Saturday, December 22, 2012

Why Fiona Apple's "The Idler Wheel..." was the Best Thing in 2012 and Other Stuff that Doesn't Suck


1. The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do - Fiona Apple

In an age where every statement is clouded with layers upon layers of irony and meta-text, where the very notion of social media masks every action with pretense, forcing even the most bland of us into a life of performance art, the existence of Fiona Apple comforts me. In her, we have an artist who disappeared from the public eye for almost a decade and returned with a record so earnest and revealing that it forces us to remember what real emotions feel like. My Fiona Apple fandom is well-documented, so perhaps I'm exaggerating or gushing or whatever you want to call it. Still, the jittery, stripped down music presented to us on The Idler Wheel... coincides perfectly with the persona on the stage, and I can 't help but believe (maybe I need to believe) that in Apple is not only a genuine artist but a genuine person as well.

Every Single Night, Left Alone, Werewolf


2. The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson

Pretty much everything that can be said about PTA's The Master comes out in the film's first "processing" scene. As a movie that deals with Scientology through obfuscation, The Master seems almost elusive in its aim, a cult in and of itself. Yet in that first "processing" scene, we see a disheveled, alcoholic veteran in Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell find something in Lancaster Dodd's (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) "Cause" that seems to speak to the inner turmoil within hi,. Freddie is erratic, prone to outbursts, and highly susceptible to suggest--the perfect candidate for a disciple--and the procession of  Dodd's "processing" technique and the repetition of simple questions ("What's your name?") into more probing questions about Quell's "past failures" leads the two into an emotional crescendo before dissipating into the lull of post-baptism. The films builds in much the same manner and washes out into the silence and emptiness of a cult's many promises.

Theatrical Trailer

Note: The next two entries actually do suck, but I want to right about them anyway. So here we go...

Saturday, December 15, 2012

To Fish

sean enfield is an asshole
who has taught three people
how to fish. one of them died
two years ago of starvation
while the other two live
impoverished in the slums
of houston waiting for fish
to hook themselves on the end
of one of their lines so that they

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Mark Twain and a Kitten: An Ode

When this image was first brought to my attention, it seemed me that metaphorical stars were metaphorically aligning, and my documentative instincts immediately led to a trance of reflection. It's a horrible way to live, but we make due, don't we?

Anyway, I couldn't help but feel as though Twain was reaching out to me from beyond the grave via the medium of another literature enthusiast's blog. “Some people scorn a cat and think it not essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.” We, Enfields, are with you, Sam--undoubtedly, we are with you.

I was in Junior High when a teacher first introduced me to Mr. Clemens, the same year a balding football coach, through a class dubbed "Health Class," introduced me to intricacies of my then-changing body. In fifth period, we read Huck Finn aloud, several timid white children tip-toeing around the word "nigger" as though it were poison ivy or a land mine or something of that sort whilst looking in my direction to make sure the ethnic half of me hadn't taken offense, and in sixth, we watched a fifteen minute illustrating both the birds and the bees in unwanted detail, which was I how I saw the first vagina I'd ever see, crowning head and all. I had already developed a self-consciousness about my weight and my plump, perpetually-dry lips and my clammy, perpetually-moist palms. I tried to hold hands with the girl who had asked for my help on the Huck Finn paper, but she was not a fan of the nervous sweat dripping from our shared grasp.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Always Inevitable and Untimely Demise of the Bond Girl

For the first ten years of my life, I was convinced that my father was Sean Connery, though that was not the name by which I knew him. My real father (depending on what unit you use to measure authenticity) was present, affectionate even--offered encouraging words in times of emotional distress, watched basketball games with me, cheering when I cheered and shouting angrily when I shouted angrily, was concerned about my grades, about my future, about my general well-being--but he was tangible, thereby lacking the mystique of my real real father. I had his nose, his tendency to stand with arms hidden behind the back and to sit leaning backward, crossing legs, his gut, protruding but not too much so, his passive-aggressive manners, but that, to me, meant as much as it might mean to you if I were to tell you that that man, any man, strange in just how normal they seemed, was your father too. As a child who watched his VCR copy of The Lion King into oblivion, I expected a father to be the wise sage in the clouds, James Earl Jones, someone suave who could in one breath offer wisdom and in the next disappear. I grew up watching my mother swoon over Mr. Bond as well and so the two entities blurred in my mind. There was a brief period where her affections switched to Roger Moore’s incarnation of the character that confused me, but she found her way back to the true father and all was made well.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Brief Moments of Honesty from Otherwise Dishonest People


