Month: January 2004

Did you ever notice how weird that word is? It’s so packed of odd, soft sounds. I think about this as I write my post. I like to start with titles. Well, actually, I start with an idea. Then I make a title. Then I actually write the post.

I really love those old cartoons where they had puns for titles. The jokes were all lame, the kind of pun that makes you groan, but I relish in that kind of rudimentary linguistic slapstick.

I, however, am not so good at puns for titles. I agonize for sometimes minutes over what to title my next work of genius. I languish in throws of literate torture. I lament the ease with which some people have come up with titles that were catchy. Even, on my own site, my cousin Brenna upstaged me in the pun department with her guest post, I Can Post for Miles. Not to say I haven’t tried my best:

• A Minor Problem
• Oh Deer
• My So-Called Wife
• Spictacular
• Pizza What ?

Today’s title is just as bad as any of these. I knew I was writing about thrift, but I don’t know anything that rhymes with “thrift”, so I decided to use the word “store” next to “thrift”. So, you are supposed to think “Thrift Store”. Ok, with that, I decided to rhyme “store” instead. An easy task? No.

I jogged my little browser legs on over to RhymeZone, hippest rhyme place on the internet. I put in “store” and patiently waited for the MC behind the site to figure out his list. I could just picture this little half-Chinese, half-black, sunglasses-wearing, hair-braided, techno-rap-hip-hop Coolio-Neo wannabe saying “store, sore, floor, more, roar…” In any case, they gave me this list.

There are 318 ways to rhyme “store” according to this site. There are only 42 ways to rhyme “thrift”. My choice was clear – take on “store.” The misleading thing about the number they give you is that most of the words are grayed. This means that they are archaic, obsolete, or last names. Like I’d want some random last name in my post title, hit song, or poem.

They arrange them in groups of syllables. The largest syllable word that they have listed is 8 syllables. I considered it. A large rhyme is a good score. It makes people respect you, in a way. I thought that “Thrift Reserve Officers Training Corps” was too long to be considered witty. Also, I don’t know what that is, so I ran the risk of being asked to explain my title, in which case I really would have to be witty.

“War” seemed to be a good rhyme, but with times as they are, it seemed iffy. There is so much war in the world right now, and using that word to make a light, airy post might not have the desired effect that I want. What if people think I’m making fun of war? Then I have the gun-wavers against me. What if people think that I’m making a statement about war? Then I have the pot-head hippies trying to hug me.

No pot-head hippy gets hugs from me.

No large syllable word, no war. I scrolled to the top of the list. There were too many choices. The title sets a tone for the piece. It also creates expectations of what I’m going to write about. If I were to use “Thrift Sore”, the reader would assume that I got my thrift groove on bit too much, and that they would expect hot hand-me-down on hand-me-down action. The same idea are brought to mind if I were to use “Thrift Whore”, but this term also conjures lucid images of late-night drug use, crazy schemes, and scoring less than well on school tests. For some, it also conjures up images that would get my site blocked at private schools.

I was planning on talking about my awesome finds at the St. Thomas church in Madison. In the basement of the church, they have a “Free to Take” thrift clothing section. I mean, come on. I know that girls love sales, but I love free.
They had quite the selection, actually. I almost felt guilty in taking so much relish in what I was taking in. I got a “look at me I’m a lawyer or banker” trench coat and a “look at me I’m actually colour blind” suit coat, much like the one I got at Savers to long ago (that I thought I wrote about but can’t find in my archives right now).

What words described this post? How can I set the tone of getting horrible crap for free at the church? There was so much that that one word had to say, and to have said to it. I needed the right diplomat de plume.

I was relentless. I searched and searched for the word, until it hit me.

The word?

No, a bird; it hit my windshield. And when that happened I got depressed.

Not you, Miles!

Yes, but as soon as I got depressed, I got undepressed. You know why?

Why?

Because I thought of a word for the post.

Was it “bore”? Was it “chore”? Was it “door” or “lore” or “pour”? Do I start it with a consonant, or with a ‘y’ like “yore”? I’ve explored the list for some I’ve missed but nothing was ignored. And it looks as though you, too, must know, it’s “gore” that I adore.

Remember the moon? That scary planet that’s both made of cheese and has a man’s face in it? Well, as I recall, some people are still shocked that we ever decided to send people there in the first place. They could’ve been eaten. But as long as we beat them Russians, who cares! Well, we’re all lucky to have President Bush in the white house; he’s bringing us back and oh so much more.

Here’s President Sparky’s plan: he wants to send people to the moon no later than 2020, and then once we research just how humans react to such strenuous space travel we’ll shoot people to Mars. Yes folks, we are going to send people to “The Red Planet.” Why would people willingly want to go there? Just the sound of it seems painful. Mars seems like the universe’s “Time-Out Chair.”

