like I went 15 rounds with Mikey Tyson; I am muscle-fatigued and bloodied. My face is flushed with red and my breath hitches in my chest. My thighs are rock-hard and sore from over-exertion; my groin has been battered.

I have been initiated. I am "in the club," now.

I went tubing today. It's the first time that I have ever done that, and now I am feeling the effects. Yes, tubing--being pulled on an innertube behind a speeding boat. Being buffeted at 30 knots by the waves (the wake) and injesting intermittent splurges of water when one hits the waves just right.

Tubing. Yes. Tubing. What'd you think I was talking about? Sex?! No way, Jose. Not until I'm married, gosh dammit!

I had a friggin' blast. And now I want a boat. There is really almost nothing finer than enjoying a beautiful Labor Day on the deck of a friend's boat. Soaking up the rays, eating delicious sammiches, getting pummeled by the concrete water. Stepping blindly into an open hatch in which a portable tabletop lay in wait...slicing one's toe open.... Flip-flap, flip-flap.

I want to send a big ole Cyber-thanks out to Lees and her hubby Mike for so generously offering the invitation to spend the day on their brand-spanking-new speedboat. I had a great time. As did Meagan. Minor pains notwithstanding.

;-)

CDL AND LDL

Have you been to the DMV offices, lately? I had to go today to take the written test for my CDL. Given my default mindset, I had been fretting it a bit, but it turned out to be for naught. I passed all three tests on the first try, which was very good. I'd been having mental picture shows of sitting in that damned office for hour upon hour, filling in circle after circle with my trusty PaperMate mechanical Number Two pencil. No.

I passed by the skin of teeth. That's all right. I really didn't need skin on my teeth in the first place.

The DMV is quite the sociological study. Everyone needs to drive thus an interesting cross-section of humanity emerges. You have the well-coiffed rich girl, with the shiney three-inch black heels and the immaculate makeup and the Texas-sized rock on her left ring finger and you have the shifty-eyed dude who looks about as comfortable immersed in that mass of jabbering and cell-phone talking and politely-burping humanity as a goose in a hockey rink.

Then there was the guy that I have seen in a few AA meetings. I'd like to say that we made eye-contact and shared a super-secret "I know you, you know me" head nod, but...no. In all seriousness, it seemed to me that he was avoiding making eye contact with me. Which is just as well. Actually, I couldn't care less. What would we have chatted about? "So, uh, you're a friend of Bill W.'s? How's it going?" And then he would say, "Uh, good. Good. I'm still off the sauce. You?" Then I would say, "Oh. Sure. Um. Yup. I'm feeling pretty good." Then we would look at each other and nod vaguely and find the line of people amazingly interesting. And our shoes would probably be fascinating new discoveries, as well. Watches would be looked at and pocket change would be jiggled. "Okay! Good luck, man!"

"You too."

Anyway. Like I was saying, I passed by the nonexistent skin of my teeth. I brought the three tests up to the Southern-drawling older lady named--I'm serious--Bessy, and she checked the answers and then allowed me to look over what I had missed. The first test, 50 questions, was a general knowledge test and, looking over what I had missed, I would have seriously kicked myself if I had not passed. You can miss 10 questions and still pass; I missed 10 questions. And about seven of them were questions to which I knew the answers. I must have been in a rush. I must have filled in the wrong bubble. In my defense, though, taking a test in the DMV is basically as soothing as taking a test in a DMZ. Cell phones, people talking and laughing, rustling of newspapers and magazines, staffers calling out numbers...these are all very unconducive to rapt attention on what, essentially, is a test that is about as exciting as watching paint dry. And the foreign lady behind me who insisted on reading all the questions aloud to herself? Oy vey. I'm sure that it helped her grasp the slippery English language better, but--damn!

Hey kidz! Would you like to have fun?! Would you like to play along at home?! Go to this website and you too can take practice CDL tests! Trust me. It's as fun as watching a barrel of monkeys...well...monkey around.

And now a bit of negative news: I went to the doctor last week to get blood tests--just for the hell of it--and I got the results in the mail today. All was good except for my cholesterol level was elevated and they want me to set up an appointment to discuss the results. Here is what that discussion will sound like: "Adam. You need to eat better and exercise more. And, also, smoking hardens your arteries, you know, thus making the disease of atherosclerosis more attainable. It gives it a foothold, as it were." And then this is where I will say, "Okay, Doctor Hasbany. I will get right on that." Seriously, though, this is not anything with which to fuck around. I know that.

Then why, oh why, did I just get back from Lombard's wherein an extra-large pizza pie was purchased? I'll start my new and improved exercise regiment...tomorrow. Scout's honor.

EARPLUGZ

I'm writing this with earplugs in my, well, ears. The sound of my fingers hitting the keys seems to be more distinct than when I am typing sans earplugs. To me, this seems kind of like a contradictory phenomenon. Shouldn't it be tougher to hear the key strokes? Is it because the rest of the aural world is, for intents and purposes, washed away, leaving me in the here and now? Or is it because typing is, with a deadened sense, all the brain has to focus on, so it rachets up the level of thinking grease? If a tree fell in a forest, would I hear it? Probably...no.