            Your band sucks. Even through cell phone speakers, barely audible in a crowded bar, she realizes this truth, but her mouth is bound by courtesy. Your band is fucking terrible. It’s all she can think, anticipating the moment when the timer on his iPhone playlist reaches 0:00. She no longer notices the smell of sweat, the distressing and dank atmosphere of her surroundings, the heat, the discomfort of the wooden stool beneath her. All other senses are overridden by the noise, the clamor of countless other conversations around her and the I-IV-V chord progression playing faintly underneath them. Is he bobbing his head to his own song? He can’t be …
           
“What do you think”
            “What do I think?”
            “Of the song?”
            “I can’t really hear it.”
            “Do you like it?”
            “It’s good.”       

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

How Thoreau Might Have Behaved on ChatRoulette

Reading your own work as writer is like masturbating, though for him it was a little less messy, a little less fulfilling, a little more obvious. He wondered if this was how the greats might have felt, if there was some sort of singularity between the writing experiences of all writers. Then, he drifted through them, inhabiting their flesh, reading their words, metaphysical sticking his hands down their (and his) metaphysical pants and underpants.

It was all very odd, strange indeed.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

I'd Like to Run A Food Truck

I'd like to run a food truck, though I cannot cook. My greatest culinary achievement to this date is an omelet that I managed to flip with only a slight crack in its structural integrity. It was a damn good omelet too. Still, I'd like to run a food truck. I'd like to drive through each and every major city, watch as the people there get fat off my delicious cuisine, smile and come back for more, then move on so that I can experience it all again. Now, I don't know what I'd serve, but I know the local papers would rave about it. I know the reviews on Yelp would be too flattering to even read. I know my truck would become a national sensation. Cities would desperately anticipate its arrival. The McRib. My truck would be the McRib of food trucks.

I'd like to have a family too. An average family--a wife, a daughter, a son, two dogs, a cat and three fish. We would try not to travel when the kids were in school. They would make friends. They would lead normal lives. They would have a home base. Then, come winter or summer break, they would set sail onto the metaphorical seven seas. They would see parts of America most kids only read about in Geography courses. They would be contributing members of the best damn food truck in the world. And I would be there father.

I'd like to ride horses into the sunset. I'd like to be the hero. Like in the movies. I call myself The Man with No Name; I snarl like Clint Eastwood. It's sad, yes, but in the funniest way possible.

I sing songs to myself. I pretend I'm on the stage. There are audiences everywhere I go. You are in the crowd ... and you and you and you and, yes, even you. I interview myself. Ask the most intuitive of questions and respond with the wittiest of retorts. There are people, imaginary people, who kill for my autographs. You can have one. At the moment, they are free.

I'd like to run a food truck. I'd like to drive into the sea.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Fiona Apple at the Winstar: this is not about hash

"Fiona Apple doesn't perform her songs -- they escape. "

That is the prevailing rhetoric surrounding Fiona Apple's current Idler Wheel tour, recent arrest notwithstanding. And it's a fitting sentiment, one that Apple perpetuates in each of her performances thus far, and it's a telling one, too, that she has reached a point as a performer that critics are no longer labeling her performance as performances. No, they go to the top shelf of their vocabulary when Fiona comes through town. But it fits. She is an enigma, disappearing from the scene and emerging seven years later with a heart-wrenching album of raw and intimate songs.  