Among the plethora of reasons people should be saying, “Whoa, George, you’re having a whack attack,” a great one is that one of the purposes of putting humans on Mars is to check for life. This reeks of disaster; can we say “Alien”, “Independence Day”, “Alf” or “Alien: Part Gazillion?”

Aliens are vicious creatures that have no sense of right or wrong or the Geneva Convention. Why would we want to risk the lives of astronauts just to see if we can get a leash around them and bring them to Earth?

I realize many people believe this announcement by Bush to be an attempt to win a few more votes. It may convince a few voters that the president is interested with enhancing our nation’s knowledge of one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Others believe he is finishing his father’s space campaign that was halted once Congress found out how much it would cost. Either way, I think Bush could be spending the money on something a little more important then going to a planet named after a candy bar.

Apparently, Hepatitis B is bad. From what the CDC says about it, it “can cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and death.”

Basically, it’s the viral equivalent of drinking way too much. This virus, coupled with drinking way too much, is why nurses around the country are urging college students to get vaccinated against this tiny, itsy-bitsy fiend. So, what exactly are the nurses of America doing to protect the collegiate fold they are sworn to protect?

Making comic books. Nothing speaks to knowledge-hungry college students like an over-dramatic, poorly drawn, comic book. I feel it is the obligation of Awayken.com to help the proliferation of this literature. That is what follows below.

Click the thumbnails to see the full version.

Cover:

Pages 1 & 2:

Pages 3 & 4:

Pages 5 & 6:

Frosted in golden
    auras and left,
        eternally to fade
        reluctant to go,
    in dying halos
ebb your trails.
Ta’en so slightly
    remaining so softly
        apparitions to praise,
        in such sweetness.
    Light in dark
suddenly wonderfully fails.

Download it at deviantART.

Two thousand and five years ago, a tiny little Jew-boy was born and changed everything. His name was Jesus. At first no one gave a damn, save three Eastern men (go figure), but time would tell. This little boy would shine.

Nowadays, we celebrate his birthday. There aren’t many people who are now passed on where we celebrate their birthday. Holidays like July 4th (birth of America), New Year’s Day (birth of a new year), and Valentine’s Day (birth of cheesy arrow-shooting angels and retarded candy-related puns). It just so happens that Jesus got so bloody popular, being the Son of God and all, that he made the list.

Unlike Thanksgiving, where you exchange over-cooked turkey chunks and needles with your burned-out uncle, Christmas is celebrated by exchanging presents. It’s common to give a present to anyone you “love” or people you want to have power over. If you just “love” someone, you get them a $4 calendar 18 days after Christmas under the guise that ‘it was in your room back in Madison the whole time.’ If you want power over someone, you buy them the sweetest, most expensive present you can imagine them wanting or using. To be most effective at this, it helps to stalk the person first to garner enough information about them to be good at this.

I’ve never been good at Christmas. I “love” more people than I want power over, so I usually get people crappy, after-thought gifts. This is not to say that my coloring book pictures were crappy after-thoughts. I love my grandma and Aunt Sue. It’s just that it seems that I’m cheap. This year, however, was a banner year for me and giving. As far as getting presents is concerned, this year was a drought.

Every year, after mass, we head over to my Grandma Rausch’s for a meal and present exchange. This year was no different. My Aunt Sue usually has a very carefully constructed and orchestrated series of riddles, puzzles, poetry, or games to taunt us, her nieces and nephews, before giving us our presents. This year was no different, except that Sue gave Dan and I (being the eldest) our presents first, with no pomp or circumstance. That was our reward for the game this year, Charades.

The rules were complicated, and no one really understood them. You had to first act out the person whose name you had drawn and then you had to act out the location of their present. Simple enough except when none of your cousins is really outrageous enough to pantomime about. I drew Stephanie’s name. Stephanie is quite the little girl. Stephanie and I have never gotten along much, as our maturity levels are almost identical. You’d think a five year old would be more mature.

Alas, this game lasted for a good deal of time. The only major wrinkles were that Stephanie seemed to think that every present after hers was hers, too, and my Grandma’s charade. Grandma didn’t pay much attention to Sue’s instructions, and we had no idea what she was acting out.

Then we went home. All of us, but Bryce, were present. The presents I gave were stellar. I gave my mother a VHS of “Princess Bride”, my father a gold calendar (when they were expensive), my brother an “Unseen Archives” book on John Lennon, and my sisters a Beatles’ calendar for them to share. What a great guy I am.

Bryce really cashed in. He got a baritone, a guitar, the book from me, a new car, an elephant, and two trips to Disneyland. Molly got a candy machine, a Beatles’ cd, a new puppy, and $1,000. Brenna got a used Kleenex and half a Barbie. What did I get?