It's pretty cool, though. It's more of a physical exercise than a mental exercise, when you're typing with your ears plugged. All that I can hear is the distant and muffled clop-cloak-clop-cloak sound of keys being depressed and the wheezy sound of my breath. The TV is a distant blur and my focus is right here, right now, on this monitor. I'm not exactly writing anything, but the pleasure of this post--for me, obviously--is the feeling my fingertips get when I'm typing. In fact, I could keep doing this all night, just typing for the pure vibratory pleasure in my fingertips/nailbeds.


Hello? Hello?! Why did everyone leave?!

THE CHALLENGE OF SEGUE

The horror of the blank white sheet of paper. Appease the beast. Write whatever comes into your mind, kemo sabe....

I was looking at my home page a few minutes ago and I saw a story about a hot air balloon in British Columbia that caught fire whilst on the ground and then, breaking loose from its tether, floated up into the air and burst into flames before shooting off like a sputtering balloon and exploding into an RV park. Two people were unable to jump from the craft and subsequently died from burns. Eeeesh. Good God, I thought that hot air balloon rides were supposed to be nice and relaxing, a meandering float above picturesque villages, a ride that renders towns below quaint postcards. You don't expect to be involved in Hindenburg '07 when you clamber aboard a balloon. Thoughts and prayers.

And now, without an appropriate segue (but how can I segue from that?), I am fiending for NFL football. I drafted a team for one of my Fanatsy leagues yesterday. We drafted at a bowling alley right down the road from work headquarters. Many people enjoyed alcoholic beverages; I, nearing my ninth month of sobriety, enjoyed a few Nordics, Labatt's non-alcoholic brew. (If I may be so bold, if you are ever going to drink a non-alkie beer, this is the one to drink. Stay faaaaaaaaaar away from O'Doul's. Stuff tastes like tonic water mixed with wheat germ...not a good taste.)

Anyway, for all two of you NFL geeks out there who read my drivel, what follows is the result of my sober draft. Team Monkey is as follows: At quarterback, I have Donovan McNabb with Matt Hasselbeck as his backup. At running backs I have Joseph Addai and Rudi Johnson with Cedric Benson and Marion Barber III as their backups. I drafted a shitload of wideouts, for some reason. In this league, we start three every week, but I still, for some unknown reason, drafted four backups. Anyway, here are my starters: "Terrible" Terrell Owens, Larry Fitzgerald and Darrell Jackson. I'll be shifting the receivers each week, according to the matchups, but here are my backups: Braylon Edwards, Greg Jennings, Matt Jones and the still-speedy and earnest octogenerian Isaac Bruce. At tight end, I selected Chris Cooley from the Redskins. My defense is the Carolina Panthers and my place kicker is Josh Brown from Seattle.

I like my chances. It's basically a work league--all eight of us in the league work at Consumers Energy. There were some foolish selections, such as Drew Brees going 14th overall and Frank Gore being selected before Joseph Addai. But...that shit happens, right? Right?!

I stayed true to the two-stud running back strategy and I am very happy to have gotten--for all intents and purposes--three starting running backs who are not subject to the platoon system on their respective teams.

Okay...wipe the Fanatsy Football Geek Juice (F.F.G.J.) off of the screen.

OATMEAL

I wonder about my brain-power, sometimes. I wonder if, perhaps, too many hops and too many barleys conspired to drain my Einstein of elasticity.

Case in point: I had this picture of Lou up in Adobe Photoshop. There was a glare coming from the Saturday morning-light zapping in from the window, obscuring the image on the monitor. I, for about five minutes, did what I was doing with the picture, all the while craning my neck to counteract the glare. It was a pain in the ass, not to mention an increasing pain in the neck. I just can't see it! I was thinking to myself. Eventually, I angled the monitor two inches to the right.

No glare. If I stay true to this kind of cutting-edge thinking, I just might yet gain tenure at Harvard.

A MONKEY'S UNCLE

So, yeah. I drew the picture that you see, here, when I was in the back seat of my Ford Focus. My brother-in-law Matt was driving (he drove 23 hours and 1300 miles...he is now, officially, Stud), and my sis Meliss was in the passenger seat. I read and smoked and, one time (not at band camp) I jammed my stinky flip-flops in the area between the passenger door and the passenger seat, thus guaranteeing that my dear sister would be privy to the full effect of my odorifious zapatos. I have written about this already, but I figured I would lend some background information to this picture.

Anyway, I have long loved to doodle and, often, I draw a gratuitously grotesque characiture of myself, including but not limited to: a wide expanse of forehead, pinched facial features, a glowering brow and a miniature bowler hat, a type of hat that I have never in my life worn. I don't know why I draw that picture incessantly, but I do. It had become an almost thoughtless exercise in line-drawing.