When she stands behind the mic, you can hear the intensity in her voice, see it in her thin body as pounds at her chest during a verse, feel it as she crouches down on the stage, contemplating or what-have-you during a interlude. Her fingers fly and bounce atop the keys of the piano.
Image Courtesy of Pegasus News

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Basketball for the Heavy Set

He had this dream, this beautiful dream. In it, he and Dirk Nowitzki were paired in a 2v2 game against Mark Burrows, the boy who used to throw mashed potatoes at him during freshman lunch, and Michael West, the boy who used to supply Mark with the potato ammunition. The rules were simple: the first to twenty-one points won, and the winning team got to watch as the losers groveled at their feet before ritually committing suicide with the blade of their choice (this being a civilized society). Even in his dreams, he played the role of sidekick, choosing to take the backseat as Dirk leveled point after point onto the opposition. He could pass well enough that he felt his contribution adequate, though he wished he could nail a jump shot, could drive to the rim, could shoot threes with the confidence of a young Larry Bird, but that would never be the case, not even when his imagination was unhindered. Still, he delighted in the demise of his enemies. He took a devious sort of pleasure in watching Dirk do his bidding and even darker brand of pleasure in watching the blades protrude from the backs of those, to him, perpetually thirteen year old monstrosities.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Of a Kind

She fancied herself a shitty poet, for she had come to believe that those were the most earnest. The talented poets, those who gazed upon the world and saw Truth, could transcribe their vision in a manner with which only other poets could comprehend. Poets of her breed, however, those who gazed upon the world and saw the world, wrote with an identifiable ease. They brought no new light, opened no eyes, moved no hearts, challenged no minds, but what they lacked in poignancy, they made up for in accessibility--in that notion they found transcendence. Like the talented, their audience was broad, though far less analytical and far more modern. They were of an age, a brief moment in time, a whisper into the very ears of God, vanished into the vast plane of history. No one would fight to keep their works in print, nor would anyone attempt to retrieve any lost publications of these truly awful few. When they work ended, so concluded their legacy. They were of a generation, that generation's chief voice as far as sales were concerned, and she was chief among them."Miss Emily Meyers," read everyone of her book jackets, "Shit Poet," and she delighted in the title.

This morning, she did not know delight, however. She knew frustration instead. It crept through her like a rat through the walls. The mini-van reeked of puberty sweat, her twin boys hitting each other in the back seats, her daughter pouting in the front. So much shitty poetry pouring through her and no pen to record it with, no surface to record it on. Did her kids not understand her status--queen of the shit poets, goddess of shitty poetry?

There is, of course, a distinction between the shitty poets and the shittiest poets. Shitty poets were those with mass appeal; whereas the shittiest poets were just shitty poets. The shittiest poets wrote in isolation, dreaming to ascend the ranks, believing that they would one day achieve the status of Yeats or Eliot or Dickinson or what have you, unaware of the majesty that accompanies the shitty poets once their shitty poetry saw sunlight. The only qualm Emily had, and it was a minor one at that, was with the word "shit," but she did not coin that particular part of the phrase anyway. Her brother, not one to censor himself and unfamiliar with concept of tact, provided the inspiration.

"What a shitty poem!" he declared upon finishing what she considered to be her magnum opus, and the words struck her. Shit. shit shit shit shit How vile, how unpoetic. She loved it ... sort of ... she hated it too. Rather, she understood it, realized its function in art, its appeal. This was the role she was born for. Rarely does one get the privilege to look into the mirror and lay eyes upon their purpose, knowing without any semblance of doubt why The Stork delivered your fetus to your mother's womb, but she, Miss Emily Meyers, saw exactly that on a piece of paper, informing her of her first publication. She was a shit poet.

That was her mantra, repeated whenever she sat down to write, and she could not stop writing. Her brain leaked shitty ideas for shitty poems everywhere she went. She wrote about love--all the best shitty poets wrote about love--and she wrote every night. Once she finished a collection, she started another. It was her livelihood, how she fed her kids, paid the rent, kept her dog supplied in the higher-scale brand of dog food for which he had developed an exclusive taste.

Her hand never ached. She did not comprehend "writers block." There were so many things to say, none of them vital, but all of them were said regardless.