Well, the first thing I got was from Molly. She got me a cheap pen with multi-coloured feathers on the top and bobble eyes. Can we say “crappy after-thought�? From my brother I got a “Happy Tree Friends” DVD. The bad part about this was that it was not wrapped, and he gave it to me days early. Where’s the cheer in that? I got nothing from Brenna (go figure). The rest of my presents I got from my parents collectively.

For Christmas I asked for two things. I asked for (1) a new guitar (or money for said guitar) and (2) the special edition of “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” DVD. My first gift was a compass. This was a gag gift that my mother told me she was going to buy. Then I opened my next package. It was heavy, it was Lord of the Rings, it was wrong. She got me the “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” deluxe special edition set. I didn’t want bookends and I already had the DVD. I also got raw horse meat, a pretty nice camera I guess, and the Asian flu.

I was severely let down. God himself got gold, scented candles, and baby oil on the first Christmas. Even Brenna got that half a Barbie she wanted. I guess, for a little bit, I felt sorry for her, and I felt a bit of an affinity with her. We both got the raw end of the Yule-tide deal.

I’m still thankful, though.

He didn’t like prison. People normally don’t like prison, but Casio was softer than most and sensistive. It wasn’t just that they had wrongly accused and then wrongly convicted him. It was also that the kind of person Casio is isn’t the kind of person prison is good for.

The most painful thing he knew outside of those bars was the knowledge that his family, friends, and lover were all on the same side as the law. The courthouse had been packed with people crying for blood. It had been hot, made hotter by the amount of people moving and talking. Some were crying, but no one cried for him.

It was an old country-type courtroom. It was so backwoods that there was dirt on the floor and the judge wore his hunting clothes beneath his robes. Casio was never sure if this custom was on account of the inbred, South Dakotan style of law or the dirty 1920s style of life.

As the judge made his decision, and the gavel met the wooden surface of the desk, he turned to his wife, his bestfriend, his lover, and saw that she was wearing the same guarded expression that everyone else was. She believed them over him. After that he was ready to be locked up, ready to die away from her.

Inside the prison, the most painful thing he knew was the humiliation of being branded a pedophile. He told anyone who would listen that he was innocent, but that same cry was a common mantra of every other inmate. No one listened to him; they broke him in so many ways.

It got to be common practice. After a while, he took neither the care nor energy to resist the things they did to him. He remembered it, though. In his mind he replayed the scene from the courtroom when he realized that his wife didn’t even believe him. It made him bitter; it made him cold.

He paid his debt, as they say, in due time. Being on good behavior and convincing the board that he was cured of a social ailment he was not aware of having, Casio was let back out into the real world.

It was a dark, summer afternoon when he got home. He stood on the beach of Stardust Lake and stared forward. You couldn’t see the other shore from where you stood. It was a flat pane of water, of glass. All that was visible in the Stardust was the front that was rising at the horizon.

He pondered. He was no longer a victim, a horse. He was a free man, but he still felt shackled to what they had done to him. He was trapped by hurt and anger. He looked calm; he looked silent.

The wind picked up. The claw-like hands grabbed at his pant legs. They pulled on his hair and shirt. The storm was coming. It urged him on. It mocked his outward coldness and stoicism. It clutched at the rage that was growing inside him.

He watched the front across the waterway pickup. It reared its head in the water. It rose high above the ground, towering with raindrops clinging to tiny dust particles. He heard it on the wind as he saw it with his eyes. “The storm in the sea.”

Download it at deviantART.

I fancy myself a software guy. I’ve kinda fallen out of love with a lot of aspects of computing. Hardware gets so confusing. Different types of RAM, CPUs, hard drives, video cards all plague the market. How is the average person supposed to be able to build their own screaming, dream machine? Whether for gaming or porn, the average joe or joelie should be able to purchase random pieces of hardware from any site with the words “computer” and “discount” in the web address. Sometimes I buy from a page with the word “sexy” in the address, too. Just don’t tell Megan.

I had little problem in building my computer. I had the kind words and advice of a host of computer genii, but I still found myself a little overwhelmed. All in all, the process went well. Building a computer found a soft spot in my heart.

I cannot say the same for networking. Networking has that hard, plague-crusted, artery-clogged part of my heart. That part of your heart where the blood is black and smells like soy sauce and rum. Collin, you know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t then you’re not the lead – guitarist – hair – band – wannabe – washup – x – ray – picture – taker – computer – science – ex – programmer that I think you are.

I thought that Christmas Break would be easy. I was all ready to sit back, read a little, plot my funeral, and write some posts. Boy was I wrong. Almost as soon as I got into the house, my mother was talking to me.

“Your father has all the wiring done. When are you going to get the internet working for your computers?”

“Hello, mother. I love you. Do you love me?”

“Get those computers wired. Then you guys can play games.”

Sigh. So, I got to work. After bringing my computer downstairs (to see three other computers sitting in waiting) my dad, Bryce, Ryan, and I started the process of wiring everyone.