But the fact remains that I often draw myself as an ape, or, at least, a human being with an apish apeture.

Do you know how excruciating middle and high schools were? Do know what it's like to score in the top 99th percentile in rope-climbing...and be ashamed of your achievement because it just felt way too easy? To have bananas spill from your locker during class breaks? Have you ever had the girl upon whom you'd focussed your attention pierce your tender freshman heart with one well-timed "Ooga-ooga?" Have you ever cried yourself to sleep in the highest branches of the schoolyard oak tree? Yeah.

Me either. But I did get called (mockingly, of course) "Grape Ape" in eighth grade. And I did have my childhood friend burp out the word "Aaaaaaaaapppppe." And I did have a fondness for anything banana. (Except for hammocks; never hammocks.)

What is it, exactly, that reminds people of primates when I'm around? Maybe nothing, but, if pressed, I would submit that my brow is somewhat low-slung and my mouth is babyish, thus lending itself a cute Curious George-type swell. I am the Missing Link! See me beat my chest! Listen to me weep.

So. Anyway, back to the picture: I drew it without knowing what the finished product would look like. Apparently, it looks like me. Apparently, the "West Side Simian"...is me. Two--two!--people on Flickr have said so!

My life, as I have known it, is over. Over, I say! It's nothing but downhill from here. One day, in the not-so-distant future, you may read an odd story of a man in Brazil...a man who met his unfortunate and premature demise after scaling--remarkably quickly--the Christ the Redeemer statue and flinging himself off of the Saviour's nose, wildly flapping his poorly-constructed Wings o' Banana, screaming to the whipping wind: "Ooga-ooga?! Take this, Susan!"

Or...not.

INVASION

The cicadas are here! The cicadas are here! Everybody! Run for your lives!

SNAP. BACK TO REALITY

With the road trip to visit my sister of the North (Alexis in Minnesota) in the rear view mirror, it's time to hunker down and get back into the Work swing of things. God. That sucks. Those four days just flew by. I had a good time, though, and it was great seeing my sisters and doing my "Little Brother" thang, such as surreptitiously jamming my offensive flip flops in the space next to the passenger seat and the passenger door, inches from my unsuspecting sister's head. If you want to, you can read about it here. Hey, I gotta do what I gotta do. Someone once told me not to hide my light under a bushel basket. I took that to heart; I still do.

My "light" is pukish-green and it manisfests itself in the form of lovingly shared bodily odors. It's odor-rific, is what it is! Yeah, seventh grade humor is still fresh in my mind. Hey. It could be worse. I could find smashing watermelons to be the height of comedy.

Here is another funny thing to do: Whilst belted securely in the car, and with the camera cord secured tightly around your wrist, lean out the window [the automobile should be traveling at least 65 miles per hour, but 80 is better] and open your mouth and take a picture of your face. I'll guarantee one thing: If you have been on the road for eleven and a half hours, tired and slappy, the digital capture will leave you hitching in the chest and gasping for breath, you'll be laughing so hard. Then again, when you look at said picture a couple of days later, with your mind loaded down with thoughts of work and murky maturity, it won't seem quite as funny and, in fact, the picture will make you think to yourself, "Well, hell, this is what I'd look like if I had the misfortune to become a waterlogged corpse! I'll be damned!"

It's hideous. It disgusts me, but it's funny.

Anyway. That's it. I had a great time seeing my sisters and my brothers-in-law. Also, I learned that if one wants to get a kick-ass burrito whilst in Duluth, Minnesota, one can't do any better than a burrito from Burrito Union. Damn fine grub. They come in one-fisted and two-fisted sizes. I went with the two-fisted pork burrito. I think it was called The Capitalist. There is a definite Marxist theme to the restaurant, don't ask me why.

I said don't ask.

TARNISHED RECORDS

"Hammerin' Hank" doesn't top the list, anymore.

Barry Bonds passed him tonight; by hitting his 756th career home run, Bonds is now the "Long-Ball" king. Things just don't seem right about that.

Hank Aaron epitomized class while in the major leagues. He was grace under pressure. While he was banging away at the baseballs, ever-inching towards the record that Babe Ruth had held for nearly fifty years, racial slurs were hurled his way and threats were made on his life--and more--because he was a black man in the 1970s, looking to break the great Bambino's hallowed record.

Barry Bonds cheated. He 'roided-up. (Allegedly.) That is not to say that hitting seven hundred and fifty fucking six home runs is an easy task, because it is assuredly not. That is not to say that Barry Bonds did not work his ass off in the weight room and better himself through nutritional sciences, but it is to say that the record has a wholly hollow feel to it.

I actually felt no excitement seeing the record-breaking shot. And I'll bet that a lot of other people felt the same way as I. And I've been a baseball fan my entire life. When I was younger, I would stare at books on baseball history and read up on people like Honus Wagner and Pie Traynor and Cy Young and Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth--and I'd memorize their statistics and I'd get all gooey-eyed.

That ship has sailed.