That night, she found herself caught by a fever. She never felt this way. When she wrote, she wrote calmly, the words flowing out of her with the ease and steadiness of a running faucet, but tonight, the words pressed against her, forcing their way out. Tremors shot up and down her spine. She was a nine on the Richter scale, a code red threat level, ready to blow at any second. The lights were dim in her room--the pitter patter of little feet on the floor downstairs provided the soundtrack. Every now and then, she would hear an "ouch," and she would mutter a brief prayer that her sons had not killed each other in whatever ill-conceived game they immersed themselves in and that her daughter would not play the role of collateral damage. She would tend to them if she could, but her work had consumed her, had seized her brain, had made her a prisoner to some unknown warden. It occurred to her that she was excreting poetry. She, the shittiest of the shitty poets, for the first time in her career, was excreting her first shitty poem. The others, as shitty as they were, did not come with such toil. They came not from the ass but from the mind, with complete comprehension of their creation. She could not even read the words of this current monstrosity, did not believe she would understand them if she could. This was a chemical reaction, an explosion of thought, volatile. She feared she would never write again, would be incapable, rendered useless by one malicious shitty poem shitted maliciously.

Oh God oh no it can't be She sat back, the words no longer pushing through her. A restoration of clarity overwhelmed her, forced her backwards through time and space. She read it then read it again then read it a third time. no no no She e-mailed her to her brother, waited anxiously at the computer, her daughter crying downstairs while the boys sprinted to their hiding places. no no no 

When his response arrived, her worst fears were realized. Miss Emily Meyers, shitty poet extraordinaire, had written a good, nay, a great poem. All hope was lost. 

Monday, May 21, 2012

The Indisputable Divinity of Ray Allen as Jesus Shuttlesworth and His Father Denzel

I had written you, yes you, a wonderful short story for this particular post. Irreverent, sure. Blasphemous, maybe. Wonderful, most definitely. But as you can see from my italicized used of the past tense, that tale is no more. It has gone the way of my pens, my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, my iPod, I think maybe a dog or two of mine, and it is now lost. This is the penance I pay for scribbling my short stories on whatever random piece of paper I find laying around and shoving the results into my pockets without any semblance of a thought. My organization has always been ... well, I have none, but so far, it has never brought upon a tragedy of this magnitude.

GONE! My work all gone, and all I have to show for it is this self-deprecating blog post and the pocket lint I retrieved from my pocket instead of my story notes. I could recall only the title, those words forever engrained onto my skull, and a sentence that began, "As he stared into the bear's eyes, convinced that this creature was convinced of his edibility, Jesus raised the basketball..."

The rest is fog, indiscernible and maddening.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Letter to My Black Half: A Rebuttal

Dear Colored African-American Self,

I received your letter, and it only furthers the point I've been making since 2008: Obama's election has given you an unbearable sense of pride. All of a sudden, we're listening to Outkast, we're watching Spike Lee films, we're seeking out Cornel West interviews on NPR. Where was all this black pride in high school? When you were listening to Pinkerton and crying about girls on full blast instead of Bun B and crying about girls? I apologize for the attempts on your life ... that was perhaps a little too far and unwarranted, but the ego has gotten to be a little much. Your civil rights aren't even a century old yet, and already they're being shoved in my face. Need I remind you that, without me, we wouldn't be half as employable.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Letter to My White Half

Dear Self of the Honkie Variety,

Listen. We need to talk. Don't worry; we aren't splitting up. Unfortunately, that is not an option for us--I have consulted a number of specialist. No, our burden remains to carry on, to deal with each other's faults as Dr. King would have wanted, and that is why I have chosen to write you.

It's the racism, Sean. At first, you would just crack the occasional joke about whatever stereotype you happened to conjure. A "I bet you want some of that fried chicken" or "Shouldn't you be able to dunk" or perhaps even "Use your magic negro powers," which I did not even know was a stereotype until you brought it up, would come gallivanting out of you mouth whenever the situation was "appropriate," and I could live with that ... if it had ceased there. But then came the attempted lynchings. After the first, I thought, surely this was another joke. Then twice ... three times ... four! and I got suspicious.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Screamales: A Hazy Retrospective

Hello all. I've decided to try something new within the established Kittens in Ties format. The goal is to write reviews on things ... all sorts of things ... in the form of flash fiction based on my memories of said thing. This week's review is of a concert I recently experienced: Screaming Females at Queen City Hall. We'll see how this goes ... 

