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!