“Kathy Tyler says that you need to use two routers, not the switch.” Oh, yeah. My mom tried to help, too.

Step one was to deal with the router. BEFORE YOU PLUG IT IN, you have to configure it. How do you configure something when it’s not hooked up? “Kathy Tyler says to put this CD in first, before you hook up the router.” I put the CD in. It spins up; it autoruns. I click through the menus, again it tells me to make sure the router is not hooked up. Then I click “auto configure”. While I’m watching the little hourglass go tumbling end over end, I bring up a browser and navigate to “http://awayken.com”. As I’m browsing the comments of my page, a dialog box from the install pops up. “Internet connection not detected. Please manually configure the router.”

This is just one example of many to show just how this was going to go. I go to the website to manually configure. Linksys has a page of ISPs and the settings that you should set your router to. I scroll through the list to find that there is NO Midcontinent Internet listed.

Great grand. The next day, went even better. We yanked all the wires down through the ceiling and put them all in the former laundry room, which is now the cat poop and pop place. We brought down the router. We hooked a bunch of computers up to it, but there weren’t enough ports. So, we tried to hook the two routers together. It was no good. The computers couldn’t see each other. I tried thousands of things. We wanted, one, the computers to all see each other, and, two, all the computers to see the internet.

I tried messing with router configs, hooking up different cables to different ports, and crying. They were all no good, but crying was the most satisfactory. We called Kathy Tyler several times. Pretty soon she was saying to use the switch instead of the router. No good. Now use both routers and the switch. No good. Sacrifice second born. No good.

We moved the main computer and switched the router/modem/computer/cable configuration. Then the home computer didn’t have internet for a while. Then I got it back. Then I moved some stuff, and it lost internet again. Then I got it working again. Back and forth we tumbled until I was about to give up.

I switched out the switch with the routers again. I tried to get them to talk to each other, and then my aunt Sue came over. She’s the network administrator and fourth grade teacher at Big Stone School. “Did you make a crossover cable?” Oh, lord. How can little things like that escape me. I made a crossover cable after that, but it didn’t go. I didn’t know if it was crossover for sure. I made it again. Nothing. I made it again. Nothing. When I had about 3 inches left to work with, I gave up. The computers could all see each other, so we gamed.

Day three, the final day. I got up and gave Midco a call. He set me straight on a lot of things.

“Did it work that way before?”

“No; it’s never worked.”

“Oh, okay. I’ve never heard of that working, so that’s why I asked. It probably won’t work that way.”

It’s good to have such helpful tech support people. I reconfigured the setup once again. Then the internet didn’t work again. I messed around and finally got it working again. So, I now knew what I had to do. I had to get the LAN jack to send little tiny network packets downstairs to that switch. So, the internet comes through the cable. It goes to the router. Then it goes to the main computer upstairs, and then through the LAN jack downstairs to the switch. Then it splits out and goes to every computer plugged into that switch. Some of it goes to the other LAN jack up stairs, and some of it goes to my dad’s garage.

The problem was that it didn’t work. The switch all worked. The router all worked. What was the deal. We called Kathy Tyler again. I got to talk to her way longer than I cared to. The nice part was that she couldn’t figure it out either. I sighed. I was close to giving up. I redid an end in the basement. I rewired the jack in the wall. Then I redid the end in the basement one more time. I was fed up. It was dark out now, and I was sick of it. I finally announced it to everyone.

“I’m done. I hate networking. I’m going to play Max Payne 2 downstairs, and then I’m going to go write the hit song, ‘Alone in my Principles’.”

I was in the midst of killing a herd of villians in sepia-tainted slow-mo when my aunt Sue came back over. My mother had called her. Over the gunshots, I told her what I had done. She sat for a bit and talked to my dad. I continued to be a good cop gone bad. Then she came over and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Restart your computer, and you’ll have internet. You had one wire loose in the wall jack.”

The internet has never been more bittersweet. For all the work it was, all I can say is, never again.

The sun did come up that day, but a guy couldn’t make out the outline from our house. You could see a haze, sure enough, but that golden ball was just a dull circle in the blackened sky. The oblong yellow, dampened by dust, was something like a symbol of everything that had happened.

They didn’t tell you these things when you moved out here. They tell you a bit about the winters, but that’s all. Then the winters hit, and you can’t think of anything worse. The cold moves like a ghost. It runs with the wind; it pushes into your bones. You can’t imagine a cold like the kinds you get out here.

Then the winter fades away. The sun, like a savior, would rise every day to push the bluster farther and farther away. Then comes the wind again, this time with dust in its hands. It tosses the sand and dirt about like a kid in a sandbox.

It got everywhere. It would find its ways into the most unforseen cracks. Our house was identical to the out of doors, except that there were still four quaint walls around us. We were breathing ground everyday.

We couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe. We just waited to die.

Download it at deviantART.