Power chords ran through his veins like demented gerbils psyched out on pharmaceuticals running through an infinite loop of tunnels encased in a glass cage. He could feel the dissonance of the guitar solo inching up his spine, and it was only 7:30, several hours before the show would even start. These were feelings drawn by expectations, already bobbing his head up and down amidst the rhythmless soundtrack of street noise. It would do for now. He knew the songs well enough that he didn't need musical accompaniment to get amped up. Instead, he needed only silence ... his mind would provide the rest.

Of course, now was not the time for premature headbanging. Now was a time for action.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

A Doodle of the Devil Blowing Bubbles

Every picture needed horns, and he wanted to be the hand that distributed them. He realized his realm of influence in that regard had its limitations, but his elementary school made a habit of telling children that they can accomplish anything they put their minds to--no matter how improbable. As a result, he earnestly believed he could sketch horns onto every political figure in every textbook, onto every portrait of every composer reprinted in every program for every concert band performance, onto every smiling child on every box of girl scouts cookies, onto every author's photograph on every book jacket wrapped around every book in every library or bookstore, onto every poorly sketched stick figure in every bathroom stall in every truck stop across the country. For now, he would have to settle with this particular program, content with defacing this idle giant as that gentle beast gazed over a landscape somehow meant to signify the accompanying piece, but eventually he would need to expand, would need not to regulate his art as a means of contending with boredom but as a militant expression of disdain for a horn-less society.

Monday, April 16, 2012

A Rough Sketch of Cowboys and Indians and Zombies

With his index finger and his thumb, Martin Zipper turned his hand into what an adult would consider an “L” turned sideways but what he knew was actually a six shooter, the likes of which John Wayne once used to rule the West. He could still recall the films, could still smell the weird stench that plagued his grandparent’s trailer home, could still hear his grandfather quoting each and every line, could still quote the lines himself. It was hot then; it was hot now, the trailer serving as a metal can that concealed the intolerable Arizona heat with them and the insects that flew in from the open windows. “Bang!” he shouted, “Bang! Bang! I know you’re back there, Johnny!”
“Your bullets can’t go through walls!” a faint voice retorted, failing to even project at the necessary volume.
“Yes, they can!”
“No, only Phil’s can! You already have invisibility!”

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Out of Context Spencer Krug Lyrics

I think over the course of this blog that we have established two things.

         1) It primarily contains my award-winning [citation needed] fiction.
         2) It allows me to communicate with you, the readers.
         3) I can do whatever I want.
Today, I want to post out of context lyrics from various songs penned by musician and mythical figure, Spencer Krug.Why? Because it's poetry or lyrics which inspires my craft or whatever and I'm analyzing them or, you know, not. It's my blog ... that's thing number four that I've establish so far, and as such, I'm allowed to break the rules. And there are no rules.
Krug in his natural habitat.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Books You Should Read

 We interrupt your sporadically scheduled short fiction to bring you this brief message. If you are looking for something to read that does not have "the" "hunger" or "games" in the title, then here are two things that I've read recently that you might enjoy. Enjoy!
Basic Training - Kurt Vonnegut

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Things Duct Tape Can't Fix

Lately, he had developed a hobby of making lists, but he found that the lists too quickly became existential and self-analytical as customary with everything he wrote. The lists were never predicated by an important topic. They were simply the nonsensical rattling off of various items, phrases, actions, people, places, ideas, thoughts, things, street names, animals, theologies, philosophies, roads, foods, songs, bands, movies, office suppliers, composers, painters, third century historians, that related to a particular title which, for reasons unknown, had been lodged in his thoughts, yet as silly as the practice was, he still managed to delve into nihilism with each successive list, to unearth the darkest parts of his soul with lists such as "Ways the Smurfs Convinced Me of the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father, Papa Christ."

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Bonding of the Musical Variety

This is a largely impersonal blog or a highly impersonal blog or however you want to view it. Essentially, it's just an overblown, somewhat frequently updated collection of short stories, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be friends. That's the beauty of the internet. The barrier between author (artist, filmmaker, musician, or what have you) isn't as extensive as it would have been centuries ... even decades ... prior. And while it might be bold to declare myself an author when I have only this blog to my name, I still believe that barrier between us should be torn down. Or, at the very least, I can stab a few holes in it.

So I like music. Unless, you are Satan or Hitler or Stalin or Satan-Hitler-Stalin's evil, immaculately conceived love child, you probably like it too. Here's a brief write up of the bands that have had the the largest influence on the stuff you have and will read on this blog. (Previously published here: 5 Favorite Bands) Enjoy! ... more short stories to come!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Factory


The cold steel in his hands feels awkward as he grips it. He pulls it up to his eyes and examines it. A good one. And he sends it down the assembly line. He watches it as moves down the conveyer belt. He did not know what the item was or what the item did. He knew what made the item function, and how to tell if it was good or not. That’s all he needed to know for his job, and that’s all he knew.
            When the work day concludes, he hangs up his gloves, goggles, apron, and rubber boats into his locker. He walks outside with his hands in his pockets and makes travels home. He did not own a car and did not desire to. He did not travel often, only to work.
            He enjoyed it most when he was inside or on the porch of his house with a book he saved. It was safer that way. A level of comfort lingered around his house.
"A bad one."
            The next morning, he is watching one of his machines travel toward him. He gets ready to grab it and extends his hand toward it. He looks it over. Once. Twice. A bad one. He chucks it into the bin behind him. If he fills the bin, he will toss it into the oven and watch the bad ones burn. If he did not, he will wait for day that he did, which was probably coming soon. He generally gets to burn faulty machines every day. This is his favorite part. It helps to drown out the monotony of pick and look. Pick and look

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Cedric Lloyd Dies in the Apocalyspe

Somehow, I had convinced myself that Carrot Top would somehow bring about earth's demise, and when I learned that that would not be the case, I was oddly disappointed. I realized then that the world's greatest prop comedy bit would never be performed, could never be performed, and I started to cry. Damn it! I actually teared up. Imagine it: Carrot Top walks across some stage, any stage, and begins the set up to some joke, any joke, and for the punchline of that ... he blows up the whole, God damned world. Actually blows it up, and in one instant makes human existence both meaningful and meaningless whilst redeeming his entire career. But alas, that was not to be.

No, eventually I learned--and I suppose this bit of information disappointed me the most--that I, Cedric Lloyd of Beaumont, Texas, would bring about the end of existence. I know. Sucks, right?

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Sid-Vicious Cycle and Hope for the Human Race

Some bathroom art strikes you immediately, impossible to remove your eyes from it. So much so, that you briefly consider spending the rest of your life on the toilet, forever locked in a staring contest with the "Mona Lisa" of hastily sketched stall pictures, but then you get a waft of that bitter atmosphere, that pungent scent of waste, and you return to reality, forcing yourself to reconcile with the truth: you can't live on the toilet, no matter how good the stall art is. Most bathroom art, however, diminishes your faith in the human race or, at least, in your respective gender, makes you wonder what muse inspired this stranger to draw his genitalia for every person who stops by the men's room at the truck stop off I-35.

In front of you, you spy the words,

"Women Humans are good for:
>F
>C
  >C,"

Monday, February 27, 2012

A Superficial, Philosophical Discussion with Oneself Regarding the Absence of Bread in the Pantry

YOU enter the kitchen, more introspective now than you have ever felt before, on a desperate quest for a ham and cheese sandwich. You know just how you'll make it too. It will have ham, obviously, and swiss cheese, but beyond that you will dress it with mustard and lettuce and tomatoes and maybe even ketchup if the inkling arises.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Difference Between Life and Death

            After careful consideration, Beth had decided that life was a rather perplexing concept, and after even more thought, she had decided it bored her. This thought was the result of quite a long Tuesday. On this Tuesday, much like any Tuesday, Beth woke up. In fact, Beth woke up fairly often. One might say that she did it at least once every morning, and now it had grown monotonous. Perhaps this was one reason why life had become such a bore to Beth. Waking up every morning grew rather tedious, and some mornings she wished she could skip the ritual all together.
           As of late, life had evolved into an enigma for Beth, one she had no ambition to solve. It simply did not concern her anymore. Perhaps, she felt pressure rather than boredom, and she had mistaken one for the other; nevertheless, there were things about life she did not understand. For instance, she did not understand theories or why they mattered, nor did she understand governments or countries or why they mattered. As history had taught her, they each would be gone in a heartbeat, so why bother? Ologies perplexed her. Philosophies left her bamboozled. With all this considered, Beth did understand three things, and three things alone:
 
 
1) She did not care.
2) Everything is temporary.
3) She was a nobody.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Narcissist Conundrum (Or How to Be a Better Narcissist)

If this were to have another subtitle, as ridiculous as that would be, it would be subtitled Or How to Love Others by Loving Oneself. If it were to have a third subtitle ... it would never have a third subtitle. The fourth subtitle, however, would most certainly be The Reckoning.

I feel as though, through my birth, my parents achieved Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream at its logical conclusion—of course, for my existence's sake, my parents had to be more than a little black girl and a little white boy holding hands (though I choose not to dwell on this fact, for it makes me queasy as it should ... or should it? It should.). My sisters are further developments in MLK's revolutionary, wet dream (and I will accept the blame for making the dream a wet one since Dr. King made no references in regards to cross-racial breeding in any of his speeches, but the prospect had to have crossed his mind at some point, hadn't it?). All of this is to provide me with a sense of importance before addressing you as I wish to address you, yet I suppose I'm not the first realization of King's dream--current president notwithstanding. In fact, this dream had been realized prior to MLK's birth if you consider Thomas Jefferson and his slave concubine earlier contributors to the civil rights movement. Still, after tireless deliberation, I have decided that this angle, however overblown it may be, is the best that I've got. This hyperbolic and somewhat crude symbol of racial equality that I have bestowed upon myself leads adequately into the titular conundrum.

Friday, February 17, 2012

An Excerpt from "Zombie Chimps and Other Seemingly Awesome Things that Suck"

Like any self-respecting author from my generation, I have written a trashy Zombie apocalypse novel that should probably stay hidden in the most remote folder on my computer, but because I love you guys so much (or hate or whatever), I have decided to share an excerpt of that novel with you. Enjoy.
             
My ass hurts. I suspect I’ve been bitten, though I pray that isn't the case, assuming I would have noticed if I had been, but in my wilder days, long before the infection turned us all wild, I had felt the sensation before. Of course, in those wild days, I would have enjoyed the bite; indeed, I might have even begged for more, but now, it makes me nervous—cautious whenever I sit down so as not to alert the suspicion of my peers. I wish I could have seen the frisky monkey who decided my ass would taste better than the brains further upstairs. If I had seen him, I’d have popped him right between his banana-loving eyes with the butt of my gun, and I would hit him and hit him again and again until his furry skull was spread across the African wilderness. For now, however, I will hold out as long as I can.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Teddy Hudson's Grandpa is Dead

I will always find amusement in the sight of my breath, in the pale smokey quality it exudes as I maneuver my lips into an oval and blow into the cold still breeze that defines the morning. As a child, I would try to pull the breath back into my chest, breathing inwards, watching it drift away from me and into the atmosphere and up through the clouds where it will forever drift, for once it escapes my lungs, there is no returning. All the while, she holds my hand, sending warmth through me and I through her. We both want to laugh and we both want to cry—not certain which emotion will triumph and fully aware which is most appropriate. Across from me, Teddy Hudson stands with hollow eyes like egg shells drained of their yolk. He wears a stern face, not quite a mask, and bears no tears. I don't expect him to cry. Others might, but I don't. He spent the whole week crying, locked in his room as Robert Smith sang on full bast—though not louder than the sounds of sobbing, yet even Mary, as agreeable as we tend to be, still expects him to cry.

          “He seems so—”

          He seems so angry, but that's not what she is going to say. She is going to say “empty” or “dejected” if she feels poetic enough.

           “—dejected,”she whispers.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The Heavenly Affairs of Tyler Patton

  Tyler Patton was black, or African-American, or a nigger, or what have you. He did not know when he ceased to be black, but when they spoke of him now, they used the past tense and not only in regards to his ethnicity. Yes, he was black, but he also was an honor student, he was on the track and field team, he was a bassist, he was alive. Supposedly, all of those aspects of his character ceased to be. He was no longer black; he simply was.
            Of course, he never considered himself black anyway—not in the sense that society considered one black. For one, he had never set foot in a ghetto, and all black men, all black men of merit, hailed from the ghetto. Eazy E, the man he had idealized since he had been capable of such a fixation, came from the ghetto. Died there, too. But Tyler's mother begat her son in a Presbyterian hospital, in close proximity to at least two coffee shops where seldom an NWA track was heard. 
            Tell them where you’re from, Tyler:
            “Straight out of Plano.”
            A suburb of Dallas … doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?   He possessed no gold teeth though he had had a couple of fillings, he did not drive a Cadillac, he did not own rims for his non-existent Cadillac, he did not play nor did he enjoy watching basketball, he had no aspirations to rise from rags to riches, he believed most fried chicken was too greasy, and he had never met a watermelon he enjoyed. Now, he did not simplify those qualities into a prototypical black man. He would not even consider that portrayal a stereotypical black man, but somewhere in his sub-conscious, he figured he should have been that person, should have crafted a more suave and seventies-soul-brother persona. In his thoughts he sounded smooth, hearing the voice of a middle aged Barry White rather than the scrawny teenager who actually spoke and earnestly believing that smoothness to accurately speak on behalf of his character, but that man--that negro Casanova--existed only in his father. He was not his father, a man as black as society defined black, and now, and not only because of the condition of his deadness, he would never be his father. With surgery, he could have been his mother, and without it, he still possessed the nerdy suburban mentality she held. However, as much love as he had for his mother, he did not want to be that person. He wanted the “Black Power,” television negro, character—the black men who made records, made money, impressed women.
         Yet he was no better or worse for not being that person. And now, he was nothing at all. He simply was.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

How a Google Search Crippled My Creativity

Every now and then, I get the urge to google myself ... and that's not a euphemism. It's a welcome break between creeping on Facebook and clicking through reddit. Usually, the only things I find are all of my social networking profiles, some ill-advised sketch videos I put on youtube when I was young and impressionable, and the many blogs I have launched and subsequently abandoned (though this one will remain strong!). There's never anything of interest.

Until this time!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Where are the damn kittens?

Let's pretend for a moment that your name is Bartholomew Fredricks the third, and that, for some reason, you've approached me at a metaphorical street corner (or in a metaphorical coffee shop if that's your perogative. Note: location doesn't have to be metaphorical either) about this particular blog. Let's pretend also that you and I had the following conversation:

Saturday, January 21, 2012

A Rough Sketch of a Man Lost in Thought

  “Have you ever been in love?”
  The question, regrettably, conjured thoughts of the women currently locked in his basement without food or water to nourish her. It had been the first time he had considered her existence in the past few days, and what a place to do it—empty coffee shop, nothing but a day old croissant in his stomach that would not have been sold had he not been drunk enough to purchase it, seated across from a man whose name he could not remember and whose face seemed evil enough to be suspect. He first wondered if she were hungry, for he was hungry, only capable of thinking of others as they related to him. How much time had passed since he had last been home? The days had begun to blur into a singular haze; his last meal, that he could recall, came by way of a trash can and a diminished sense of self-regulation. He could still taste the dirt on the french fries, the mold on the half eaten roll, the piece of cardboard he had mistaken for chicken skin because it was that greasy and he was that inebriated. By now, her last meal might have been her own arm, though he figured her jaw had likely weakened, making it difficult to chew through the muscle—and she had some muscle through which she would need to chew—in order to make the task worthwhile. He almost felt cruel when he imagined it, but he could no longer remember the circumstances that had led to her detainment. Admittedly, he had a history of making irrational decisions in the wake of minor discrepancies: the most recent of which was choosing to get drunk at nine in the morning because he could not find his car keys. Of course, forced detainment of a woman he once claimed to love had to have now topped the list of poor and irrational decisions he had made. Still, shame crept into his emotions when he pictured her—not as she was in his basement but as she had been when he called her “honey” and “cutie pie” and “kitten dumpling”—when she would jokingly refer to him as an alcoholic, playful punch his shoulder and skip off into the distance, instigating a chase, and he would take off after her, wanting to wrap her in his arms and squeeze her until her heart popped onto his plain, black sweatshirt, kissing her neck all the while.